Green Party Platform:
Public Education
In order to meet our commitments to the future, we must restructure our educational system.
We need quality education to meet our commitments to children and to the Earth. Our rapidly changing California society needs well educated Californians.
Current California budget allocations have slighted education putting our children's future at risk. Educational financing should be the same for every student regardless of the local prosperity or poverty level.
The Green Party calls for a high quality of education:
- Reaffirm the value of public education and reject the use of public funds to pay for students' attendance at private or parochial schools.
- Work for free education to eventually be available from preschool through college, graduate and profession schools.
- Increase spending for K-12 as well as for the State College and University systems.
- Oppose the current shift from public to corporate funding of schools.
- Change the management of our schools to provide for more teacher, parent and student participation at every level of decision making, especially concerning the allocation of funds.
- Develop a more holistic and multi-cultural approach to learning.
- Increase language training so that every American understands at least one language besides English.
- Restructure the school system to provide a greater diversity of choices and smaller, more personalized schools.
- Treat and pay teachers as valued professionals.
- Give students classroom instruction on how the world's economic and political systems really work. This should include, among other things, information on how energy and resources are allocated, how the relevant decisions are made, and the results of global inequalities.
- Instruct students in the dynamics of interpersonal communication and effective listening skills.
- Increase the number of trade school opportunities.
- Encourage students to teach other students. We should encourage graduate students to do part-time teaching to pay for loans. Parents and outside organizations could come into classrooms and help teach or lecture.