Gallup keeps getting answers that leftids don’t like. For instance:
Only 28% of Americans have “quite a lot” of confidence in our public school system (https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/education/barely-one-quarter-americans-trust-public-school-system-poll). The lowest-ever figure, since they started keeping track in 1973, was 26% in 2014. When *Batteries Not Included was president and started meddling with education.
Breaking it down, Republicans had the least confidence in public schools, 14%; Independents, 29%; and Democrats (of course) a bizarre 43%. You could look at it another way: Even among Democrats, less than half think the schools are peachy-keen.
The question remains–why does anybody send their kids to public school? Why are there still millions of children in there, being “taught” Critical Race Theory, transgender, socialism, and being groomed for aberrant sex? Why have they been left as playthings for the teachers’ unions? How is “Yeah, the schools suck, but we send our kids there anyway” a reasonable argument?
To answer your question about why parents send their children to government schools: Many parents don’t know of any other options or can’t afford them (even homeschooling). But throughout the country, formal schooling is mandatory. If parents don’t send their children to school at all, their children will be taken away from them as constant truants.
How did the Roman middle class get educated, 2,000 years ago? Public schooling as we know it wasn’t invented till the mid-19th century. So families pooled their resources and hired a tutor who would teach their children together.
IF (!) enough people take their kids out of public school, we can break the teachers’ unions–and what’re they gonna do? Grab 10 million kids and jail their parents?
God help us if that’s even feasible.
Unfortunately, some states have made such stringent laws and regulations about homeschooling and schooling pods that they’re either impossible to meet the criteria or prohibitively expensive to submit the paperwork and get the required permits. Some states, too, mandate just the kinds of curricula that parents are trying to escape from. It’s going to take a lot of time, courage, and perseverance in the face of persecution to escape from the teachers’ unions and government oversight (but I repeat myself). I’m not saying it can’t be done, and I certainly think it needs to be done, but the parents themselves are going to have to be trained first before they can fight the Leviathan.
The Chalcedon Foundation has spent several decades fighting for homeschooling. When R.J. Rushdoony began, those few parents who dared to homeschool faced prison time. But we are happy to report that homeschooling now is enjoying record growth and there are now too many homeschooling families for the “educators” and their Democrat friends to turn the clock back.
True, in Canada the government does try to dictate the curriculum to homeschooling families (“Bible bad, sodomy good”). But we are not in Canada. We still have some freedom left, and we had better use it.
I’m surprised it is that high!
There are still many people who simply haven’t been paying attention.
They are horrible