Public Education Has Value

Written By: Dan Stanley  |  Posted: Saturday, July 30th, 2011

            Public education is under attack today.  Maybe it would be better to say it is being critiqued, and some of the conclusions are not good.  It is my guess that most would agree that there are weaknesses in the public education system - some large and glaring ones included.   How about the cost per child to educated them? Or how about the philosophical underpinnings as to what is being taught to the average American citizen?   Every thing from sex education for little children to historical revisionism for all children seems to be the order of the day.  The list is long, no doubt.

            But in the process, we have, I am afraid, made statements that are simply too broad and sweeping.  To suggest that there is no value in public education (whether young children or college age students) is simply not true.  Everything from learning how to write and read to how to be an engineer or accountant is accomplished to some degree within the public educational institutions. To this day I can recall learning my 3 R's as well as how to diagram a sentence along with the history of our country in the public school system.  Many in the technical schools of our day have learned arts and skills that enabled them to enter into a particular vocation upon leaving school.  How many nurses, doctors, lawyers, accountants, carpenters, and mechanics have learned their trade in a college or trade school?!

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