Republicans want to destroy the Federal Department of Education; In fact, a recent President actually appointed a Secretary of Education who agreed with this philosophy. This is stereotyping but as we say in Belizean Creole “If no so it nearly so”.
There are four legs on the “opposition to education” stool. We cannot change things until we cut at least two legs out from under the movement only then can we topple the stool. Those four legs are religion, racism, politics, and business. The two that I suggest cutting are religion and racism.
People do not want to pay to educate other peoples’ children. They do not want to pay to subsidize public school with taxpayers’ dollars. If they send their children to Catholic School, or Lutheran School, or a Muslim School, or whatever school, why should they pay for children going to a school that teaching what they do not believe (the first leg)? This is why many people support a voucher program, which diverts money from public to private schools. If it is a religious school or private school of any description, what right does the government have being involved in a school? In religious school, the churches hide the subsidy in the tithe (10 % of income); as an aside, these people object to having the government force them to pay taxes. They are willing to drop money into the collection plate; the objective is to expand church membership but not pay taxes to maintain schools, police, and firefighters, maintain streets, etc.
Some people do not want their children going to school with those who are different. In a country with Federal Civil Rights, they can control that without admitting what they really believe (the second leg). The metaphor for racism is States Rights in areas where they have a majority, which fits right in with our constitution; legalize re-segregation.
The conservative base for their ideology is innate selfishness, but greed is a pejorative term so we do not use the term. Tenure, which conservatives want to get rid of, means administrators cannot fire teachers for teaching what they think, however, billionaire Charles Koch gave a Florida university a large sum of money but only if teachers assign Ayn Rand’s novel, the Atlas Shrugged, a book that strongly enforces the selfish philosophy of greed (the third and forth leg). What do you think the University’s administrators, the very people who control the teachers’ salaries, will do if they cannot fire them?
Private schools are big business. They charge tuition but they also receive taxpayers’ money from government bodies such as state and federal legislators. Private elementary schools are involved but so are colleges with the aside that industries support them with overhead money for research grants to hire researchers and call them professors. Industries benefit more than it cost them or they wouldn’t do it. You do not believe me. Look at the student teachers ratios; some Universities have class sizes of two or three hundred yet have more employees than they have students. Look at the way administrators spend the interest of billion dollars sized endowments and match that with their legislative requests. Look at the university presidents’ million dollar salaries and students’ tuition; fifty thousand a year. Add up votes. Conservatives win (look at our House of Representatives) when political operatives such as Karl Rove add the religious to the racists, and those who feel that schools should operate as money making free enterprise.
Separating church and State, and making all schools public schools would be a good investment in the future. If they want private schools so be it but politicians should not support private schools with money robbed from taxpayers’ as they now are. This will only be possible if we knock out two of four legs and topple the stool of opposition. Then and only then will our children be educated as they should be and everyone will have a stake in seeing that happen.
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