🚀 go-pugleaf

morphis@niuhep.physics.niu.edu wrote:
> 
> In article <32928927.573E@rmii.com>, sockeye <sockeye@rmii.com> writes:
> 
> >       Sigh ... look, this is a simple and symmetric issue, really.
[ .. ]

> [some good points deleted]
> 
> >the parents. Why is institutional schooling the default?
> 
> What %age of families have a SAH parent?  Historically I think the
> answer is that most parents were too busy and too poorly educated
> to have half a chance to home school their children beyond teaching
> them to read from the family Bible.
>
How many high schools manage even that much? A modern high school
diploma is not even a guarantee of functional literacy. I realize many
HS kids do much better, but most of them got intellectual stimulation ..
at home. 


[ .. chop ... ]


> 
> I merely want to point out that the parents have do input through the PTA
> and through voting for the school board and other politicians.  

	Not really. The PTA and school board are IMO just sops for public
opinion. They exist only to sidetrack and occupy and frustrate potential
reformers. Remember the great Stephanie Hult Recall Controversy? At the
core of that controversy (personalities aside) there was a difference of
opinions in how middle schools should be run. I looked closely at the
differences in the two sides. Regardless of which side won, the outcome
would have been negligible in real terms ...a few schools would have a
changed a little bit for at least a little while. The kids most likely
would not even have noticed. I don't even remember who "won"; it makes
no difference anyway. This controversy occupied thousands of exhausting
hours of parent, teacher, and school board time, and made no difference
except to soak up all of that energy without producing any real gains on
the ground. I suspect that is the PURPOSE of these elections and
meetings, when you get right down to it. If you want to hear from people
who have gone through the channels to try to affect change, pop on over
to misc.education. In every case, the voice of experience is the voice
of frustration. The knobs that run the system are out of reach of anyone
who ever sees the kids, and the knobs offered up to the proles are
connected to nothing. 
	As long as the schools can persuade people to assume their own
rightness, and all other's wrongness, and to compel attendance, they
will not change, ever. Amendment 17 would have stripped them of the
power to compel attendance, and a victory for A17 would have made clear
that the majority of Coloradans are not prepared to deify the school
system in the face of the evidence to the contrary. 
	=Eric