I think public schools should be closed. They have fallen too far into government control to be resuscitated. The patient is beyond saving. The public has spent more and more every year, hideous sums of money, since I started school more than 60 years ago, yet nearly everyone agrees, from employers to college professors, that the resulting performance levels are worse than ever in terms of basic educational attainment, reading, spelling, math, etc. It would sure be wonderful to have a "student understand[s] how the components of culture affect the way people live and shape the characteristics of regions," but not if they were unable to count their change, or make change, without mechanical assistance, or spell the 15,000 or so most common words of the English language, or write several sentences into a paragraph or paragraphs.
Frankly, public schools have evolved into little more than baby-sitting services for prepubescent children and dating services for post-pubescents. Why not start over after a clean sweep?
I advocate vouchers, not as presently envisioned to be cashed in at public schools, though. Give the parent/guardian of each child (a daunting enough challenge in this culture these days!) a voucher for whatever amount the state decides to spend. It will be equal for all students. A far better solution would be to stop the state from giving any money, and lower taxes, but that runs the risk, if not the certainty, that the government would seize on low taxes to raise them back to fund other boondoggles. If the state got out of it all together, the parents would have income to cover the cost, as it should be.
Who would educate the children? Parochial schools do a pretty good job, I hear. Private schools do an excellent job in many cases, free of the administrivia of public schools yet still undoubtedly burdened with some part of it to comply with DOE reporting, record keeping etc. More private operations would spring up in place of public schools. Parents would be free to spend their voucher how they saw fit. If little Susy was on her way to being a Rhodes Scholar, the path would be there. If Johnnie was not going to be an academic, he might take a different path, chosen by the parents and modified from time to time as the kids matured. If the chosen provider wasn't getting the job done, take your business elsewhere.
What would happen to teachers? The good ones, who know what they are doing and are good at it will be immeasurably better off, in income, working conditions, respect and satisfaction. Really effective ones will attract paying customers. The lousy ones will be flipping burgers somewhere.
Just like there are shoppers who prefer better quality, or service or convenience, there are children who want, prefer and can benefit by very high level educational exposure. Whether we like it or not, there are many, most, who do not and efforts to inflict it on them is doomed to failure, frustration, guilt, feelings of inadequacy and worse. There will be the inevitable mismatches, of course, and those can be addressed because anytime a parent thinks they could do better elsewhere, they would free to move. This keeps the operators of those educational emporiums on the hop, too, because their "customers" can leave if they aren't getting their moneys worth, as they define it from time to time. Just like there is Nordies, there will be Walmarts, and Costco's and Macy's and Sears and Penneys, all competing for your business striving to offer what a parent wants.
The product of government is compulsion, uniformity, equality. The product of the marketplace is efficiency, satisfaction, truth, justice and the American Way.
For generations, American children learned to read and do math at one room schools often taught by teachers barely older than themselves and not much more exposed to "how the components of culture affect the way people live and shape the characteristics of regions" than themselves, but somehow they could read, write, do basic math, and learn the rest of what they needed or wanted to know. One factor missing these days, it seems, is wanting to learn. Past generations understood it was important, critical to survival. It is not seen that way now.
Despite the governments' best intentions and expensive exertions, "survival of the fittest" is a law that can be neither amended or repealed. Millions who were serous about learning received very adequate educations in what are seen today as appallingly crude circumstances. Ted Cruz's dad made it through UT, not because he had a splendid preparation but because he wanted to, badly. Me, too.
When I was 4 years old, I told my mom I was going to learn to read even if it took all week! By golly, I did, although it took a bit longer than a week, reading a foot of books a week, like I read that Thomas Edison claimed he did, for quite a few years.
Important details of my idea are yet to be completely figured out. I still haven't figured out what to do to preserve high school football. Somebody will come along with something, though.