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Guttermouth's avatar

What's a "high quality education"? Who gets to define it? Who gets to enforce it? Does it include CRT? Religion? Anti-religion? The incontrovertible rectitude of certain political ideology and the incontrovertible evil of others?

Does a standardized "high quality education" include a curriculum transparent to parents, or hidden from them to prevent "interference"? What's the penalty under law for interfering with your child's high- quality education? Removal from the home? May law enforcement employ deadly force to ensure children are successfully removed from a home that interferes with their high-quality education?

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Ted T.'s avatar

Those are good questions. In most European countries, which are very capitalistic democracies, and where you have as high (or higher) freedom quotients than the US does under the Freedom House rankings, school curriculums are arrived at by consensus among the various parties involved.

Nobody dictates, certainly not the executive branch of the government.

Nobody is obliged to send their child to public school. Private schools are plentiful. But public schools are well financed, and local populations are deeply involved in how they are run.

Home schooling is allowed, as is, obviously, religious instruction. The only time you hear of a child being taken away from parents is if the child is being badly mistreated and/or receiving no schooling at all according to social workers.

The point is that education is considered a right for every child. People of all political slants and their governments agree on this and insist on it.

Also, most European countries have proportional representation in the legislative branch, even at the local level, so several parties from left to center to right always have a say on each issue. Nobody has a monopoly, and nobody tries to 'indoctrinate' the little ones.

Even countries that are extremely proud of their history, like France, don't force feed French 'greatness' on the kids. They just try to give them the best education they possibly can, so as to have a decent chance for as good a life as possible in this difficult modern world.

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Guttermouth's avatar

Give me a single example of a social policy arrived at through broad "consensus of the various parties involved" in the United States in the past century, and I'd be happy to trust Congress to become deeply invested in "fighting for the rights of children" to receive a quality education.

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Ted T.'s avatar

Dunno. Social Security probably looks the closest. Was during the Depression and FDR won almost every state, and ditto the the Dems in the house and senate.

But you're right, examples are hard to find. Medicare is way less open and shut. It was ferociously opposed by quite a few people at inception. When he was governor, Reagan opined that Medicare would be something like a death knell for the USA. But by the time he became president he had changed his mind. Seemingly, so had most Americans.

The thing is that consensus building in the general population is often a long slow trek, often affected by countrywide events, like the Depression. In the US, nowadays, consensus is just so hard to find. Largely because the two-party system almost automatically creates pushback from one party if the other one proposes something. But over time, on any major issue - like women's suffrage - people's positions often change, or become more nuanced and flexible.

However, among elected officials, consensus is a very different, much trickier animal. It's usually arrived at not on the merits of an issue, but via dealmaking, facilitated by inducements that sometimes look like bribery.

This indicates that the two-party system as it stands is not designed to improve life for citizens, but to perpetuate a lucrative set-up full of juicy nooks, crannies and back streets.

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