TMLutas thinks I should be kinder to schools. Sorry, no can do. Schools are heartless and barbaric and should be treated as such.
He does make the good point, not incompatible with my point, that the infrastructure we have created for schools can be reused. Sure! Keep the buildings, keep the bus runs, keep the classrooms. You can even pay for them with tax dollars if you simply must. Let the teachers and administrators teach individual classes, or form their own competing schools, or even just provide baby-sitting services if that's what parents want.
While it may look as if I think the people in schools are the problem, I don't. The vast majority of teachers could be very good. The teachers are not our enemies. They're as frustrated with the system as anybody. Just ask them what makes them the most unhappy and they'll tell you: the bureaucracy. Teachers would love to work in a private enterprise system which possibly paid them less but provided for much more job satisfaction and more .... education and less schooling.
UPDATE: continued
posted at: 13:20 | path: /economics | permanent link to this entry