Monday, March 11, 2013

Another nice column on education by Glenn Reynolds

Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit has a column at USA Today. 

Public school insanity starts with:

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In The K-12 Implosion, and also in these pages, I've noted that goverment-run public schools are facing a problem: There are more and more alternatives. It's not so much that the public schools are getting worse, I've argued, as that the alternatives are getting better and more attractive.

But now I'm starting to wonder. Maybe the public schools are getting worse. At least, to judge from recent news reports, they seem to be getting crazier.

Exhibit One: A seven-year-old boy who was suspended because he chewed his Pop Tart into the shape of a gun. Now, really, why would you suspend a kid for that? A gun-shaped Pop Tart isn't a threat to anyone. Nor does chewing a Pop Tart into the shape of a gun suggest violent tendencies.
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Glenn enumerates a number of similar instances of inappropriate reactions to typical child behavior. 

He then has this fun paragraph:

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And that's the problem with all of these cases. Our justification for putting massive amounts of taxpayer money into public schools is that they're supposed to teach critical thinking. But stories like these -- and they're legion -- suggest that the very people who are supposed to be teaching our kids how to think are largely incapable of critical thought themselves.
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So homeschool your children because too many adults in the government schools are no longer able to think rationally!

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