Sunday, May 14, 2006

 

Home Schooling, Accurate Statistics, and Authoritarian Thinking

Another reader has written about education.

While the repubs want to say there’s a 50% drop out rate for hispanics, about the same for blacks, and only 60-70% for whites, those figures are disputed: 82% for whites, about 70% for blacks and about 75% for hispanics. That’s not counting the ones who go back for GEDs later, either.

For what it’s worth, 90% of high income kids stay in school; students from poor families are 3 1/5 times more likely to drop out than kids from middle-income families. We’re dealing with a complex issue when it comes to why students drop out of high school. But, between 1974 and 2002, white drop-out rates have decreased by one-third, and African-American rates by about one-half. And college enrollments and graduation rates are up as well.

For the record, I think there’s a Democratic vanguard of evil ™ as well. They gave us Clinton, Gore, Kerry, Dean—the same old same old centrists. We have one political party with two right wings.

I believe public education, funded by the central government, with a uniform curriculum, is the best way to educate people; once the students are in university, I believe they deserve to be subsidized as much as people in the military. I do not believe that the intellectual growth and adventure of students should be controlled as to content anymore than I think that of women should be controlled by authority figures.


Posted by SLM to disturbing the comfortable at 5/14/2006 04:57:37 PM
May 14, 2006 4:57:40 PM PDT

With so many students dropping out of high school, isn't it a bit silly to worry so much about a very small percentage of students (1-2%) homeschooling? Oh, that's right, they're in the Republican vanguard of evil.

By demonizing those who want some sort of school choice, you come off sounding ridiculous. One would think you'd be glad to see the children of the rabidly Republican and the fanatically religious educated away from the rest of society. But the truth is that you're really the one who wants to keep all kids around in order to indoctrinate them to your way of thinking (if your string of cliches can be called thinking).

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