I don’t usually read the Education section of the Sunday NYTimes, but its lead piece caught my eye this week.
In New York State, people have a constitutional right to an education. The question is: How good an education?
… the court ruled [last week] that schools were obligated by the state Constitution to do nothing more than prepare students for low-level jobs, for serving on a jury and for reading campaign literature รท the equivalent, the court suggested, of an eighth- or a ninth-grade education.
Yep. Sure makes me want to send my kids to a public school. (And let’s not forget that New York State sends less money per kid to New York City schools than to any other district in the state.)
In the discussion of kids as economic units vs kids as citizen units, I’d venture that this ruling does credit to neither. Whatever happened to the notion that an educated electorate is necessary for an adequately functioning democracy?
I once saw a grafitto scrawled on a bridge in Boston: “If voting mattered, they wouldn’t let you.” Sometimes I do wonder if our government doesn’t prefer an electorate that’s easy to lie to.
