No Sacred Cow Left Behind

flippityflopitty sends this Washington Post article at truthout concerning an investigation of a key initiative of President Bush's No Child Left Behind law, "a program besieged by allegations of financial conflicts of interest and cronyism".

For decades liberal Democrats have controlled public education. But it's only now under the sheer pretense of introducing competition and standards that the dastardly Bush-contributing corporations have moved in to rip off the public and create a real mess that threatens the future of our children.

What about the conflict of interest that motivates teachers and their unions to favor immigration because it means more students and thus more money and power, despite the harm it does citizen children? I never read about that in truthout or WaPo.

How about the conflict of interest between the one-size-fits-all, multiculti, politically correct, gay-lifestyle-glorifying, feminized, anti-corporate, anti-military indoctrination my children are getting from their predominantly liberal-leftist teachers who see them as little Eichmann-vessels to be filled with scepticism and indifference, if not rage and hatred, toward all things Western under the guise of shoring up their self-esteem; versus the unvarnished and objective exposition of science and rationalism and history I'd like them to get? Never seen this mentioned in truthout or WaPo.

Despite the constant flowery words to the contrary the interests of the teachers and their unions always trump those of the students and their families. When the budget gets tight (and it always does, regardless of constant spending increases) there goes the computer lab, there goes band. Anything to save a teacher's job. California spends $8K per year per kid. Who pays for that and where the heck does it all go? More truths not deemed worthy of exploring by truthout or WaPo.

We can be rid of all the conflicts of interest in public education. Abolish it. Stop taking my money to force poisoned alien world-views down my children's throats. Voucher games (and teachers don't want even that minimal flexibility) only give back a fraction of the taxes paid toward education. Let me keep all my money and select where and how much I'm willing to pay to educate my children. A 12-student class with a teacher of my choice sounds good to me. I'll bet $96K/year sounds good to teachers.

Most people don't necessarily like the sound of that. They believe that somebody richer or with less children helps pick up their tab, it's ok to screw the rich and the childless, and as if by magic the enormous bureaucratic waste in our current system is actually cheaper in the end.

Probably because they went through the homogenizing dehumanizing meat grinder otherwise known as public school.

You aren’t compelled to loan your car to anyone who wants it, but you are compelled to surrender your school-age child to strangers who process children for a livelihood, even though one in every nine schoolchildren is terrified of physical harm happening to them in school, terrified with good cause; about thirty-three are murdered there every year. From 1992 through 1999, 262 children were murdered in school in the United States. Your great-great-grandmother didn’t have to surrender her children. What happened?

If I demanded you give up your television to an anonymous, itinerant repairman who needed work you’d think I was crazy; if I came with a policeman who forced you to pay that repairman even after he broke your set, you would be outraged. Why are you so docile when you give up your child to a government agent called a schoolteacher?