A reader explains why we maintain public schools. It is not about being college and career ready; it is not about global competition. It is this:
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?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Once again, there really is nothing new under the sun:
Good Citizenship: The Purpose of Education
As the great majority of our children are being educated in public schools, it is all-important that the standards of citizenship should be of the best. Whether we send our children to private school or public school we should take a constant interest in all educational institutions and remember that on the public school largely depends the success or the failure of our great experiment in government “by the people, for the people.”
Eleanor Roosevelt – 1930
http://newdeal.feri.org/er/er19.htm
Indeed. I spend my time — under the sun and by the midnight oil both — reciting the lessons my teachers taught me 4 and 5 decades ago. “In my own words”, of course, as they dictated I do. The fact that any of that sounds more and more like a novelty to some people as time goes by kind of scares me a little.
one of my favorite T Jefferson quotes is something I paraphrase quite often…education’s purpose is to create and maintain an informed electorate…the irony is that currently we really don’t have an informed electorate, do we?
Inscribed over the front door of my high school (and ever since on my brain): “The Commonwealth Requires the Education of the People as the Safeguard of Order and Liberty.” I have since learned this was borrowed by the school’s architect (circa 1910) from the facade of the Boston Public Library (where it is credited to the library’s Board of Trustees). Ironically, my old high school was torn down in the late 1980s.
I don’t think I have ever seen anyone here posting against the idea of universal, free, and compulsory education. I have seen some disagreement on how to achieve that goal for all students.
Clearly Eleanor Roosevelt felt high standards of citizenship could be achieved through private schools like the English school she attended or with a combination of homeschooling and private schools as her husband experienced. If charter schools had existed at the time, perhaps she would have added it to her statement about the importance of education.
Nor have I observed many people, here or anywhere else, who objected to the existence of private schools that were privately funded, religious schools that were funded free of state involvement, or the models of alternative, experimental, charter, and laboratory schools as originally conceived and controlled.
So when did the recent problems arise?
They arose when private, religious, for-profit, and charter schools were seized on by the enemies of public education as weapons to destroy it.
Do you think that unequal access to education for all citizens of the United States is a recent problem?
Our nation is founded on certain ideals —
It is the nature of Ideals that their implementations tend to fall short of them. So forming that more perfect union has ever been a work in progress. But at least we can say that we spent the better part of our history working on it.
I have known and I have read many critics of our educational system, but almost all of them, including myself, have criticized its implementation relative to its ideals. The ideals themselves have never been attacked, at least, never so frontally and widely as recently.
That part is new. That is where the recent problems arise.
I agree we are a work in progress and am actually very optimistic about the future of education. I just see the charter school movement as part of the work in progress.
I have not found the ideal of education under dispute here at all, but some disagreement about how it might be obtained.
I doubt that neither Eleanor nor Franklin had a hand in choosing their own primary and secondary educational institutions. Nonetheless, an informed electorate is the basic requirement for democracy to survive and thrive.
The charter school movement relishes in the employment of pseudo teachers. Significant numbers of charter school teachers drop out of their teaching assignments short of 5 years. How does a revolving door of cheap, inexperienced, ill-trained teachers improve the long term prospects of public education? We’ve got a runaway train here folks and it’s not slowing down….
Compounding America’s education problem is the low morale and disappearance of experienced professional teachers: http://www.metlife.com/assets/cao/contributions/foundation/american-teacher/MetLife-Teacher-Survey-2011.pdf
Unfortunately the high attrition rate for teachers is also a problem for public schools as well.
This reminds me of one of my favorite James Madison quotes, from a letter he wrote in 1822:
The liberal appropriations made by the Legislature of Kentucky for a general system of Education cannot be too much applauded. A popular Government, without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy; or, perhaps, both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.
It is clear that our Founders got it.
I just wonder how we lost it.
I believe my choice to be an educator/teacher was never bred in the desire to be a “good citizen” (dutiful and patriotic toward the country’s ideals of my birth), but in an awareness to share knowledge and experience in a positive/helping way for all, especially children.