19 Comments

"Give me four years to teach the children, and the seed I will have sown will never be uprooted." Vladimir Lenin

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If tomorrow the government decided that food was "too important" to be left to the free market, we'd be starving by September.

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I think the solution must be even more radical, i.e., going to the root of the problem.

Government-run/controlled education violates the First Amendment and should be abolished at all levels, from pre-school to graduate school and beyond. Government has zero right to decide what ideas may or must/must not be taught, how it’s taught, and by whom. There is no delegated authority or enumerated power for the federal government to be involved, at all: loans, college funds, research and other grants (except for some military applications), etc. etc.

It's in those breeding grounds of statism and collectivism that the academics and lawyers and doctors and journalists and teachers and students are indoctrinated with these horrific notions of how our society should be governed and the ideals we should follow.

Local and state schools at any level, school boards, regents, etc. are all part of government or are government agencies, either directly elected or paid via taxation, i.e., all such employees are state employees and thus part of the government (cf. FDA, CIA, FBI, and all the other alphabet agencies: none are elected or hold political office, but all are arms or branches of government, enforcing government laws, rules, regulations, etc.).

Private institutions _should_ be irrelevant here, but in today's sorry world, too many of them are subject to improper government rules/laws/etc. governing various aspects of education, especially if the institution receives government tax dollars via student loans, grants, etc.

And since states are bound to abide by the First Amendment via the Fourteenth Amendment, all this prohibition applies at the state level, as well.

Few will point out how unconstitutional all this is. Vouchers come with government approval of where/when one can use the voucher. Plus, those vouchers are still paid for by stealing income from everyone, whether one has children in school or not. Pay for your own kids' education. It's immoral and a violation of rights to force others to pay for this (or any other such programs or institutions). Quit being bullies, cowards, and thieves. No involuntary servitude (the Thirteenth Amendment). (In my state, education spending is the biggest item in the budget.)

This isn't rocket science. It's an issue of basic freedom and rights. There _is_ no fundamental right to education — or health care or retirement money or food or anything — paid for by money forcibly taken from unwilling strangers.

Without stealing money from taxpayers, many of these cesspools of SJW-PC-speak would disappear, and with that ending, more people will have a chance to learn that freedom, independence, justice, honesty, productiveness, and integrity are not just words but have real-world, objective meanings that we need to re-learn.

End government schooling and I wager all of this nonsense, all this irrationality — CRT, PC SJW crap, worthless courses and degrees, anti-capitalism, trans nonsense, relativism, anti-intellectual garbage, "diversity" officers/policies, etc. — will sooner rather than later wither on the vine and die. If schools were forced to rely on actually pleasing their customers and make a profit or close/go bankrupt, 90+% of this ridiculous illiterate, irrational, anti-freedom, anti-thought BS would quickly disappear.

There should be a complete separation of government and education.

One cannot "reform" what should not exist in the first place. Arguing about the degree of federal control or how much more money to spend is akin to two robbers arguing about whether to take all of someone's money or leave him some and whether they should beat him senseless or just rough him up. The activity itself is wrong. It cannot be "reformed" except through prohibition. Cf., also to slavery: how much is "okay"? None.

‪It's too bad that I’ve never seen anyone with a real audience make these points.‬

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I gave feedback for our school that CA children may have a chance to compete with other kids ( globally in terms of education), if the CA board of education is hit by a meteor and an earthquake at the same time.

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Even FDR was against unions in the public sector. Unions have a tendency to protect the bad actors at the expense of the very people they are supposed to be serving.

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t seems that a large proportion of the US population does not know the name, Howard Zinn - the revisionist "historian" who has authored numerous textbooks that now form the basis for the teaching of history as advocated by the American Federation of Teachers and other teachers unions. Anyone unfamiliar with his works can find out more by performing a Google search for his works (example: https://libcom.org/files/A%20People%27s%20History%20of%20the%20Unite%20-%20Howard%20Zinn.pdf). This is the new history taught today and that supported by CRT advocates.

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Thanks, excellent take on the CRT problem. When caught out, the CRT proponents deny they are doing it, blame you for not understanding what CRT teaching really is, then claim it’s really not CRT, and they are simply teaching “real” history. The idea that conservatives should sue school districts to enforce anti-discrimination laws already on the books is total BS. It’s costly, it will take too long and will allow CRT to become permanently imbedded in the public school systems. Your comment about the teacher Unions doing more to damage and cheat disadvantaged students is is exactly right. CRT also allows Unions to dodge the actual requirement to impart the necessary skills to be successful in today’s world, i.e. math, reading, science and history free from wokeness.

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crt, sj, covid 17 are all tools for subversion. fortunately, the kids who think will read and talk to honest people, the kids who do not will be the usual output of unionized aka non performing education.....

when the battle is done hang both the lawyers and teachers.

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Excellent post bc. Ty

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Do right-to-work laws have anything to do with this?

Excellent article. Thank you for clarifying the issues.

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No to vouchers.

Vouchers will likely lead to defacto takeover of private schools by the state. Government money always comes with strings. With vouchers will come demands for control of potentially every aspect of the product and how it's provided, including requiring or at least tolerating unions and union work rules, and including curriculum.

Vouchers would distort market pricing. Every private school will raise its prices to the amount of the voucher. Why would they charge less?

End compulsory free education. There's just no reason that education should be provided by the state.

https://mises.org/library/voucher-socialism

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The disproportionate harm done to poorer students from school closures is a feature, not a glitch. What better way to foment even more division than to make poorer students suffer more? Crimes against humanity.

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Right on, hermano. I am put in mind of a recent move, in a Cali district if I recall correctly, to end all math enrichment programs for kids gifted in math because it would mean that kids gifted in math would be treated differently than kids not gifted in math. That way, poor kids who are gifted at math do not get enrichment programs while the families of rich kids gifted at math just hire private math tutors. Gee, it's almost like they were cutting off their noses to spite their faces. Anyway, math is so boring and racist and it's not like we, as a country, face extraordinarily intense competition with countries where STEM is treated like a religion? Oh, wait a minute...

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Very powerful piece… bravo el gato malo 🐈

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The synergy of naked self-serving incentives leading to bedfellows across the political spectrum has been something to behold. All these assholes, elbowing each other as they attempt to drink deeply at the trough of COVID hysteria...

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Freedom future lays upon our will to die on this hill.

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