I don't, indeed can't, deny that it's as bad as you say. Just saying that compared to two hundred years ago, you're doing great... most of the western world is, and a large part of that has to do with legally demanding that children go to school and learn how to - at least - read and do math. Also has to do with it no longer just being the elites getting (and needing) and education. More people are literate today because over the centuries we've come to expect literacy from more than just the nobility, merchant classes, clergy and royal bureaucracy.Speaker to Animals wrote:They are graduating functionally illiterate students right now, Bjorn. It's WORSE.BjornP wrote:Might want to compare how many people out of the total population had access to education before compulsory education was introduced. Also:Speaker to Animals wrote:
Weird how we managed to educate people for centuries before the government started mandate our kids go to their indoctrination centers. Including the poorest Catholic immigrants. Strange..
https://ourworldindata.org/literacy#his ... erspective
So, when you say "centuries", plural...well:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_School_Laws
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/sto ... =121374125
Government schools, especially in democratic party-controlled cities, are nothing more than jobs programs for public union workers. They don't actually teach much of anything.
Your literacy levels may be declining compared to a decade or two ago, but compared to the literacy levels three, four, five centuries ago? You're not doing that bad. And yes, the state can demand children go to school without that needing to be a public school.
I will always defend people's right to unionize, but defending the right to unionize does not equal beliving in unions -any union- having the right to always win every conflict.
I keep reading horror studies from you guys that are supposed to be good arguments against public education. To me, what I'm getting from those stories is validation that what your problem is implementation , not the existence of, public education. Police corruption, or Washington being a "swamp" of corruption.... you wouldn't use those as a valid argument against having law enforcement or against having a state in general, would you?