Eternal Vigilance!

[pieces o nine]

... so it's not all happiness and sauerkraut.

Now  *there's*  a quote we can all get behind!   

[Roland Deschain]

For clarification, what you call public schools in the US, we call state schools in the UK. What you call private schools in the US, we call public schools in the UK. For the purposes of clarity, i'll use the UK versions (sorry to my US sistern and brethren).

I'm all for decent funding of state schools. I was educated in one, albeit a good one, but I was also motivated to a degree with a willingness to learn, which was partly due to my nature, partly due to my parents. State schools are there to ensure a certain educational level within the general population, and we are all obligated to contribute to this, as we all rely on those educated there. As has been said, if I have to interact with someone in my life, it's bad enough that I have to deal with the large number of seemingly ignorant and uneducated there are now, without removing yet more funding from the schools who give them what they (laughably) have already.

Education is for education's sake, and the more of it there is, the better our society's potential. We need to instil a love of learning into our youth, as they are the future. To avoid a future with most people being woefully uneducated (not that it doesn't seem as such right now) is scary to the point of making me feel ill, and I am more than willing to devote a percentage of that money to prop up the state school system in my country. It may not be perfect, not by a long shot, and the solution to the current attitudes to education in many is another issue altogether, but it is the best we currently have.

Sure, you can advocate reducing the military budget by half, but do you seriously expect that to happen under the current system, where most major politicians who decide these things are beholden to either the military-industrial complex, big business, or both? Without a major social revolution, that just ain't gonna happen.

[Aggie]

Education is for education's sake, and the more of it there is, the better our society's potential. We need to instil a love of learning into our youth, as they are the future. To avoid a future with most people being woefully uneducated (not that it doesn't seem as such right now) is scary to the point of making me feel ill, and I am more than willing to devote a percentage of that money to prop up the state school system in my country. It may not be perfect, not by a long shot, and the solution to the current attitudes to education in many is another issue altogether, but it is the best we currently have.

Sure, you can advocate reducing the military budget by half, but do you seriously expect that to happen under the current system, where most major politicians who decide these things are beholden to either the military-industrial complex, big business, or both? Without a major social revolution, that just ain't gonna happen.

Regarding your last point, how many top-level politicians' children do you think attend state/public rather than public/private school?  Similar to the provision of public healthcare, the decision-makers are ones with very little personal interest in the public system and lucrative connections to alternative service providers. The poorer that the publicly-funded schools are (in terms of performance), the more profitable commercial education providers will be.

[Roland Deschain]

Regarding your last point, how many top-level politicians' children do you think attend state/public rather than public/private school?  Similar to the provision of public healthcare, the decision-makers are ones with very little personal interest in the public system and lucrative connections to alternative service providers. The poorer that the publicly-funded schools are (in terms of performance), the more profitable commercial education providers will be.

This is so very true, but has this not almost always been the case? In the UK, there were almost scandals over top MPs and PMs sending their children to public schools instead of the state-funded ones, when they were saying that there was nothing wrong with state schools. If you can afford it, you have the right to do so, but if the state schools are so good, why not save the money and send them to one?