Texas Textbooks Whitewash Shariah

No wonder why people have to home school because they are being taught untruths and distortions.

Scary-because the decision makers concerning education for the state are suppose to be conservative.

That has always been the case. Public education was founded with the intention of creating thoughtless factory workers.

Predominantly, the people who come out the other side unthinking are the ones who went in thoughtless to begin with.

What a remarkably ignorant statement. You're blaming 5 year olds for going into the system "thoughtless"?

If the outcome of ~12 years of schooling is a direct result of the initial product anyway, what's the point?

Nobody would have seen a need for public education, and the powers that be who developed its structure would not have seen a need to construct it as they did, if this were the case.

Scary-because the decision makers concerning education for the state are suppose to be conservative. I wonder what happened?

No wonder why people have to home school because they are being taught untruths and distortions.

I'm assigning the students themselves a portion of responsibility for the success of their own education. It's not blame, it's just common sense: some children respond better to education than others. Some don't respond at all. 5 is obviously too early to make snap judgements. 11 is probably more of a sure bet. By 14 you can usually tell with a high degree of certainty one way or another. People don't want to admit this. They want to think that every child is a special sunflower and it's useless teachers and crumbling schools that hold them back. In many cases it may be, and the current state of public education is a disaster, but, to be blunt, ultimately the end product is constrained by the materials you had to begin with. No matter what system you implement, that isn't going to change.
Good question although, again, 5 is far too early a stage to make such decisions. The UK has this problem, albeit at a later stage, whereby nearly all students are encouraged to carry on with academic education (namely sixth form and university) somewhat regardless of ther actual ability. I advocate a greater variety of vocational courses and options for those who are not academically inclined. This would ultimately benefit them as well as those who are academically inclined and get slowed down by those in their class who can't, or won't, learn.

This may be harsh, but we have to be realistic. People need skills they can use to make their way in the world. Better to teach a teenager to be an electrician or plumber and allow them to make a good living for themselves than academic concepts they can't grasp, which ultimately leaves them with nothing.
Not really. The problem with the education in times gone by was that, as a system, it didn't striate by ability, but instead by wealth, or gender, or skin color, which are obviously stupid demarcating factors. The problem now is that it doesn't meaningfully striate at all, and the resultant mess punishes those at either end of the ability spectrum. We've gone from hopelessly elite to hopelessly egalitarian. We need a middle ground.

The academic ability of an 18 year old is dependent on the entire history of his academic career. Yes, we can tell by 18 whether someone is inclined to education or not, but that inclination is a result of years of prior education, conditioning, family life, etc... The point is that we can't solely blame the individual if the individual didn't have much chance in the first place. We don't start out competent enough to make our own decisions, it's up to our families and communities to get us there, the schools are a major part of that and for the most part they are a failure.