gregjohn wrote:
> Not everything immoral needs to be illegal, and the difficulty in making
> something illegal is no indication of its morality.  That is where I think
> you're headed on the wrong track with this.
> 
> Of course, "posh" parents putting their kids into private schools is indeed a
> direct cause of public schools deteriorating.  It's not a matter of jealousy but
> of direct consequences, negative externalities if you will.
> 
> In my county, there's two school districts side by side. The kids from one high
> school earn all kinds of accolades, the other one has a 46% dropout rate.
> Whenever I meet a decent, involved family who happens to move into the bad
> district, sho 'nuff they send their kids to the private school.
> 
Sadly, in the US, schools are part of the culture war going on. There 
are people on boards, like the one in Texas, that **admit** to having 
gotten elected so they can destroy the public system. The only 
"standards" are set by the same state boards, who are often unqualified, 
and make choices about what and how things are taught that have 
*nothing* to do with what works. This is in contract to private schools, 
which take on of two tacks - The ones that care at all have the teachers 
work out what needs to be taught, and hire from a pool that is *noted* 
for doing well. The ones that are ideology driven use the old school 
"Rote" learning system, which sidesteps the need to understand the 
ideas, by satisfying the only thing that can be easily tested, "Whether 
or not the can give the right answers, whether they understand why they 
are right or not, even even, sometimes *if* they are right or not (in 
the case of those things that fall into the 'stuff we want them to take 
as truth' category)."

There is a strong rise in the US of institutions like Liberty 
University, and "home schooling", the former of which will let you turn 
in dissertations on biology, which contain nothing but whining about 
god, gods creation, and the vast global conspiracy of Darwinists. The 
later.. You can buy specialized "pro-creationist" texts for, which 
teach, "How to answer the questions the way other schools and the 
government want you to, without corrupting yourself with belief in those 
things." Its the #1 best selling "home schooler" kit in the country, 
last I heard. Which should tell you, right off, who is doing 90% of the 
home schooling in the US. Their reason for it? Most of them buy the kits 
because they are a) not close enough to, b) can't afford, or c) don't 
trust the *type* of private school closest to them (FSM forbid a 
Protestant land in a Catholic school, and actually have to learn 
something, for example), to teach the *truth (tm)*.

Their torpedoing the public schools via *intentional* sabotage, neglect, 
and defunding, even as most of the new "private" schools have been fundi 
in nature recently, and most of the people sinking the public schools 
don't even **have** kids in the program, since they are busy teaching 
them, at home, how Jesus invented toothpaste.

To the original question... I think we need stricter guidelines as to 
what sort of BS happens, and not based on more "multiple choice" tests 
to assess what is being taught, no matter what country is involved. The 
moment you make something private, it creates a gap between what is 
"intended" and what is actually happening, from the perspective of 
anyone believing it should be "universal". But, whether or not they need 
to be banned is **hugely** dependent one which country you are talking 
about, or even, as in the US, which *state* its in. In some places, the 
only difference between the public and private schools are that the 
public ones could *theoretically* be sued for the things being taught in 
them, if you ever got a federal judge to look at it, since the local 
ones don't think there is a single thing wrong, and support what is 
being taught in them. Its that bad, in some places.

-- 
void main () {

     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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