I am a Classical Liberal which apparently places me under the Conservative banner in contemporary North American politics. I am also a high school teacher and have worked in both the private and public school systems for 15 + years (following a career as an Engineer). To begin with there is no such thing as Free Education - Education is not free to society - teachers need to get paid and if you aren’t paying them directly through your own pocket rest assured your tax dollars are at work here. So lets drop this notion of Free Education. It is inaccurate and misrepresents the issue. Instead of Free use the word Public.
Having said that (and this is probably where I break from many conservatives -not all of course) I do support Public Education. My reason is that I believe that Equality of Opportunity is a Conservative value.
Public education at least here in Canada, where education is funded by the province does go far in meeting this requirement, and we continue to see excellent results by students moving through the public system with the necessary support. Granted there are still many problems - weak teachers, politically inspired pedagogy, grade inflation - but I have seen these factors at play in both the private and public spheres.
Also school systems have diversified pedagogically and have moved away from the one size ossified approach toward strategies that speak more to the individual. Since individualism is a key conservative value (at least for the more Libertarian types) there are definite positive attributes here.
Finally Conservatives need to involve themselves in Public Education as they cannot afford to cede this domain to those on the political left. The Education of our children is vital and although many conservatives take great issue with those who run the system a pull back would have more of a negative repercussion.
A better strategy would be to support the system and then work to improve it from the inside.
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