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Originally Posted by Irish mist
Lol, "free public education" Nothing is free. There's nothing selfish about wanting to change the way education is dealt with in the USA. What we have been doing is not working. I'll tell you what. Keep the public schools and allow people, especially poor people to send their kids to any school they want with vouchers, and expand charter schools, and let's see how that works out. Even our very best public schools in the USA don't come near the education children are getting in the average European schools. Again, we are waaaay off topic, and I take part of the blame for that.
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To continue the off-topicness (I know that's not a real word...my U.S. education isn't that bad), I worked with with a gent from England who not only had a public primary education, but his education at Oxford was also paid for by the state. And he's definitely one of the most well-educated people I know.
There's no doubt that changes are needed in many areas (education and healthcare to name two important ones) in this country. I found a comment that I read in Newsweek a couple of weeks ago very interesting. To paraphrase, it said that in the United States, citizens considered state (read federal, state and local) spending to be waste, while Europeans considered it investment in assets (infrastructure, a well educated and health citizenry, etc.). So what changes are necessary so we (or at least the majority) feel we're getting a good bang for our buck with regards to our tax dollar?