On a surface level, it makes sense that they want public schools to be reopened, but really, it just shows how hypocritical some of these conservatives are, like Ben Shapiro ("shocking," I know). For years conservatives have been lamenting the public schools as a source of leftist indoctrination (which I agree with), so shouldn't conservatives be more vocal about the value of home schooling? Or would having students be home-schooled (which generally a parent wants to be there for) shine a greater light on a problem conservative politicians and pundits want to ignore?
Home-schooling should definitely be more utilized compared to public schools, so I don't understand why conservatives in general aren't looking a gift horse in the mouth?
I think it's a combination of factors really:
I'm all for homeschooling now for the very reasons that I think US education system is one or both of either indoctrination daycare or total shit at actually teaching. The issue is for it to be successful, at least one parent has to be willing to not worry about their career and crap and take care of the kid(s). I actually think it should be both as the working parent should take some time off as they can to be involve themselves. I also don't think homeschooling is just a replacement school at home where they watch Youtube videos and do workbooks.
If replacing traditional learning with just other traditional learning, then that's just a missed opportunity. The time should be taken to get out and explore or a lot of hands-on education like working with tools, marksmanship, cooking, etc. I was chatting with a homeschooler a few years ago and he pretty much convinced me that school, particularly elementary school, was not much more than a road block to my learning.
This is a major reason. When both parents work is hard to keep an eye on kids, especially when they are young. I have no problem homeschooling, me and my wife do not count on schools to teach the kids anything anyway but we need the daycare, sadly.
That's one point I was implying about the problems homeschooling would shine a greater light on, which is the rise of two income households. I'm not sure what your situation is, maybe your wife likes to work, but your job pays more, maybe you two have to work out of necessity, that is none of my business.
It is increasingly apparent that years of job outsourcing has truly made the low paying service jobs a greater sector of our economy then ever before. I hate to sound like a leftist, but the two income household will (if it has not already become) be increasingly common. Unlike a leftist, I don't think the government should be compensating for this with more welfare. Greater welfare is a used Band-Aid for a bullet wound that decades of globalization has wrought onto the country. There are obvious treatments, such as closing the borders completely, prioritizing industries and companies that are actually located and manufacturing in the US, but getting to the heart of the problem would require greater corporate regulation and control that goes against the popular, if completely misguided, narrative about the importance of the free market.
I thought of something else reading this too, something I've noticed around here (Texas) is that skilled labor is dominated by 2nd generation Hispanics. At least I presume they are 2nd generation, as we're talking about people who English is their primary language, grew up here, and of the type I presume are legal.
Apparently the Hispanic families realized the value of learning marketable skills that others forgot. You get to a point where the white families pushed everyone to college to be whatever they dream of and the ones that dreamed of something actually employable did okay and the rest are stuck forever in these low paying service jobs. They might have actually liked being a mechanic or an electrician or whatever, but it was never really presented as an honorable option.
I've seen this here in the Midwest, too.
To be blunt, the whole "I'm working a menial minimum wage job because I'm focused on my true passion, which is blah blah blah" thing is pure cope. You can be an aspiring writer and a plumber. People are just lazy.
Maybe your upbringing was different, but mine (in public schools) was "college college college college college college" until I finally dropped out of high school in the first days of 12th grade.
My grades had been cratering from 2nd grade on.
My parents were very surprised.
Aside from one conversation about what I was going to do outside of school, that was the end of my parental education talk. That convo consisted of me saying, well, I can do car mechanics, so maybe I will take some classes, and my dad (who worked at a truck transmission manufacturer) said, "but those guys are all gearheads," which I took as advice, and didn't go into it.
My parents were and are the biggest normies in the world, who believed everything they were told. They had a (round) kid, and a square hole marked "Education," and they kept hammering me into it until the mold broke. By the time the hammering ended, I was completely allergic to any kind of formal education.
They were useless.
The thing is, the schools knew I was failing, but a government school has one fatal flaw. If I finished earlier than the other kids, they told me to sit down and shut up and do nothing. Well, guess what lesson I learned?
But doing nothing is an acceptable outcome for a government school, so long as you stay in the building. That is a purely materialist viewpoint, and it is very common to government. ("Did you fix poverty?" "Well, I spent the trillion dollars you have me, so I must have." Hey, it's something you can count, isn't it?)
My parents had few options for private schools. A more thriving private education sector might have given them more options earlier. They sure had no clue, and I don't think they could have home schooled me for a minute.
That is a very good point about the homeschooling. Traditional learning is not very good. Kids should be more active with applying what they learn to real life rather than just memorizing formulas and theories without practical application.
Yeah, that's really the biggest thing that changed my mind is the lesser value of traditional learning. I look back at when I was in school and sure I learned some stuff but the time spent versus the amount learned was just really wasteful.
I'm all about hands on learning. Even though I finished high school and college, I credit the vast majority of what I've made of my life to endeavors outside of school. If my parents hadn't encouraged that and just gave me a "shut up and go away" device (whatever the iPad was in my day), then I just see myself being a lot worse off. I see this with my cousins and nephews, sometimes I just want to ask them "do you do anything else?"
This. Even among Conservatives there's just a desire for "things to go back to normal".
Kids not being at "daycare" is the big blocker. More so than work being allowed again. If teachers are back to teaching, it's the point of a wedge. "well no you have to allow cleaners, kitchen staff, bus drivers. And if those are being used well factories for those food stuffs and school supplies need to reopen. If those are open... Etc".
They'll plomise to deal with the Leftist propoganda in schools, just once they get this thing, then another thing.
Also some anti-union sentiment in there too imo. The majority of schools would be open at this point if not for the teachers unions.
The main problem is that they're keeping their funding. If they want to keep pretending like virtual schooling is an acceptable option, they need to have at least 75% of their funding cut and diverted to alternative schooling options, like grants for parents looking to send their kids to a private school or even home schooling.
America has the most expensive education in the world, for terrible results.
Just outlawing government-owned schools (outside of West Point and Annapolis) and returning all those property taxes and state lottery money and we could easily afford private education.
(State lotteries were dubbed "a tax on people who suck at math." An interesting idea, but making them pay for school would probably me more helpful.)
Most nominally conservative people still live in a delusional bubble, where public institutions are neutral, competence is valued, and people are generally decent.
When it is their turn to be viciously attacked by the left, they sit there, blinking like a confused rabbit, and ask how could anyone be so mean?
People like us, the aware and alert, are tiny in numbers.
Because the general "conservative" leadership are uniparty grifters and spend most of their speeches slowly working their audience towards non-conservative viewpoints.
The average American conservative is an idiot who just believes whatever the mainstream "conservative" sources tell them.
It's gotten a bit better but not much. The Q psyop really fucked longterm growth.
As a parent I enrolled my kid into a catholic school that a still has in school teaching. To be with other kids and to learn in that setting is extremely important for their mental health. Not even Christian.
In my time, I went to a private Catholic school, then later on went to a public school. I miss the Catholic school every day, while the other is still felt to be a waking nightmare.
I would be fine with them being closed permanently.... if we also fired all the people working there
But since that isn't going to happen at least make them pretend to work.
"Conservatives" -- to the extent they even realized they were in a culture war -- haven't realized that they lost it to such an extent that they are now seen as "Enemies of the State and the American People". So they think that quaint notions like raising concerns about the curriculum to the teacher or school board will still work instead of outing them as The Enemy.
I'm not having a good time at home. I want to be free from it and talk with people.
The reality of the situation is that school is daycare for the children of the average working adults. It's that simple.
Which state has closed public schools but allowed private ones to remain open?