My short answer is that I agree with a recent column by blogger Steven Singer:
https://gadflyonthewallblog.com/2018/08/29/public-school-is-not-for-profit-it-is-for-children/
I certainly don’t believe public schools are for commodifying our children and commandeering data about them.
But I also remember when I was working on the Public Engagement Project for Michigan Citizen Action, almost twenty years ago. One of the project’s ways to kick off community discussions about public schools was to get people thinking about whether people felt the primary purpose of public education was to help students become
* better prepared for jobs;
* better lifelong learners; or
* better critical thinkers and citizens.
I think the latter two are more important. In fact, I’d say there are limits to how much schools today can prepare students for specific future jobs anyway. We already need to know how to keep on learning to survive in today’s world – and if we don’t think critically about today’s world, we may not have a world tomorrow.
This shows how Focus on the Future is definitely one of the Green Party’s Ten Key Values that applies to public education. For a descriptive list of all ten, see page 7 of GPMI’s platform. (How would you say our other values are related? – especially our top priorities, the Four Pillars: Grassroots Democracy, Social Justice, Ecological Wisdom, and Non-Violence.)
a little online jalp 