Court's voucher ruling opens door to funding religious extremists (gag alert)

Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court made history in upholding the constitutionality of laws that provide public funding for private school vouchers. In a 5-4 ruling, the court determined that vouchers do not violate the original intent of the founders' principle of separation of church and state — one of the legacies that we celebrate this Fourth of July weekend.

The majority ruled that parents of kids receiving vouchers will be free to choose the school that receives the voucher; it expands their individual right to an education. GOP leaders in Washington and Minnesota were delighted with the court's ruling. Others thought the full price of the voucher vote may too high.

The first sign of irrational exuberance came from House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, who has already introduced legislation to provide $40 million in federal revenue to fund vouchers for up to 8,000 kids in the District of Columbia schools. He neglected to mention where he was going to find the tax revenue to pay for this new religious entitlement.

And in Minnesota's Legislature, Rep. Tony Kielkucki, R-Lester Prairie, has already promised to secure funding to underwrite this new civil right — the right to a religious education. But citizens have begun asking questions about the impact of separate religious education on the institutional fabric of our civic life.

History suggests that we should restrain this GOP exuberance. Much of their enthusiasm comes from the hope that changing the institutional configuration of our secular institutions will lend more order, discipline and direction to our culture.

Religious hatred and intolerance inspired the al-Qaida terrorist attacks. Our nation's founders knew that a young nation, filled with immigrants of different nationalities, languages and religions, could easily pull apart. This is why public schools were designed as non-sectarian institutions — to unite "we the people."

Public schools teach the content and rules needed for success in America's culture of religiously diverse communities. The separation of church and state is a cornerstone of our democratic republic.

Recent demographic shifts indicate that we need the unifying force of our schools more than ever. Changes in family structure, technology, immigration and our workplace have made public schools essential to our cultural unity.

Since we are at war with religiously intolerant groups whose piety has become predatory, it would be poor timing to use public funds for religious schools. One can imagine what such religious entitlement might look like in a few years: the American Orthodox School for a Reunited Israel, the American al-Qaida Military Institute, the White Christian School for Justice, the American Moslem School of Jihad.

The federal debt is currently more than $6 trillion dollars, which may slow taxpayer enthusiasm for public funding of religious schools. Congress just increased the federal debt ceiling to $6.4 trillion. The increase was needed because we have added $48 billion to the Defense Department expenditures for the war on (religious) terror, and we will spend another $37 billion on Homeland Security.

The combined effects of the recession and the Sept. 11 attacks, the tax cuts and rebates have turned our federal projected surplus into a projected deficit of $150 billion. In Minnesota, the Department of Finance is warning of a possible $2.5 billion shortfall in the next biennium. Taxpayers may not want to fund private schools with new taxes.

Since Minnesota's Republican Party has a platform that favors cutting both taxes and spending, one can see how tricky this issue will be for voters in the next election. In November, Minnesota citizens will vote for candidates and funding plans for vouchers. Political leaders may suggest taxing worship services, circumcisions, marriages, confessions and even prayer to generate more revenues. Others will urge us to cut spending on environment, transportation or public schools. But the cost to our civic unity and tolerance will be significant.

It seems peculiar that an activist court should endorse funding private religious school as we wage — and finance — a war on terror inspired by religious intolerance. In time of war, we need to pull together. The war on terror and our budget problems should help citizens see the full price for funding private school vouchers.

Mittlefehldt, 55, of Anoka, is one of eight Pioneer Press Community Columnists for 2002. He is a social studies teacher at Anoka High School. E-mail him at pjwd@msn.com.

But there's a lot of kids who get a fine education in public schools. Now, if you want the public schools to teach religion as well, then you have a problem. But to paint all the public schools in the U.S.A. as teaching leftist propoganda, as opposed to a few, is not supported by anything I've seen.

I agree entirely. The problem with the pro-voucher argument is that it generalizes from a very limited database - the so-called "failing inner city public schools" and applies those problems to *every* public school in the US.

The other problem is with the use of the word "choice." People have had a choice between public & private education since the US Supreme Court ruled in the 1920s that states couldn't make laws banning private schools. Since then, the dividing line is money.

The voucher question from a taxpayer's standpoint is this: why should taxpayers who live in areas which *do* support good public schools have to pay extra taxes to support *both* bad public schools in other districts, AND voucher programs as well? Especially when those taxpayers will NEVER see a dime of voucher money, as the programs are means-tested?

You pick out a few examples of the PC disease in the public schools and say that "they are failing to teach everyone"? That's way too broad a generalization.

Sell it on the Democratic Underground, no one is falling for a red-herring like that here. The public school system is an abject failure. Even by department of education's watered down standards, nearly 10% of all public schools are failing. Take a look at :

http://fyi.cnn.com/2002/fyi/teachers.ednews/07/02/failing.schools.ap/index.html

The only people who claim anything else are delusional, or have an agenda. Which is it for you?

The supreme court introduced competition that's all. Parents decide what the children learn, as they should.

I emailed this a$$ clown that pretty much outlined my points from above, but I was much more "scholarly" (meaning: I didn't call him a Jacka$$, even though he is).

Here was his response...

Matt, Sounds like you are looking for a more tribal situation where there is no change between generations. What was good for ma and pa should be good for today. Good luck. Try 1900. I am sure you'd have less stress.
Bill Mittlefehldt

The problem with the pro-voucher argument is that it generalizes from a very limited database - the so-called "failing inner city public schools" and applies those problems to *every* public school in the US.

Not true. The voucher movement makes no such generalization. It just wants parents who do have rotten public schools (a great, great number in this nation - particularly in the inner cities) to have the freedom to actually get more than a 4th grade education for their kids - and without the violence, drugs, profanity, homosexual prosyletization that are often present as well. The fact that inner-city parents are crying for vouchers, and the left won't give them to them is one of the cruelest and most arrogant things I've seen from the left in many years (well, after partial birth abortion, that is). Nobody is telling you to take your kids out of public school. They're just asking for a smidgeon of freedom to do so themselves.

The public school system is an abject failure. Even by department of education's watered down standards, nearly 10% of all public schools are failing.

And about 85% are mediocre. The religious schools, on average, in our area (a well-off middle class suburb in New Jersey) have students who consistently do far better on standardized tests, are not allowed to shout out profanity in the hallways, are scrutinized carefully for drug use, have teachers who make 1/2 the pay of that at public schools, but are much happier, inculcate strong values, do not promulgate homosexual prosyletization or far-out sex education, strongly involve the parents in the schools, have motivated, knowledgeable teachers (who can be fired if necessary), allow for a non-PC reading of American and world history, and subsist on about 1/3 the number of dollars per student as for the public schools. It's not hard to see why so many even upper middle class parents in our area are moving out of the public schools and into the religious ones.

Please see my Free Republic Home page for my experience with the New York State Public school system. What is happening in our town this year, is what will be happen in suburban school districts across the country in the next few years if the NEA and the department of education get their way.

Vouchers for the poor aren't a perfect solution, it should be vouchers for anyone. Now that the constitutionality of the issue has been put to bed, I'm sure that there is only a few lawsuits and several hundred million dollars in NEA money standing in the way.

I believe it is in the best interests of this country for the polulation to be educated, and I have no problem with the public funding of education. So long as it is done in a way that provides the buyer with the most choice, and therefore the most value for the dollar.

"Nonsense! You pick out a few examples of the PC disease in the public schools and say that "they are failing to teach everyone"? That's way too broad a generalization. I certainly agree that there's some real hare-brained ideas, and teachers trying to implement them, in some public schools. But there's a lot of kids who get a fine education in public schools. Now, if you want the public schools to teach religion as well, then you have a problem. But to paint all the public schools in the U.S.A. as teaching leftist propoganda, as opposed to a few, is not supported by anything I've seen."

It would be a major improvement if they would just stop teaching anti-religion...

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The ideal solution would be to reform public education and return it to its roots which were teaching the basic education and skills needed by all Americans. Unfortunately that is just an ideal.

In the real world, the incredible dominance of liberals in the education establishment makes achieving this ideal impossible.

Maybe it will be possible in a hundred years if the liberals love affair with abortion results in only conservatives having babies, but I doubt it.

.. there's a lot of kids who get a fine education in public schools. Now, if you want the public schools to teach religion as well, then you have a problem.

Yes, the problem is that the kind of speech engaged in by John Adams undercuts your use of his quote, because his kind of talk is no longer allowed in government schools except where it is regarded as historical anachronism, devoid of meaning:

"Be it remembered, however, that liberty must at all hazards be supported. We have a right to it, derived from our Maker. But if we had not, our fathers have earned and bought it for us, at the expense of their ease, their estates, their pleasure, and their blood. And liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right, from the frame of their nature, to knowledge, as their great Creator, who does nothing in vain, has given them understandings, and a desire to know; but besides this, they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean, of the characters and conduct of their rulers."

Can you imgagine a govenment school teacher telling children that that they are created? That liberty is derived from their Maker? That they have knowledge because it is given to them by their Creator? That they have divine, inalienable rights because those rights come from the Creator? Come now, that would be regarded as teaching religion, wouldn't it?

Cordially,

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