School Vouchers: 

Idea from Hell 

by Anonymous

Everyone had best think this voucher business out slowly and surely before jumping onto the bandwagon, for not only will it destroy the public education system in this country, sending billions of dollars into the coffers of the Religious Right, but it will facilitate the indoctrination of millions of children into a belief system based upon dogma, bigotry, intolerance and the curtailment of the creative process. It will not only change the basis of our society, but will end America's reign as the world leader as the harbinger of freedom.

First we must lay to rest the false premise that the public school system is failed, destroyed and so broken beyond repair that the baby must be thrown out with the bath water. In reality, most schools are doing just fine as are most students, the problems are more societal than they are educational; and reform, not destruction, is the obvious way to lead ourselves out of it. The problems are mostly confined to inner city and rural areas where money is short because the primary funding of education comes from local property taxes giving the richer districts the most money to spend. Here we must put to rest another false premise, that spending money on education does not improve it. This is one of the premier lies of conservatives, that throwing money at everything helps, it just doesn't help when helping the children or those in poverty. Well bullshit! Infrastructure, teaching aids, computers and well paid teachers do indeed facilitate and improve education. Of course where the money is going should be looked at and though pouring money into anything will reach a saturation point that most certainly is not the case in most of our rural and inner city schools.

Secondly we must come to terms with what exactly the problem is. The conservatives and the Religious Right will always put the blame on the NEA,
after all, not only is it a union, but it lobbies for democratic and liberal causes making it the essence of evil in the world today. After blaming the teachers comes blaming the parents, then blaming the media, while blaming the kids never seems to enter into it. Well the truth is that the problem is not the educational process, it is the attitudes of so many young people brought about by a generation of conservatives commanding the national debate. That everyone should have at least one big handgun to carry around, that nothing matters but your wallet and a fast mouth and the entrepreneurial spirit are more important than a higher education. This of course is proved true most everyday on the EIB Network where Rush Limbaugh, who flunked out of college, is the smartest man in the known universe constantly suggesting that higher education is for socialist dumbbells. A lot of kids may not be able to read or write very well, but they are smart enough to get that message; get a big gun, care about nothing but yourself, move a fast mouth and the world is your oyster. The moral problem today is not condoms, sex education, Planned Parenthood, evolution, or teaching tolerance of gay men and women, it is this raw callous selfish disregard
that is the centerpiece of the conservative ideology.

Thirdly we must separate the issues of public school choice and private school vouchers. The former is a reasonable idea and is being tested as magnet and charter schools all over the country. Some are successful and some are not, and it is really too soon for valid results applied to entire systems. Most Americans have little problem with public school choice and it may be a good option of reform if busing does not bother them. But there is a fly in this ointment, the Religious Right is pushing charter schools to use as the jumping off point to the destruction of public schools with a national voucher system.

Fourth we must define what exactly private school vouchers are. Let us use California as the test case as it presented itself on referendum as Proposition 174 a few years back. Every parent gets a voucher from the State in the amount of $2600 for each child in K-12. That money comes from state taxes and out of public education. In California this amounts to about $6 billion a year. This will raise state taxes still leaving the parent having to pay the difference between the voucher and the school fee. The average yearly cost of a secular private school in California is $10,000 while religious schools average $2500. This discrepancy is based on quality of teachers, infrastructure, and the fact that religious schools are subsidized by the local Church and it's national and international fund raising pool.  Just on its face it is obvious that the haves will be subsidized by tax money to take advantage of good quality schools while the have-nots will either use what is left of the public system or send their children to below standard religious indoctrination centers. This is not to mention that such a system will further increase our racist dilemma of two nations separate
and unequal.

Fifth we must look at the constitutional question. Most existing private schools are religious in nature, mostly Catholic or Evangelical, and they will be cheap and steps ahead of secular private schools with most parents forced to use them because of economic reality. Literally billions of dollars in tax money going to support the religious indoctrination of millions of children. A lot of that tax money will also end up in the coffers of various political arms of the Religious Right to fund more of their intolerant referendums and to buy more ammo to shoot more doctors in the back. The question is whether this is possible under the separation clause of the First Amendment or will the constitution have to be amended.  Probably it will be pushed as a States Rights issue and be up to the federal courts to decide. But in the time between initiation and judgment, the
system will already be in place, spreading and harder to stop.

Sixth, we must make sure everyone knows exactly who is pushing private school vouchers. The main player is the Christian Coalition, the political arm of the Religious Right organized and controlled by Pat Robertson. CSPAN aired a recent convention of this gang of fascists which I happened to watch. The speakers were in order; Pat Roberson, Newt Gingrich, Jesse Helms, Phil Gramm and Bob Dole. I missed the Dole speech because the previous speakers made me so sick to my stomach I was stuck in the toilet throwing up for an hour. All four speakers I watched had at their central issue, the replacement of public schools with a system of private vouchers. The issue of abortion was suspiciously absent (after all, they pretty much have that all figured out, shoot doctors who perform abortions until they all run away) in lieu of this new idea which they are putting all their cards in.  The words condom, sex education, liberal socialism and Planned Parenthood rang through every speech ad nauseam. In fact two of them quoted the same Bible passage from Psalms about President Clinton to the affect that we should all rejoice because the leader shall soon be dead, all to the foot stomping applause of the Christian audience. Before watching these speakers I had not fully realized the depth of their hate or the seriousness of their message regarding religious control of the government, Senator Gramm being by far the most despicable of the bunch.

Another group pushing private school vouchers is Empower America, whose cofounders, Jack Kemp and William Bennett are beating the same drum on the same bandwagon. Kemp has somehow come to be thought of as a moderate republican which he most certainly is not. He presided over HUD under Reagan who cut the department by over 50%. Then they both stood dumbfounded wondering why suddenly there were so many of those damn homeless people lying around in the streets. Duh... 

The second of the cofounders is Bill Bennett (Rush Limbaugh's best friend) who, as the data shows, was a complete failure not only as Drug Czar but as Secretary of Education as well. Now these are a couple guys who know what's going on in education and housing and have real compassion for the least of us! Hilarious. What these guys are really after is the privatization of not only education but everything they can get their hands on, you name it. The intent is to make the entire moral ideology of this nation dependent upon max profit and a groveling to doubtful deities prancing around in the netherworld.

Another dead giveaway as to what this is about and who is behind it is who the top individual contributor backing Proposition 174 is. His name is Howard Ahmanson, an evangelical Episcopalian who has donated $400,000 to the cause of a voucher system. I quote from Ahmanson, "My purpose is the total integration of Biblical law into our lives."

Seventh we must look to the only voucher system in place at present. It is in Milwaukee, encompasses 700 inner city children and has been in place for a few years. The results are that there is no difference in math scores between public and private students, a drop in reading skills in the voucher students, and some of the schools are failing leaving students stranded without a school at all.

In conclusion, this idea is not based upon improving education, but rather for the express purpose of indoctrinating millions of children into intolerant religious conservatives for the voting booths of tomorrow. 

MORE THOUGHTS....

The two issues that most confound America are race and religion. The guns, crime, gays and abortion -- though high on emotional bandwidth -- have little immediate affect upon the vast majority of our lives, race and religion on the other hand go to our political and ideological core. It now has come to pass that race holds a secondary position to what is coming soon from the House. It is being billed as the Freedom of Religion Amendment, a constitutional amendment allowing the states to force feed organized prayer to public schools students. And sadly, 70% of Americans think it's a good idea.

Praying in school is not the real issue, rather, this is a point blank attack to change the very structure of our society by eliminating the separation clause of the 1st Amendment with the express intention of tearing down the wall between Church and State -- the most central factor our founding fathers saw in drafting the Bill of Rights.

There are indeed long range horrors involved in this but the immediate affect is specific and obvious. To replace public education with a voucher system to ensure that the voters of tomorrow will be ever more intolerant, homophobic Right-wing bigots than ever before. Absolutely it is. 

In getting the Amendment ready for public consumption, the political stump speeches from the GOP unequivocally advocate not only the destruction of the Department of Education, but changing our educational system to private school vouchers. This was pushed in the 1996 election year because the numbers show the majority of Americans, having not yet thought this out one wit, think it's a swell idea.

Our educational system is a total failure.  Our graduating seniors cannot read their diplomas. Our public schools do not teach reading, writing and 'rithmatic. Our public schools teach our kids to hate America. And there are literally hundreds more of these flat out lies that have been repeated so often and so intensely that the nitwit public shovels it up without engaging their noggins.

There are a few countries who beat us in educational areas, most of which are homogenous societies, mostly socialist. Finland is usually first, then Holland, The Netherlands, Sweden and Japan. These places, unlike us, fund public education fairly and evenly, they consider teachers more deserving of respect than corporate raiders, and believe being educated serves both the individual and the society better than filling wallets as fast as possible.

Our most central problem is all that poverty, pain and hopelessness endemic to our inner cities, is flowing from the streets into those schools and bringing our overall educational proficiency down. This of course is blamed on race rather than the lack of economic opportunities our racist culture has wrought upon these areas, these people and these children. 

The second problem in education is the disparity between school districts caused by funding through local property taxes rather than general revenues. But whenever this issue is brought up, rectifying it becomes lost in the morass of the negatively labeled and racially bias Robin Hood Plan rhetoric and are usually nixed immediately. 

The Religious Right has the seeds of this religious educational structure already in place and is chopping at the bit to get going. Vouchers mean perhaps as much as 100 billion dollars a year going from State revenues into the coffers of these Right-wing Religious organizations; not only increasing their power through money spent on PACS and propaganda, but closing the minds of most of our children.

The majority of these new voucher schools will be teaching what they are teaching now, only on a far grander scale. Creation Science as biology, intolerance of other religions and cultures, hatred of homosexuals and that choice is murder, all the while not only pounding the fear of eternal pain and damnation into these kids, but pounding the crap out of them as well. 

Oh sure, those who can't afford the costs above the vouchers will stay in what is left of the de-funded public schools and indeed, there will be good secular private schools, which, without the infrastructure, power and money of the major religious denominations to back them up, will cost families thousands of more dollars a years.

One last point. I contend strongly that the majority attraction in destroying public education is based far more upon racism than it is education.

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