Day 16 - Thoughts on Education

In my opinion, education needs to be made a much bigger priority in this country. I know it's a little different in every state and it's difficult for me to judge, only having gone to school up until 3rd grade here, but the system here in the US is really flawed.
As they are here, public schools in Germany are state-run and free. You do have to pay a small fee per year per child (or for three children if you have three or more), but that's it. You get a very good education going to a public school in Europe in general - in most cases, you can compare it to the education you'd get when attending a private school here in the US. My wish would be for the United States to provide that same quality education to all children, without families having to spend 10k or more a year per child to send them to a private school. It's difficult enough for most folks to even think about creating a college fund for their children, let alone while having to spend so much per year, elementary through high school.
Now that being said, I've met many, many highly educated and intelligent Americans who attended public schools, my parents being two of them. But I fear the system is just becoming worse and worse and I fear for my children.  Besides that; I know the media more often than not misrepresents events and occurrences to scare us, but every single horror story I hear makes me cringe. Between kids being arrested for things as ridiculous as doodling on a desk, security guards roaming the hallways and hearing about children soiling themselves because they're denied a hall pass to use the restroom, I am honestly considering homeschooling. I don't want to be one of those ridiculously concerned parents and I know that more than half these stories are probably not true. But I don't want my children to be forced to live in fear and be overly controlled by this system, while trying to just get through a day at school. And I am all for my kids being exposed to many different world views and opinions in order to form their own, but I fear public schools will force their beliefs on them and try to deny my children their rights. 
I could go on and on with this post while really going nowhere at all, so I'll leave it at this; Mike and I will do the best we can to provide our children with a good education and we will cross that bridge when we get there!