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I believe that one of the worst things to ever happen to the public school system was the creation of the Dept. of Education. Here's why: The federal government has no legislative authority over public education at all. None. Zip. Nada. They are prohibited from writing any law affecting how we teach or what we teach. They have absolutely no legal control over us at all. So how, then, do they exert so much control?
Money, naturally.
Since they don't have the constitutional authority to fuck with the school system, they use money as a means of control. I think a lot of us can agree that money is a much greater motivator than the law. The Dept. of Education sits around all day figuring out what strings to attach to all that federal money earmarked for education. Needless to say, every single fuckhead politician with a point to make gets to throw in his worhtless, uneducated opinion into what schools should be forced to do in order to receive those desperately-needed federal dollars.
How can we change or fix this?
Bill O'Rights has an idea: competition and school-choice
Shanifaye has an idea: homeschool your child
Onesnowyowl has an idea: get involved in your public schools, whether you have children there or not.
Mixedmedia has an idea: pay attention to your children and what they are learning.
Honestly, as others have already said, those in charge aren't going to change a goddamn thing on their own.
Teachers' unions exist seemingly for the sole purpose of printing gossip rags on administrators. Administrators exist seemingly only for the paycheck - and trust me, principals make a very nice living. Parents exist seemingly for the sole purpose of dumping their kids in school then bitching about everything without doing anything. Teachers exist seemingly to collect a paycheck and take summer vacations. The number of people who care enough and are willing to do something positive are far outnumbered by the types of people I described above.
There are good schools out there. Oddly enough, the schools with the most successful students aren't the richest schools; they're the schools where the parents, the teachers, and the administrators work closely together for the success of the students.
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"I can normally tell how intelligent a man is by how stupid he thinks I am" - Cormac McCarthy, All The Pretty Horses
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