I have a workable idea for the Republicans to embrace. Why not privatize all Government agencies since none of them can perform as well as the private sector?

Look at the Defense Department and the billions spent on building weapons Plus the Defense Department has too many employees that duplicate the work of others. Good riddance to the Defense Department. The private sector will keep weapons costs lower by looking for the cheapest source with the best available product. Companies will gladly provide the funds to make our country secure because they have extra money from vastly reduced taxes.

Eliminating all Government agencies makes out taxes sink to almost zero. This fits with the Republican pledge to shrink the size of the Federal Government.

What puzzles me is why the Republicans never considered this idea. Instead they talk the same song complaining that taxes must be lowered without any realistic proposals.

If you like my idea, talk it up with any Republican that you know.

The first issue here is home-schooling, the second is standardized testing, and the third is general curriculum, and I’ll address them one at a time. I never intend to endorse home-schooling, nor to imply that standardized testing is useless. In fact, if there’s anyplace where standardized testing is needed, it’s in home-schooling situations. Additionally, curriculum is an entirely separate issue, and whatever that curriculum is, there does need to be some form of standardized testing geared toward it.

I’ll state that as far as I’m concerned, home-schooling should be a last resort, and only in cases where several conditions are met. The first condition has to be that there is no other reasonable alternative. The public schools available must be bad, I mean really bad, as in unsafe (gang activity, etc.) and poorly staffed with utterly incompetent teachers, because I’ve seen plenty of incompetents home-schooling their children. There should be no good private schools available; while I’m not a fan of private schools, especially religion-based ones, they are still generally better than home-schooling.

The second condition is that the parent or parents conducting the schooling need to be just as qualified, or preferably better qualified, as the teachers a school district would hire for each subject. The comment above is a perfect example, for instance, of someone who does not understand statistics in the least, nor logic. First, the average scores on tests are relatively meaningless, since the extremes may vary considerably more than those of regularly schooled children. In addition, the individual strengths, and weaknesses, of the person(s) conducting the home-schooling are likely to be reflected in the children, rather than exposure to a variety of teaching talents, thus the child with a strong math/weak verbal parent may become strong in math but even weaker in verbal skills.

Finally, and one reason why students need the protection (yes, protection!) of standardized tests, is that the reasons for choosing home-schooling should be honestly and legitimately pedagogical, not based on emotional fears (that afflict all parents to an extent) of “letting go.” Even more, the reasons shouldn’t be the extremist viewpoints of parents who are members of fringe elements with oddball beliefs in master races, my way or you burn belief systems, or other indoctrinating excuses. One reason we have standardized tests for home-schooled children is to provide them minimal protection from parents who would teach them the earth is flat, or the government is run by aliens or demons, or similar nonsense. Which brings us back to standardized testing.

My point was that we are putting far too much emphasis on standardized tests, NOT that they should be eliminated. The failure in logic of the writer above is that she tries to claim that good scores by students, currently, means we can just abandon testing and hope for the best in the future. Nonsense! Tests are used for far more than the absurd battle over school funding or vouchers, and once upon a time they were lauded by teachers who could see for themselves how their students compared, and make adjustments to the curriculums accordingly. Unfortunately, they were seized upon by politicians as a simplified approach to complex issues, easier than trying to get Joe Sixpack (who never understood basic mathematics or most of the literature he read, but managed to figure out which body parts did what and is now a Daddy) to understand complex concepts. While the bumper sticker sentiment “Stupid People Shouldn’t Breed” might be a nice ideal in theory, it’s just not realistic. They always have and always will, often more than those with enough intelligence to recognize that having kids too early, or at all, can put a serious damper on your life, and we’re hardly suffering from a shortage of humans on the planet! We can only try to make up for the lack of native intelligence with better education, which brings us to the topic of curriculum.

Reiterating the comments, “Why can’t we just get back to the basics. Teach the child to read, write and do arithmetic. Teach them what they need to know to excel in the job market in our technologically advanced society.” Uh, yes, but that’s self-contradictory, and contrary to the entire concept of a thoughtful education. No question kids need to learn the basics, but they also need far more than that, and too many “back-to-basics” approaches are a return to rote learning, not improved critical thinking skills. Having taught at a technical college, I can certify that most of the tech students are self-limiting, being able to handle only a formulaic approach to problem-solving. They’ll make a living as technicians, need retraining every few years as their skills become obsolete, and at best keep one step ahead of automatons replacing them. Anyone remember factories with thousands of limited-skill workers making good money because of labor unions, now replaced by automated machines that work around the clock for less money? Many technicians will suffer similar fates because they’ve never learned the critical thinking skills that they need, and they won’t learn those skills in a “back to basics” curriculum.