Defending public education

[Diane Aoki <dkeikoa@hawaii.rr.com>]

I had a nice long conversation with a teacher who teaches at a Waldorf
school. I thought I did a good job informing her of the complexities of NCLB
and its intent to destroy public education. She is very liberal, so very
receptive to what I had to say. When it came down to answering WHY would
they want to do this, and I gave the answer - vouchers, there was this
moment of silence and she may have possibly been pondering, hey, then this
is a good thing for us in private schools. We had to go back to what we were
doing before the conversation, but it got me thinking that I need to be
articulate about defending public education in general. This may be a simple
question for most of you, but I was hoping you can help me get my speaking
juices flowing about why we NEED to have public education, (i.e., why not
vouchers?) why everyone, even those without school-age children in the
public schools, needs it.

Hoping to get a response,
Diane