Are You Ready for a Privatized Future?
I was staggered again this morning during a conversation about the costs of educating a child in America. Many parents have committed to private, year ’round schooling for their children. Those who can afford it have joined the government and turned their backs on the nation’s public education system.
Or worse, there are millions who want to kill the federal Department of Education turning public education over to the states. That includes some of the same states that needed U.S. military or, minimally, federal marshals to force children of color into their public school classrooms.
Public education was a cornerstone of the American democratic ideal. For example, I have to believe that you are educated enough to make a proper decision in the political process that affects all of us. That’s the way it all works. I must believe you can read, differentiate an argument without getting blinded by shining stars, and make an informed decision on whatever the political process presents to us. I’m doing it. Are you? That’s no longer an assumption we can make in America.
It’s almost as if someone wanted to dismantle the American democratic ideal and started by pulling the screws that were holding together our public schools. As usual, it’s poor people who suffer the most. Low income parents don’t have the option of putting their children in $40,000 per year elementary schools that have adequate resources to prepare a modern child for a modern world that’s changing daily.
A child that starts school this fall has no idea what the world will look or sound like in 12 years when they’re launched toward higher education or a career. At the moment we can’t even guarantee that their world won’t be swallowed up by an ocean swollen from the melting polar ice.
The point is this, tax paying parents who send tens of thousands of dollars annually to various government entities have a right to expect a school that will teach their children to be contributing American citizens. In fact the American political system should expect that but, instead, it wants to shut down that option and leave so many to fend for themselves with vouchers paid for by some political action committee with ties to who knows what.
So, in addition to seeing your education tax dollars being sent to fund military industrial contracts that repay political campaign contributions, parents today have to pay an additional thousand dollars a week to see that their child is prepared for who knows what coming over the horizon.
I was sent to a private school after the hormones kicked in during my eighth grade year. And I was educated. My education taught me to take tests not my teachers. And I was prepared for most of the changes that came over my horizon. I know many who weren’t similarly prepared and had their blood spilled fatally from Southeast Asia to Southeast LA.
Does anyone care that properly educating a 10-year-old can cost upwards of $40,000 or more plus summer school classes that can cost $1200 a week? I guess that’s the cost of privatizing education and privatizing America’s future.