Deborah Meier writes to comment on Jeb Bush’s claim that choosing schools should be like choosing milk. Could have said cereal. There, two or three corporations own all the different brands.
Re Jeb Bush’s analogy—choosing schools is like choosing milk as you wander down the aisle. Among the kinds of milk he listed were milk for people who can’t drink milk. Well, I suppose there are indeed some schools that are for people who “can’t be educated” (in his mind).
What a startling picture-metaphor. Creepy? The schools are, for Jeb, just another brand on the market with fancy packaging, millions spent in promotion, and success dependent on making a profit. Worse still is the very mindset that would create such a metaphor. It could have been worse—I suppose. He could have chosen toothpaste…or….
Diane Ravitch's blog 
If anyone is looking for DATA to prove that our schools are failing, it would be the fact that this man ever got elected to anything — plus the fact that he doesn’t get hooted out of every venue where he spews the brand of idiocy he advertizes here.
Or maybe our schools are just teaching a dangerous excess of politeness.
Deborah Meier comments re Jeb Bush should have used cereal in his metaphor as most cereals are produced by 3 corporations that control the industry..isn’t that the direction we are going in with Pearson, Gates, Walton…et al at the helm of education? All have their hands in RTTP, CCSS, testing profits, tax incentives, etc. They are the puppetiers and teachers/student the puppets and the vast majority of lay folks have no clue they are behind the teacher/education bashing…
If I buy a gallon of milk that isn’t tasty or give me gas, I can pour it down the sink and buy a different gallon next time. Or I could return it if it’s spoiled. If a family chooses or ends up with a bad school experience for their child, they can’t return it. Schools need to be most excellent for everyone, not just for people who can find and afford and choose the best.
And, what if you’re lactose intolerant? Alternative milk products = alternative schools?
What a senseless and glib analogy. What milk did Jeb choose for his kids?
Perhaps choosing a school is like choosing a college.
Going to college is not mandatory.
Nor is attending any school after the age of 16, at least in my state.
I have a hard time seeing that the requirement of attendance is really the essential difference between the institutions.
My post may not be clear. In my state, students are only required to attend school until their 16th birthday. After that, it is optional. Many of the students in our high schools are over the age at which it is mandatory that they attend.
The reason for universal, free, and compulsory education is is simply this — the job requirements of a citizen in a democratic society are far and away more demanding than the job qualifications of a serf in a feudal society.
The age of emancipation from compulsory education may vary with circumstances, but the reason for establishing a norm of education in a democratic society remains the same. It is one of those measures that democratic societies enact in the effort to maintain themselves as democratic societies. Failing that, a government of, by, and for the people is far more likely to perish from the earth.
And nobody wants that, now do they?
I am not arguing that school not be mandatory. I am arguing that mandatory schooling does not require a geographically based admissions systems.
so, from the comments I read that going to school isn’t really that important and that parents should be able to choose schools…well, I teach in a county in Florida that has open enrollment so any parent can put their student at any school…I also teach in a county that has been a highly effective county since this rating/ranking began nearly a decade ago…we have ONE charter school (in cooperation with a local college and under school board control) and exceed state and most federal levels in AP and SAT test scores…
a bad experience in school could be based on so many different factors and must include the student and the parent’s level of involvement as well as the quality of their teacher and the administration…
Let’s stop pointing fingers and get involved with finding a solution that makes students, parents, teachers, administrators, and lawmakers responsible for the future of our country because, and I say this as strongly as I can, if we short change this generation we will pay for generations to come…
Bryan,
I hope you have not been reading my comments as saying going to school is not really that important. I don’t believe that and don’t think I have ever said anything remotely like that.
I found this post after I wrote my own article on the subject, also using the “toothpaste metaphor.” Here in Michigan, lawmakers are preparing to enact a radical restructuring of “public” education that will make it very much resemble a grocery store, where you get to take your taxpayer funding – which is “not a voucher!” – and buy bits o’ knowledge from various educational “service providers” that may be publicly or privately managed. In this model, teachers are described as “transmitters” of “intellectual content” and students/families are supposed to be “consumers.” And I’m quoting these terms from the working papers of the group charged by the Governor with re-writing the school funding law.
Michigan seems to be leading the nation in building the intellectual foundation for marketizing public education, a dubious distinction at best. The group is on track to unveil their proposed legislation by the end of the year, with the idea that it will become the keystone of the Governor’s FY2014 budget proposal next February.
My article on the subject:
“Education is not like toothpaste” http://www.miparentsforschools.org/node/177
The Oxford Foundation (the folks doing the re-write) paper on how to “unbundle” a high school education:
“Dis-aggregating High School Education” http://tinyurl.com/a265zaq