Tuesday, September 3, 2013

SUPPORT SCHOOLS BY PAYING YOUR TAXES

I wrote the following in response to a cry to “empower citizen to become involved in their schools” that was essentially a cry for privatization of education. The cry was raised in a Google discussion group, Education Revolution. This response in essences is simple; be willing to pay “enough taxes to support your schools. You have much more power over an elected official who does not do your bidding than you have of firing a corporate executive for doing a poor job or taking a huge bonus.

The answer as to where we should obtain the money to educate our children is simple; we should get it from the taxpayers. There is a huge Grover Norquist driven mentality afoot in this country that says, “No more taxes for anything”. It is part of the hate the government campaign. This is wrong; you know it and I know it. We need the government to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves—in this case, educate “all” of our children rich and poor alike.  If we in America want our children educated, we have to pay the price and stop preaching that money is more important our future; not just our children’s future but the nation’s future.

People are willing to pay for private schools; they are willing to drop money into a church collection plate to support parochial schools; but are not willing to pay taxes to support public schools. A segment of society feels people should be willing to pay private industry exorbitant amounts to private companies that have money as a motive. These “companies” sell their “product” bases on religious, racial, political, or class exclusivity. In my mind, this is a gross example of educational failure—driven by a basic or innate emotion, which is greed. They hide there greed with made up reasons to justify what they do. As a person interested in evolutionary psychology, I see this as a throw back to “bestial selfishness”, an individual trait that we needed and still need to survive but I also see “altruism” or helping others as form of group selfishness. We want our species, tribe, nations or whatever to “have more” than the next species, tribe, nations; whatever we see as our group.  If that is the case, and I believe it is, we have to pay for it.


USDA regulation of food in school cafeterias is an excellent example of government at work, doing what parents cannot do for themselves. Why do we have such a regulation? We have the regulations because people were serving inferior food to save tax money or increase profits. I am saying that when there is a profit motive, there will be cheating. What you are saying is true; people do not want to pay taxes. I am saying privatization is not the answer; education of the public is; one of the sub-themes of my liberal firetreepub.blogspot.   
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