BuckeyeJim
King
Formaldehyde said:
Is this something you can prove (that people had no problem with public education.) Have you considered how different education was administered from the top down before Brown vs. the Board of Education? Is it possible that you could conceive of very valid reasons why people would perceive that public education is now utilized as a propaganda school? In Jesusland people used to be able to pray, discipline their students, and had latitude to teach certain curricula. Now the system is a top down mandate thanks to the Bush wanks and NCLBA. There are plenty of valid reasons for people to not want to send their kids to private schools.
In the area where I grew up there is nary a minority to be found. But guess what, all those racist white folk still want to send their kids to private schools, and they are fed the hell up with the way the Ohio State Government is running our public school system. They want out of the parade my friend. And in the neighborhoods where I work at most, in areas of the Columbus metroplex where nary a white person can be found, the same sentiment is expressed by minorities there. People in Coshocton or Nellie Ohio are just as poor, if not more poor than poor minority communities in Columbus. This racial prattling that you're partaking in is really exceptionally ignorant in its foundation. There are undesirables that people seek to avoid, but it's hardly based along being exposed to people of different races. It has more to do with escaping the teachers, administrators, and disruptive students than anything else. In Columbus it is a desire from minority families to escape the violence and drugs that their children are exposed to on a daily basis within the Columbus City School District. Ohio's public school system is exceptionally broken if you are anywhere outside of the suburbs. It doesn't matter how racially homogeneous these broken districts are, there's still an underlying feeling of resentment. There is a desire to get out of it. But it's really difficult for friends of my dad to send their kids to private schools in Mt. Vernon when they have to pay thousands of dollars to the broken public system.
How does people maintaining a freedom of school choice screw the state and local government? I hate to tell you this, but it is my father's friends who are getting screwed when they are dictated by the government that they must first obediently handover the money that they earned, not the government mind you, and that they can try and scrounge up the money to pay for the private school on top of it with the scraps that are left over. That's getting screwed. Losing autonomy over the upbringing of your children thanks to the tax man: getting screwed.
If a state decided to enact a tax credit, or a rebate, or some method of ensuring that the money never entered government hands, it would be law, and therefore not against it. And I don't see how it would be unconstitutional under any Supreme Court of any time period. It's their state, they maintain their autonomy on such matters. States can provide whatever tax credits they damn well please for whatever reason, just so long as it is equally applied.
They do have a public school system. I'm not saying we should get rid of the public system. The basis that they should not have to pay these taxes is the same justification that the Amish don't. People should have the freedom to raise their kids as they so desire, and they should not have the yoke of the government squeezing them for as much as they can, and running them into the public school system if they don't desire that. There is absolutely, positively, nothing wrong with a religious education. If people want to "propagandize" their children, then that is their business. They are the parents of the child, not you. I'm sure you "propagandize" your children, if you have any. That's a personal matter of the home, and people should be able to make their own decisions on these matters. If people want their kids to go to a religious school, then they should have that right. Private school shouldn't just be for the American oligarchy.
This doesn't make government theocratic. Especially at the federal level. The founding fathers really had no problem with states having their own official religions written into their constitutions. To them it was the decision of the state. So I have a hard time swallowing the idea that the founders would have harbored antipathy regarding a policy such as this, which does nothing but open the door to school choice for parents and students
I have a few books that I'd like you to read. You should start with Madison and Jefferson by Burstein and Isenberg. In that book you will find some lengthy chapters about the northerners were accusing the south of abandoning God. Connecticut and Pennsylvania were easily the most feverishly religious states of the union. The northern federalists frequently attacked the deist, or atheist ideologies of many Virginia politicians. They attacked them, Thomas Paine, and others. They even went so far as to call them atheist anarchists! They were viewed and painted as supporting the French Revolution and the more "socialist" style of philosophy professed by French enlightenment philosophers of the time. It sure wasn't the Virginia Dynasty that was wrapped up in religion at the time the constitution was ratified.
