New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 3
School choice is an important component not only of liberty and improving educational outcomes but also of defeating the Woke Marxist influence in our schools and upon our children. It isn’t so easy as making the money follow the child or the backpack however. School choice legislation has to be smart, and it has some challenges in need of clever solutions before we blunder ahead into a trap the Woke Marxists are setting for us. In this episode of New Discourses Bullets, James Lindsay spends a few minutes breaking down the challenges and pitfalls of bad school choice policy by explaining how it will fail to solve the essential problem and might even walk our communities and our children into a Woke trap even worse than what we currently see in the public schools.
Additional episodes of New Discourses Bullets may be found here.
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Public (and some private) education, dominated by the extreme left (unions), has two goals or purposes:
—First: Dumb down the next generation by NOT using good educational techniques (Phonics, etc.), nor teaching (after the three ‘R’) thinking and reasoning skills (i.e. Trivium) and most importantly by NOT teaching HISTORY or how our world got to be the way we see it today.
—Second: Cripple the mind of the next generation. Ecclesiastical education has known how to do this for hundreds of years:
1. Pre-puberty sex. Before physical maturity of course but specifically and definitely before intellectual maturity.
2. Guilt trips. (original sin). Guilt associated with immutable characteristics (color of your skin); or because of something someone else did before you were born. Guilt that YOU deserve to be punished for: MUST atone for, repent, do penitence for and is so terrible bad that you can / will never be forgiven for!
Why? Because a dumbed down and Crippled mind is that much easier to enslave!
We are bringing School Choice to Oregon with constitutional amendments to the Oregon constitution. We are empowering parents who know what their children need and we are allowing parents to choose which schooling is best for their children. Our school choice will allow for public school choice–open enrollment year-round across Oregon to empower parents who believe public school works best for their children, and will allow for private based school choice to give parents the constitutionally protected right to choose for example private school or homeschool–and not be dependent on a legislative exception to a mandatory education at a public school. And our private choice will further allow parents to OPT IN and choose to have an education savings account into which a share of Oregon’s education dollars will be transferred. Once that money is deposited into the ESA it is NO longer government money. The government will therefore be prevented from demanding compliance with government policies just to use the money. No more strings tied to use of government money. We also build in protections for parents and private schools against regulation by the state as to creed, curriculum, education practices, admission policies and teaching credentials. We are writing these measures for the parents and to restore parents to their rightful position as the ones in charge of their children’s education. [email protected]
As a young man, I would have never seen a need for school choice.
But in my last year of high school I attended an “alternative” public high school (in Ann Arbor Michigan). This turned out, in a lot of ways, to be a sort of pre-Woke educational environment. But I had the choice of self study, so I basically home-schooled for my last year of high school without even realizing it!
I didn’t go to college, because in those years (early 1970s) there was considerable anti-college propaganda being published, and I was very moved by it. I went to a community college and worked as an electronics technician. This was fine for me, but would have been a problem for someone with more ambitious financial goals (today I live on an income officially below the poverty level).
Though I am aware of a private school network that I would trust (the Applied Scholastics system), we really need to reform the whole field of education. Colleges are one thing – as they traditionally train the upper classes – but public schools really need to be straightened out.
As James notices, many people realistically only have the public school choice. Those people have to make their public schools work for them, or else totally lose control over the education of their children. So, while I was really happy to be able to have some school choice when I was growing up, I see that today for many people it is a hollow promise. We need to actually push the Woke out of our schools, not just provide alternative schools for those who can afford to avoid Wokeness.
Yes, a free market dynamic requires a free market. This also requires us to allow parents and students to make choices that “we” may not agree with, including Woke (and many other) ones. May I also suggest that freedom as a Right must include Responsibility (as consequent to Choice). Thus I propose that parents choose for kids 5-12 years old. And kids choose when 13-19 years old. The introduction of meaningful Choice on the cusp of young adulthood is a meaningful introduction to Responsibility/Freedom. On a side note, do you know of any people who are at work on a new Bill of Rights and Responsibilities that would address the widespread abuses of power that we see in every direction?
“kids choose when 13-19 years old”
No. Parents may want to consider the preferences of their kids but kids are not adults and are not responsible for themselves. Parents get to make the ultimate choices. Only those who are independent adults who are personally accountable should be granted these “rights.” Even after kids reach age 18, if they are being funded by their parents, then the parents get veto power. Not on board with your concept of a Bill of Rights to subvert parental authority.