Posted on 09/01/2013 8:36:06 AM PDT by Kaslin
A new cornerstone piece on public education by Allison Benedikton on Slate.com titled, "If You Send Your Kid to Private School, You Are a Bad Person," was shocking but consistent and clearly revealed that liberals value the word “education,” as long as the word “public,” precedes it. According to the author, public schools continue to fail because parents are sending their children to private schools, instead of public schools. Parents who spend their hard earned money to send their children to private schools are in fact destroying the fabric of America’s public education: which is immoral. For liberals, abortion is not a moral issue but rather an issue of liberty and choice. Education whether public, private or charter, should have the same application of liberty and personal choice. Unfortunately, allowing freedom and choice in education would require an admission of failure and for liberals to turn their back on a core government institution.
This is because liberals value community more than the first and primary institution, which is “The Family.” Liberals believe that public education equals strong community and that all people have an obligation to community before family. Since community is more important than family, we are therefore obligated to send our children to public schools that are failing. Liberals would also suggest that we invest our time and other resources to improve the failing schools, as if other options did not exist. Truthfully, I feel no such obligation to public education nor can I intellectually rationalize sentencing my child to state education for the sake of the greater good. Public schools need good students and good parents and I understand that, but not at the cost of my child’s future.
So in applying this blind allegiance, if I live near a failing public school –which many people do – I have an obligation to send my children to that school. I also by implication of this argument have an obligation to fight for what my child needs as in new computers, AP classes, and specialized education. Liberals believe that property taxes are not enough, even for parents who pay for public education and do not use it and also pay for private education. Liberals want more than our money they want our flesh and blood and for us to sacrifice our children on the public school alter no matter the cost. Instead, I would rather send my child to a school where I believe they will be educated, instead of learning how to be busy worker bees producing widgets. It is my belief that classes in formal logic, centered in a classical education, will provide my child with an ancient forgotten skill: the ability to think and reason properly.
In my opinion, public education is as bad as public restrooms or public swimming pools. People become accustomed to free stuff and then develop a sense of entitlement believing they deserve community pools and free lunches. Feeling that we have certain natural rights and actually having them are two completely different things. I feel I have a natural right to dunk a basketball and play in the NBA, but no matter how hard I practice, playing in the NBA is not possible because I am a 170-pound short white guy. The government does not give rights to people and our constitution only protects our natural rights from the threat of government. Liberals and progressives in the Democratic Party have an agenda that is connected to a misguided worldview and it starts in public education.
Liberals value equality and so do conservatives, but the definition of that word is used very differently between conservatives and liberals. I believe human beings have natural rights by the very nature of being human, whereas liberals believe their rights come from government. Conservatives believe in equality of opportunity, as all men and women being equal before God. Liberals on the other hand believe in equality of outcomes, where everyone becomes so equal that no one really has anything at all.
Applying the equality of outcomes to education is not only foolish but also dangerous. I will send my child to a school where their talent will be cultivated and they will learn how to think. In short, any school that is in line with my values is where I want my child to attend.
Leave the public schools to liberals and to people who do not care and wish to die on the hill of public education reform. The longer we suffer the fools of government the longer they can pretend their grand ideas are working. I do believe in community and in the importance of education. What we are missing is not the want or desire for community and better education, but an actual foundation for community to exist.
which he said would fix the education system already fixed by the 2001 GW Bush and Ted Kennedy legislation called “No Child Left Behind,”
which was supposed to fix a system supposedly already fixed by a 1994 piece of federal legislation called “Goals 2000,”
which was supposed to fix a system already fixed by “America 2000,”
which was a 1991 response during the Bush administration to a 1983 federal report on education called “A Nation at Risk,
which was published a full four years after Jimmy Carter first fixed the nation’s public school system by establishing a cabinet-level Department of Education in 1979.
How bizarre. They abort their children so that they don’t have to be bothered with them, and then they want to interfere with others’ children’s upbringing. People who feel qualified to direct other people’s lives are usually pretty screwed up themselves.
That are the liberals for you
You know it's bad when a bunch of people at DU are saying, "Um...that's a little to collectivist even for us".
It looks like it’s never ending
Liberals are squealing because private schools and vouchers threaten the mission of their public indoctrination centers.
It always comes down to the desire to control others.
“Political tags — such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth — are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort.”
---Robert A. Heinlein
And that says it all
after a terrible experience with my child inthe public school, seeing how the teacheres were pot heads, liberals adn the students had parents who were also pots heads or had found parents dead of heroin overdoses in one of the wealthiest towns in the country, I pulled the plug on that deal and sent my youngest to one of the best private day schools in the country. Imagine my disgust that most of them and their parents declare themselves to be liberals and atheists and that to their minds, any Christian is an extremest and not fashionable. These are the wealthiest people in the city and they actually think they get to keep all that stuff under a communist regime and maybe they do, since they are the power elite.
At least my child is still Christian.
. . . and probably just a coincidence that public education has continuously gone down hill since 1979.
When we restore our lost constitutional republic, I believe we're going to want to draw up a long, long list of activities the national government is prohibited from sticking its big nose into.
Wouldn't "If" be more accurate?
Truth be told, my son is getting a pretty good education from the local public school. The teachers are motivated (still) and indoctrination is at a minimum. Early on, there was some silliness with math. However, they have since locked in on the the original teaching methodologies of mathematics.
One could argue that my son is getting overwhelmed and there is too much. The work load for the past three years has been comparable to college. But that is okay with me to a point (my wife might disagree) because college isn’t for wimps.
Here is the secret: the parents. Both of us value education and teachers appreciate us a great deal for this.
IMHO: School is what you (or the parents) make of it.
One thing for new parents to look out for, though: Tools of the Mind. This is total BS in my opinion. Apparently, they only teach it in economically depressed areas. But it is crap. So our education system isn’t perfect. However, as involved parents, the school system would have had two very angry parents if they tried to teach it to our son.
Ha! That makes me a surly curmudgeon. I like it. I like Heinlein! I love Christmas! Yay!
Public schools have become nothing less than Federal Government Indoctrination Centers, performing at the Federal Government’s whim, and no longer providing a solid true academic educational base and preparation, for the real world, outside those ivory towers and school board fealties.
All the time, overpaid, over-rated, and coddled individuals, who call themselves “teachers”, many of whom are active Communists, indoctrinate our precious children, (and future voters deciding grandma’s and granddad’s longevity), in Super High Intensity Theorems, of which 99% have no function, other than to gauge the ability of the brain-washed child’s mind, to scoop up the avain-fashion-fed information.
The word should be probably be altar unless the author is trying for some obscure play on the word for "change" or "make different" or unjustifiably trusts his spell checker to do his proofreading. That would be just lazy.
In part that’s true. If leftists can’t control children through endless indoctrination via public schools, they lose a MAJOR toll in their kit. One thing that shows how dumb they are though, is that parents who send their kids to private schools STILL have to pay taxes to the local public one. Leftists should be grateful because there is then more money spent per child than otherwise.
Excellent post!
I have to disagree, just as I have to disagree with those who say that liberals value equality. Their actions do not show them valuing community or equality. Their actions show them valuing control, and large institutions, such as government school systems, are a useful tool.
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