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Posted By: boxingcardman

Leon has hit on one of the key issues facing us: education quality. I send my daughter to an expensive private school. I pay in post-tax dollars for the privilege of not sending her to the neighborhood school in walking distance from our house, which I involuntarily fund with my tax dollars. Education quality boils down to one thing: money. We do not fund public education adequately as compared to the real costs of purchasing education privately. I sit on the alumni council of my (private) high school. The school spends about $17,000 a year per pupil on direct costs (teachers being the largest part) plus the infrastructure. Class size is limited to less than 20. The children receive not only the basics but also art, music, language, computer skills and other "specialty" classes that have disappeared from the public curriculum. The difference in quality is stark. Talk to any teacher you know (there are even one or two here). The issue isn't the kids, it is having 35-40 of them in each class, and teaching to a test and not much else.

People in this country have got to wake up to the fact that if you skimp on education and infrastructure, you get what you pay for down the line in the form of rotting bridges and ignorant workers. Taxation is not a dirty word; we owe it to ourselves and our children to fairly and properly fund the public sector. That investment in earlier, more enlightened times is what made this country great.

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