Parker Post and Question Answer: 4. What role should schools and schooling play in the US? In a democracy?

I believe that public schooling is the first step out of idiocy and as democratic as a setting as we have in the US! The public school isn't a private, closed minded, place like our homes were we just practice what we want and can exclude the realities of the world. It is a place of variety. Like Vivian Gussin said in the reading, " The children I teach are just emerging from life's deep wells of private perspective: babyhood and family. Then, along comes school. It is the first real step to the outside arena. Boys and girls are both there. Jews, Protestants, Catholics, Muslims, Buddhists, and atheists are all there together. There are Africans Americans, Asian Americans, and many more. Immigrants from the world over are there in school.
This buzzing variety doesn't exist at home, or in churches, temples, or mosques either. It exists in public places where diverse people are thrown together, places where people come from numerous parts private worlds and social positions congregate on common ground."
Parker also said," Problems and diversity are essential assets for cultivating democratic students." If we produce more democratic students we will have produced more well rounded people that will help stear us out of "idiocy".