Pencils and other lethal weapons

Michael Reagan's piece, Pencils and other lethal weapons, is a must read for those with any interest whatsoever in public education. Reagan aptly observes that public schools are now gov't schools and they are being run by imbeciles:

When school officials found a pair of scissors in 10-year-old Porsche Brown's book bag, the fourth grade student at Philadelphia's Thomas Holme Elementary School was handcuffed and hauled off to a police station even though the school district admitted she did not threaten anyone with them or even display them.

The scissors were discovered when students' belongings were being searched for property missing from a teacher's desk. The school's excuse for this absurdity: Porsche violated a rule against having dangerous weapons in her possession. So they called police and had her handcuffed and taken to the police station in a filthy paddy wagon.

"They handcuffed her and she said [the handcuffs] were tight on her wrist and they took her out and she was put into a paddy wagon," her mother Rose Jackson told NBC 10.

"She said there was blood in the back of the wagon and it smelled like urine," Jackson added. "It was dark in there."

Now if this isn't crazy enough, consider the fact that nobody ever told Porsche or her mother that having pair of scissors in school was forbidden. And that's not all: "I received a letter of things she needed for school and scissors were on there," Jackson revealed.

At the police station cops realized that Porsche had committed no crime and they released her.

Is it any wonder why Home Schooling has become such a phenomenal success and will continue to be? As gov't schools continue to fail, more and more money will be demanded from the weary tax payer and at some point the public will no longer take it. Gov't has no business being involved in education. Education has always been and always will be the responsibility of parents. When they forfeit that responsibility and they turn their kids over to someone else who doesn't love them or have any regard for them, the results often become disastrous.

The responsibility to educate falls squarely on the parents. Not the schools, not the teachers, and especially, not big gov't. If parents took responsibility over their kids' education, the poor quality of gov't schools wouldn't be an issue because parents wouldn't allow their kids to attend them. That would necessitate alternatives. Private schools would become more plentiful, more competitive, and therefore, less expensive. We're talking freedom of choice here. Only instead of abortion, we're talking about education. Why can't choice apply to education as well as abortion?
(Please be sure to read Michael Reagan's entire piece; it's good.)