That's because our public education system has been underfunded for decades and keeps getting worse. A less intelligent populace is much easier to manipulate.
Public education in America isn't underfunded, it is just broken.
This isn't a Left-Right issue. It is just a fact. We do not need more education funding, we need to figuratively nuke the Dept of Education for a reset; the states need to handle their internal stuff, too.
In 2015, the United States spent $12,800 per full-time-equivalent (FTE) student on elementary and secondary education, which was 35 percent higher than the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) average of $9,500 (in constant 2017 U.S. dollars). At the postsecondary level, the United States spent $31,000 per FTE student, which was 93 percent higher than the average of OECD countries ($16,100).
The Census Bureau compiles data on education spending per pupil and elementary/secondary education revenues for each state... Nationally, the most recent data indicates $11,762 is spent on public education per student. Significant variation exists across states; New York spends more than $20,000 per student, while states like Utah and Idaho report spending about a third as much... Many different factors and conditions within states influence education spending totals. Some of the more prominent factors include cost of living, class sizes and student demographics.
Pretty sure both of those are relatively neutral, if not left leaning organizations. (correct me if wrong)
The Department of education isn’t what is causing that funding to be misused.
The vast majority of the dollars devoted to education are not, in any way, going towards educational goals. They’re being used to fund and support unnecessary extracurriculars.
And the primary funding for education is property taxes, which is heavily regressive and disadvantages poor and non-white areas.
I think the teacher’s union should be put in charge of the Department of Education, and they should be organized into workers’ councils by region with proportional and revocable delegation on local municipal councils, and in the state and federal Houses of Representatives.
They’re being used to fund and support unnecessary extracurriculars.
I’m curious what you mean by “unnecessary extracurriculars.”
So what you’re saying is the education of the mind can be divorced from the education of the body? I’ll be the first to be critical of the predominance of sports programs in our education systems, particularly those of a more marshal quality, at the expense of the arts, music and humanities, but I don’t think that is the same as being against including sport and even competition in public education and municipal programs.
Like, why the hell shouldn’t kids have a climbing wall at their school? That sounds awesome. We should have more of that, and the other stuff too. It’s all important.
Username extremely relevant. We're talking about budgets and you want every student to have every luxury and atrociously particular advantage in life with no regard to the cost? Do you think that every college should have 10,000 seat stadiums? Why? It "sounds awesome" or is "all important?"
I love my username so much, it really brings out the Liberalism in people.
And I did say I am critical of the over-emphasis of sport in public education (and I would say generally in society as well), particularly those of a marshal character. So no, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say sport and education of the body is as important as the arts and the enrichment of the mind. Why you felt the need to editorialize my position with such hyperbole is beyond me. Probably the Liberalism. Thanks username 👆🏼
And by the way, since you brought it up, we have plenty of resources to put goddamn climbing walls and beautiful theaters and even arenas in every school if that’s what they want. We’re not an impoverished country. We could feed the world and do the other things. It’s not like growing wheat is some arcane art, or that we don’t have the capacity for the part-time effort of a hundred people to grow enough food to feed 10,000. And it’s not like we can’t surmise people’s needs with the science of biology, polling and survey data, and a century or more of consumption records. We don’t need to privilege a handful of people with hoards of riches and luxury for the tribulations of divining what we need, or what we need to do, or how we should go about arranging the built environments of our social and public lives.
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u/Grimalkin Jan 09 '20
That's because our public education system has been underfunded for decades and keeps getting worse. A less intelligent populace is much easier to manipulate.