Public Education

This is probably a damnable heresy, but I am starting to doubt that public education is a good idea. This week, a friend discovered from her 12 year old son that the art teacher had a showed a U-Tube video during class that dealt with the art work of Salvador Dali. In my friend’s view, the art and the narration in the video were about as appropriate for her son as it would be to release rattlesnakes into the classroom for a study of zoology.  

The crux of the problem is widely divergent values that have taken root in our culture since the 1960s. Our nation has lost the moorings of a mostly Christian/religious ethical base. Our morals are rocking like a canoe in a hurricane. As this happens, what's a teacher to do? And what's a parent to do as schools hire teachers from this value vortex? There are parents and teachers who have an established moral code, and they can tell you what the code is. There are parents and teachers who are disciples of churches that teach Hollywood principles, "Do anything you want, and we'll make you feel good about it." There are parents and teachers who advocate anything legal if it promotes achievement, regardless of morals and ethics.  And there are and parents and teachers who simply don't care what goes on as long as no one bothers them. 

With such a wide split in values, morals, and ethics, some young teachers enter the classroom with no more notion of what would be appropriate for children from different value-structures than I have of quantum physics.

Add to the value vortex the artsy philosophy that anything called “art” has merit and therefore is above criticism and the mess gets gooey.  My friend's experience illustrates this values clash.

There are an abundance of people who are desensitized to what used to be a moral “no-brainer.” For instance, when my son was about eleven, we let him sleep over at a friend’s house. He and his buddy spent half the night watching R rate movie after R rated movie.  It never occurred to me that a responsible parent would rent R rated movies for eleven year olds.  It never occurred to them that anyone would object to the movies.

Over the past two decades, this value separation is growing more pronounced.  Case in point:  no ever thought of homeschooling when I was a child.  There were some children who lived on ranches so far from a school that the kids stayed home and took classes over the radio, but that was the extent of homeschooling.  

I don't see how public education can work when those with decided values are mixed with those of shifting values.