By Kevin W. Daly

Given all the ways to educate this nation’s youth, the government school system is perhaps one of the worst.

This failure is not due to a lack of funding but rather a perverted philosophy built upon a lie. The government educators feed us a lie when they say that their school system is non-religious. It is impossible to have a non-religious school. Whenever anyone does anything with purpose, he is making a religious statement. You only have purpose if there is a judgment by a judge. If there is no judgment then nothing really matters. There is no purpose. Why get involved in government or education if you have no purpose?

When you act with purpose you are confessing there is a judgment and your speech, values, lifestyle and philosophy are acceptable to your judge. You teach religion whether or not you admit it. Those who refuse to admit this are either ignorant of their very nature or willfully deceptive. In either case, they should not be educators, politicians or judges.

The main beneficiaries of this government-funded system are the teacher unions that fight against opening up the system to competition. Teachers get their job security while your children get mediocrity. What must the public endure before realizing that these unions, the elitist educators and the liberal politicians that support them do not have our best interest in mind? They support and feed each other while they use us to empower themselves.

True school choice, where the power and funding is given to the parents to decide the best educational path for their children, would improve education for our nation’s youth. It is better to trust the parents than the current failed system. As a worst case, any bad parental decisions can only negatively affect their own children, while an incompetent and immoral teacher can negatively affect many hundreds of children over the course of his career. I’d rather trust the parents. Let the good teachers compete and let the others go far away from our children.

The government school system receives approximately $7,000 per child every year in central Florida. It is even higher in more costly areas of the nation. Is the public getting an equivalent value of education in return? A family with three children of school age should be receiving an equivalent of $21,000 in education every year.

In order to make a more accurate evaluation of education, one needs to think outside the box of the government school system. It is of questionable value to compare one government school with another when the true quality is outside the system. Many schools have tuition less than the $7,000 per child. In addition, parents can educate their children at home economically. There are DVDs and online home education methods that supply the necessary books and bring the classroom into the living room. The cost is about $1,000 or less for the first child, with some cost savings for additional children.

We do not need to hear government school teachers complaining about low pay. My family scrapes by with my job paying little more than $10 per hour. We sacrifice to educate our children at home because we know the government school system is detrimental for children, yet we have to pay property taxes to empower these ministers of mediocrity. The government teachers cannot argue that they are doing their best unless they are fighting for open competition and true school choice.

On average, the home-schooled child tests four years above that of the government-educated child on a grade equivalent scale by the time they reach grade 8. My wife and I have had great success with our home school. Our oldest child on the grade 5 SAT tested at a grade equivalent level of 8.8, while our youngest child, on the same grade 5 SAT, tested overall at level P.H.S. (Post High School). We have been using Christian home-school materials and DVDs in their home education. We encourage our children to seek God’s help in their education and in their testing and to do it for His glory. In contrast, evolutionist educators can encourage their students to do it for the glory of the worms they will feed.

This is not written against all teachers, just those who feed off the children by supporting a government-funded monopoly that is detrimental to the children. I am certainly not against the students nor their parents, who I wish to see empowered with better choices. The government school box needs to be opened and the people freed.

Kevin W. Daly lives in Kissimmee.