Gunny JMC testifies:
I found the school system substantially flawed and only those students with the burning desire to educate themselves, getting an actual education, in my day, graduating high school in 1975. At the time, the teachers were mostly good teachers, and well educated, but fighting a bureaucratic system. It occupied too much of their time, but had not destroyed them yet.
I watched my son and daughter get a horrible education, ameliorated only by my demands of their reading skills, and the constant discussions on everything, each day and evening at home. Neither of my two children graduated high school, but they fit right in with the statistical failure of their school. I’m not sure how one would graduate from the school they went to, it was over-run with gangs and drugs, and only a few male teachers were able to control the mob scenes. I went there on a regular basis, sometimes in uniform, sometimes not, but I always saw kids in the halls, and on many occasion, reached out and grabbed a firm hold and stopped a kid from doing something.
You are absolutely right in calling for the end of these schools.
It’s easy for the college-educated class to forget that while they can afford to have terrible schools tearing away at the values that sustain the social fabric, the less-educated have no such margin of error. It doesn’t actually matter much what is learned or not learned by the suburban girl whose parents pay for a quiet abortion, by the suburban boy whose parents hire lawyers to plea-bargain a felony distribution charge down to a possession misdemeanor and 100 hours of community service, or by the adult-children of either sex who take eight years to complete their sociology degrees on Mommy and Daddy’s dime. They can afford to mess around for 12 years, then settle down into a functional role as an office drone or hausfrau without their lack of an actual education having any significant effect on their lives. They possess the economic ticket, which is all that a college degree represents nowadays.
As I have written previously, the schools are now so bad that they actually maleducate, the net effect is negative and a child would learn more and receive a better education by doing nothing but playing XBox and PS/3 for 12 years. At least he’d learn reading, math and geography, you’d be amazed at the level of geographical knowledge possessed by the average 12-year old wargamer.