[extropy-chat] Re: Home-schooling

[Brent Neal]

 (1/21/04 10:31) Mike Lorrey <mlorrey at yahoo.com> wrote:

>
>--- Brent Neal <brentn at freeshell.org> wrote:
>>  (1/21/04 8:35) Mike Lorrey <mlorrey at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> 
>> >
>> >I find it rather disengenuous to conflate a religious parent wishing
>> to
>> >send his or her own children to a religious school WITH THEIR OWN
>> MONEY
>> >as 'transfer public funds to their prosyletizing efforts'. Talk
>> about
>> >loony statements.
>> 
>> Ahh. Well, if you're giving them an exact deduction from their
>> -property- taxes, I have no problem. Its when you pay them out of
>> federal taxes that I have a problem, for obvious reasons. At that
>> point, its just another special interest clamoring for more of my
>> money, natch?
>
>Your money, or their own? They pay federal taxes too, a chunk of which
>funds the department of diseducation.

I'm -really- leery of federal involvement in education, considering how badly the states have screwed it up on their own.


>
>Besides, wouldn't you rather your income taxes went to educating poor
>kids in private school or home school settings, where you know they'll
>get quality education, than for your money to be spent on prisons to
>house illiterate adults who engaged in the only trade they were
>qualified for?

That's one of those "hard" questions. I've not seen any data that has sufficiently convinced me that -any- form of education - public, private, or home- can educate the children of parents who do not value education themselves.  The unfortunate reality is that such parents are disproportionately found in the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum.  It may be that prison education is the only realistic solution to the problem. The idealist in me would like to think this isn't the case, but I've not seen much that gives me hope in that regard.

B


-- 
Brent Neal
Geek of all Trades
http://brentn.freeshell.org

"Specialization is for insects" -- Robert A. Heinlein