National politics tends to frame every debate.
Or, perhaps I should say “mis-frame” every debate. Trouble is, there’s this tendency to make a “federal case” out of everything.
Politicians seem driven to add on bureaucracies and taxes and programs, rather than root around government to repeal programs that aren’t working. More failed programs beget more failed programs.
We witness this, these days, in the debate over medicine. The drive to centralize is strong, seemingly irresistible.
But centralization rarely accomplishes what people hope for it.
K‑12 public schooling has been systematically centralized first at state levels, and then, increasingly, at the federal level.
“Closing the Door on Innovation” is a broad-spectrum, trans-partisan attack upon the very idea of (as well as recent calls for) a national curriculum. Its sponsors know that calls for increasing centralized control over what kids learn in our public schools only sounds good as sound bites. In practice, centralization strangles innovation and closes off diversity in schooling.
I encourage you to read the manifesto. Sign it. In my opinion, the further we place our kids’ educations out of the hands of parents and into the hands of bureaucrats and politics, the worse things will get.
It is decentralization that should be our watchword. Let’s add it to our political agenda.
And let’s teach it to our kids. They could use a good education, after all, one good concept at a time.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
4 replies on “Fighting the Centralizers”
Would not vouchers improve the public schools? We are getting an inferior product from the present school system, whether local, state or federal.
The monarchists are only for diversity when it fragments people and lessens the people’s control.
Competition, local control, a challenging curriculum, and teachers that teach instead of toeing a minimalist line are things that threaten to remove power and money from the centrists, away from the statists and return them to the people.
The republi/dems will never go for it.
Our current facsimile of an education system has teens having to ask Google who Osama Bin Ladin is and why he was important, but most of them “knowing” about the unproven concept of global warming.
That is what centralization has bought us.
THE PROBLEM WITH THE PARENTS HAVING ( ANY SORT OF CONTROL) IS MANY PARENTS(A) DON’T CARE AND/OR ARE TOTALLY INDIFFERENT. (SEE- NEWS-PARENTS AND PARENTS BOYFRIEND/GIRL FRIEND KILL CHILDREN BECAUSE — -), AND (B) ARE IGNORANT, AND/OR RACIST.
MY MOTHER WAS A TEACHER (NYC) FOR OVER 30 YEARS- AND SAW IT ALL. OTHER MEMBERS FO MY FAMILY WERE IN THE EDUCATION FIELD IN FLORIDA, AND SAW MANY OTHER THINGS- LIEK SINGLE MOTHERS WHO HAD A BOYFRIEND/LIVE IN OF THE WEEK; HATE TATTOOS ( “LETS KILL ALL THE NIGGERS; CATHOLICS. SPICS AND JEWS”- GOING INTO A KINDERGARDEN CLASS- WHERE HER DAUGHRTER WAS A STUDENT); A FATHER WHO CAME FOR KLUNCH AND HAD HSI DAUGHTER ( 6 OR 7) SIT ON HIS LAP- WAND WALKED AWAY WITH AN ERECTION.
THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS DESERVE SOME BLAME, BUT SO DO PARENTS. WHY IS IT, THE SAME TEACHER WHO IS A FAILURE IN AN INENR CITY SCHOOL/MINORITY SCHOOL, CAN GO TO A HIGHER INCOME AREA, AND HAS STUDENTS WHO SCORE WAY HIGHER/ IS IT THE TEACHER OR THE STUDENTS, THEIR ENVIREMENT AND THEIR PARENTS, AND THEIR PARENTS VIEWS OF, OR LACK OF VIEWS OF, THE VALUE OF AN EDUCATION?