I'm aware of the Superman movie & I mostly agree with your criticisms, and again, my objection was that I thought you overstated your criticism of the "United States public school system." Obviously, not all public schools are bad.
For example, my hometown of Montville, NJ has a wonderful public school system which has very good outcomes. As does Bergen County, NJ. And many of my friends and family have attended Rutgers University and received outstanding educations. These are public schools, functioning just fine. Rutgers is arguably better than most private universities, and our high school arguably better than most private schools.
Again, I agree that our public schools aren't great for the most part, but I think this is a complex problem and that we should try to remove ideological arguments and drastic, unrealistic solutions (like taking a hatchet to our entire public school system). And again, yes, charter schools are great and more are necessary to meet demand, but I don't think that necessarily means we should ignore efforts to attempt to improve the public school system which many kids are stuck with.
tl;dr: Yes, charter schools are fantastic, and we need more, but we should also try to improve our public education, especially in the poorest of our communities.
For example, my hometown of Montville, NJ has a wonderful public school system which has very good outcomes. As does Bergen County, NJ. And many of my friends and family have attended Rutgers University and received outstanding educations. These are public schools, functioning just fine. Rutgers is arguably better than most private universities, and our high school arguably better than most private schools.
I thought even the best public school is highly inefficient, especially with the high school I go to. They have pep rally and sport team. It cost money to train coaches, build stadium, and other items. Heck, my educational field trip got canceled even though sport teams get to go.
I mean, a true autodidact, not a shallow self-educated learner like me who happens to learn little bit there and there, would probably own the students at my highschool with terrifying efficiency.
Now, bringing athletics into the discussion is a wholly different beast. Having interacted with a lot of fans and alums and faculty, and having attended panels back at RU, there will be quite some opposition against athletic spending and it will be labelled as unnecessary but more often then not, the benefits of athletics to an institution outweigh the cons by a whole lot (if run properly that is) and the arguments against it are often misguided.. that conversation is for a different time, diff place.
For example, my hometown of Montville, NJ has a wonderful public school system which has very good outcomes. As does Bergen County, NJ. And many of my friends and family have attended Rutgers University and received outstanding educations. These are public schools, functioning just fine. Rutgers is arguably better than most private universities, and our high school arguably better than most private schools.
Again, I agree that our public schools aren't great for the most part, but I think this is a complex problem and that we should try to remove ideological arguments and drastic, unrealistic solutions (like taking a hatchet to our entire public school system). And again, yes, charter schools are great and more are necessary to meet demand, but I don't think that necessarily means we should ignore efforts to attempt to improve the public school system which many kids are stuck with.
tl;dr: Yes, charter schools are fantastic, and we need more, but we should also try to improve our public education, especially in the poorest of our communities.