From: coolidge@speaker.wpd.sgi.com (Don Coolidge)
Newsgroups: alt.rush-limbaugh,alt.fan.dan-quayle
Subject: Public Education (Was:Re: Family Leave)
Date: 28 Sep 92 20:23:27 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc.

In article <1992Sep25.175925.9328@anasazi.com>, best@anasazi.com (Mike Best) writes:

Melanie has responded on her own, in a very lucid and cocise manner, to
Mike's posting. But there are a few things she was too polite to say...

|> In article <CGYQBCT5@cc.swarthmore.edu> mwertz1@cc.swarthmore.edu (Melanie Wertz) writes:
|> ...
|> >> organization.  School choice would, in effect, open up competition and
|> >> result in better schools.  
|> >
|> >NO.  School choice fails to solve the basic problem facing many inner city
|> >schools today.  Bush's proposals in his America 2000 "strategy" do exactly
|> >this:  they reward the schools that least need it, and punish the schools
|> >that are suffering from poor facilities, teachers, and programs.  Such a
|> >meritocracy system would just push inner city schools further down and make
|> >public schools in rich white areas better.  You can argue that school
|> >choice gives schools "incentive," but what good is incentive without access
|> >to good teachers, decent facilities, funding, even basic physical safety? 
|> >Inner city schools don't *want* to be hellholes; they are hellholes because
|> >the economic and social environment under which they are forced to operate
|> >systematically denies them.  Raising the stakes on bad schools in a game
|> >which is already stacked against them won't do diddly to help education in
|> >America.
|> 
|> I think you have well argued the socialist side of this issue, that equality
|> is the just goal.  What this really means is that to be equal we need to 
|> bring the bottom up and, this is the important point, bring the top down.
|> There is no other way to acheive an average, and in the end your scheme
|> has produced just that - average schools.

Mike makes six assumptions and/or statements in this paragraph. Five are false.

First, he states that improving public education is a "socialist" theme. If
he wishes to maintain that, he must 'fess up that *his* scheme has nothing
whatsoever to do with improving education. Failure by him to do so only 
confirms *him* as a true-blue (oops! red) socialist. :^)

Second, he assumes that the goal is equality. Wrong. The goal is improvement,
given the current wretched state of our public education system. Of course, 
it could be *his* goal, but I don't know that to be true. It is certainly 
not Melanie's goal.

Third, he states that we need to improve our worst schools. Bravo!

Fourth, he claims that we must lower the capabilities of our best schools.
This is so absurd it hardly merits response, but I'll give one - after a
couple more paragraphs.

Fifth, he claims that bringing the top up and the bottom down (whatever
that means) is the only way to achieve an "average". Guess he doesn't know
what the word "average" means. So much for his dreams of a career as a 
millionaire mathematician! - or a millionaire lexicographer, for that
matter. :^)

Sixth, he claims that Melanie's scheme will therefore produce "average"
schools. But it's not her scheme, Mike - it's yours! 

Mike expends a lot of effort criticizing his own assumptions. They have
little or nothing to do with what Melanie has mentioned - in fact, they
totally ignore her main points. The technique is called "building a 
strawman", and is (next to spelling flames) the last Net resort of the
incompetent. 

Mike, if you want to argue with yourself, go do it quietly somewhere
where you won't take up other people's bandwidth. If, however, you wish
to join in an actual conversation, please pay attention to what you're
responding to. You haven't done so to date.

|> Your argument is an important side issue but what about the point of this
|> approach by Bush?  That is, giving individuals the freedom to choose the
|> destiny of their children.  Is the Pro-Choice movement limiting it's 
|> definition of what choices are availabe?  Need I point out that the
|> Constitution is a document about individual liberties?  I think that
|> giving parents the choice is more honorable than your version of
|> government coercion.

Buzzwords, buzzwords, no content. 

The issue is the quality of public education in this country. If choice of
school could help improve that, I'd be all for it. But choice alone, even 
when combined with a putative $1000 tax credit or voucher, will do nothing
to improve quality. It will only magnify inequality.

Bush's "plan" is simply another ploy to give the rich and the haves another
government teat to suck from, by pulling it away from the needy. It does 
*nothing* to improve public education, and positively assures the death of 
quality education for the poor and the disadvantaged. Melanie has told you 
why and how, but you've ignored her and continue to act as though your 
Proof By Repeated Assertion is valid. What a joke!

Of course, that quality of reasoning does explain why you continue to
support a president who thinks that flag-burning and the capital-gains
tax are the two most pressing domestic issues this country has ever faced,
and that Dan Quayle has been a good Vice-President. :^)
 
|> The public schools would still receive the same amount of funding as long
|> as the student population was maintained.

A continuation of the same amount of funding will doom them to the same
slow death by starvation they're already immersed in. THINK, dammit. 
Cause and effect. Or have you never even bothered to investigate the 
current state of inner-city schools...?

|>  In order to maintain that 
|> population it might be necessary to bus (yikes!) children to public 
|> schools - is bussing now immoral?  Seems to me that the liberals were
|> all for it when it fit their ends - what goes around comes around.

You, Mike, are the first person to mention busing in this thread. Don't
try to pillory Melanie for words that you've put in her mouth. I realize
it's a tried-and-true Republican ploy, but Lee Atwater's dead now, and
Jim Baker is working for George Bush, not you, so you're on your own in
that effort. Frankly, you're far too heavily outnumbered and under-armed
to do it in this forum.

And, Melanie, thanks for being more polite to Mike than he deserves. I
wish I could have done so, too, but I'm only human...:^)

Don Coolidge 
Newsgroups: alt.rush-limbaugh,alt.news-media,alt.fan.dan-quayle