That is where I disagree. State laws and state tests. If they want to study a trade instead that will not follow those. If they pick up the family business that will not follow those. Or whatever other options for success that do not follow those.

Do you think that a 10 year old has the mental capasity to make that kind of decision? A general education provides them with a foundation that closes no doors until they are old enough to make their own decisions for their own life.

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Set your destination with your heart, get there with your mind.

"The wisest men follow their own direction." - Euripides

No, I give that responsibility to the parents.

And why should it be given to them? By the time the effects from that decision come to light, the child will be grown up and moved out and have one of the most important aspects of his/her life dictated by someone that it has no effect on. The child should be given a general base education that leaves all doors open to them until they are of age to decide which doors to go through and which ones not to go through. The parent should have no bearing to force a child through a door that the parents wants the child to go through, because in the end who suffers from the parent's choice? The child and the tax payers.

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Set your destination with your heart, get there with your mind.

"The wisest men follow their own direction." - Euripides

The same reason so many of the child's rights are entrusted to the parents. It is their child. I said it before if the child picks up a trade after public education they have wasted there time. If they were taught a trade and picked up something else they have wasted there time. Same either way.

But they waste different amounts of time. If they get a basic education in everything (english, math, science, history, so on) than they don't have to start from scratch with the field that they want to do, they also learn how to learn and how to studing different things and find out what studying works best for them. If they focus from the start, than want to do something else when they finally get to think for themselves, than they have to start from scratch and that puts them further behind than the student that got a general education.

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Set your destination with your heart, get there with your mind.

"The wisest men follow their own direction." - Euripides

If they pick up something else after that general education they have wasted much more time. Most of that knowledge will be useless and forgotten.

Hey, go for it! It will only make the North East far more competative than other parts of the country and that will only help our income.

Because they're the parents. And it isn't that it should be "given" to them it's that it's an inherent part of parenthood.

Too damn bad! Who the hell do you think you are to dictate how other people raise their own children??? Raise your own damned children and keep your nose out of other people's families!

And just who the hell do you think you are to dictate this? What constitutes a "general base education" and why the hell must the government be the one that provides it? What you are proposing here is something that should never even be thought of by an American: taking parental responsibilities away from the parents and turning them over to the government.

Again, damn it, who the hell do you think you are to dictate that parents should not carry out their inherent parental responsibilities and to dictate that you, other government-loving, freedom-hating, nanny-staters, or the government should make these choices instead?

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A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

He doesn't care about that. He only cares about running other people's lives. He doesn't want parents to have responsibility for their own children, he wants to make the rules or to have the government dictate what parents must and must not do.

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A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."