John F. Kennedy said it much more succinctly, Liberty without learning is always in peril, and learning without liberty is always in vain. That said, there is at least one more campaign promise that W is sure to break. He will attempt to destroy public education, he will not save it. Our public schools that suffer the most are in our economically poor and middle class communities. They simply lack the funds to be effective.
Classes are too large, and teachers and materials are too few.
The idea of pulling a thousand dollars out of such a school, and giving it to an economically poor student, whom the school has failed, to attend a multi thousand dollar a year private school that the child s family cannot afford with or without the voucher, is patently stupid with no sense of logic dedicated to the stated intended result. It does, however, serve an unstated intent. It serves Hitler s theory of mind control, and creates an uneducated working glass that provides an endless supply of cheap labor. It serves the Republican quest to take us back to the good ol days, when children were working in coal mines, and life was a beautiful thing. We, who have received the benefits of a fine public education system, have the responsibility to use that education to preserve and rebuild the system before it is lost to further generations of Americans.