public schools to schools in socialist or communist countries.
However, if we look closer, we will see striking similarities
between the two systems.
In the former socialist-communist Soviet Union, for example,
the government owned all property and all the schools. In
America, public schools are also government property,
controlled by local government officials. In Soviet Russia, the
government forced all parents to send their children to
government-controlled schools. In America,
compulsory-attendance laws in all fifty states force parents to
send their children to public schools.
The Soviet rulers taxed all their subjects to pay for their
schools. Here, all taxpayers pay compulsory school taxes to
support public schools, whether or not the homeowner has
children or thinks the schools are incompetent. In the Soviet
Union, all teachers were government employees, and these
officials controlled and managed the schools. In America,
teachers, principals, administrators, and school janitors are
also government employees, paid, trained, and pensioned through
government taxes.
In the Soviet Union, most government employees could not be
fired they had a "right" to their jobs. Public-school employees
in America also believe they have an alleged right to their
jobs, enforced through tenure laws. As we will see later, in
America, it's almost impossible to fire tenured teachers. In
communist Russia, competence and working hard didn't matter
very much — the government paid most workers regardless of
their performance on the job.
In America, public-school teachers' salaries depend on length
of service competence is irrelevant. In communist Russia, the
elite ruling class had estates in the countryside while
peasants starved. Here, public-school authorities get fat
salaries, pensions, and benefits while our children starve for
a real education.
In communist Russia, government control of food supplies
created eighty years of chronic famine. In America, one hundred
and fifty years of public schools has created an educational
famine. Millions of public-school children can barely read
while the system wastes twelve years of our children's lives.
Still think the comparison to communist schools is too
farfetched? Albert Shanker, former President of the American
Federation of Teachers, the second largest teacher's union,
once said: "It's time to admit that public education operates
like a planned economy, a bureaucratic system in which
everyone's role is spelled out in advance and there are few
incentives for innovation and productivity. It's no surprise
that our school system doesn't improve. It more resembles the
communist economy than our own market economy."
Finally, schools in some communist countries like China seem to
give a better, more disciplined education in the basics of
reading, writing, and math than our public schools.
International math and reading test-score comparisons often
find American kids lagging far behind children from China.
But what values do Chinese communist schools teach their
children? Here is another apt comparison between communist
schools and our public schools. In both cases, either a central
or local government controls the curriculum and the values it
chooses to teach its students. The Chinese government can and
does indoctrinate all school children with its communist
ideology and loyalty to the communist leaders.
Similarly, in our public schools, left-leaning school
authorities control the curriculum and the values they teach
our children. In many public schools, values-clarification
programs and distorted American history courses in many public
schools now indoctrinate our children with anti-parent,
anti-religion, and anti-American values. In both communist
schools and our government-controlled public schools, parents
cannot (with a few exceptions) stop school authorities from
teaching harmful or immoral values to their children.
Question --- Do socialist, compulsory, government-controlled
public schools belong in America, the land of the free?