Eavesdropper, I appreciate you post very much. It was reasonable and well said.
I agree with your position on evil people. They often coop religion (devotion) and use it for their own means. It doesn’t matter what they call it, they are still doing evil. Religion can easily be abused by those who seek to prey on the simple minded. It is sad, but it happens. I find this to be no indictment of religion, only an indictment of evil people’s behavior.
But I do not agree with your dislike of vouchers. I am left with the thought that you do seek to control the education of children in a top down manner. Instead of making teachers and school districts accountable to the parent directly (or the parents choice), you would have them accountable to the arbitrary nature of a bureaucratic system.
If we instituted a voucher system, public schools as they currently exist would change dramatically. Some would be left to crack and fall and some would be swelling. This is not a reason to dislike vouchers. It would be massively disruptive, but that is what we need in our schools, massive disruption of the status quo. Why should we force kids to go to a sub-par school when their parent seek to send them elsewhere. How else can we force teachers to start looking at parents and the citizenry as their boss. I know this is a scary thought for many teachers, but it must be this way just based on the flow of money.
Your thoughts on the difficulty of implementing and holding accountable schools, I strongly disagree with. Currently there is little or no accountability in the current system. Schools with 50, 60, 70% drop-out rates go on in perpetuity for years. The same teachers and administrators show up for work every day, and draw down their paychecks from people they are not accountable to. Currently we have only a few people looking over the schools shoulder and they are encouraged to see no evil. We could have a parent for every kid looking at the quality of their child’s school and determining if it is working for their child. If it is not working, they can take their child and go elsewhere. Bad schools will be de-funded organically, and in the least disruptive way possible. But teachers in failing schools will have to be laid off, and buildings will have to be sold. Paradoxically, new teachers with fire in their bellies will be hired, and new buildings will be built.
Then again there will always be disinterested parents. That much is obvious, and many of them will not care where their child goes to school. But this is something that our schools can not fix. These kids are given a raw hand, but how can it be worse for these kids with vouchers than without vouchers? If all of our schools are more accountable, it can only get better for even the kids of disinterested parents.
I am all for a tax break as a compromise. Especially if that tax break is nearly the cost of educating a child at a public school. The problem with the tax break is, it favors people who pay taxes…but it is the families that have such a low income that they do not pay taxes who would benefit most from breaking up the monopoly of the public school system. Vouchers allow even the poor to leave their hell hole behind and find something that works.
Note, this is all an aside to the debate about religion. But it is more important, because all the rest follows. If parents have choice, this debate about religion in schools in unnecessary. If you don’t like religion being taught in schools, don’t send your kid to a parochial school…If you want religion in schools, send your kid to a parochial school. This is the beauty and simplicity of freedom. And this freedom does not infringe on anyone else’s freedom!
