joanna wrote:
>
> I'm not arguing; but I wonder if you could expand on how the private
> system is worse? For one thing, the private system embraces everything
> from evangelical/catholic schools to Andover. That's quite a wide range
> of systems....
Public schools _in principle_ (and perhaps a bit more in practice than many would acknowledge) honor the meaning of "citizen" in its original revolutionary significance. Private schools and home-schooling spit in the face of that principle. That's not particularly an argument either, but something to think about.
The public school system in the u.s. is too vast, too disparate, to allow any non-tautological generalization about it.
And teachers are an important part of the u.s. working class. Criticisms of the public school system are not (always) intended to be a slam at teachers, but that's the effect they have in practice. U.S. teachers laboring under terrible difficulties (including perhaps centrally that they are held responsible for evils not of their own making) are doing one hell of a job. I don't like to see them slandered.
Carrol