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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