Broad brush
San 408 has a very valid point. There are ALL kinds of people teaching, and there are excellent, mediocre, and bad teachers, of every political stripe and way of thinking. In both public and private schools.
And, just as fairly, there are ALL kinds of parents home-schooling their kids. Of every political stripe and way of thinking. And some do an excellent, some a mediocre, and some a bad job of it.
Everybody went through an education experience on the way to growing up. That makes everyone an expert on what makes education bad and how crappy teachers are, right? And of course all teachers are equally crappy, equally leftist, etc, etc.
By the same logic, everyone has had medical treatment at one time or another, therefore everyone is qualified to diagnose and treat diseases, and criticize doctors, right?
Funny how everyone is an expert on education, and feels free to tell teachers how they should be doing their jobs, but when they get a mysterious heavy feeling in their chest, nothing but a (very expensive) heart specialist will do! And you don't tell the heart specialist how he should be holding the stethoscope!
I've been inside and outside of both public and private education. The one advantage private education gets automatically is the ability to rid itself of the riff-raff who shouldn't be there. These kids of course get dumped on the public schools, where they take up considerable staff time and effort, to very little benefit. And the public schools of course are unable to get rid of these kids. Then the public schools get criticized because the private schools do better. :banghead:
The other advantage private education MAY have is the commitment of the parents and kids involved. Committed parents and kids of course do better, but that is true IF the kids and parents in a public system feel committed, also. It's just more likely in the private system, but even there it's not guaranteed.
Homeschooling works very well if it is done right, and is a disaster if done wrong. It mostly depends upon the commitment of the participants. How is that different from public schools or private schools??
To get this thread back on topic, 'way back in the day, I instructed Hunter Safety classes right in the school--after hours--and for no pay, of course. We used real guns in as examples. The kids handloaded ammunition. Right in a public school building, imagine that!
The kids were taught sportsmanship and fairness, along with good gun handling. We had some of the "worst" kids in the school go through the course, but never a behavior problem, because (1) The kids, and their parents, felt a commitment to the program, and (2) Hunter Safety Instructors, unlike "real" teachers, were empowered to kick kids out of the program if they misbehaved, and refuse to pass them unless the Instructor felt that the student would actually be a safe gun handler in the field. No questions asked, no appeal process. We never had to kick anybody out, and nobody failed the course, IIRC. But that was partly because they COULD fail!
That's really the problem with public education in this country: The educators are forced--by politicians, from the President down to the local school board--to guarantee that no one will fail. With no commitment, no effort, from the parents. This is impossible, of course, so school superintendents have to lie about it to their school boards, and then force the teachers under them to make motions as if all the kids were succeeding. This wastes tremendous amounts of teacher creativity and time, not to mention your tax money. If students in public schools were routinely flunked for non-achievement, and kicked out for bad behavior, you would see an immediate solution to a great deal of what's wrong with public schools. And private schools and home schooling would immediately lose a great deal of their attractiveness. But that "ain't gonna happen any time soon."
