Minister Giannakou and her Deputy Taliadouros are clearly liberal politicians. They do have the great opportunity to follow new liberal lines reforming our traditional statist educational system. Wendy is an excellent expert of marketizing and privatizing the educational system in USA. Some ideas would be very fruitful for moving on our educational system. Private schools in public service, is a brilliant idea and a very productive educational system.

WENDY McELROY DEFENDS ALTERNATIVES TO PUBLIC SCHOOLS

Homeschooling and apprenticeships are unjustly maligned and should be considered two important alternatives to public schooling, argues Wendy McElroy, research fellow at the Independent Institute. In “The Separation of School and State,” her latest column for FoxNews.com, McElroy notes that U.S. literacy rates were high before public schooling. A French statesman who emigrated to America — a contemporary of Thomas Jefferson — wrote that “Not more than four in a thousand are unable to write legibly, even neatly” — a result of widespread homeschooling. “Today homeschooled students often perform better on standardized tests than those from public schools,” writes McElroy. “In 2001, for example, homeschooled SAT-takers averaged 568 on the verbal test and 525 on the math; the national average was 506 on verbal and 514 on math.”

Perhaps in response to the growing recognition that homeschoolers often outperform their age-cohorts in the public schools, foes of homeschooling are now claiming that it often acts as a mask for child abuse. All homeschoolers in New Jersey, for example, “may be subjected to indignities like criminal background checks and obstacles like health regulations more stringent than those imposed on public schools.”Apprenticeships — which are actively promoted in Germany and Switzerland — have been erroneously attacked in the United States as brutal child labor.

“My purpose is not to dispute with parents who send their children to public schools,” writes McElroy. “I believe the system is a brutal failure, but parents must decide for themselves. I advocate extending alternatives far beyond the typical private versus public school debate, and even beyond homeschooling. . . . A universe of educational possibilities has been obstructed by the attempt to enforce a government monopoly over how, where, when, and what children learn.”

See “The Separation of School and State,” by Wendy McElroy (2/25/04)

http://www.independent.org/tii/news/040225McElroy.html

Also see:

“Homeschooling Must Be Decriminalized: Parents Really Do Know Best,”

by Ariel Dillon (9/18/03) http://www.independent.org/tii/news/030918Dillon.html

SCHOOL CHOICES: True and False, by John D. Merrifield

http://www.independent.org/books/brief_school_choices.html

CAN TEACHERS OWN THEIR OWN SCHOOLS? New Strategies for Educational

Excellence, by Richard K. Vedder

http://www.independent.org/tii/catalog/cat_can_teachers.html