Parenting

Parentcaster

as a big proponent of public education, this makes me pretty sad 😔

building /quidli 🦑, casting in /justinahn, daoing in /🍊 & /🟪

why does it make you sad?

freedom of choice, parents taking a more active role in their kids education and decentralization makes me happy ... but im biased. we chose to homeschool.

>We felt similar until we enrolled our kids in the public education system.

for sure easier to talk about than to realize and apply in practice, especially at scale.

i'm pretty laissez-faire, but education is one of the few issues where i believe tighter control and accountability are necessary in the spirit of public goods. imo, being unfettered AND protected has led to the layers of mismanagement, which you mentioned.

We felt similar until we enrolled our kids in the public education system. The rules they have to follow are insane. In one of my kid's classes, a student got sent home weekly for behavior issues and we could clearly see about 3-4 students with learning issues were slowing the whole class down

Where we are, they aren't allowed to separate kids out of gen pop into special ed (it's "bad" for them) so everyone suffers. Skill-based match making exists for a reason.

I still see public schools as public goods, they're just run horribly by multiple levels of government

i can see why parents today are increasingly more skeptical of public education systems

but i believe schools are a public benefit worth buying into, not just for education, but from social cohesion and assimilation standpoints at the national level 

decentralization of societal values is imo a big driver of polarization we have now, and seeing families choose to segregate, often by socio economics and ethnocentric lines, is sad to me and will likely just have disenfranchised groups feel even more disenfranchised

my own experiences weren't perfect, but school was an institution where i learned to bridge gaps and interact with people i wouldn't naturally, making me a lot more well-rounded as an adult today