Eg: Both sides care about children, productive economy, value of education
The school I went to was a Dalton school (though basically only in name, as explained below), one of the pioneering futuristic school systems developed in the early 20th century which said that people would learn more if they are allowed to learn about what they actually care about. My school had a copy of the original book describing the Dalton school system in the library. Almost everything described in the Dalton school from 1905 would be illegal if it were done today.
My point is, I'm fairly left-leaning but I support a radical deregulation of education on all levels: this seems to be one area where we should let the free market take care of things. And of course, if it turns out that a different way of teaching works better, there's nothing (except inertia) stopping the public schools from adopting the same methodology, making it universally available.
Often this is addressed through a voucher system. Single Payer (or subsidizer), multiple provider.
Eg: gov't gives a voucher for $10k per head, you're free to shop for the best schooling your money can buy (perhaps even online!)
Aside: this exact concept can apply to healthcare too
My personal belief is that the death of the old education system is over a century overdue.
We don't need to kill it, just stop making alternatives illegal and the problem will solve it itself.
There's nothing preventing a public system from being changed and improved. Take Finland as an example. Everyone goes to the same public schools there, rich or poor. The result is one of the best education systems in the world. New methods are regularly tested and teachers have a lot of freedom to choose the ones that suit them.
So I’m curious because taken on it’s own your comment sounds a lot like a fiction a conservative American would author about what they think ‘Europe’ is like. But this might just be a result of your alternative schooling.
Also your schooling is described as being not available where you are yet still what you went through which seems a bit of a conundrum as well. Was it actually illegal, or do you think you might have been exposed to biased propaganda by the institution coloring your view on what the educational system in your country is actually like?
I'm half Croatian, half Australian, and speak with an American accent due to my childhood friends. I went to an international school (IB) followed by a Dutch high school (VWO). (Basically I'm an alien everywhere I go.)
My school called itself a Dalton school, but upon reading the book by the creator of the original Dalton school (Education on the Dalton Plan, Helen Parkhurst, 1905) I was absolutely blown away by how radical and futuristic this school sounded, and how short my own school (which supposedly was the same kind) fell of that mark. I investigated why my school did hardly any of the things Dalton schools are supposed to do, and found out that they were against Dutch law.
As you say, Europe is not (yet) a monolithic entity, and perhaps there is even a country here where letting kids do what they want isn't considered a crime. Hopefully I was wrong to generalize in this regard, I would certainly be happy to hear about it.
As for my bias, I admit freely that I absolutely hated school, consider it an abomination and a crime against the human spirit, and almost certainly would have left if it weren't illegal (they send the police after your parents). I say "almost" because I did rather enjoy the part where you get to see your friends every day—although at the time it wasn't clear to me that this would go away with graduation, or how much I would miss it.
To be clear I have no problem with people willingly submitting themselves to such a thing, it's the coercion part that I can't stand for.
As an immigrant to the US who's been to a dozen or so states, I'd add it's also inaccurate to talk about the US as a uniform thing or group of people
Homeschooling is the closest to that free market in the US. Your comment prompted me to look up the homeschooling statistics [1] and I was surprised by the results for Europe. The US outstrips the rest of the world by number of children in homeschooling by a large margin.
US homeschooling outcomes are so far promising [2], so one could say it is a pretty competitive alternative market.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeschooling_international_st...
[2] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/261885035_The_Socia...
Yeah, that's why they're adamant about the dangers of freedom of speech.
Functioning roads and schools supported by taxes is supported by 99.9% of people. People only object to paying high taxes for wasteful, inefficient bureaucracies and corrupt deals to pay well-connected insiders or campaign donors excessively for providing services.
Everyone wants roads and schools. Conservatives complain when they realize they're paying taxes for a campaign donor to rebuild the same road every year. Liberals complain when they realize the owner of the construction company is now a billionaire. Both want the road, neither want corruption and injustice, they just focus on slightly different aspects of the same dysfunction.
40+ years of externalizing costs has taken its toll.