That's a ridiculous argument. The binary decision is not crap govt. schools or a voucher system. You american's are crazy the way that that has become a culturally conditioned, rational response to such situations. The solution is to make govt. provided education better. Like it is in New Zealand where I was publicly educated. Reading stuff about the american school system is quite horrifying from over here: children never exposed to music and art? 160 Public schools with no libraries? What the hell kind of system is running over there when one can be part of the wealthiest nation in human history yet that nation is incapable of delivering quality public education to all its citizens?!
The fact of the matter is that when education is a part of the government the voters can decide how school performance is measured.
The citizens voted on it, and we got "No Child Left Behind." You can say it's dumb and that we don't know what's best for us, but that's how our government works.
As long as education is part of the government then educators have to suck it up and realize they have to listen to the tax payers, or go to work for a private school.
"You american's are crazy", "american school system"
Perhaps the NZ school system could have spent a bit more time on the capitalization of proper nouns and the where to put a possessive apostrophe with a plural.
It's easy to criticize. Harder to find solutions. NZ's history, culture and scale are quite different. Got any ideas?
Nitpicking grammar on a casual internet forum is a great way to win an argument. I post on here (like most I'd imagine) as a distraction from the more mundane parts of my job, forgive me for not applying enough rigor to my grammar in such a context...
While you were busy being condescending and not making a point, you ignored my main point that, with the amount of money the Americans (happy?) have available to them, the answer should not just be blow up the entire system because GP has a hardon for libertarianism, but to use the vast resources available to make the system better, and allocate more if need be.
My point was my last sentence. I was attempting to ironically point out that you were criticizing from a position of assumed superiority without offering anything. My means of doing so was self-referential, until the last sentence which was intended to give the game away. I guess I was not clear enough, and I didn't mean to offend.
Anyway, surely you can enjoy the irony of messing up grammar during a fierce critique of another country's education system?
Meanwhile, the trouble with the argument you're using with libertarians that since the US is so rich they could afford better public services is that libertarians can easily counter with "America is so rich (partly) because we don't waste money on that stuff."
I don't believe that, but it's very hard to refute.
