This requires high skill and dedication from the teacher, and small class sizes.

Teaching is like any other profession, there's good ones, average ones and bad ones. Sad as it may seem, many teachers don't have the same passion for excellence as yourself. If they collect their pay and feel like they're helping the kids, they're happy.

The curriculum has to be something that is capable of actually being executed, and in the class sizes that economic conditions demand.

Have you ever tried teaching someone to evaluate information on their own?
It ain't easy.

Dude, the thread implied that kids should be taught what the government wants them taught instead of what their parents want them taught. This would imply that kids shouldn't be able to be home schooled either since that would involve teaching kids what their parents think is the truth and not what the government thinks is the truth. I never said that kids were physically dragged into school.

I was simply pointing out the implications of the majority opinion in the thread. Reading comprehension bro. Saying that I don't want something to happen does not mean that I think that it is currently happening. That's how you twisted what I said.

So now it's just crackpot to question what's written in a high school text book? So you basically just decided that I was a crackpot the second this discussion began. I guess all of my profs are just crackpots as well that can't read a high school text book.

You have yet to propose a reason as to why anything I said about wars hurting the economy is wrong. As I said, it helps numbers like GDP and unemployment but does not help the economy. GDP goes up as a result of the huge government spending and unemployment disappears as a result of a good chunk of the workforce being taken away to fight, and the government building a lot of tanks and the like. None of that is actually a productive use of capital that helps an economy. It is just a ton of government spending on stuff that has no economic benefit. I know what crackpot idea right? It's not even written in high school textbooks.

I decided that based on what you wrote. You haven't "questioned" anything. You've declared by fiat that X is wrong and so wrong as to be totally stupid (ie comparable to the loch ness monster evolution thing) so I'm questioning whether these so called "professors" that agree with this actually exist. Maybe you can name some names.

There seems no possible way to have an economics conversation with you given you were wrong about basic questions of fact like what most economists think was the relationship between the end of the depression and WWII is. I mean, even people that agree with you, but are slightly educated, know that positing a causal relationship is hardly a fringe position.

If you had bothered to do any outside research, you'd also find that the schools that use these Accelerated Christian Education textbooks are private Christian schools, although these schools will now be receiving some public funding due to a new bill passed in Louisiana. These are not public schools. The government does not determine their curriculum; the school itself does. Parents choose to pay for their children to learn this crap.

GOVERNMENT DOESN'T DICTATE THE CURRICULUM!!! The experts in a given field "dictate" the curriculum insofar as experts write "accurate" texts that are chosen by state level boards. If anything, right wing states like Texas undermine accuracy of curriculum content via purchasing volume, which allows insistence on ideologicaly driven content e.g. American exceptionalism and the wrongheadedness of new deal social programs.

Right. I was just phrasing it in a way t_roy's brain might be able to understand, but having a small amount of experience in the education field, I do know how curriculums are developed, yes.

Government, however, does determine the funding and set standards for what must be learned, so in a way, they do influence curriculum.

I was more responding to troy than to you. But "government" has different levels, and the federal government (which is pretty safe to say is the boogeyman itt) plays almost no direct role in influencing content, as opposed to standards. HOW these standards are set is something that is absolutely reasonable to discuss. But because curriculum is set at such a low level of government, it's entirely ridiculous to argue that, when typically only hundreds of votes are cast for any given school board candidate, that "parents" as represented by their close peers are not deciding what goes into a curriculum. The absurd extreme of this system can be seen anecdotally in Texas, Kansas, and Pennsylvania.

"Expert opinion" =/= "majority opinion." Also, there was no implication that government should dictate curriculum content, and no discussion thereof, until YOU broached the subject in YOUR first post itt.

Ok, PM me the details. If the offer is interesting enough I'll quit my job.

I know, it's my job

What, the curriculum is effectively set by whoever can mass-produce the cheapest textbook?

Who owns a child? While t_roy is obviously full of **** on every factual claim, and seems to have missed that we weren't initially talking about public schools at all, he does have a point buried in there somewhere: Some people believe parents have an absolute right to teach "their" children whatever they want, even ridiculous hooey like loch ness monster and jesus zombie and such. Implicit in our (SMP's, and so on) discussion of how wrong it is that that stuff is in some textbook, or would be if it were (I'm not clear on whether this turned out to be an urban legend) is our belief that society as a whole has some say in the matter, and that, for example, parents should not be allowed to dictate science curriculums if they know nothing about science.

(To the extent we weren't implicitly decrying it and were actually just laughing at foolish people, he has no point at all, but let's pretend.)

(And yes, I realize that no US state disallows home schooling, but there are still ways in which the state limits what parents can do, so his point still sort of stands even though no government education program fits his image of jackbooted thugs dragging children off to disinformation camps. So again, let's pretend.)

So let's at least start from first principles. Are we all of the opinion that the state has a sufficient interest in determining what gets taught to any given child that it can exercise at least some control over that, even against its parents' wishes? Why? And if it does ... why do parents have any interest in it at all? It would be a lot easier if we just decided children belonged to their parents, period. Or to society, period. Why the inherently problematic compromise?

For the same reason that you can pick the food your dog eats, but can't leave it in the car on a hot summer's day with the windows rolled up.

Basically, most people aren't particularly bothered if you give your dog a food they don't approve of, but don't care enough to make it a rule. Most people are bothered if you cook your dog alive in your car, so we got a rule.

In other words, instead of absolute ownership, you have limited ownership.

Another, related, reason is that most of us want some amount of freedom and that requires compromise. It is really hard for me to have freedom to do as I will with my kids if I don't allow that same thing for you.

Hence, freedom to do as you will, but with boundaries.

You're implicitly assuming the child is "yours" in some sense. Why?

It takes effort and resources to try to control what other people do. If something is egregious/offensive enough, like teaching delusional godtard nonsense in place of science is offensive to most people ITT, they're willing to try to do something about it. And since there are a bunch of godtards trying to propagate their version of "science", and efforts to stop it are just as or more offensive to them, we end up with the tardfests in TX, KS, etc and minimal annoyance where they aren't concentrated.

It's not really a different mechanism than any other law, just that the positions are completely antithetical and there are nontrivially sized pockets where each opinion prevails.