What’s so Terrible About the Public School System?

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We often hear a parent of a student in the public school system make this kind of statement:

My child is doing fine in school. Sure... public schools may not be perfect, but as long as my child is doing OK, the public school system is working.

There's so many things wrong with this statement and its easy to fall into the multiple fallacies in this kind of thinking.

So, we decided to list out as many problems in this kind of belief -- the terrible assumptions that parents can make about the public school system

You don't really know what your child is learning

Unless you're involved in your child's school work on a daily basis (aka "homeschooling"), you can only observe a small portion of what your child is learning which is not representative. Do you have the time to read and examine every single textbook that your child is using (probably not)? Do you know what lessons and materials are being passed out and studied in class (No). If your child was taught something that you don't agree with, would they be likely to tell you of it in the first place? No. Here are some problems inherent in the fact that when you drop-off your kid at the school or the bus stop, the teachers are now in-charge of your child's education:

First, teacher's are not required (legally or otherwise) to notify you of the subject matter or details of what they are teaching, except for a few narrowly defined subjects (such as sex-education).

And for these subjects that require prior notification, there are gigantic legal loopholes. For other subjects, you have no right whatsoever (which has been repeatedly upheld by the Supreme Court) to object or interfere in the teaching of normal subjects. Here are some examples:

• A biology teacher teaches your child that the most noble goal in life is to Save the Planet from its imminent destruction and that your child should become an environmental activist. They regularly discuss recycling, deforestation, pollution, fracking, climate change, etc. (environmentalism) during the school year.

• The health science teacher teaches your child that they are transgender, which (in their opinion) falls outside of the category of sex-education.

• That "Communism can work, if it was done the right way" or that living in China is just like (if not better than), living in the United States.

• The english teacher has the class studying world religions and implies that Jesus was not real and is a mythological character.

• The drama teacher teaches your child that the Rocky Horror Picture Show is the apex of art and theater, directing your child to absorb every detail of this play.

• The english teacher selects only Nihilistic or Atheistic inspired novels for their class to read and study, emphasizing that post-modern nihilistic philosophy is the highest belief.

• The public speaking teacher teaches students to only speak in-favor of Democrat and Liberal political causes or messages. If a student must take the opposing argument it is treated in class as a kind of punishment and point of ridicule.

• The Health-Ed teacher decides that teaching about condom usage is not a within the topic of "Sex-Education", and therefore not subject to prior notification.

• The history teacher is teaching that the founders of the United States of America were all bigoted slave holders and that the United States was really founded in 1619 when the first slaves were shipped and arrived in America, that racism is commonplace today, and the Bill of Rights is really just a smoke-screen used to oppress people.

  
  

And these are all real examples that have gone to the Supreme Court which has ruled that you, as a parent, do not have a right to know or object to the subject matter taught to your child, except in some narrow circumstances.

You don't know what your child is not learning

Along similar lines, you have no idea if your child is not learning important subjects (or subjects that you feel are important) or if your child is failing. That is:

• Do you know if your child passed in every subject matter they need to learn? If the grading system allows a studen to get a few "Fail" grades in tests or assignments, which are weighed against their "A,B,C's"-- then its likely that they may not be able to do some basic things (such as long division, which many adults can't do).

• Do you know what subjects are being minimized or maximized? For example, the history teacher has instruction for 6 months on the Presidency of Barack Obama, teaching about every detail of President Obama, but only brielfly mentions the most negative things about presidencies of Donald Trump, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, George Bush (Sr), and Gerald Ford, spanning 3x the number of years.

• Do you know what subjects are being omitted? For example, few high schools teach about Home-Ed (how to do things that are needed in the home), budgeting, or basic financing. So when your child gets to college they may not know how to: 1) pay their bills, 2) cook healthy meals for themselves, or 3) handle complicaed debt instruments, such as a credit card or student loan.

You don't know what career your child is being influenced towards

An inherent part of education is influencing your child's direction into a future career, which they should begin to consider as early as 12 or 14 years old. Its also possible your child is being influenced towards a career that doesn't really exist, will pay very little, isn't a real job, or which only supports left-wing causes. Think about all the careers that were triumphed when you were in school: such as art, music, writing, teaching, biology, life sciences, environmental science, baseball player. Now think of all the subjects that were not emphasized: engineering, accounting, law, software development, information theory, farming, business administration, economics, leadership, and finance. One group (the latter) can provide a real career with some security; the others do not.

There's a reason why so many adults have a degrees in liberal arts but then they can't get a good job, and its because the public school system is influencing students towards these low-paying careers that provide value to few others. There's a reason why most of the population of the United States is not independent enough to survive without the presence of elaborate social services. Do you want your child to experience a lifetime of being dependent and poor because they were taught by a teacher that they should pursue their "art"*?

*Note: we're not saying that being an artist can't be a great hobby that later turns into a career. 

You don't know how much of your child's childhood is being wasted

When you were in school, there were probably many times when you were bored in class or when it seemed that school wasn't productive. Perhaps the teacher was teaching about a subject that you already knew, or that you weren't interested in or didn't seem important at all. Or maybe the teacher had you do endless math worksheets of long division or the PE teacher decided to make you run laps for the entire PE class. Or maybe the teacher decided that the class would read the entirety of "The Joy Luck Club", spending the whole school year in doing so (a real example from this writer's high school english class).

Regardless of the details, public schooling is extremely inefficient. Because teaching is not individualized, the teacher of a subject can only go at one rate of advancement for the class. If that rate is too slow for your child, they are wasting their time. If that rate is too fast, they will fail to learn the material. In either case, the public school system is wasting your away child's childhood.

You don't know what religion your child is being taught to follow

In every community in America, there is a governemnt sponsored temple that only teaches Atheism and Paganism. These temples are called our "public schools", and although they provide educational instruction in some areas, they promote a unified religious philosophy that attendees must obey, such as:

• You are not allowed to practice, exercise, or outwarldly display a belief in the most well-known historically evidenced religion (Christianity). Talking about or acting out this religion will result in your freedoms to be suppressed.

• You are allowed to practice, exercise, or outwardly display a belief in any other religion, as long as it contradicts Christianity. The more it contradicts Christianity, the more it will be permitted and emphasized.

• Human beings evolved from apes or monkey's, and there's no inherent meaning in the creation of human life on earth, since we are all just animals.

• Life is devoid of meaning. The best you can hope for is accumulating enough material wealth to be comfortable, or getting a job that provides enough security until you no longer need to do work, or can't (retirement).

The risk of dropping-out is real and can be forever damaging

An education system should never fail a child: the failure rate should be nearly zero. And yet the high-school drop-out rate nationally averages between 6 to 12%. This means that your child has (approximately) a 1 in 10 chance of experiencing a life-long disability that will impact their confidence in themselves and/or their ability to succeed in a competive economic world. (And yes, we recognize that some entrepreneurs that were drop-outs). There are few jobs (even easy ones) that you can get without some level of education and getting into college is pretty tough without a high-school diploma or a GED.

And why do kids drop-out? There are many reasons, all of which are only occur in public schools:

• Drugs: the most likely reason is because of drugs or somehow related to drugs. When your child is in a public school, there is simply no way you can control their exposure to the drug-culture.

• Pregnancy: similar to an exposure to the drug culture, there's also an exposure to promiscuous and under-age sex.

• Personal learning challenges: some students require individualized instruction, for whatever reason. Perhaps they're a little autistic or more emotional than other kids. They have a need that needs to be handled in a personalized way.

• Gangs, violence, and crime: many teenagers drop-out because they are influenced by others to engage in gang activities or commit crimes, which provide an immediate pathway out of the school system (albeit, a bad one).