Schools are containers for kids. School budgets are what it costs to have dependable peace and quiet around town for a few hours a day. Have you ever heard anybody ask, “why aren’t they in school?” ???

The onus is on public education to keep the little buggers occupied during that few hours a day. How many of the kids’ own parents are willing to do it? School teachers would rather keep twenty strangers’ kids occupied than stay home to do the same for their own two or three. Have you ever heard anybody say, “I can’t wait until my kid goes to school!” Have you ever wondered how it was that some kids found out about school and how to get there in the first place? Even know-nothing parents know about school.

Our society agrees that it’s best to have kids confined, away from their parents and out of the neighbors’ hair, for at least a few hours a day, most days, most of the year; but our society hates the public education institution and all the people who get paid to run it.

That’s craziness – as crazy as saying that school is, or should be, for the kids. What do the kids get? What do the kids expect to get from school, given the attitudes they hear or sense from the people they trust most, their parents? Conflicted, maybe? Distrustful and contemptuous of authority, maybe? Cynical, maybe?

It never works well when people say a thing and negate it with everything else they say do. I don’t believe that public education can work again until the people who speak on its behalf figure out what they’re selling and why the public should buy it.