I Was Government Educated, Too.

The problem with me was, I didn't get diseducated by it.

The system has, in effect, failed me horribly

I read lots when I was a kid. Science fiction, news, history, action, mystery/detective stuff. Not just comic books (too broke for those), books (free from the liebury). Plus textbooks. I couldn't tell you what any of the textbooks said any more (except some poetry), but the stuff I see cropping up in news and high technology doesn't surprise me - I read about it in the fiction of many years ago. My grandfather even lent/gave me some science fiction from when HE was a youth.

God gave me a good mind as well, and an inclination to use it.

I never did see sports as worth enough of my time to spend hours everyday at them, although I'm probably better at riding bicycles off-road than you are. The point of doing just what some coach told me to do, sweating for it and hurting for it, after spending all day doing just what some "teacher" told me to do, I didn't see. I did see the worth in gathering knowledge. You know, like the proverb says? Yeah, it helps to know things.

Then you spent lots of money to train me in the same stuff I had been tinkering with for years, then I spent a few more years tinkering, being exposed to a wide variety of equipment and experiences.

All of this means that the limited education received from the government indoctrination centers (a.k.a. Public Schools) has been supplemented by actual thinking, and use of the imagination.

Get your kid's nose in a book. Try a different subject matter if he doesn't like it. They'll be better educated. Make it a classic. I am (very slowly) becoming a well-read person, filling in the huge gaps in my reading left by the public schooling system. If your child isn't being taught from the texts of someone a thousand years dead, their education is LACKING.

Also, get involved with their schooling. Homeschool them if you can afford it. It IS worth moving from your big house to a little apartment or working a second job to afford it. If you leave the education of your children to their 'public school' teachers, you will fail as a parent, and they will fail to realize the potential they have to be great people. Is it really worth it, to buy a new $6000 television in a couple years, and not pay for the curricula from a good homeschooling organization? Not in my house.

This is part of the reason I can't afford to go shooting as often as I would like. Priority: children and mortgage payments before new TV and cartridges.

That is all.