Posted on 07/09/2002 8:23:49 AM PDT by madfly
The Supreme Court's recent 5-4 decision allowing the constitutionality of financial aid to parents which they may use at religious or private schools, including virtual academy (computer-assisted-instruction) charter schools available to home schoolers, will result in the deliberate dumbing down of all education.
In this latter regard, the writer of this article was told in 1981 by the Director of the Office of Libraries and Learning Technology, U.S. Department of Education, that " in the future all education will take place in the home, using computer-assisted-instruction, but that we will always have the school buildings for 'socialization' purposes." This is the United Nations lifelong learning/brainwashing concept (International community education) which places all community services under the umbrella of the community school. (The National Alliance of Business refers to this agenda as Kindergarten-Age 80).
The public sector succumbed years ago to federal control through funding. Now, private schools, willing to go the "voucher" route in order to get the money to stay in business, will have the opportunity to be equally dumbed down, denied a liberal arts curriculum, and stripped of all sound moral education. I can already hear the howling from voucher-supporting conservatives the first time the heavy hand of the federal government lands on a private school denying it the right to determine "what is right and what is wrong" in its curriculum, hiring practices, recital of the Pledge of Allegiance, The Lord's Prayer, etc. Those private schools which courageously, for reasons of conscience, resist vouchers will eventually be forced out of business due to their inability to remain competitive.
Interestingly enough, the blame for this incredibly dangerous Trojan Horse decision can be laid at the feet of the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Is school choice a plot to implement the socialist, corporate fascist, workforce training agenda for the global planned economy?
You 'betcha.
This decision will succeed in carrying out the long-standing leftist/internationalist goal of total control of all education (public and private) through the dollar. It provides a classic example of what the late Senator Edmund Muskie, D. ME. referred to when he described how the Democrats, when they couldn't get something controversial approved, would go to the Republicans for action. Muskie, known as "Mr. Metro", used as an example President Nixon's implementation of metropolitan/regional government (the unconstitutional carving of the nation into ten regions), something the Democrats had been unwilling or unable to tackle or accomplish.
The late Robert Hutchins, left-wing educator, former President of the University of Chicago, and supporter of World Government, would be ecstatic over the voucher decision. In fact, he could have written it. In an article by Virgil C. Blum in The Commonweal, January 31, 1964 entitled "Freedom and Equality", p. 513, Blum says:
"Dr. Robert M. Hutchins sees no constitutional difficulty in federal aid for the education of church-related school children in secular subjects. The fact that such education 'is permitted by religion' or that federal aid for such education is an 'aid to religion' he says 'is immaterial.' The benefit that accrues to religion, Hutchins argues, is 'incidental to an overriding public benefit.' Consequently, 'such incidental benefits,' he reasons 'do not invalidate the legislation'."
It is not difficult to understand why Hutchins would be supporting aid to church schools. He knew it was not a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow but government control and therefore, he could argue that "aid to religion" as a byproduct of government support for church schools would be 'incidental to an overriding public benefit.'
Why don't more people understand that government control of private and home school education is exactly what is going to happen? And why have religious organizations, especially those affiliated with the Catholic Church, supported school choice proposals when they have so much to loose once the government controls are implemented?
If the question of school choice is considered in a vacuum, without the benefit of an in-depth understanding of the history and highly controversial goals of American public education, if it is considered simply in the context of providing a better education for low income children, if it is considered only as an issue of equal funding for all children, one escapes the very dangerous crux of the matter: ACCOUNTABILITY... accountability to the government which is granting the voucher or tax credit.
While working in the Department of Education and involved in supervising grants and contracts to local schools, government labs and centers, United States and foreign universities, etc., I had to make sure that the recipients of the federal grants complied with federal regulations, guidelines, and criteria for that particular project. I never questioned the wisdom of such a requirement.
Although the U.S. Department of Education is in itself an unconstitutional entity and should not exist, it would still have been illegal to allow recipients of federal money (extracted from the taxpayers) to spend that money as they wished. There must be accountability as long as we Americans want government to perform in an orderly, fair manner.
Elected officials and others in supervisory positions, including public school superintendents who complain about government regulations, should, when the government honey pot is passed around the board table, just say "NO". That is the only way to avoid the regulations imposed rightfully in the name of "accountability," and to remain a truly free agent. During my three-year tenure as an elected school board member I voted "NO" on every single motion to accept federal curriculum or federal funding.
So, why is it that those promoting tuition tax credits and vouchers have missed this point of accountability? Is it because it is too simple to understand? Is it because they feel that the need to level the field for low income children should take precedence over accountability requirements and that accountability requirements are not to be feared? Read on...
In 1982, while working on a U.S. Department of Education technology grant to the Association for Educational Computing and Technology, a spin-off the National Education Association, I was shocked by some internal comments in an early draft of the grant. Although I was not working in an "Eyes Only" position for the CIA or Defense Department, but for an agency which supposedly exists to provide a beneficial service to parents, children, and teachers, this paper was stamped CONFIDENTIAL! On one page there appeared the following information:
"PROJECT DESIGN FEATURES: What We (the U.S. Department of Education) Can Control or Manipulate? Under that incredible question the following items and activities were listed: State participation/selection process, role of advisors, content of program, training of state leaders, resource people utilized, basic skills content areas emphasized, perception of need to use technology." The main reason I gave that document to the press, for which I was subsequently relieved of my duties, was that I was appalled at the blatant attitude of the federal government regarding the national public school system. Do the five justices who ruled favoring school choice proposals live in such a dream world that they believe the government will require less regulation of the private and home schools than it requires of the public schools?
There is a certain naivety, Alice in Wonderland attitude, amongst those who should know better regarding what will happen to private schools and home school entities which accept vouchers. Did the Supreme Court majority not study the catastrophic history of school choice in France which resulted, in 1983, with the socialist French Government under Mitterand assuming control of all private and religious education which received government funding?
The conservative Mayor of Paris, Jacques Chirac, said the takeover threatens "the free choice of schools by parents, the basic character of private education, the freedom of management of these establishments."
The conservative Paris newspaper, LeFigaro said it was worse than that: "Private schools are no longer threatened. The propositions of Education Minister Alain Savery on the future of private education are equivalent to a sentence of death."
It is understandable that parents are desperate to find a solution to the devastating problems facing their children in the public schools. However, they should realize that the despicable situation has been planned for over 150 years (the dumbing down was deliberate...the Hegelian dialectic at work), in order to get the parents to call for and accept what is being sold to them as a solution providing freedom of choice, which in fact is what the internationalists, especially the Carnegie Corporation, has had planned for at least 75 years. The Carnegie Corporation's plan to change our economic system from free market to collectivist was published in 1934 in its little book "Conclusions and Recommendations for the Social Studies". Not only did President Reagan in 1985 sign agreements with President Gorbachev to merge the United States and Soviet education systems; the Carnegie Corporation signed even more extensive agreements with the Soviet Academy of Science to carry out the same agenda.
Let me warn parents and private school administrators: "Freedom to choose" is exactly the opposite of what they and the private sector will receive if they take one penny of federal, state or local tax money to educate children. Believe it or not, slavery is right around the corner, since once the private sector is controlled through vouchers, thereby creating a partnership with government (corporate fascism), students , having been psychologically profiled, will be tracked into specific training at an early age and later into job slots to suit the needs of the corporate sector and the global economy. That is the failed international socialist quota system that in essence provides NO CHOICE! Our children will have no freedom to choose what they want for their futures. This is going on right now in the public school sector due to Goals 2000, the School to Work Opportunities Act, and the reauthorization of the ESEA (S.1, the Bush-Kennedy "No child Left Behind Act.") Some bright 9th graders are spending 3 out of 5 days a week at the job site, rather than studying math, science, literature, history, foreign languages, art, music, etc. which would give them a liberal arts education, indispensable for upward mobility, freedom, and an understanding of the world in which they live.
Ah.....would that Aristotle, 384-322 B.C., could return to express his displeasure with this latest development. He said "Educated men are as much superior to uneducated men as the living are to the dead."
What school choice is all about is not giving parents a real choice without strings attached; it is about controlling all children (referred to as "human resources"), everywhere on this planet, in order to implement the corporate fascist global economy, with 100% participation in the global computer!
Why, otherwise, does one find most of the major players and promoters of school choice coming from the corporate sector, with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce as the largest and loudest supporter of all? TIME magazine, 6/8/92, owned by Time-Warner came close to the truth when it said "...the Bush Administration strongly supports the concepts that underlie the Edison Project...Many observers believe Whittle's long-term plan anticipates the use of these (voucher) funds. If adopted, the reform (vouchers) could funnel billions of public dollars into private schools..." And NEWSWEEK, 6/8/92, not to be outdone by TIME, said "There's no question that Whittle schools could be extremely rewarding ...If Congress approves a voucher system..." Are we so naive that we believe big business really cares about our children's futures? It cares, and rightfully so, about big profits. That's perfectly fine, but not at the expense of our children's freedom to choose their futures.
Conservatives have a problem understanding the overt and heavily-funded position of the teachers' unions in opposition to school choice, and refuse to understand or accept the NEA and AFT leadership's covert position of support. The unions would be pretty stupid not to support vouchers when they know that the international education agenda calls for such "choice" in order to implement the global workforce training agenda and that their membership will be called upon to staff the training sites. It is the average traditional classroom teacher who opposes school choice for obvious reasons, some of which are cited in this article. The following quotes substantiate the above conclusion:
The late Albert Shanker, President, American Federation of
Teachers--"It may be that we can't get the big changes we need without choice."
President George Bush, Sr.--"Choice is the one reform that drives all others."
Former U.S. Secretary of Education Lauro Cavazos--"President Bush and I are determined to use the power of choice to help restructure American education."
To illustrate how the promoters of this totalitarian agenda know full well what they are doing, one need go no further than to the writings of major education change agent Chester Finn, who was once opposed to school choice but is presently a supporter of the concept. (Finn assisted in the development of the National Institute of Education in 1970, served under Secretary William Bennett as Assistant Secretary, Office of Educational Research and Improvement in the mid-eighties, and was the author of America 2000, renamed Goals 2000 during the Clinton Administration.
Finn also serves on the National Governing Board for the National Assessment for Educational Progress. The NAEP is the tool for measuring accountability to politically-correct government viewpoints (60 percent of the test items measure political correctness and school-to-work readiness). The NAEP, which President Bush mandated be administered in all schools, will determine not only curriculum, but compliance with accountability standards and therefore will be essential in the determination of which private schools and home schoolers will receive vouchers. That is the reason this decision will do away with private and home schooling education as they are presently constituted.
In an article he wrote entitled "Public Service, Public Support, Public Accountability", March, 1982, National Association of Secondary School Principals' Bulletin, p. 69, Finn said:
"Some to be sure, like to think they can have it both ways; i.e. can obtain aid without saddling themselves with unacceptable forms of regulation. But most acknowledge the general applicability of the old adage that he who pays the piper calls the tune, and are more or less resigned to amalgamating or choosing between assistance and autonomy."
And, in American Education, May, 1982, "Public Support for Private Education." Part 1, p. 5, Finn said:
"Short of scattering money in the streets or handing it out to everyone who wants some, the funding agency must define eligible recipients...This means, in a word, 'regulation,' the inevitable concomitant of public financial support."
The other side of the coin, Finn says, is "the obligation of private schools to recognize certain limits to their differentness and certain ways they must conform to the norms and expectations of a society that values and supports them..."
In returning to this most bizarre Supreme Court Decision, something comes to mind. Why did Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor recently attend a conference in Europe to familiarize herself with World Court decisions and how they might play out in the United States, under our present Constitution? Could this school choice decision, in the future, have anything to do with world court decisions, universal/global education, public private partnerships, global work force training, etc.?
Remember, it was Karl Marx who called for a "combination of education with industrial production." And the global government being implemented today is nothing more nor less than what Lenin called for: international socialism.
Why did the majority of our elected officials in Congress and appointees on the Supreme Court allow these radical changes to take place, changes which will forever affect the futures of our children and the special nature of the greatest, freedom-loving country in the history of the world?
Because they no longer represent the best interests of their constituents. Their allegiance is to the global elite at the United Nations and elsewhere, from whom they receive their marching orders. Or, especially in the case of our elected officials, they have been so dumbed down in the public schools that they didn't even know what form of government and economy they swore to uphold when they assumed office.
Our government, through this latest decision, has placed the last nail in the coffin of "freedom". This decision finalizes the exchange of our highly successful free market system and republican form of government for a failed 'ism' form of government. Whether our new form of government will be corporate fascism, socialism, or communism (all of which differ only in minor ways), remains to be seen.
Note: Credit for some of the research in this article goes to Barbara M. Morris who wrote the indispensable book on the dangers of school choice: "Tuition Tax Credits...A Responsible Appraisal", 1983, and to Billy Lyon who wrote a fascinating treatise "Connections and Conflicts of Interest (Or, There Ought to Be an Investigation!) 1992, which documents the role of conservatives, liberals, corporations. foundations, etc. in the promotion of school choice and the school-to-work agenda.
© Charlotte T. Iserbyt, All Rights Reserved
We are not pre-destined to failure. In the early 1800's there were many church-run schools that were funded by the taxpayers in some states. For decades they did a great job with no government interference. Then the catholics established schools. Lack of tolerance for those schools destroyed the whole system. Isn't it ironic, today the catholics have a school system that many non-catholics envy and the public schools that the majority of kids go to are garbage by comparison.
If you want quality schools for people in the lower class areas of big cities, then look to the catholic schools. They spend a lot less money per child than the public schools and they get much better results even with the lower class kids whom the public school experts tell us can't be educated.
If the author's primary concern is valid, then this statement is incorrect. Schools that accept vouchers will eventually be forced to meet 95% of government-imposed regulations anyway, so the non-voucher schools will still be cheaper.
I don't dispute your data, but do suggest that your confidence is misplaced. The left intends to bring about these changes by invalidating your State laws in Federal Court. That is how they did it to public skewels and vochers will be no different.
fporetto- If there's a window of a few years during which the private schools can get voucher students without having to bend to the educrats, they could out-compete the government-run schools so thoroughly as to fatally undermine the case for "public" education. Public willingness to tax-fund education to any degree might collapse.
I'd call it a race.
I don't differ with your political analysis, if the struggle over standards were legislative. It' won't be. A single TRO or injunction steals your time window and I am certain that the dark side is shopping for judges even as we speak.
I wouldn't be so confident.
Ditto bump. Additionally, the educrats' attempt to force accreditation on homeschool "teachers" in the mid-90s was defeated overwhelmingly.
But as long as the funds come from the government - even through vouchers - ALL schools who accept them will become government schools.
Correct.
The author's arguments should be addressed to the state legislatures and to congress--they are emphatically not a proper criticism of the Supreme Court.
Only insofar as defunding the DOE is concerned. The real battle will be in the courts.
True, for now.
I repeat: You are forgetting the manner in which databases and testing will track EVERY kid for whether or not they are learning PC attitudes, not how well they are educated. That is how they will coerce home-schooling.
The government already has total control of all education through the dollar. The decision to enable private and alternative schools and education is what dismantles this monopoly.
A single TRO or injunction steals your time window and I am certain that the dark side is shopping for judges even as we speak.
Yuck. That's a very good -- and very scary -- point, especially given the preponderance of leftish, power-grubbing judges who'd love to ingratiate themselves with the educrats.
Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit The Palace Of Reason: http://palaceofreason.com
That's how they did it in California.
I have grown tired arguing about this over the past week, but I'll give it one more try. First, NO school has to accept vouchers. Are we clear? Secondly, MANY schools have said "no thanks" here in Florida due to some "requirements" that may be construed to mean other things. As another poster put it, Private schools will not accept vouchers if there are intrusive "strings attached", so State governments will not implement "intrusive" rules which would defeat the voucher program. Politicians mostly send their kids to private schools, for the same reasons many regular people do. They will not create regulations to destroy the schools their kids go to. It simply will not happen.
The NEA types can try to challenge State laws in Federal court all they want, but the SCOTUS has already ruled on the major point of contention. Secondly, the voucher funds come from State and County taxes, not federal money. Its not a federal issue. The voucher goes to the parent, not the school. Florida's laws are clear about the government having very little regulatory power over private schools. Vouchers do not, can not and will not change this.
I didn't say that they would. There will be mandatory testing, indeed there already is in many states. They will test for attitudes and successful indoctrination, not learning. Testing results will be tracked in a national database. Just watch!
As another poster put it, Private schools will not accept vouchers if there are intrusive "strings attached", so State governments will not implement "intrusive" rules which would defeat the voucher program.
I am not arguing with that. Are we clear? My guess is that those schools that will take the money will be at the bottom of the economic ladder. It is a typical leftist strategy of political indenture.
Politicians mostly send their kids to private schools, for the same reasons many regular people do. They will not create regulations to destroy the schools their kids go to. It simply will not happen.
Politicians won't have a say in the matter. Judges will, but I do understand your point. The evidence points otherwise. Look at the kids of leftist politicians. Look at how many wind up with serious problems or in jail. A leftist will destroy their own family before they drop their ideology. It's sad, but demonstrably true.
The NEA types can try to challenge State laws in Federal court all they want, but the SCOTUS has already ruled on the major point of contention.
It's just a start. They are not done. When the DOE gets their national database cranked up for issuing "certificates of mastery" you'll see more of where this is going.
Secondly, the voucher funds come from State and County taxes, not federal money.
Given that money is fungible, I think that this one may be porous. States will still be accepting Federal funds for "education," and may thus still be subject to "equal protection" lawsuits. There is ample prededent for that in programs for "special needs" kids.
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