Mar
16
Communist Homework
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Last month, Moonbattery linked to An Englishman’s Castle post about his child being assigned to read Trees Belong To Everyone by Diana Noonan. Follow the link to see some pages. They’re infuriating.
The synopsis of this cute little story is a woman named Miss Brooks who uses her hard-earned money to buy a home, and then the government forces her to cede ownership of it to be used by the community. Government officals directly occupy the domicile on the land. The worst character in the story is Mr. Pennyfeather, who not only takes Ms. Brooks’ money for the land, but then demands that it is still used in a manner of his choosing.
The book is a little frightening if you ask me. How would you feel about a county commissioner demanding he use your home for an office and that the townfolk climb in your tree? I’m sure if one of those little eco-thugs fell out of that tree your homeowner’s insurance would have to pay any and all damages, huh?
This is communism, plain and simple. The community owns the property. If my child were sent home with this Marxist propoganda, I would make the school famous, and probably start homeschooling my children. Then again, maybe that’s why the commie libs have such a problem with homeschooling.
Feb
22
Agendas In Voucher Politics
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As I wrote in an earlier post, while I support the separation of church of state, it’s clear that organizations like Americans United pervert the cause in the interest of a liberal, big-government agenda. Believe me, I’ll be protesting as loud as anyone when there is a genuine violation of the Establishment Clause. But there is a clear line between not wanting government intervention in a cultural element and wanting to ban the cultural element altogether. Take prayer for instance. Under no circumstances do I sanction a government official, such as a president or teacher, in leading private citizens in a prayer to a particular religion. But the private citizens, be they constituents or students, are well within their rights to pray at any time they want. But there are many on the left that object to this privately-led prayer, and I suspect that their agenda is to curtail the influence of religion itself rather than government sanction of it. The spiritual decisions of private citizens are nobody’s business but their own.
Another clear case of the big-government agenda is when dealing with school vouchers. School vouchers allow students to take the education funding with them in the form of a government voucher. The student will receive a voucher of, say $5000, that can be used at a private school of their choice (along with having the option of remaining in public school). This creates competition among schools, and, hopefully, will incentivize them to provide the best education for the lowest cost, as opposed to creating the securest jobs at the highest wages for public employees.
Over at AU’s blog, they wrote with great disdain over a Georgia state legislator’s attempts to implement a $5000 school voucher program:
Georgia’s Senate Education and Youth Committee held a hearing yesterday to consider SB 90, which would make tuition vouchers available to virtually any student in the state.
The bill, introduced by State Senator Eric Johnson, would provide parents of each Georgia child about $5,000 in taxpayer money to be used to defray the cost of enrollment at religious and other private schools.
But as Maureen Downey of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution put it, “What he hasn’t provided — what no one has provided — is a convincing argument as to why.”
That’s something Americans United asks about vouchers all the time. Despite knowledge that vouchers violate state constitutions, don’t work, and hurt public schools, 27 state legislatures have introduced voucher bills or tuition tax credits already this year, according to AU’s legislative department.
When states offer voucher programs, they are using taxpayer money to fund religious schools that are free to discriminate in hiring, discriminate in admissions and indoctrinate children in the tenets of one faith.
Lamenting that vouchers “don’t work,” the post went on to say:
What vouchers have done is hurt public schools systems by taking funding they would have received and given it to religious and other private schools.
The most glaring point of this article was the importance it put on the health of the public education bureaucracy. The well-being of the students is only mentioned in passing. This is where AU gives away their pro-government agenda. In the comments section, I wrote a reply:
When you said that vouchers could be “harmful to public schools,” that is very telling. Nothing about the students, just the school. Just because it is education does not make schools any different from any other governmental bureaucracy. Its interests are in preserving itself - not serving the public. Vouchers are in fact “harmful to public schools” and that is the point - to inject choice for the consumers (students). Now don’t get me wrong, I’m a libertarian and I’m as concerned about the ‘religious right’ as the next guy, but I don’t understand how statists don’t see that vouchers would make secular private schools feasible. The reason private schools today are almost entirely religious is because government has a near monopoly on education and the only organizations that can fund alternatives are churches.
In the end, our chief concern regarding education should be the improvement of the students - not the payrolls of the school board. And, as I mentioned above, can you imagine what would happen to the private school market if everybody in Georgia were running around with $5000? Its supply and demand. With such a strong government monopoly on the product of education, its no wonder that the only organizations willing to get into the market are non-profits (churches).
The second main problem with the article is this inane idea that “government money” is being used to fund religious activities. I concluded my comment by saying:
…money spent on vouchers was the taxpayer’s to begin with, not the government’s. This whole business that we’re worried about vouchers using ‘government money’ to fund religious organizations is fallacious because there is no such thing as ‘government money.’ It is taxpayer’s money all along, and if some states want to return a portion of these funds to its rightful owners and they happen to choose a religious school, then that is their choice.
To illustrate my point, envision this scenario: When my child is in first grade, public schools do not exist and therefore school taxes do not exist. I spend $5000 on tuition for my first-grader in a private school that is run by a church. Then, in second grade, the governments opens up public schools and institutes a $5000 a year tax to fund them. No longer able to afford the private school, my kid goes to the public school. When it comes time for Junior to enter the third grade, the legislature introduces a $5000 voucher program - essentially giving me the money back that I earned. Do you support that coming with strings attached as to where I use it (on top of the stipulation that if I accept it I already have to use it for education)? Is it right to call this “government money”? Nonsense. This was my money to begin with.
Please don’t think that the issue of school vouchers are as simple as the posts on this and AU’s blog would suggest. It comes with a lot of considerations politically, educationally, constitutionally, and economically. But I will always come down on the side of allowing taxpayers to use more of the money they earned, and that decentralized decision-making and competition are better for the end user and society as a whole. But most importantly, when ever someone is ranting about something they don’t like, you have to see who they’re looking out for. In this case, Americans United was looking out for big government and public employees rather than the students.
