Houston Chronicle: Private Schools Feeling Budget Pinch

The Houston Chronicle, in thier Sunday online edition, posted an article entitled "Private Schools Feeling Budget Pinch". The article goes into how private schools are losing students due to the economic situation.

The article goes into the pros and cons of public and private schools and to some degree the home-schooling segment of education. It also discussed why many stduents leave public education for the private school or home school option for education.

I have had some evry definate opinion on why public schools are failing and how they are run.

Many public schools cater to the small groups who seem to demand or require individual and special help to succeed. However, that success is measured in a different way at the general student population.

I agree that all students should be provided an education, but when a select few require more educational support than other groups of students, the overall quality of education goes down. By doing this, the overall education quality of the school is watered down.

Private schools and home schooling are not the answer to the problems of education.

Schools have always been a microcosm of society in general and the issues that students, teachers, and staff face in the classrooms are a result of what is happening in the world. Society has become too liberal. Most people are only concerned with what they can get at the moment, without any desire to work towards a goal and feel the satisfaction of achieving it. That is way most public schools are failing.

The students and their parents, whom on the whole, do very little to foster a positive opportunity for the student to succeed need to be instructed and required to contribute to the education of their offspring.

Some many flee to private schools and home schooling. Unfortunately, not everyone can afford to do that.

A simple solution would be return to the educational method that everyone over the age of 50 experienced in their youth. After all, we turned out pretty good. Well, at least BETTER than the majority of the students we are graduating from high school today, who cannot meet the rigors and requirements of college, the job market, and life.

"Education would be so much more effective if its purpose were to ensure that by the time they leave school every boy and girl should know how much they don't know, and be imbued with a lifelong desire to know it." - Sir William Haley