[speaker001:] yeah I guess uh uh it's an easy one for me I think that's uh there's something seriously wrong yeah
[speaker002:] what is it that you are you know particularly upset about
[speaker001:] uh I guess uh I think they've lost their compass and uh I'm not sure they know exactly what uh uh public education supposed to be for anymore but uh I voted with my feet and uh my kids go to parochial school
[speaker002:] uh-huh
[speaker001:] so um
[speaker002:] what do you feel that your kids are getting in the parochial schools that they wouldn't get in uh the public school system
[speaker001:] well one hundred percent of the uh customers care that's one thing everybody cares about the education the kids are getting and um they uh take an active relatively active part which uh I mean if you're uh sending two thousand dollars that way every year you uh watch what goes on and you um um pay attention and participate and and you can influence the way things are
[speaker002:] so you're saying that the taxpayer who also is really paying through the pocket book for the education of the child may not be quite so conscious of the fact that they are paying the tuition for that child in the form of uh real estate or other taxes and and consequently they're not so motivated to get involved to make sure things happen the way they'd like to see them happen
[speaker001:] yeah the immediacy just isn't there and um uh I also think that one one of the problems and actually I don't think this I think this is a cultural problem
[speaker002:] um-hum
[speaker001:] the uh problem with public education is really uh really a problem with the culture and I guess my evidence for that is the school districts in places like California for example where only a minority of the taxpayers have children in school and you can't get a tax levy passed um people are um reluctant to pass uh school tax levies even uh when the money is needed or would be well spent because it's uh they don't have kids in the schools
[speaker002:] right
[speaker001:] I think that's a a loss of civic virtue and a loss of um uh the cultural attitude that we used to have that education was first even if it wasn't our kids I think that's uh that's the principal problem is that uh people no longer see it as uh as their problem and as an immediate problem
[speaker002:] right it troubles me too that that the priority seems to be with my particular purse strings rather than the public good and by definition for some of us at least the public good includes having an educated populace I mean the idea uh that uh you can make a sound judgment with respect to small votes in in the at the local level or bigger votes at the national level uh
[speaker001:] right yeah
[speaker002:] uh it means that you've got to be informed and you've got to have a certain level of education to do the reading and the critical thinking involved to come up with a decision
[speaker001:] yeah you know I I believe that the original idea of public education in the United States which I guess was controversial at the time of the constitution um you know it barely made it I think it was added afterwards I think the real the principal reason was uh education for civic participation the idea was that everybody should have an education so that they'd be a better voter
[speaker002:] right
[speaker001:] and you couldn't pull the wool over their eyes
[speaker002:] right it has taken on a more more more profound and you'd think we'd notice it economic uh thrust yeah
[speaker001:] well that's exactly what I was going to say now there seem to be really three reasons for education one is education for civic duty one is education for economic reasons and one is education for civilization I mean and I I think that one is
[speaker002:] well I'm glad that you added that one yeah I think that one's significant
[speaker001:] that that's what I used to think education was all about when I was a college professor and then I quit and got disabused of that notion but um the um uh now the only thing people seem to agree on is that education is um an economic enterprise to um train people for jobs and um I'm not sure that people in the education establishment really know what their purpose is and I'm really sad to say this I never thought I would have but I really think that uh the educational establishment has become part of the problem and uh that's why I guess I'm sort of reluctantly uh in favor of these uh choice programs
[speaker002:] right well I I agree agree with everything that you've said so far and the only thing I'd wanna add is that I'm a little more in contact I think with public school teachers than perhaps you are uh except as a parent of your child and the sense sense that I get from public school teachers that I know is that they are very conscious of what they feel they should be doing and they are the three things that you mentioned but they find that they are also being asked to do a bunch of other stuff which they think is only tangentially related like consumer education
[speaker001:] right that's what