211: The Case Against Public Schooling

My response to The case against homeschooling by Jesse Scaccia

Here are my top ten reasons why public schooling parents are doing the wrong thing (actually, they’re not my top ten, they’re just a response to Scaccia’s top ten):

10. “You were totally public schooled” is an insult college kids use when mocking the poor-performing kid in the dorm (whether or not the offender was public schooled or not). And… say what you will… but it doesn’t feel nice to be considered dumb, and an academically low achiever — a natural outcropping of being public schooled.

9. Call me old-fashioned, but a students’ classroom shouldn’t also be where they are stuck between four walls with one adult and 30 other same-aged children. Students–from little ones to teens–deserve a learning-focused place to study and real-world experiences. In modern society, we imprison them in places called schools, that most closely resemble factories or prisons. The best and brightest of all generations throughout history were free to pursue their interests in real-world contexts. Prisons have, historically, and until the advent of compulsory schooling, always been reserved for criminals.

8. Public schooling is selfish. Students who get public schooled are increasingly from dual income families with well-educated, wealthy parents. To put these students in our schools is a disservice to our less fortunate public school kids. Poorer students with less literate parents are stuck with higher class sizes and less individualized attention.

7. God hates public schooling.
Deuteronomy 6: 4-9

4 Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. [a] 5 Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. 6 These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. 7 Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 9 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

You can’t really fulfill this set of commandments by sending your kid off to public school. (Personally I don’t think God really cares what method of education you use . . . but the parody back is kind of fun).

6. Public schooling parent/teachers are arrogant to the point of lunacy.
My qualifications to teach English include a graduate degree in English literature, a year’s worth of post-grad studies in fiction with a Pulitzer Prize winning author, and ten years as a college professor. So, first of all, public school teacher, you think you can teach English as well as I can? Your degrees are more likely in education, and not in a subject area. But let’s assume that you can teach as well as I can.

There’s no way that you can accommodate my student’s needs and interests in the confines of your scripted curriculum, NCLB testing practice, and the needs and interests of your other 30 charges. You simply don’t have the time, talent, or resources to do it. Even the most gifted teachers (a rarity) are spread too thin to truly invest the time my student deserves.

5. As a parent, public schooling kind of pisses me off. (That should be more than good enough for #5, but let’s explore it.) Not only do you want my child during h** choicest hours of the day, you want to send home makework, busywork, and homework to intrude further on our family’s time together. Additionally, you can’t seem to make the 10-15K per student in funding you receive cover any of your classroom supplies, reasonable upkeep of the building, textbooks, or, in many places, transportation. Do you know what I could do with that same 10-15K? Actually, you can see exactly what I’d do with it — because I choose to use my own funds to provide that education to my children, and still pay for your school. I do this without draining the resources or adding to the crowded classrooms.

4. Public schooling breeds intolerance, and racism. Unless the student is being public schooled in a large city, how can a young person learn to appreciate other cultures if he or she doesn’t live among them? Public schools draw their student bodies from the same neighborhoods, ensuring that children are divided by race and class, just as their neighborhoods are. If my child were to attend her local school, she’d be trapped, every day, with thirty other white kids of her same age, and would never have the chance to experience the diversity of our community. Public schools engage in “school rivalries” further deepening divides between neighborhoods, races, and classes.

3. And don’t give me this “they still participate in activities” garbage. Socialization in our grand multi-cultural experiment we call America is a process that takes more than an hour a day, a few times a week outside of the prison walls we continue to call “schools.” Public schooling, undoubtedly, leaves the child unprepared socially.

2. Public schooling parents are arrogant, part 2. According to the Why Public School blog, many poorly educated, low-income parents are “probably people who are a not comfortable in taking risks” in choosing a college or line of work. “The attributes that facilitate that might also facilitate them being more comfortable with public-schooling and be satisfied with the poor performance of their assigned school.”

Not comfortable taking risks with their child’s education? Gamble on, I don’t know, the Superbowl, not your child’s future, but don’t send them to public school. After all, their poor educations and low-incomes are almost always directly attributable to the public schools the parents attended.

1. And finally… have you met someone who was public schooled? Not to hate, but they do tend to be lemmings.

*** On the word ‘lemming.’ In general, to be a lemming connotes a certain inability to think for oneself and take risks. Which, I would argue, is a likely result of being educated in an environment with one set of same-aged peers between four walls, for 12 of your most creative, energetic, and productive years. It’s hard to get by in such a diverse world as ours! And the more people you can hang out with, the more real experiences you have, the more freedom you enjoy, the more likely you are to succeed, both in work life and real life.