-=> Quoting Mike Angwin to Jean Halverson <=-
 MA> Have you seen what is being taught in schools today and the way
 MA> it is being taught?  Here in Houston we are fortunate if one out of
 MA> four techers our children are assigned to are what I would really call
 MA> a teacher.  These teachers still do well and stimulate our children
 MA> letting them learn.  The remainder are either totally unconcerned
 MA> about the children themselves as individuals, or are so involved in
 MA> other things they cannot effectively teach.  Then too, there is the
 MA> political agenda that takes precedence over everything else.
 
 But it's been that way for years. It was that way when I went to school,
 but I'll readily admit that things are considerably worse now.
 
 JH> dropped out for a year and carried a dismal GPA not to mention the fac
 JH> I do not argue with this at  all. But are you sure that this is not me
 JH> "makework" to keep above average students occupied while the teacher h
 JH> deal with students whose parents don't care?
 MA> 
 MA> No, I think it's makework to give the teacher time to fill out
 MA> all the required forms and makework created for them by useless
 MA> administrators who themselves have nothing better to do.  
 
 This I agree with. My grandfather was a teacher in the San Diego, CA school
 district for about 15 years. The only work he had to do was correcting
 papers. The amount of bureaucratic paper work that is now required has 
 snowballed. But my experience in school was alot of makework for average
 students while the teacher worked with the difficult students.
 BTW,  what are the current administrator to teacher ratios? The last I 
 heard  it was around 1 to 7  or so.
 JH> Okay, I'm not saying to shut the doors, I'm saying let's stop _forcing
 JH> children  into school. That should be the parent's responsibility.
 JH> If the parents don't want to send their kids to school let them find
 JH> their own babysitters.
 
 MA> There is an age where this might be a viable option, but in the
 MA> pre-teen years I believe it's important that all children receive the
 MA> benifit of a foundational education just to be functional memebrs of
 MA> society.  What I would like to see is elimination of the government
 
 A functional member of society is one who has job skills, not one who has
 a little piece of paper proving he graduated from school. I graduated
 with a B average and had no job skills. We need to return to the
 aprenticeship system or push  vocational programs for the _majority_ of
 students. I saw a PBS special two years ago that  gave the statistic that
 only 25% of jobs required a true college education, The rest required
 vocational training. We've been graduating unemployable people for two
 decades at least. Kids should be learning their vocational skills in
 highschool. Their parents should not _have_ to send them to college.
 
 MA> monolopy on education and a competitive atmosphere created giving
 MA> parents, and children, the right to choose between different schools.
 MA> That alone would go a long way towards solving the problems created by
 MA> a stagnant, centralized, government operated system.
 
 JH> I think our only real area of disagreement is in the idea of "compulso
 JH> education. I feel that compulsory education has created nothing more t
 JH> a government babysitter. I do feel that the voucher system is complete
 JH> viable and should be pursued.
 MA> 
 MA> Unless we maintain an ability to give all our children basic,
 MA> foundational skills, we are going to have an enormous negative impact
 MA> on our society.  
 
 This is hyperbole, Mr Angwin. There would be a negative impact but it would
 be more along the lines of parents being arrested for neglect when they
 refuse to aquire their own babysitters for their children whom they don't
 force to attend school. THEN as the realization finally dawns on _these_
 particular parents we might actually see a change in our society. Imagine
 parents actually caring about their children's education.
 
 MA> An illiterate and uneducated mass of Americans would
 MA> become a persistant social problem manifesting itself in higher levels
 MA> of crime, large numbers of unemployable individuals, and, possible the
 MA> most dangerous of all, a large block of voters far more prone to
 MA> casting emotionally based rather than logical votes in elections.
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 And we don't have that now?????
 And we don't already  have a large group of kids who are graduated from 
 school without usable skills???
 MA> The consequences of this could threaten both our ecconomic and
 MA> social stability over the long term. 
  
 We're there already, Mr. Angwin.
 Jean Halverson
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