RE: Paying for Schools (was: SOCIETY: Re: The privatization of public security)

From: Jerry Mitchell (jmitch12@tampabay.rr.com)
Date: Sat Aug 25 2001 - 12:22:23 MDT


> From: "Mike Lorrey" <mlorrey@datamann.com>
>
> > A public school system CAN be economically efficient if it
> is subject to
> > the same competetive pressures of the free market, and if all of the
> > people are given their freedom to choose (why is it left
> wingers seem to
> > think we should have freedom of choice in some things, but not in
> > others?).
>
> (Assuming I am understanding what you meant by left wingers
> and freedom of
> choice) Mike, do you understand the difference between, say,
> a local police
> department and a local branch of the KKK? A police sergeant
> may belong to
> the KKK group (there's the freedom of choice), but he cannot
> represent the
> police department while speaking for the KKK group (i.e., he
> cannot wear his
> police uniform, thereby giving the impression that the police
> department
> supports the KKK, although the police sergeant, as an
> individual, can be a
> member).
>
> A democracy may support the right of groups like the KKK to exist, but
> local, state and federal governments cannot ask taxpayers to support
> parochialism of the kind the KKK represents.
>
> In the same vein, private schools may exist in a host of flavors
> (specializing in upper-middle class college prep, or employ a
> creationist
> curriculum, or have a foreign language emphasis, or be exclusive for a
> myriad reasons), but governments cannot ask taxpayers to support
> parochialism, so public schools are necessarily set at
> "neutral," and open
> to all citizens (and even non-citizens) of the United States.
>
> Olga

Good job Olga! You seem to have tripped over another great argument for
total privatization! I've thought about the impossibility of running a
public school system morally. You will necessarily force some of the parents
to pay for things that they don't want taught to their children. Stealing
cash and then funding an opposing philosophy with it is about as morally
bankrupt as it comes. I don't believe the same as the bible thumpers, but
Ill defend to the death their right to free speech about it OR to have their
own schools where they teach what they want. The constitution was designed
to protect unpopular speech, popular speech needs no protection.



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