From: mccall@mksol.dseg.ti.com (fred j mccall 575-3539)
Subject: Re: equality of opportunity (was: Re: State Income Tax)
Organization: Texas Instruments Inc
Distribution: usa,tx
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1993 14:44:47 GMT

In <1852@airgun.wg.waii.com> billc@airgun.wg.waii.com (Bill Curtis) writes:

>Can't resist jumping in here...

>What about the poor.  Indeed, what about the poor?  One of the
>obstacles to improving our educational systems and having rational
>discussions about public education is to engage in the non-sequitur,
>baiting questions such as "what about the poor".  Everyone interested
>in improving our nation's school should ask themselves whether or not
>the poor genuinely benefit from the depressing, substandard, yes, and
>even dangerous, schools we have today.  To ask the question is to
>answer it.

To ask the question is to assume that ALL public schools are
absolutely as bad as they can possibly get.  They aren't.  To support
'choice' through that assumption is simply admitting that you're going
to abandon the people who can't get out to a deteriorating system
whose deterioration you are going to accelerate.

>Again, do poorer schools help anyone, anyone at all?  Can a positive
>response to this question be seriously offered.  Does having no choice
>at all, no vouchers, no alternatives, increase or decrease the despair
>and alienation from society the stereotypical poor are daily faced
>with?  The liberal mindset is such that they are blinded to what is
>happening and cannot see a clear path, and they consequently are left
>to deny the plain tragedy unfolding before us all.  They won't speak
>out lest they endanger the sacred icon of socially engineered public
>education except, mind you, to defend the status quo and meekly claim
>that enough funding is not provided by our society.

I could post similar ideological noise in response, but that would
simply be a further waste of time and bandwidth.  I would, however,
point out that the one option that 'choice' advocates seem to always
want to ignore is the idea of PUBLIC school choice, which provides a
lot of the ostensible advantages of 'choice' (all the examples of how
great choice would be are based on public school choice programs)
without simply tossing away people who for one reason or another can't
go to Joe Whitebread's Acadamy on their voucher.

>I don't know the answers but I do recognize the philosphies separating
>the vouchers-no vouchers camps.  One in contrast to the other wants
>more government control, more socialism, more big brother oversight,
>less parental influence in our schools, less accountability in the
>education establishment, less individualism, less teacher talent.

So much for what you 'recognize'.  I hope you're better with other
aspects of reality than you are with this description, including your
false assumption that everyone who opposes your particular vision of
school choice is 'a liberal'.

>Clinton comes to office as a self proclaimed change agent: will we see
>change here?  I worry, he's against vouchers, yet in the face of his
>support for public schools he sends his child to private school.  A
>contradiction?  Were he not a democrat wouldn't he be branded rather
>harshly for his obvious, shall we say, ambivalence?  He has lots of
>markers against him and when the hard decisions are to be made, I fear
>the NEA will operate him like a marionette.

Perhaps you should take a look at the changes that were made in the
Arkansas school system (where his daughter did attend public schools)
while he was Governor?  Also, perhaps you could point out where Bill
Clinton asked for a voucher to send Chelsea to a private school; I
wasn't aware that he had.  And of course, if he didn't, then his
position would seem to be perfectly consistent to me.

-- 
"Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to live
 in the real world."   -- Mary Shafer, NASA Ames Dryden
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Fred.McCall@dseg.ti.com - I don't speak for others and they don't speak for me.