There’s a story at the ABC News website, entitled, “Politics of Education: New Texas Social Sciences Curriculum Standards Fraught with Ideology, Critics Say,” about the new public education curriculum in Texas. Some voters are upset that the public curriculum is too conservative.
I’ll not weigh in on what’s too conservative, or too liberal, in public schools…at least, not today. What’s more telling is how a system that taxes people for a public curriculum, establishes itself as a mandatory standard, and makes private alternatives hard to fund with whatever money money people have left will always foster controversy.
The answer is to make private alternatives easier to establish. Once that happens, there will be more alternatives, from among like-minded groups. There will also be fewer ideological controversies between the left and right in the public schools.