....one of the least understood Paul Platform issues is abolishing the Dept. of Education. I truly believe that a large percentage of people with children in public schools do not remember or know that Reagan's platform included abolishing this department. In addition to all of his reasons, the situation has grown more pronounced and there is lots of ammunition for calling it out.

Example: percentage of those in Congress who choose not to send their children to public schools and yet vote repeatedly for more federal intrusion in education. The total failure of programs like No Child Left Behind, the plummeting morale of teachers and statistics on the drop in enrollment of teachers and the volumes of information on US kids versus those in other countries. When this issue is misunderstood we lose votes and support. If it were understood we would all of a sudden have the support of many, many parents and educators. A nation that does not care about the education of its young people is doomed. Privatizing and restoring competition; freeing dedicated teachers to teach; eliminating this insane teach the tests only approach; and, the $$$ wasted on "services" that don't serve and curriculums that don't work are all issues that reach lots of people. It worked for Reagan and once clarified it will work for Ron Paul. Far too many people see abolishing the Dept. of Education as turning our backs on education and they could not be farther from the truth..

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fonta

You hear a lot of the

Submitted by MikeK on Thu, 11/08/2007 - 16:14. Permalink

You hear a lot of the undeducated who say "Ron Paul wants to do away with public education". This is simply not the case.

Just because you get rid of a bloated, ineffective bureaucracy like the DoE does not mean that you want to end public education.

When you hear something like this, please be sure to remind people that the funding for the schools is provided by property taxes. These are local taxes, therefore the schools should be responsible to the communities and the parents who pay the taxes in the first place. They should not be responsible to the DoE.

If we take that power from the DoE and put the responsibilty and the power to educate our young people back in the hands of the community, we would get a much better education system and insure that our young people were being taught critical thinking skills, not just how to take a test.

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I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.
Thomas Jefferson, 1791