However, if 80-90% of americans evaluate that the right to be informed/educated is not a basic human right, then the ruling class [002-5% of people] has nothing to worry about.
Democracy, at least as it pertains to rights [or priveleges, meritocracy], wld have prevailed.
tnx

I support unions. The problem is that the educational system as it now is organized does not work. Also, sometimes the teachers union does not work. I spent many years in school systems in many States across the US. It was the teachers union that prevented many from getting a livable wage. This was done by the NJEA as a tactic to ‘protect’ professional salaries at the expense of other workers. I argued against that elitist stance, but lost.

There is now pending legislation that would provide for pre-school education of very young toddlers. Sounds like a good idea, BUT it disrespects parents. Maybe some of the money used to fund programs such as that would be better used to allow a parent to stay home and school their own child. I oppose the unnecessary ‘institutionalization’ of children (and the elderly), which is what day care centers do. Yes, I have heard all of the arguments against my proposal – some parents are not fit to educate – but many are.

Charter schools, home schools, and a FAIR voucher system would all be improvements over what we have. It is a political issue opposed by the dems and the teachers’ unions.

Followed by …

I favor a Single Payer, K thru grad school educational system that would be free and supported by broad based taxes. If med school was free, medical care would not be so costly.

I actually like the second comment but I think the system should remain free. It should be funded via taxes and I do think money IS a problem. Since the Reagan years education has been cut in real terms and housing patterns has lead to inequality of funding. When I lived in Texas there was a lawsuit by poorer districts to demand equalization of funding. There were schools with classroom with holes in the roofs and no text books. You may remember in 2004 Ralph Nader made as part of his campaigning the dilapidated condition of the nations schools and how for one little African American girl just having soap in the bathroom was special.

But even before we can get to a free and equal educational system there has to be a radical re-thinking about Capitalism. Until that time I’d rather keep the teacher union’s in place than see privatization of the current system via vouchers or other types of payment schemes.

Regarding college. College today is also a “weed out” system because many of the jobs today especially required by the FIRE sector just do not require a large labor force. If young people want to be considered for these higher paying jobs they require that paper and with a de-emphasis of the trade young people are seeking these kinds of careers. Unfortunately they are falling prey to the unscrupulousness of debt peonage in order to pursue these degrees. Thus there needs to be a restructuring of the economy such that FIRE sector type jobs are de-emphasized building up other sectors including the arts whereby there are broader and greater career choices for young people.

And about colleges – many have become just businesses. And the student loan program is a disgrace. Too many students have been misled, lied to, and will be ‘indentured’ to the unfair loan system for most of their lives. I favor a Single Payer, K thru grad school educational system that would be free and supported by broad based taxes. If med school was free, medical care would not be so costly.

Also, a new way of learning that includes internships would be less costly. But most important we must end the worship of the ‘paper’. I envision a day when we would have a president who was a plumber, carpenter, or auto mechanic. Can anyone deny that we have too many lawyers and not enough real people in power.

To do so, such intellectuals would perhaps have to take a critical eye to the time when they were children, and what was also very wrong about that period, instead of just reacting through paternalism, and claiming that things were better when they were young, and that all decisions and increased freedoms that young people have gained since them are just the tools of corporate manipulation, and how dare they have sex or use the internet or play video games (when we didn’t do those things, so they must be creepy)!

I agree that we need a great expansion of the rights of young people; schools need to be reformed into democratic, creative, free institutions, instead of schools of punishment, some of which still allow criminal violence to be acted out on students by the staff. It is also a big issue how college has been turned into such a for-profit, privitized charade in the past thirty years that most students who aren’t rich end up tens of thousands of crippling student loan debt, that isn’t even dischargable through bankruptcy due to t lobbyist-inspired legislating.

The medical system is a big problem The case of Deamonte Driver is important. How many other children suffer and die needlessly like he did. How many in the US never heard of Deamonte? Most people in the US would rather watch junk TV shows or celebrate some star athlete than work for social change. The values and priorities in the US have led to a nation on the brink. I don’t think that the solution to the school problem is a lot more money. A change in values and priorities would make a step forward. For one thing, schools should be much smaller. The push toward very large school districts has not benefited students.

The way we try to educate in the school system, as it now exists, is sometimes worse than not sending children to school at all. Text books lie. Teachers, many (but not all) of them, are misinformed and pass that misinformation down to students. If a teacher is enlightened he/she would probably be fired for teaching the truth.

Worse than that is the culture in some schools. Drugs, violence, and bullying are major problems. In the cases where young people kill, bullying is often the root of the problem.

Violence is glorified on football fields and during wrestling matches. Children are taught competition, but rarely are they taught cooperation. The “my team is better that your team” type thinking eventually leads to the view that our country can do no wrong.

I could go on and on. Your article struck a nerve for me. I started teaching in 1956 and founded the “Justice for Children” in the 1970s. That was the first organization of that name. It was dedicated to advocating for the legal/economic rights of children.