Question about what Obama just said.

[The_vagabond7]

I don't think fully privatizing schools is a smart thing to do. I definitely think there needs to be reform in the education system, but simply handing it over to private business would in the end be disastrous. For the record I think most things should be privatized, but there are certain areas where business is not going to seek the same goals as government, and it's in the best interest of everyone to let the government do it.

Business doesn't act in a way that is the most beneficial for the country or for society, they act in such a way that is the most beneficial to them as an entity. They give people the product that they want in the way that they want it, and they do so in the brightest, most efficient cost effective manner possible. Which is often beneficial to many, other than just the business. But Given what America wants in education, and how business acts America would become a thousand times dumber.

Imagine if there were two schools across the street from one another, one is offering to teach courses that include the most up to date information from the most respected members of their fields, evolution, philosophy, economics, mathematics, ect. The other school is offering to teach that God created everything as you see it 10,000 years ago,and what jesus would think about america today and would have a fantastic mathematics course, computer labs, ect ect because that school would be ten times richer than the other one. Once something becomes privatized it has no public interest, only competitive interest. Which often times benefits the public, but in education it would be incredibly easy for it to go down a very bad road.

A disturbing amount of americans believe that faith is a better way to understand the world than rationality or empiricism. Schools getting donations from the Discovery institute to re-christianize america, or sponsored by coca-cola to teach the benefits of drinking coca-cola brand products. Schools funded by political groups to teach specific ideologies. The culture war would take over schools pandering to whichever ideology is most prevalent (and thereby profitable) in the area .

So obviously the government would have to have oversight to ensure that something resembling fair and balanced education could exist, instead of choosing the propaganda school of your parents choice. But how much oversight? Obviously curriculum would have to be standardized so you don't have entire states teaching that modern biology is a lie from the devil, or that Coca-cola has better health benefits than water. There would still need to be standardized tests to insure that schools don't drastically lower their standards in order to say "95% of our students are straight "A" students, and yours can be too!" in order to take short cuts. This would fly because a large portion of parents are more apathetic or status driven than you might think.

You may say "private schools aren't like that now, why would that happen all of the sudden?" Private schools now have minimal competition.

The amount of privatization you could give to the education at large would have to be very small to insure that the majority of kids have at least a chance to get a decent education instead of being force fed the ideals of their parents. I think alot of work needs to be done to our school system, but it's one area that I would not trust to money hungry corporations.