Wednesday, March 2, 2016

Anti-Public Education could ruin the USA.

The "reform" movement has become an anti-public education movement, and some people are swayed to think that there is now a need to put kids in private and "charter" schools instead. The school district I used to work for even had 3 or 4 of them on the school board for a term (thankfully, it was not a majority). They are not "reformers" - any good teacher can talk to you for hours about what needs reforming in education - they are, instead, destroyers. 
They want your tax dollars to support private, especially secular, education. To do so, they have to make public education worse, less effective, so destroying collective bargaining and thus reducing pay and job security makes it harder to attract good people. (Ooooh! Collective bargaining! Unions - hissss! Charter schools don't have collective bargaining and their principals may get paid the same or less than an experienced public school teacher). 
The longer this exists, the less effective teachers and support personnel will be. This self-fulfilling worsening of public schools will make it possible to elect more legislators who will gladly support private education with taxes required of you. What is never discussed is that, because of the "equal protection" guaranteed by the Constitution, the wealthy will be subsidized to send their children to schools most would not be able to afford even then; every Christian denomination, with their infinite variety of Bible interpretations, will be subsidized by your tax dollars and still take the tuition of their adherents; Morman, Muslim, Buddhist, Rastafarian, Wiccan, Communist, Atheist, 'ad infinitum', schools will be subsidized by your taxes and also collect tuition from their adherents. Some of these schools might even teach extremist hatred for the USA and the west. To children. With the help of your taxes.
Yet the vast majority of our leaders, good and bad, were educated in public schools, starting with Herbert Hoover. Some of the most disliked leaders, at least by many (FDR, for example) were educated in private schools, or tutored at home. Expensive, exclusive, private schools.
     But, we went to the Moon thanks to public education! Most of the great Universities in this country are LAND GRANT Universities (Google it, you'll be amazed at the foresight of some politicians a long time ago!)
     Many people are convinced by conspiracies, an increasing number thanks to the internet. Where are they on the ongoing attempts to destroy public education?
A lot of people want their children to be taught things in public school that are secular in nature: Creationism, no evolution or geologic time,etc. Fine, teach that in your private schools, but you have no rights to my tax dollars, any more than an extremist Imam has the right to my tax dollars to subsidize teaching the evils of the Great Satan, the USA.
It's not about taxes, it's about the future of this country!