Public School and Society

In our social system, we often just take for granted that the way our educational system set up is the way it should be without question.  But if you look at society across the ages, turning your children over to strangers without question to educate them in ways that are not your own is far from the normal way most societies bring their young up to adult level of knowledge and skill.

If anything, the two models that most resemble the way families educate their children historically is home school or private school.  It’s only the advent of large cities and a move away from the agricultural lifestyle that brought on the phenomenon of huge public schools as we know them.  As recently as the generation before The Baby Boomers, public education was handled at the local level where the local community hired a teacher and brought the children together for basic instructions under the watchful eye of the local school board.  

Parents were far more the authority under that system and the idea that the teacher or the school administration had more to say about what your child would be taught than you do was as ridiculous as the idea that the grocery clerk could tell you what food you could or could not buy.

This early model of private school is more in step with the way most of our social support systems work.  We by and large maintain a capitalist society where people are allowed to do work for us as long as they conform to our expectations.  The employee doesn’t tell the employer what they can expect and the employer is not denied access to the process as it often the case in public schools.

Now to say that public schools “kidnap” our children and “indoctrinates” them into some strange alien way of thinking is overly dramatic.  To be practical, most local schools systems are looking after the best interest of the children.  The basic education of the kids in the core disciplines (reading, writing and arithmetic) still are the reason for existing for most public schools.  

But there are abuses that crop up in virtually every public school system that often aggravate parents.  The very fact that the private school movement has been such a success is a testimony to the fact that public schools are not serving the needs of all of the children and their families who pay taxes for such service so those parents must seek other alternatives for their children.  

It really is unfair if you think about it because of the almost “socialist” way that public schools are run.  Funding for public schools is usually enabled by taxation.  But many who pay into the system do not benefit from it because they do not have children and they don’t have a say in whether they approve of the system or want to see it changed.  Furthermore, if a family decides to take their child out of the public schools and pay for private school, they have to continue to support the public schools with their taxes and in effect pay for two school systems, one of which failed to serve their needs.

Looking at the differences between public and private schools in this way doesn’t solve anything.  For the time being, the situation is not likely to change.  The most important thing is that your child gets the best education possible and the decision you must make between public and private schools for your kid’s sake must look away from the unfairness of the system as it works today.  But it is helpful to look at the system this way so we can work as a society to make things better over time.  That is our job as parents and as citizens as well.