Back to the larger question
Baron Max said:
Sure, but you don't know what that "something else" would have been, do you?
And see, that's exactly the point ...you don't know what would have been.
And here I was trying to write a short post. You make a point that I deliberately left out.
Not that it's unimportant. You are correct insofar as the point goes. I cannot guarantee that the something else would have been a wise or worthwhile investment. But that, in and of itself, changes nothing about the fact that certain resources are wasted in an effort to recover from obligatory damage.
In the larger question of "education by force" ... well, I see the underlying abstraction as a bit off to begin with. Still, though, part of the problem is what people often refer to as "nickel and diming". We cough up money for schools grudgingly. Another aspect is that fact isn't necessarily democratic. For instance, I'm sorry if people in Kansas feel disrespected by science, but creationism ain't a science. Hell, I went to a religious school, and my biology teacher wasn't so stupid. He saw no disagreement between Biblical creation and Darwinism.
In the meantime, something strange happens. A school board decides on a curriculum. Later, someone who didn't offer their two cents during that process (it wasn't worth their time, maybe), throws a fit. The school board accommodates.
In
Oregon, a book by Sherman Alexie was just pulled from the curriculum because someone didn't like the fact that the story mentions masturbation. In
New York, a school district actually
ripped several pages out of the books because a parent objected.
You know what the sexiest book I read in high school was?
The Scarlet Letter. And it's acceptable. Why? Because among the possible morals of the story is that sex corrupts.
Now turn around and look at American culture. A "wardrobe malfunction"? Oh, please, why was that such a big deal? A good part of our cultural confusion about sex comes from the fact that we never, as a culture, deal honestly with that part of ourselves.
History? I've mentioned before the "Lone Star" editions of textbooks, in which American history is tailored to meet the approval of Texas school boards and parent groups. This has the effect of perpetuating certain myths, including the Myth of Southern Reconstruction and the Myth of the Empty Continent. Most students are in college before they learn that ninety-five percent of the indigenous population was wiped out in the passing of a generation. Some students never learn that American tribes learned how to scalp from white people, who set up a bounty system in order to enlist the indigenous population to wipe itself out. I don't know a single person who knew, without being told, that the purchase of Manhattan Island for twenty-four dollars was bogus; the people paid for it had no claim on the land. Hell, when schools started teaching Columbus according to the man's diaries and logs, people threw a fit. How dare we speak so poorly of such a hero. How can you call him a butcher? Well, it's ... it's sort of in his journals. That is, written in his own hand.
Declining arts programs, increased specialization. Especially during the 1990s, the phrase "well-rounded education" was anathema.
So I think the underlying question of "forced education" cannot be fairly considered without giving some attention to the nature of that education.
Give the schools the money they need to do the job right. Stop screwing with the curriculum to appease irrational demands. Let's see what happens and go from there. But we won't know until we try, right?
