by M.Daniells
Soon Californians will vote on proposition 174, a momentous piece of legislative that is being touted as a further opportunity for parents to exercise “Choice.” This time the choice is where to send their children to school and who they want to receive the $2500 vouchers that would supplement the tuition that private schools charge.
Already, the public schools, who receive approximately $5000 per annum, per student are up in arms about the proposals,
Under the rubric of church and state constitutional arguments teachers unions and their primarily democratically supported representatives are crying foul meanwhile Christian fundamentalists and their Republican cohorts are gleefully rejoicing. What seems to be missing in the argument is the benefits of each proposal to the most important individuals in the tug of war, the students.
Public schools are failing say the critics but as the mandates have changed from the three R’s of my youth Reading, ‘Riting and ‘Rithmatic to sex education, slam dunking, and avoiding guns and knives, the essence of parental responsibility seems to have gotten lost. In the good old days, ( a mere 30 years ago,) my school chums and I were taught to brush our teeth, eat our breakfasts, pay attention and be respectful of the teachers and other adults by our parents.
My mother didn’t expect the school to teach me to say “please and thank you” and to wash my hands before I ate, that was her job and rightfully so. Today though, one reads of parents who have so totally abdicated their responsibilities that teachers have little time for the job of education and that students routinely graduate as illiterates. The sense of discipline and respect that was taught by the family as a matter of course has given way to the freewheeling lack of control: that appears when “the inmates run the asylum” or the “monkeys run the 200″
asylum and zoo being appropriate monikers for schools today, The 60’s and 70’s saw educational reform in light of other rights and freedoms that American society demanded but somehow the goal and role of education got lost. As schools began to initiate innovative classes/in obscure and often revisionist subjects from “Bachelor living” to “Black English” hard edged learning receded and “Mickey Mouse” classes arose. Students cannot really be blamed for choosing “the Comic book as Literature” over Shakespeare when both satisfied the local requirements for a literature class nor can they be blamed for choosing photography and cooking in place of the traditional chemistry or biology for their science requirements.
So to a great degree, public education has failed in its mission to educate our public. Another problem is the lack of opportunities for those who will never be among the college bound. Trade schools and apprenticeships are sorely lacking in our current system and those students who are not the most academically inclined deserve better than being “babysat by bored and uninspired educators.
Teachers unions have protected Jobs at the expense of students, Refusing dis cuss merit and mandating tenure that bad or inadequate teachers keep their Jobs and the educational bureaucracy grows, Administrators who contribute little to the actual education of students benefit by grand salaries while tax school districts can barely provide books and black boards. .
In view of this, parents have every to demand a choice.
The question is, are vouchers h choice?
Article extracted from this publication >> September 3, 1993
