What do the following people have in common? Herman Melville, Ernest Hemingway, Frank Zappa, Errol Flynn, Nol Coward, Frank Lloyd Wright, Gustave Eiffel, James Watt, The Wright Brothers, Charles Darwin, Michael Faraday, Benjamin Franklin and Abraham Lincoln. All were more or less self-educated.
Those were the exceptions not the standard. How many others in their generation are uneducated folks doing manual labor because they couldn't read, write, solve simple equations, or have any other skill set than brute force/strength?
Without a real nationwide system in place your placing a lot of responsibilty on the parents which many now show little to no desire to do anything to educate their children. And increasing that is only going to make things worse. Your going to increase the undeducated and only redirect millions of dollars that went to schools into other long term assistance programs because of the new uneducated generation your system creates.
The parents who care are going to get their kids a good education. They are involved. They want their kids to succeed. That's why homeschooling often works. Because the parents
CARE.
I've worked in Detroit where they are dancing in the streets over raising the graduation rate to 62% for 2011
http://detroitk12.org/content/2011/...e-state-began-new-cohort-methodology-in-2007/ 62%!!!!! And yes they should be proud of what they've accomplished. However 62% is still embaressing. The thing is many of the parents of these kids just don't care. Many of these kids are left alone to fend for themselves till dark because its not safe, or they have to be back in school the next day.
So how many of those parents are going to actually make it a point to get their kid to school, let alone to a better performing school on the other side of town? Or in the next town? Not going to happen.
Not enough of them are having their parents sit down and go through their homework with them. Help them use proper grammer, or show their work so they know they know the answers. How many of them actually say they are proud of their son or daughter? Or even bother to show them affection?
Part of it is a school issue, but part of it is a parenting issue. I work hard to make sure my daughter is learning as much as she can that's part of my responsibility as her father. Its not enough to send her to school and expect them to educate her. I have to take the initiative and be sure she's doing her work, and its done right not just done. I always had my parents proof read my work because they would do that early on so it was habit. They took the time to read to me, to make sure I didn't have any run-on sentences, and I carried the 1.
We have whats called "School of choice" here in Michigan. Everybody can go to any school they want to provided there are openings. Its not merit based or anything else, its literally available slots in the school district. So if you want your kid to go to a different school you can. The trade though is you have to get them there if you go to a system outside your district. It has its advantages because you can get your kid out of an underperforming system if you have the resources but it creates a whole new set of problems trying to get the kids to that area. It really hasn't made that much of a difference around here. Its free enterprise but its not really making a big difference.
You can't tell me that fancy buildings with a gymnasium, a cafeteria, a football stadium and classes in Comparative Folk Dancing are necessary to get a good education.
I think this is more of a problem at the college level than at a public school level. The rising cost of tuition, paying for these extravagent work out rooms, stadiums, coaches salaries etc. No public school I know of has classes in Comparative Folk Dancing.
