Educating our young

The value of public schools

       Or is it the poor value of some public schools?

            After all, we all pay the local taxes that end up in public school funding. Now that's on top of home school or private school, like Catholic school, expenses for those that go that route. Even in the State of Maine, local taxes often become school vouchers for the rural way of educating  many young children.  That's how important education is to these parents.

            It's admirable what so many people do, and the burdens they bear, are now doing for what they think is enhancing their kid's education. I think Catholic school education has been going on for a long time in the USA. But it also seems like the numbers of home schooled kids in the USA these days are expanding for the most fundamental reason, education. And a real education, vice some kind of indoctrination, usually helps future success in life, and a greater chance for happiness.

            When I went through a drive through line at a McDonalds a while back, and the poor kid couldn't even make change with a machine to help her, I would say one element was the poor education she received. Now I don't know for sure, but I assume she had a public education. Whatever,  she could not even make change with a machine to help her. So I did it in my mind, told her what change to return to me, and proceeded on (and I did not cheat her). The make change routine problem was not that difficult for me, and I had morals, too. Talk about repelling many possible future mates by her ignorance. This poor kid had been set up for a difficult life by today's adults, like those of us who have gone before her.

            So I would encourage leaders in the education area, like school board members, to think about making education about our children the priority, and not anything else, like an indoctrination program, or an adults jobs program, or budget program focused on operations and land purchases and building contracts.  That process will often prompt difficult decisions for them. After all, our future is our young people growing up and being educated for success and happiness.  Said another way, it is about them, not us. And their success and happiness usually translates into benefits for society, too.

            Of course, home schooling usually takes a two-parent home, but that is another subject, too.
So is voting for someone else, too.