The Press: What's It Good For?

"Absolutely Nothing."

OK, that's a lyric for describing "war".

But really, the press, the media, the reporting agency that informs and watches over the scurrilous and corrupt follies of the state and private enterprise.

Even comedian-newscaster Jon Stewart has justly skewered the mainstream media for hyping inane nonentities and niceties that have little bearing on the political life of this country or its citizens.

When the press exposes failing test scores and the dangerous sites of public schools, nothing happens.

What will it take to make change for the better in our schools?

God forbid, are the media part of the same functioning dysfunction that characterizes our state entities?

How many times will the Daily Breeze tattle on the bloated, underperformed Centinela Valley Union High School District? How much longer will we have to read about the drastic cuts to education in Torrance, Redondo Beach, and even Los Angeles before we realize that there has always been plenty of money, but that more than half of it gets siphoned off into district and upper-level administrative costs? About one fourth of all allocated funds gets into the classroom.

Everyone loves to dish on corrupt government, out-of-touch school boards, and rude students with little parental supervision. But when are we all going to be part of the solution, instead of the problem?

Parents who homeschool their children deserve support, attention, and advocacy. Let's fight for them, so that the state, it its legal-fiction role of "parens patriae" can no longer thwart the preparation of today's youth for tomorrow. On parent getting by is better than a well-financed waste factory, which better characterizes a greater number of public schools, whether in elite or working-class neighborhoods.

The press can only inform the public. The public cannot act in concert as a mass, without creating the same social ills. It's time that we stopped treating education as an exclusively public commodity, but a private venture which the public deserves to be interested in, informed enough to ensure that everyone, right and poor, can choose how they want to learn.