re: #263 ~Fianna

It’s quite a leap from non-compulsory education to child labor in the mines or factories!

You act as though today’s teenagers are doing anything productive, especially in the inner-city precincts. It took welfare reform to get them (somewhat) to stop having babies just to collect the checks connected with having babies.

Consider the situation in NYC fifteen years ago. A girl who has a baby automatically gets an apartment, food stamps, clothing allowances, and all kinds of other goodies for the “poor” - kids were lining up for their pregnancy tests, hoping. A girl who graduated and went to work couldn’t afford her own apartment, paid a lot of taxes, and generally didn’t get anywhere the same good deal.

There’s no need to compel elementary education; that’s the easiest and least expensive - people have been “learning their letters and sums” for centuries!

How did all those brilliant scientists, philosophers and statesmen, like the founding fathers, ever learn anything without public education! And why do so very few approach anywhere near the same level nowadays? The answer of course is that political groups of all stripes use the system for indoctrination, first and foremost (refer to the people above saying how our result is sitting in the White House).

Let go. People will survive and get educated, probably better, without the public system and all the taxes and corruption. Teachers today are not what they were 50 years ago! How could they be - no discrimination (positive) based on quality, no good behavior in the classroom, all those extra bureaucrats interfering….

I repeat - what rock have you been hiding under, to think that this system is in any way worth saving!