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Among the many ballot issues before us this fall, there's a tax credit for private-school tuition. The public-education lobby opposes it, for the same reason that the lobby opposes vouchers and the like, on the grounds that it will harm our public schools.
But would such policies, which encourage alternatives, really damage public schools?
As it is, public schools are in essence franchise
monopolies, closely regulated so that they operate in a
one size fits all
mode. This, of course, is hardly
conducive to excellence.
Consider a frequent occurrence -- parents appearing
before school administrators with a complaint about course
content. Little Susie was assigned to read Macbeth
by William Shakespeare, a drama that offers occult witches
which could damage her immortal soul. Little Johnny's
future health might be damaged because he had to read a
story in which the good children were rewarded with ice
cream, a fat-laden dairy product, rather than with organic
home-grown carrots.
As it is, the public schools generally feel compelled to respond to these grievances by adjusting the curriculum toward an inoffensive mediocrity. It's like banquet food -- hardly spiced, generic mush aimed at the lowest common denominator -- as opposed to a hearty meal of food you like cooked the way you like it.
The result is an education designed to avoid offending various pressure groups, rather than an education designed to inform and to challenge. This isn't evil -- it's a natural result of our political system.
But suppose that there were many thriving alternatives, and that parents were empowered with vouchers.
Then the school board, upon hearing from parents who were appalled because their delicate offspring were supposed to dissect a frog, could invite them to take their money and go down the road to a more suitable institution.
The public schools would thus be free to focus on doing the job to the best of their resources and talents, rather than on placating every irked parent.
Such parents could take their grievances elsewhere, and the public schools would be free to ignore their various sensitivities that range from fundamentalism to extreme political correctness.
So it's hard to understand why public-school supporters are so opposed to vouchers and other school-choice mechanisms. If you want public schools that are dedicated to sharp-edged excellence rather than banal mediocrity, then you'd want to remove the political pressures that push schools toward blandness, rather than quality.
Another thing that's hard to understand this fall is Sen. Ben Campbell's television ad which brags on his desire to increase federal funding for education.
Traditional Republican dogma has it that education is strictly a state and local matter, not a federal concern. Recall that in 1980, Ronald Reagan promised to abolish the federal Department of Education.
Perhaps Campbell's conversion to the GOP wasn't complete and he still exhibits latent Democratic tendencies.
But even if he's praising federal subsidies to local
education, I have to wonder about the educational level of
the people who contrived this ad. It concludes with the
announcement that Campbell supports Zero tolerance
against drugs and school violence.
This phrase makes no sense, since tolerance
against
is meaningless. Try similar locutions, and
you'll see what I mean. I have no tolerance for
opportunistic trendy campaign statements
is a
meaningful statement. So is I have zero tolerance for
hair-splitting newspaper columnists.
But it is
impossible to practice tolerance against.
I presume that Campbell's hired wordsmiths wanted to
make it clear that he's opposed to violence and drugs in
schools, and so they used the word against,
even
though it's a clear abuse of our Official Language.
Besides, who is in favor of drugs and violence in schools? Nobody on any ballot that I've heard of, so why is this even being presented as a campaign issue? It's like announcing that you're in favor of prosperity.
Beyond that, isn't zero tolerance
the same policy
that caused a schoolgirl in Longmont to get suspended
because she accidentally brought a paring knife in her
lunchbox? The same policy that got a Colorado Springs
student suspended for giving a friend a lemon drop? The
same policy that caused hearings in Cherry Creek when
several students, with the consent of their parents, sipped
wine with dinner in a civilized country where that was
legal?
I wouldn't brag on my support for such straitjacket
idiocy, but then again, maybe I just haven't figured out
what zero tolerance against
really means, if it does
indeed mean something.
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