The primary purpose of public education has always been to “socialize” the students. What we are now seeing is simply another step on that road to emotionalist, responsibility-shirking hell.
Witness the almost invariably better performance of home-schooled children. They aren’t prodigies, just normal kids held to reasonable standards. They only look like prodigies next to their public school brethren.
The only long-term solution is to abolish public education — something the government was never meant to provide, anyway. Private schools, run as businesses without government interference, would offer incentives to teachers (more control over curricula, merit-based pay, not having to worry about coercive unions) that they don’t have now. They would also be affordable once the tax burden of public schools was lifted.
