<p>Find yourself a cozy seat at B&N or Borders, turn to Chapter 6, and enjoy!</p>
<p>Aw c’mon. Just tell us. This thread’s not going to be active long enough for me to get over there.</p>
<p>But the fact is - you can guess it. Just imagine yourself as a liberal masquerading as a rightwing conservative. What over-the-top, unsupported diatribe could you make against public schools that would net you some money and an occasional speaking engagement from well-heeled tax avoiders without requiring you to do anything that would actually improve the state of the education in the country?</p>
<p>It will require you to be a little bit creative, so give her some credit. ;)</p>
<p>Unfortunately for some, nothing in that chapter is particularly “over-the-top.” Anyone who keeps up with education news daily is already familiar with every story she uses in the chapter to make her point that, despite the daily unslaught of negative stories about public education, teachers as a group are, indeed, sacrosanct in our culture for some reason.</p>
<p>Would you care to offer something specific?</p>
<p>I wouldn’t dream of it! (you might take it seriously…;))</p>
<p>Oh, I agree Coulter’s book is not a scholarly treatise. But, specifically, if you really do want to learn about what’s going on in k-12 public education in this country, you can start by reading <a href=“http://www.educationnews.org%5B/url%5D”>www.educationnews.org</a> each day (don’t skip a day!) for three years - <a href=“http://www.nychold.org%5B/url%5D”>www.nychold.org</a> is great for critiques of the whims of public educators too. For daily feel-good stories and award ceremonies, of course, continue to read your local papers.</p>
<p>No, I was asking for hereshoping for something specific.</p>
<p>There is a lot of negative feelings about the public school. Some of it is based on conservative values logically thought out. But for too many people, it is “it’s just something that I know”. They’re just repeating what they’ve heard.</p>
<p>The schools where I live are pretty good. So when someone says “the public schools are just awful” I ask them to provide a concrete example, not necessarily to pick an arguement, but to understand where they’re coming from.</p>
<p>mini, who else might the clever liberals in extremist’s clothing wolved?
(or is it Hume?)</p>
<p>If you don’t have personal experience with poor schools, you’re one of the lucky ones. I have personal experience and I’ve also done the homework. After you’ve done the work, get back to me and we can talk! If Coulter puts you off, try the above websites. Have fun!</p>
<p>I’m with Daguy. Some public schools are good and some are awful. Ours were pretty good.
Some of the of the best schools in the country are public schools in our suburbs. So let’s not throw out generalizations about how awful public schools are. Some are and some aren’t.</p>
<p>David Carr has an interesting article about Ann Coulter in today’s NYT. Andrew Sullivan linked it, but you need to be a subscriber. However, Sullivan reproduced a cartoon that pretty much sums up the Coulter modus operandi.</p>
<p>“Some are and some aren’t”</p>
<p>If “some” means, many are and some are not.:)</p>
<p>I did look at the websites: they are interesting.</p>
<p>I am puzzled because you don’t want to pull any specifics from the Coulter book, no matter how often I ask. What’s the problem?</p>
<p>I have changed my tune on public school hugely. My husband and I both graduated from public school, and one of our children is in high school in our town with well ranked public schools. We have always been big supporters of public education.</p>
<p>However, public education has changed enormously, as a result of too many state tests and federal mandates. It has become increasingly rigid and routine, with far too much time spent preparing for and taking state tests, and far too little time spent doing critical thinking, interesting projects, etc. Forget about physical activity, interesting music, etc. My daughter’s class lost parts of eleven instructional days, just taking the state tests. This doesn’t include the umpteen hours spent doing review and preparation, of some incredibly mind numbing work.</p>
<p>So, she isn’t going to public school next year. I think school should be creative and interesting, not just boring and routinized. We didn’t pull her from public school without a lot of thought.</p>
<p>Not saying all public schools are boring and routinized, but NCLB has really done a number on schools’ curriculums, and every teacher with whom I have spoken agrees.</p>
<p>Tired of fighting on cc 
Read it for yourself and form your own opinion.
allmusic: It was a HUGE decision for us, too, when we pulled our younger son out, since my older S went all through 12th in our public schools. It was the right decision; S2 is very happy as are we. What a relief to be done with all that testing :)</p>
<p>I agree that NCLB has not been good for the schools; but that isn’t the public schools’ fault. It’s the consequence of a weird alignment between Ted Kennedy on one side and GWB’s Dept of Education on the other. </p>
<p>FS: I say “some” because I have no knowledge about how many are good and how many are not. The important thing is not to generalize. Not all private schools are great, not all public schools are awful.
I happen to know of some absolutely terrific public high schools and some absolutely horrible ones. They are not a million miles distant from one another.</p>
<p>Reckon I was just interested in what Coulter specifically had to say. It’s the same curiousity that someone has when they pass the scene of an accident on the freeway.</p>
<p>Believe me, I won’t lose any sleep wondering what she had to say. I may lose sleep wondering how someone like her came to exist. :)</p>
<p>I love when my intuition kicks in…</p>
<p>Mini–way back when I was a kid, I remember a Casper the ghost cartoon where the mean ghosts gave him mean pills, and he did terrible things to them–the one I particularly remember was him covering one with glue and feathers, and then mowing him; it gave me the willies. So, the upshot at the end is, Casper admits he never actually took the pills, he was pretending, in order to teach them a lesson. Ha ha.</p>
<p>So, that’s my reaction to your Ann Coulter theory. Clever, but saying things that are that vicious would not be satire–by saying them, you are that vicious.</p>