The Role of Public Education

The Role of Public Education

I am probably going to be preaching to the choir with this post, but I feel everyone has to speak up in defence of a public system of education.  I understand that there are many who feel that their children ought to benefit from something somewhat better than a public school. We live in an age of entitlement and no one does that better today than young parents. They want only the best for their children.  However, there are many who cannot get anything better than the public schools because they are not particularly well off. So they put their kids in public schools that are receiving a dwindling number of resources and therefore continue to grow the gap between what charter or private schools can provide and what their children get.  However, what most in society refuse to acknowledge is the role the public education system played in making societies better.  As schools became better at performing their role and providing a baseline education for their charges, the society as a whole benefitted.  If you are not sure of this, look at most of the developing countries around the world and see that they have put huge amounts of money, money that they can ill afford, into schools for their children.  Literacy rates around the world have gone through the ceiling everywhere.  That is because of the public school system.  More people have been lifted from poverty as a result of increased literacy and numeracy skills.  Now, in the wealthiest country of them all, the U. S. of A., public schools are being deprived of the chance to get even better. The result is that there is a huge underclass of people educated in poorly equipped schools and therefore unable to keep up with the kids born to wealth and privilege.  Ironically, the kids of the latter environment take what they have for granted and many don't even try to excel.  The end result will be that the society that was once the magnet for the rest of the world will be surpassed and put to shame by those hungry enough to want to raise themselves and derive the benefits of their public education.  Look at Canada...in my own province of Ontario, the most powerful tech companies in the world are investing in places like Kitchener, Toronto and Hamilton because the quality of the work force is precisely what they need to feed their industrial growth.  It will be very interesting, in another ten years, to see where the U. S. stands relative to other countries when it comes to the educational attainments of their young people.  It is a sure bet that they will have been overtaken, unless folks reverse the funding trends put in place today by the Republicans in power.