So long as wintertime is extorted to pay the bills of the public schools or whatever most are, she gets to complain. We call it the First Amendment and it guarantees freedom for the speech that offends even tax-pampered gummint employees. In fact, that was probably the founders' exact intention. Give up access to the tax money and you will probably hear less criticism because no one will care during the transition to educational excellence in the private sector.
As I understand it, resistance to lavish or any gummint expenditures on "public" "schools" is quite consistent with conservatism. There are lesser arguments (a need for universal literacy, for example) that can be made for the other side and called somehow "conservative."
JimRob: In case there should be any pressure on management to shut down criticism of government schools as though such criticism might be viewed as personal criticism of teachers who post here, I hope that appropriate distinctions are observed and that open discussion is preserved. Your website, of course, and thus your call as it should be. We are but your guests.
I would agree that resistance to federal spending on education is consistent with conservatism, since there is nothing in the Constitution about education being a function of the federal government.
However, powers not granted to the federal government are reserved by the states, and my state's constitution says that public education is a primary function of the state government. State spending on education is therefore constitutional in at least some states.
One could argue that given our current world, federal standards for education would improve our national competitiveness, but that is a totally different discussion.
There are lesser arguments (a need for universal literacy, for example) that can be made for the other side and called somehow "conservative."
Yes, Thomas Jefferson himself made the argument that our form of government required an educated citizenry if it were to continue, and he advocated for a public education system for that reason.
I'm guessing that most of us consider Thomas Jefferson's ideas to be quite conservative, although for his time they were extremely liberal. ;-)
My problem with wintertime has nothing to do with freedom of speech, it is abuse of freedom of speech. The founders never intended that freedom to be absolute., ie yelling fire in a crowded theater.
wintertime has established a pattern of:
1) referring to the entire public school system as evil.
2) referring to public school employees as leftists, Marxist, and useful idiots.
She is certainly entitled to hold these views. Since there are a number of us that as public school employees are conservatives, are not Marxists, and have IQ's higher then 90, she is not entitled to use the label of ALL.
By her own admission she refuses to work within the system to make improvements. She has not run for a school board not done anything else to reform the system.
As a matter of fact her action of removing conservatives from the system virtually assures the liberals a louder voice.
Quite frankly some one needs to take her aside and let her know that these fanatical views of hers paint the conservative movement in a bad light and make our work more difficult.
As long as she continues to label us ALL with such a broad sweeping brush I will call her on it.
When I view her posts as abusive I will ask to have them removed and when she is over the top I will ask to have her banned.
Thank you for your support. I was feeling a bit overwhelmed.