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  •  That is why they want vouchers... (4.00 / 3)

    They want you to pay for teaching their zany ideas one way or another.

    by inclusiveheart on Tue Aug 30, 2005 at 06:23:00 AM PDT

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    •  The grand GOP plan (4.00 / 7)

      They don't just want vouchers.  They want to gut and destroy the whole idea of public education.  They, of course, can't come out and say it, but they can kill the system with lot's of small injuries.  Intelligent Design here, extra unfunded mandates there, a hyped scandal over there, and pretty soon lots of "normal" people are against the school system.  

      Here in Texas, the laboratory of bad government, the GOP is working overtime to destroy the school system, all the while claiming to support it.  The papers just report the talking points.  It is all really quite surreal.......rather soviet-esqe.

      The Long War is not on Iraq, Afghanistan, or Iran. It is on the American people.

      by Geonomist on Tue Aug 30, 2005 at 07:28:05 AM PDT

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      •  Yes! (4.00 / 3)

        I give your comment a 4...the Republicans are out to kill public education for a couple of very specific reasons:

        • Public educators are pretty much constrained to teaching reality and facts.

        • it's fundamentally socialist or egalitarian - every kid gets a shot at the same thing - what you're really seeing here is the anti-integration backlash to Brown vs. Board of Education.  

        • objective history is not conducive to Republican election strategy or xian fundamentalism.

        • Children of the rich aren't really necessarily any brighter because Social Darwinism is really BS...they need an uneven playing field in life.

        • Republicans want to redirect all revenue streams thorugh the 'private sector' where they can skim.  

        NCLB is a poison pill designed to place unrealistic and unattainable standards on public education so that funding can ultimately be redirected to 'private' schools (corporate and fundamentalist xian welfare) that aren't held to the same standards (basically, they don't have to take students they don't want) via vouchers.  There is nothing more to it than attempting to generate 'evidence' that schools can't take the place of parents in society and fix everything.  They want to undermine, in the long term, political support for public schools in the broader society (anyone who can't afford to get out of them).

        Think of the issue of health insurance: public education is like universal coverage - doctors, insurers and corporate providers (eg, HCA) all make off with a much larger slice of the pie we pay through health taxes - let's be honest about what FICA and employer-provided health care really mean: a wage tax!  Under our system, insurers can just refuse to cover the hard cases; believe me, public education is chock full of those kinds of students.  School Boards generally get in the way of CEOs (superintendants) lining their own pockets. Sure there is corruption - Washington DC Public Schools are in a perpetual state of absolute chaos - but the scale doesn't even compare with the corporate world.  

        Look at KBR and the army: it's already painfully clear that army did a more efficient job of feeding and clothing itself than private contractors do, in addition to fighting.  But, conservatives were successful at redirecting that revenue stream into their own pockets.  An all volunteer army (ie, self-selecting and 'private') makes it easier to do that.  Why do you think we now have all the problems with fundamentalist evangelicals taking over the leadership, esp. at the military academies?  Of course, failure doesn't really mean anything to KBR, because as we've seen quite clearly, the army has no choice but to keep rewarding them contracts even if their business model is bad and fails.  

        When everyone participates, the whole system benefits because we are all involved.  Public education is no different - it's much better for a child, even (or especially) children of privilege,  to spend some time up close and personal with everyone else in our society.  Children raised in a sheltered (private school) environment have a very limited and skewed view of the world.  Republicans know this too.  

        -4.13, -5.59

        by montpellier on Tue Aug 30, 2005 at 10:33:40 AM PDT

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        •  The right wing truly hates (none / 0)

          anything "public."  Schools, parks, space, air, water, you name it.  It stems from their neo-conservative economics, which ideologically demands that all resources be in some private hands.  A miracle is supposed to occur causing efficient production.

          One has to wonder what they dream about as an end state of their ideology.  Do they have dreams about the future?  If allowed to proceed it will be a nightmare world of isolation, poverty, and absolute domination by the few.  Eventually it will lead to mass death of humanity.  

          The Long War is not on Iraq, Afghanistan, or Iran. It is on the American people.

          by Geonomist on Tue Aug 30, 2005 at 02:13:53 PM PDT

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      •  Don't knock the Soviet school system (none / 0)

        they put out lots of decent mathematicians and scientists.

        just really tired of all the bullshit.

        by bitterguy on Tue Aug 30, 2005 at 10:51:15 AM PDT

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        •  the American ones aren't (none / 0)

          producing competent scientists, mathematicians or engineers, that is.

          I can't figure out this angle of the Bushists.  Sure, they want uncritical masses who don't know real history and will accept that America is the Chosen Nation that will lead the World to Democracy if only we send enough of our kids off as machine gun fodder. I understand that it's in their short-term interest to gut scientific studies to keep big pharma, big energy, and big agri-business happy.  I understand that the anti-evolution and anti-birth control agendas keeps their rightwing base mollified and deluded.  I understand that scrapping the public school system feeds the Norquist ideology and besides provides more of that machine gun fodder.  But blowing off science and technology will eventually kill their nice little empire.  The Europeans, the Chinese, and the Indians aren't blowing off science and technology.  Are these guys so deluded that they really think they can control reality by the things they say?  Are they really that far out in Cloud Cuckoo Land?

          Power and greed and corruptible seed seem to be all that there is. -- Bob Dylan

          by Delia on Tue Aug 30, 2005 at 12:20:28 PM PDT

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          •  they either think (none / 1)

            they can loot the country before it goes under, and then buy into the game elsewhere, or they think they can just buy science.

            It goes to show that they didn't learn from Hitler's mistake -- if you lose the science, you can't win the war for very long.  They also underestimate how much this economy relies on the importation of intellect from the rest of the world; stop that brain gain, and we'll be at a major disadvantage in the long term.  They've already damn near stopped it; we're such an international pariah that no one wants to come here anymore.

            This will be impossible to fix without a clean break from the recent past.  I hope Feingold can win the 2008 elections and clean house.

            by texas dem on Tue Aug 30, 2005 at 03:29:04 PM PDT

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        •  I wasn't knocking the (none / 0)

          old Soviet schools.  I was comparing our press with the old Soviet press.  The US press pretty much shamelessly repeats any nonsense passed to them by Republican Party bosses.  

          The Long War is not on Iraq, Afghanistan, or Iran. It is on the American people.

          by Geonomist on Tue Aug 30, 2005 at 02:07:48 PM PDT

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    •  I think the religious adherents want (4.00 / 3)

      the vouchers for obvious reasons: to have more money supporting the teaching of their beliefs.

      On the other hand, I think the voucher idea, as envisioned by the Bush junta, is another way for the government to handle large sums of our tax dollars without being scrutinized closely. The money is essentially paying off leaders to express support publicly for Bush policies and deliver votes in the future to ensure the permanent Republican majority. This is just institutionalized machine politics that is national instead of local.

      Since much of the nation is in awe of authoritarian institutions, there will be no accountability for the voucher money. If some group demands accountability they will be called "anti-Christian."

      by lecsmith on Tue Aug 30, 2005 at 07:31:35 AM PDT

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