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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: greenspirit who wrote (41887)	6/26/1999 4:48:00 PM
From: nihil	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

There is an enormous amount to be said for anarchy. Most Americans are predisposed to anarchy, having escaped from tyrants or come in over, under, or through the wire. The idea of a bureaucrat running a school is revolting, and ought to cause a revolt. The next worse is a priest running a school, contaminating truth and facts with his own distorted idea of God. The next worse idea is a profit-maximizing business person running a school -- selling plausible ideas that appeal to mall-shopping parents rather than the truth. The only education worth a damn is an inquiring learner having fun who knows something more than the student knows, trying to help a learner to think. Clic and Clack are far better teachers than Lamarr Alexander, the NEA, or voucher fed business.

To: greenspirit who wrote (41887)	6/26/1999 11:50:00 PM
From: Grainne	Respond to of 108807

I'm not sure what it is you don't understand about my post, Michael. Jeb Bush's wife is dishonest at the least, according to the article I cited. She has paid a fine for violating customs laws. I am just a little tired of "moral conservatives" pretending that they are more moral than, say, liberal Democrats. I don't believe that is true. Maybe she should have to memorize the Ten Commandments or something! Obviously just being married to a conservative Republican governor didn't help her live by them, did it? I am not opposed to limited experiments seeing whether school vouchers would be successful in improving educational performance. I do have a problem with my tax dollars paying for religious education, since we have supposed separation of church and state (at the moment). The best predictor of success in school is the educational level of the mother. Poor children have it really bad in lots of ways. They are typically not read to when they are tiny children, they are more likely than affluent children to live in chaotic, out-of-control households where they are traumatized, which makes learning very difficult, and they are more likely to be hungry. Their parents, being unsuccessful themselves, don't give a model of successful living, and they are left out of middle class networking. With all of these factors in play, it is simplistic to believe that school vouchers are going to make enormous differences in outcome, although I certainly hope that they do. Obviously, the poor students most likely to succeed under the school voucher system are those whose parents are able to assert themselves and find better educational choices for their children. This would indicate some level of support for education in the home. But then what would happen to the poor children whose parents are less interested? In San Francisco, there are programs in the public schools to get these parents involved in helping their children be successful students, childcare classes for them, computers loaned out to their children, etc. Would this happen under voucher programs? I feel very uncomfortable when everything about public schools are portrayed negatively; there are wonderful, dedicated teachers all over the United States who teach in them, and most successful adults in this society were educated in public schools. There is a sentence in that article about how it is wrong for public schools to watch over children, making sure they are not being neglected or abused in some way. Why is that wrong? I would hope that ANY people put in positions of trust over children would do the same thing, and this lack of clear good policy making around children's issues makes me very concerned about their welfare under the voucher system, which is chaotic at best.