Tuesday, April 3, 2007

Education Degradation Part III

-While tragic, the recent stabbing of a 12 year old girl at a local middle school has no doubt vindicated those parents refusing to accept boundary changes quietly. In the case of some students let’s face it, those students moved will without question be put into schools that are rougher places. Will they survive? Of course. Will they be better for it? Probably not.

Parents who are concerned with their children’s school environment, pay taxes, and very well may have chosen their address on account of the neighborhood school have every right to protest this and every reason to be perturbed by the arrogant manner in which the local school board president has dismissed them.


-A local columnist recently lambasted those parents protesting TeenScreen, the proposed universal mental health screening of our local 8th graders. While he is correct in pointing out the good intentions of the program’s sponsors, he subsequently dismisses those of the parents and is sadly mistaken on almost everything else, not the least of which being that schools have any business dealing in mental health in the first place. This columnist (Bill Guida), in classic liberal elitist fashion, told parents to butt out and leave it to the experts. Unfortunately the only people who can really explain their suicides are no longer with us and the only likely result of the screening would be more money in the pockets of both psychologists and drug companies. However Mr. Guida has long made clear the low esteem in which he holds the sense of everyday people, favoring smoking bans and mandatory helmet laws for those without free will and recently claiming that folks (except him of course) are “force fed” fast food via advertising. Just listen to the experts and the gummit’ will make everything alright…

Mr. Guida being no peculiarity, contemporary liberals/progressives, forever frustrated with Americans’ fondness for rugged individualism, have always seen schools as their great opportunity for experimentation with collectivism. Every time the schools take on another unnecessary responsibility like feeding children, babysitting, sorting them by race, etc. they see a microcosm of their perfect society: the government (largely made up of them) providing for every waking need. At one time this fact wasn’t at all hidden. Those considered the founders of our public school system were nearly all avowed socialists.

These disagreements weren’t always necessary. But like so many other things, when you add the word “public” to anything it’s like putting ketchup on a steak, it can only be so good. This should come as a surprise to no one however after the track record of public housing projects, public assistance (welfare), public retirement (Social Security), public healthcare (Medicare/Medicaid). Those that weren’t immediate failures are nonetheless impending economic disasters.

I apologize for the imagery, but can any of you honestly say you prefer public toilets to your own? The tragedy of the commons is very real. Parents can forbid their child from playing with the third-grader next-door with the fowl mouth and mean streak when he drinks, but at school they’re powerless. Parents can teach that one religion, one country, one attitude is preferable, but once they get to a public school they will hear that everything under the sun is equal and the only one’s who are lesser are those that would dare to say otherwise.

School choice in the form of vouchers would do much to remedy this rift, not to mention school crowding...

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