Basically, one generation has the responsibility
of providing a "supply" of education to the next 
generation so that the civilized world may continue 
as we know it.  

A century ago, only the financial elite had the 
opportunity to gain any more than a minimal 
educational experience and still today there are 
many people who are functionally illiterate.  

If you study history at all, it will become very 
apparent that civilization advanced very slowly until 
the advent of the printing press.  Up until that time, 
knowledge was maintained basically by religious groups 
who could support a "scribe" to hand create volumes of 
history and knowledge.  Once the printing press was 
invented and books could be "mass produced", civilization 
"took off".  Written, documented knowledge became the 
building block of progress.  While the stone age, bronze 
age, and iron age, took thousands of years to evolve, the 
modern age of nuclear power and space travel and technology 
have evolved quickly.  Scientific facts have exploded over 
the last fifty years.  From the day that John Glenn became 
the first American in space, from the day that Neil Armstrong 
set foot on the moon in 1969, our generation has been 
bombarded with technological advances.  With the advance of 
technology and specifically, communications, it would seem 
that the education of the next generation would progress at 
a similar pace.  Not so.  

The political reality is that the educational process is
nowhere as altruistic as one would have you believe.  Every
person involved in the expenditure of public funds for the
education process seems to have a personal agenda that is far
more important than the process itself.  Electing "Boards of
Education" to oversee the process for the community hasn't
worked, at least not in Northern Ohio.  The entire system should
be turned over to the private sector to run as a corporate 
entity, and the taxpayers should be the stockholders of that 
entity.  The education of the community will be the dividend. 

At the present time, there is a great deal of discussion
over the differences between public and private schools at the
elementary and secondary level.  From a strictly "results"
standpoint, the private schools have a much better academic
record.  That is, a much higher percentage of students moving
through the private system perform better on standard tests and
go on to college.  I would suspect that this is to be expected. 
For the most part, students at private schools are coming from
affluent families where a great deal of emphasis is placed on
education and achievement.  However, the parents of these
students are paying real estate taxes to support the public
school system as well as tuition to support the private education
of their own children.  They would very much like to see a
voucher system in place that would allow them to spend their tax
dollars in a way that best suits the education of their children. 
For instance, a local community calculates that it costs $3,600
to put a child through the public system for one school year. 
Parents who opt to enroll their children in private school should
be entitled to a voucher worth $3,600 to use toward their private
tuition.  After all, the community will not be burdened with that
cost for those specific students.

Where this falls apart is that the cost for the children
remaining in the public system will go up (per student), and in
all likelihood, the best and brightest students will be removed
from that system leaving struggling schools trying to deal with
the education of those most difficult to teach.  The "special
needs" students will be left in the public system.  These are the
children that cost the most to care for and are least likely to
be enrolled in a private system.

Theoretically, the children being enrolled in private
schools are there because their parents have decided that they
can afford to support the public system and still pay separate
tuition for a private education for their children.  I believe
that the voucher system will become a method for less than honest
opportunists to establish minimum service private schools with a
profit motivation as opposed to an educational motive.      

We must not forget that the purpose of education is to
prepare the next generation for assuming the responsibility of
maintaining civilization.  The school, public or private, must
turn out young adults that know how to learn.  That is so much
more important than the ability to perform complicated algebraic
computations.  Produce a generation of children that have a
thirst for knowledge and the world will be a better place for
everyone.
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