RESPONSE:

Public Schools Are Vitally Important

Having received an education in German schools which are fully under government control, I can have an informed opinion. German schools, like most other government funded and controlled educational systems in Europe, far outperform the US system. There is no tinkering with science, religion or politics in the curriculum because well-paid, professionally educated and rigorously tested government workers sworn in to duty for life run the system, not desperate local politicians without professional training in the field of education.

After a long and fruitless phase of experimentation by states to change requirements for socially underprivileged students, the truth is becoming evident that ALL students are best of when they ALL are being held to the same and very high standard. Those should be the standards that would allow any student to apply for a scholarship at Harvard, Stanford and MIT. This is achieved by holding ALL teachers to the same, equally high standards first, and providing them a competitive and secure income and high social status. The results speak for themselves and anything else is a crime against the next generation.

Could parents make sure their school can serve this purpose? Sure, the rich ones with Ph.D. degrees could--and they already do. But for the children of parents who were denied such a right and who now have neither the financial nor the intellectual means to give their own children the best possible education, the government has a responsibility to assure fairness and quality. To do otherwise would be a social experiment that will throw the US back into the educational stone age. But maybe that's not necessary any more, because the current system has already done that.