Risk to public education

[altivo]

The quality of public education in the US has been declining for years. One has only to look at literacy levels in the general population or among high school graduates to see this. As a retired librarian I can tell you that requests from high school and college students for audio or video formats of their basic textbooks and assigned readings were increasing rapidly even twenty years ago.

The average literacy level of our adult voters is somewhere between grades five and six, which I find appalling. Surveys after the recent election revealed the fact that voters in general had no understanding of what a tariff is. Queries online asking "How can I change my vote?" were amazingly frequent in the week after November 5th.

Yet the GOP wants to abolish public school funding and the entire Department of Education? (Seems that they fare better with ignorant voters than with those who can read?) I urge you to contact your congress critters now and tell them in no uncertain terms that the Department of Education and its budget that aids in particular schools in rural areas and low income neighborhoods must NOT be cut back or eliminated.

Comments

[ranunculus]

Do you think this is a red herring to divert people's attention from bigger issues? That said the idea is horrifying to us who are educated, but in line with the "get government out of my life" attitude...

[theradicalchild]

I prefer to call schools "Rockefeller Indoctrination Camps" since they more teach students what to think and/or how to think in limited terms instead of how to actually think freely. And administrative staff has actually been increasing way more than teachers have. And there's all that bullshit regarding Critical Race Theory, which I call Critically-Stupid Race Theory (no, racism doesn't freaking exist in places that don't have a damn thing to do with race, thank you very much), and all that Woke transfascist BS, and normalizing sexual promiscuity, and so on.

It should just be about reading, writing, and arithmetic. Keep politics the hell out of the classroom. Let students discover all that through libraries and/or the internet. At the same time, I also oppose indoctrinating students with the belief that America and its Founders like Thomas "Merciless Indian Savages" Jefferson are somehow divine and immune to criticism. It also pisses me off that groups like the ACLU, which I call the Ass-CLU, for stupid reasons, *oppose* educational transparency. Parents and students all deserve to know what exactly's being taught in the classroom, and I'm glad my state (Texas) has it.

I also strongly support educational alternatives, since as an autistic student, mainstream education was a living hell for me (though it was my fault for not staying in special education). My niece and nephew were homeschooled, but they are absolutely freaking brilliant.