Posted on 09/07/2013 9:40:39 AM PDT by JoeProBono
FORKS TOWNSHIP, Easton Pa., - A Pennsylvania man who homeschools his children said he paid his $7,143 school tax in $1 bills to protest funding public education.
Rob Fernandes videotaped himself delivering the 7,143 $1 bills, along with 54 cents change, to the Forks Township municipal building and explaining his reasoning to tax collector Anne Bennett-Morse, Philly.com reported Friday.
"I'm not doing this to make anybody's life more difficult," Fernandes can be seen telling Bennett-Morse in the video.
Fernandes said he sees the money taken for school taxes as "stolen."
"We homeschool our kids, so we don't even use the public school system, yet I'm being forced to pay all this money into a public school system that I don't use, don't want, don't need. And I don't think that's really either fair, just or even ethical," he said.
"It would be the equivalent if McDonald's were to force vegetarians to pay for their cheeseburgers," he said.
"I'm a big proponent of education," he said, adding that "education can be provided more efficiently in a free market."
“This is how much money this lady is stealing from mommy and daddy every year. Yes honey, she seems nice enough. But that doesnt make her any less of a thief.”
Charity isn’t a function of government. Private charity should pay to school those too poor to pay for it themselves.
A big 10-4!
Although......there's three chances of that happening:
Fat, slim and none!
Too many folks are comfortable and make inane suppositions......like....my Doctor went to public school; my mechanic went to public school; my teachers went to public school; my "ad nauseum" went to public school.
So what! Think how much better they all would have turned out if they hadn't gone to public school!
Good grief. What is so sacrosanct about a bunch of "statists" teaching your kids about "statism"?
I’ve made two converts that I know of by pointing out that they object to socialized healthcare, socialized clothing and socialized housing and socialized food. All of those are at least as much a basic need as schooling. It’s hard to convert the indoctrinated but not impossible.
Thanks for the ping!
Americans are the **most** generous people every to have lived on earth.
If all childhood education were private do you **seriously** believe that any child in this nation would lack access to an education because of a lack of money?
Do you **seriously** believe this? Really?
Yeah.........Don't you Socialists touch my "Food, Clothing and Shelter".........but go ahead and keep my offspring under your thumbs for twelve or thirteen years.....!
I trust you....because you're from the 'gubmint....and are here to help......right?
For anyone to argue that they don’t benefit from public education is stupid
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Correlation is not causation. For example, nearly everyone you do business with has eaten potatoes. Does that mean we should have socialized potatoes because there would be no doctors or engineers without access to potatoes?
But...Seriously, where are the studies that PROVE government schooling actually teaches children anything? You can’t provide them because they have NEVER been done.
What a child learns IN THE HOME due to parental input, the child’s own work, and formal and informal tutoring from friends, family, and paid tutors has NEVER BEEN MEASURED!!!
Got it? NO ONE knows if government schools really teach anything! They may very well may merely be sending home a very very very EXPENSIVE curriculum for the parent, child, and tutors to follow IN THE HOME!!!
It seems stupid to me, to spend a universe of money on a socialist-entitlement program that has NEVER been proven to work!
All them have likely eaten potatoes, too.
Correlation is not necessarily causation.
It is also likely that those professionals managed to get an education IN SPITE of having been a prisoner ( under threat of police and court action) in a government school.
You are correct. Many of the people posting have failed to gain a basic classical education. They need to understand the fallacy in their arguments.
They also are trying to legitimize their seizure of others money for their benefit. Arguments that would persuade a child do not work in the adult world, but they continue to try. They are the trophy for everyone crowd, and nobody fails crowd. I’m sure they are playing with their ObamaPhone, as they love their socialized medical, and socialized education system.
Here is a nice link for all the others on the thread that can’t make a solid argument.
http://changingminds.org/disciplines/argument/fallacies/aristotle_fallacies.htm
The education of our children is done in the interests of the State (Federal, State, & Local), and in the interests of the various warring groups fighting for control of the state. The day that it was done in the interests of the children and their parents (the people, in other words) is long gone. The fact that the Federal government, the state governments, and even many of the local governments have come to regard the public school system as nothing more than a part of their respective information ministry infrastructures, is as clear a signal as possible that education can no longer serve the people while it remains a creature of the state.
We can understand why Jefferson, Madison, et al, did not transfer what they had come to know and understand about the Establishment of Religion to other instances of the same order. Their “failure” does not excuse our failure.
We have fire departments (generally a local matter), and likewise police departments, both for the protection and general benefit of the people. Likewise, the Courts, which have a Federal component regulating the relationships between the several states and between individuals and the states. Also the Armed Services for defense against foreign enemies.
Our general rule must be no regime establishment of ideas if we are to retain our freedom of thought. Presently, the rule is honored almost exclusively only in its breach.
Sorry SUSSA . . . meant to ping you too!
No problem.
Jefferson did indeed propose a government school system. It was rejected by the other Founders. Franklin went with a capitalist system when he started the school that became the University of Pennsylvania. He put up some of his own money and got other well to do citizens to contribute the rest. To this day the University of Pennsylvania is a “private” university.
You’re right that neither Jefferson nor Franklin, nor any other notable Founder, envisioned a single payer system of government indoctrination centers. It wasn’t until the 1850s that government schools started spreading through the States.
Prior to that, the vast majority of schools were funded by parents and local wealthy patrons. Frequently, “schools” were rooms in back of a store or the parlor of a large home, or a church. The teacher was paid by the parents who decided to use the service rather than take on the task themselves.
Police and courts require the power of government to do their work. Police and courts require the threat of force, and occasionally use of force to do their work. Schools, healthcare, and fire protection, do not. Many towns have volunteer fire departments that do a darn good job.
In the case of schools forcing people who do not want to be there to be there by force harms the work schools are designed to do.
Fascinating. I was aware that Jefferson did propose a primary education system that was rejected by the Virginia Legislature, and then did later set about creating a higher education institution that became the University of Virginia. The University of Virginia at one time enjoyed the distinction of having three former US Presidents serving simultaneously as members of their Board of Directors (Visitors), this being Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe.
But I was not aware that Jefferson ever submitted his proposal for an elementary school system to any body that could accurately be described as composed of “Founders.” Perhaps you have a source of original documents describing Jefferson’s proposal, the Founders’ rejection of same, and their reasons for their rejection? I would greatly enjoy perusing such documents and would very much appreciate your courtesy.
“[Jefferson's] statement of the objects of primary education contained in the celebrated report prepared by him for the Commission appointed by the Governor of Virginia under an act of the General Assembly and which met in 1818 at the unpretending tavern at Rockfish Gap in the Blue Ridge. There have been held since that day, in many parts of the United States, conventions and conferences of teachers, educators and friends and patrons of learning more numerously attended, favored with more abundant information, and with other advantages for the consideration and discussion of educational questions; but none, certainly, more distinguished for the dignity and ability of its members. Besides senators and judges, there were among those who assembled on that occasion, James Monroe, then President of the United States, and his two predecessors, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. And, certainly, we may look in vain for any public statement before that time or since, of the objects of public education so concise so comprehensive and so just as that contained in the report of this Commission written by Jefferson. He thus defined the objects of primary education:
“1. To give to every citizen the information he needs for the transaction of his own business.
“2. To enable him to calculate for himself, and to express and preserve his ideas, his contracts and accounts in writing
“3. To improve, by reading, his morals and faculties.
“4. To understand his duties to his neighbors and country, and to discharge with competence the functions confided to him by either.
"5. To know his rights; to exercise with order and justice those he retains; to choose with discretion the fiduciary of those he delegates; and to notice their conduct with diligence, with candor and judgment.
"6. And, in general, to observe with intelligence and faithfulness all the social relations under which he shall be placed."
This statement of the objects of primary education will never be improved. It ought to be written in letters of gold and hung in every primary school throughout the land and be known by heart to every teacher and child therein. It is, indeed, more than a statement of the elements of rudimentary education. It is an enumeration of the duties of every good citizen under a popular government.(1)
__________ (1) U. S. Bureau of Education, Circular No. 1 P. 33.__________
. . . . . The University of Virginia and Thomas Jefferson, Its Father, An Address delivered by James C. Carter, LL. D., upon the occasion of the Dedication of the new Buildings of the University; June 14, 1898, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, in 19 volumes, Memorial Edition, edited by Albert Ellery Burgh, Vol 2, pg xi.
Jefferson’s plan, for local school districts of approx one square mile, was rejected by the Virginia Legislature, but over the following century, its general outline was gradually adopted by many of the states.
As I recall, the general outline of what we now call primary, or elementary, public schools, was instituted beginning in the 1820s in New England and spreading west and south as new states were added.
“. . . A single measure in my own State has interested me much. Our legislature some time ago appropriated a fund of a million and a half dollars to a system of general education. After two or three projects proposed and put by I ventured to offer one which, although not adopted, is printed and published for general consideration to be taken up at the next session. It provides an elementary school in every neighborhood of fifty or sixty families, a college for the languages, mensuration, navigation and geography within a day's ride of every man's house, and a central university of the sciences for the whole State of eight, ten or twelve professors. But it has to encounter ignorance; malice, egoism, fanaticism, religious, political and local perversities . . .”
. . . . . Thomas Jefferson, letter to Albert Gallatin, February 15, 1818, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, in 19 volumes, Memorial Edition, edited by Albert Ellery Burgh, Vol 19, pg 258
Thanks SUSSA, very much, for posting.
Thanks for you’re reply.
While not as famous as some, I submit to you that George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Francis Lightfoot Lee, and Carter Braxton were Founding Fathers and all served in the Virginia state legislature at that time. I’m unaware of how any of them voted on Jefferson’s proposal, I just know the legislature rejected it.
UVA, while a fine school, is still a government school. Penn on the other hand is private.
Jefferson and Franklin are two of my favorite Founders. On this point I just agree with Franklin rather than Jefferson.
You’re also right that socialized schooling started in New England around that time but it was rare elsewhere until around 1850 when it really started infecting other areas.
We can, I think, get lost in minutiae over the development of public education in America. Enough went on in such a complicated story as this, that we can agree that where we differ, the differences are essentially ones of perspective.
To reiterate; when Jefferson set out what was to become the basic structure of the American public education system, he had in mind six fundamental “objects” of what he regarded to be a primary education:
“1. To give to every citizen the information he needs for the transaction of his own business.
“2. To enable him to calculate for himself, and to express and preserve his ideas, his contracts and accounts in writing.
“3. To improve, by reading, his morals and faculties.
“4. To understand his duties to his neighbors and country, and to discharge with competence the functions confided to him by either.
“5. To know his rights; to exercise with order and justice those he retains; to choose with discretion the fiduciary of those he delegates; and to notice their conduct with diligence, with candor and judgment.
“6. And, in general, to observe with intelligence and faithfulness all the social relations under which he shall be placed.”
These are, I think, yet today what many people generally have in mind for their children when they consider their expectations of a primary education. Others, of course, wish only to have the state, as much as possible, relieve them of the burden of raising their children (including, in some localities, the preparation of breakfast, dinner, and even some weekend and summer meals).
Of the six fundamental objects above, which (if any) do you suppose would rank of highest priority among politicians and bureaucrats for the achievement of their objectives? I suggest, none would (or even meet the approval of politicians and bureaucrats).
Since at the time “public” education did not exist, being a purely private matter, we can forgive Mr. Jefferson for not comprehending that, like religion, if left to the authorities of the State, education would ultimately come to be regarded by those authorities as merely a function of the State’s information ministry, and that its existence must necessarily serve the State’s objectives (that is, the intentions of the politicians and the bureaucrats whom we have so foolishly permitted to control our lives). We can pretend no such unawareness today.
When dealing with the issues of what to teach and how to teach it, you will find that you must come to terms with the fact that “public” education ultimately amounts to government indoctrination. That we have so long escaped this fate is perhaps a testimony to the wonderful government, despite its faults, we once had, but the government of Mr. Jefferson’s time, when he so energetically endorsed a locally funded education, is not the government it has come to be in our lifetime. If government is to be in charge of education, then it will educate our children in what it wants them to know, and not necessarily what is in their own best interests to know.
For example, see # 5 above: Government will not want us to know our rights; it will try to teach us to be obedient, and to not think too terribly much.
So let us understand with what we must deal. Government indoctrination centers will teach us what those who have day-to-day control of government, want taught. We know who has day-to-day control of government. If nothing else, our experience of the last thirty-four years (that is, since the Carter formation of the Education Department) should have taught us that. We also know that there are local differences of opinions that promise to keep “Education” roiled in local disputes that will persist into the foreseeable future.
“The very purpose of the First Amendment is to foreclose public authority from assuming a guardianship of the public mind...because the forefathers did not trust government to separate the truth from the false.”
. . . . . Thomas v. Collins, 323US516, 1945
The foreclosure of “public authority from assuming a guardianship of the public mind . .”
For example, the prohibition of a government establishment of religion, or of a government proscription of the free exercise thereof, because we cannot “trust government to separate the truth from the false.” With respect to religion, several hundred years’ experience of conflict made this obvious to Jefferson (and many another Founder). Jefferson did not see that the same dynamic would arise in a “state” education. Neither, then, can we “trust government” to separate the truth from the false in the education of our children. If ever there ought be a ‘wall of separation’ let it be between government and society’s constituents, and let that wall be society itself.
What has proven the annihilation of our Republic is the continuing growth of a ruling elite dedicated to an old order of government, which is much more to the advantage of its rulers than the structure of government devised by the Founders. This elite, composed of the men and women occupying seats of Federal power, and increasingly of state and local power, is willing to betray the liberties of the people, believing they can purchase their acquiescence with free medical care and food stamps, for the sake of the power they can attain thereby. It would seem they have calculated accurately.
It is only the Judeo-Christian tradition (of which I am unaware) that stands against those elements of society who have concluded that, not being able to persuade society to their view, they must now resort to using government coercion in the realization of their ambitions. And the use of government coercion, in my view, is what we must oppose.
Thanks for your post.
I’m sorry it took so long to respond. Life intrudes on my computer time.
You’re right. No matter the genesis of socialized schooling we need to deal with what exists today.
The fact is socialized schooling is a failed experiment. I submit that a free market capitalist school system will come closer to realizing Jefferson’s six objectives than the single payer socialized system we suffer under now.
Which is the reason for my remark, "One more reason for the separation of School and State."
Thanks for your posts.
And....The last I checked our local police and volunteer police departments are not forcing children to think and reason godlessly.
Yet....Every socialist-entitlement and single-payer K-12 school in my county does exactly that . The children **must** think and reason godlessly just to cooperate in the government’s godless classroom
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