Revisionaries - How a group of Texas conservatives is rewriting textbooks

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stof said:

mrstickball said:

This is why you need a privatized school system in America.

Should such a system be initiated, then schools would have the power to decide if some nut job's viewpoint is accepted curriculum or not - and this goes for whatever your worldview is (atheist, theist, ID-er/creationist, or hard evolutionist). It also enables the public to ensure that their kinds aren't being indoctrinated by an extremist view - if you don't like Sister Beatrice teaching that Jesus created the earth in 6 days, then you can take your kid out and plug 'em into a school across the street.

For every McLeroy, you can easily have someone on the other side of the fence that may want to revise history in the other direction. If individual schools have the ability to decide what is taught, without fear of a government institution destroying them, then common sense will win out, and kids will be taught properly.

Before taking the private school route, come on over to Korea and look at the hagwons (private academies). It's a great system for pandering to parents, but when it comes to kids getting a solid education... Well... That rarely ends up being the best way to pander to the parents.

 

I know my statement isn't in regard to textbook selection or ideology pervading the classroom, but still, private school systems are NOT the way to go.

I don't know if there are enough parallels that you can really draw the conclusion that the conditions that cause failures there exist in the US.  This is particularly so when private schools, and specifically the school voucher system, have been extremely successful in the US at bringing test scores up for students in the public schools. 

It is also worthy of noting that they do it at literally a fraction of the cost. The example of the DC voucher program being an instance where expenditures per student were halved for voucher students and they saw significant test score increases.  Of course that program was cut off over the past few months despite its tremendous success...or perhaps because of it?  I'm not sure if I'm that cynical just yet, but it certainly seems suspect in the absence of some justification...but I digress.