America's first and longest lasting experiment in socialism has been the public school system.

As with all socialist endeavors, death is the easily predictable outcome.  The only question is how many will die.  The next school shooting will give us only a running total, not the final tally.

Here are the reasons why a public school system should be abandoned.

1. Safety.  Placing kids together in large numbers in one place is a safety and security nightmare.  Schools become attractive targets for psychos, terrorists, pedophiles, and undesirables, many of whom seek jobs in the public school system just to be around kids to exploit them for various agenda-driven reasons.  Transporting kids by the millions twice every day via buses and cars exposes them to danger.  When one considers that many of these needless travel miles are forced on students to achieve "diversity" goals, the idiocy of it all boggles the mind.

2. Expense.  Schools cost money, and most of it is being wasted.  Property taxes are needlessly assessed and collected, a lot of them from folks who receive less than nothing in return for those tax dollars.  School lunch programs; school building maintenance; cost of security guards, cameras, and the like; cost of busses and other transportation; gasoline and gasoline taxes; teacher salaries (which includes your donation to the Democratic National Committee)...I'm leaving a lot out, but I'm counting on readers to add their own thoughts.

3. Results or Return on Investment.  A common retort I hear is that an educated population benefits all Americans.  By any accounting of how well we are educating American kids in public schools, we are failing miserably, and not receiving any benefit for your money is a common attribute of "bait and switch" scams.  Public schools are not functioning at any reasonably acceptable level.  Friend and author-journalist Colin Flaherty recently shocked me when he related that "there are 16 mostly black, Baltimore high schools wherein not ONE student can read at a third grade level."  What's worse is that the failure of black students to read gets blamed on white racism, which is the go-to excuse for every failure of black society, not only in the U.S., but worldwide.

4. Indoctrination.  The leftist agenda gets pounded into "our" kids relentlessly.  They're not called government schools for nothing.  God is out, government is in – or, spoken another way, the government is the religion.  As a parent, you may want to protect your kids from undesirable influences.  How can you do this when they are forced into associations with teachers and kids who live, breathe, and talk the agendas and ideologies that you despise?  In this environment, your young loved ones will surely morph into something or someone you do not recognize.  It's not much of an exaggeration to say they will become "possessed."

To sum up: Public schools are socialist hell-holes doomed to fail on a number of levels for a number of reasons. Being forced to pay for failure and self-defeat is an exercise in futility and portends the suicide of a nation.

Willie Shields is a radio host and author of Exit 13A – A Control Tower Diary.  A "once and always" U.S. Marine and a former air traffic controller, Mr. Shields resides in Wilmington, Delaware.  He responds to email: WSHIELDS1775@VERIZON.NET.  Twitter: @WILLIEONRADIO.