From: pajerek@telstar.kodak.com (Don Pajerek)
Subject: Re: The New Education President
Reply-To: pajerek@telstar.kodak.com (Don Pajerek)
Organization: Digital Equipment Corp. - Telstar
Distribution: usa
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1993 18:43:05 GMT

In article <1993Jan12.165925.21091@m5.harvard.edu> borden@m5.harvard.edu writes:
>In article <1993Jan11.194142.8067@kadsma.kodak.com> pajerek@telstar.kodak.com (Don Pajerek) writes:
>
>>My question is: why stop there? Why should there be a school tax or
>>voucher system of any kind? Why not just forget the whole thing and let
>>parents use their money to buy their kids an education on the open market,
>>without the involvement of any taxing authority?

>...Your idea of scrapping the universal education requirement and
>taxation element entirely has no political feasibility at all in the near
>future or even probably during our lifetimes.  I think a voucher system is a
>good compromise between the liberal ideal of universal public education and
>the conservative ideal of free choice.
>
>  - Dave Borden
>    borden@m5.harvard.edu

This is a well-reasoned and well-stated response, with a far higher S/N
ratio than the typical t.p.m raving.

Needless to say, I'm not seriously proposing that the concept of universal
education be scrapped entirely. It does bother me, however, that the issue
of education seems to be becoming more and more contentious, on several
grounds.

There is first of all the problem of financing. Unless there are some
very serious changes in how money is collected to pay for public schools,
I don't see how a voucher system will make much difference to the
prototypical 'inner-city' school that is often the target of reform
movements. After all, these schools must be paid for by property taxes
collected in the inner city! There simply isn't very much money available,
whether it's handed out as vouchers or used the way it is today.

The idea of pooling tax revenues over several districts, so that money
from affluent suburbs is made available to the inner city, is highly
controversial in itself, apart from any sort of voucher program. So,
until this question is resolved, there is still going to be a rather
sizeable resource gap.

We also have the problem of the 'politicization of education', according
to which the public schools are forced to serve any number of social
objectives aside from that of simply providing an education. For example,
it is now necessary for the ranks of administrators and teachers to adhere
to various Affirmative Action guidelines.

Lastly, there is the question of content. Here in New York, it has been
mandated that education be 'multicultural'. In practice, this means that
my son knows just about nothing about (say) Thomas Jefferson, except that
he was a slaveholder. Another example would be the objections of
Fundamentalist Christians concerning the manner in which the Theory
of Evolution is presented (if it is presented at all).

As in so many other areas, the broad sort of social consensus that is
necessary to support something like 'universal education' seems to
be breaking down. Under these conditions, I'm not sure that any sort of
mandatory, publicly-funded education system will remain practical for
very much longer. Some might argue that the system has in fact broken
down completely in some areas. Here in Rochester, the newspaper this
week is running a series about violent assaults on teachers in the city
schools. This is not all that uncommon an occurrence, and has been known
to extend as far as the killing of a teacher in the not-too-distant
past.

So, you tell me: is it too soon to begin contemplating the successor to
the present system?


Don Pajerek

Standard disclaimers apply.
Newsgroups: alt.politics.clinton,alt.politics.elections,alt.politics.libertarian,talk.politics.misc