Education in America

I stopped at Sam's Club on the way home from church today. As I was parking my car, I saw a bumper sticker that said "Why do we always have money for war, but not for education?" My first thought (and I believe it to be very valid) is that this is a car that belongs to a public school teacher.

I find this line of thought incredibly irritating and uninformed. First and foremost, it is the job of the government to protect those of us who live here. Without this protection, there is no freedom to learn. I would rather live my life knowing we are free and safe, than living under oppression but having a public education. The role of the government as our protector is found in the constitution, something this teacher must not know too much about.

I also find this irritating on another level: the more money that we as a country spend on education, the more that we complain that the education system is not doing its job (it seems to me to be an inverse relationship). Schools pass people so that they have good pass rates, they look good to the government, and they get more money for their school. Teachers protest when we want to test (or even monitor) them to make sure they are capable of teaching our children.

Education is important, but we put the responsibility on the government to teach our children. It is ultimately the responsibility of the parents to see that their children are educated (and we use schools to help us in this effort). However, today's public education is more indoctrination than it is about facts and figures and teaching people how to think for themselves.