I wonder at what point the rural Republican voters wake up and realize they want to kill public education in order to keep poor kids- theirs especially- as grist for the billionaires.
GOPers hate public goods so much that they poured money into opposing a bond issue for the Columbus (OH) Zoo. Get those lazy monkeys and tigers off the public dole!
So Covid Kim got her voucher plan passed last year. And this year, most private schools in Iowa increased tuition for pretty much the amount of the vouchers their students were able to bring them. Net result: more money for private schools, but no new opportunities to attend them. And of course less money for public schools, who get to educate everyone the private schools, with zero accountability, reject.
I've been driving my kids all over for soccer tonight, but here's this thing from my wealthy-ish blue state suburb: even people who send their kids to private schools (and there a lot!) want to have great public schools. From a basic homeowner's perspective, good schools = more money for your house.
Even selfish pricks should realize that their homes won't be worth as much if their school districts suck. Mortgage + private school? GTFO.
"..they want an underclass of relatively ignorant culture warriors.."
Completely agree with your sentence as it stands but it's worth noting that this section could also stand on its own. In fact, you could even trim it down to "They want an underclass." Whatever semi-coherent, grammatically challenged, CPAC-
scripted garbage spills out of their mouths, the rich white supremacists' Vision for America depends on a permanent slave class to populate their cannon-fodder ranks and for-profit prisons.
Ta, Robyn. Sigh. I learned to read at age two, and got a library card (in Brooklyn, one could get a card as soon as one was able to sign it, in cursive, which I practiced for a week). I went to Kindergarten in a city in northern NJ. Then my family made its final move to a lily-white suburb of not-so-little boxes made of ticky-tacky. That's where I went to school for 10 years before my mother threw me out for fabricated reasons.
I never belonged there. I loathed it, and was bullied mercilessly. The first week of first grade, the teacher called my parents in for a conference. She suggested a private school in Princeton, which was nearby. Unfortunately for me, my parents were buying that shitty house (they'd always rented), and they wanted me to socialize with the new neighbors. Epic fail.
That said, the love of my life is a public school teacher in my birthplace of Brooklyn. Public schools deserve all the love and all the money. Not a penny of our taxes should fund charter schools, let alone private schools. Not a red cent.
Here's a song Stevie Wonder wrote FIFTY YEARS AGO to the year -- and if you're wondering why all the issues are exactly the same and the country has made no progress ... consider the fact that it is Confederate Republicans who drag us backward literally every single time
As a HS sped teacher during the pandemic, I can assure you this is so. I actually had families suffering hardship because one parent or another had to stop working to ride herd on the kids.
We started a food pantry to help, another instance of schools stepping in where others did not.
"[T]hey also want more control over who has access to education and who doesn’t."
What they want is control over what gets taught. Another generation of ignorant rubes willing to vote Republican won't exist otherwise. (See: New College, right down there on the Wonkette home page.)
They're being asked to torch their public schools, in exchange for . . . what, exactly? Is it possible that there's a limit to what they're willing to pay, in order to see trans kids forced to use the "right" bathroom?
I remain absolutely astonished at the number of reasonable well-educated White people, who also care about democracy, who either don't understand or won't see the depth of the power of racism in this country when LBJ spoke about it before lots of us were even born
I grew up in a town the size of Sulphur, and it was the largest town in the county. Other towns were little more than two stop lights and a gas station. We had one high school in a 15 mile radius and one middle school. A few elementary schools. So any change in the system was big.
"The GOP is playing a long game here. Yes, they want to privatize and monetize schools because they want to privatize and monetize everything. But they also want more control over who has access to education and who doesn’t."
I got in touch with the Tea Party in 2018 after Trump's 17% increase in deficit spending, they told me they wanted to talk to me about school choice. The Tea Party was funded by Charles Koch, along with every other bad idea, dark money, pool in America. The rubes will never figure out that they are just useful idiots.
Conservative hostility to public schools really began in 1954, with the Brown v. Board decision striking down legal segregation. Private "segregation academies" sprang up, whites-only of course, and the Confederate states promptly began diverting tax money to them, and away from public schools.
That eventually got snuffed out (in an excruciatingly long process), but the basic attitude remained. In the 1970s, when Mississippi was considering mandatory kindergarten, a state senator or some such Solon declared that he was damned if he would use taxpayers' money to babysit a bunch of Black kids. Only he didn't call them Black. Most proponents of "vouchers" know now not to use that kind of language, at least in public, but IMO that's what drives many of them.
Make. PACs. Illegal.
I wonder at what point the rural Republican voters wake up and realize they want to kill public education in order to keep poor kids- theirs especially- as grist for the billionaires.
GOPers hate public goods so much that they poured money into opposing a bond issue for the Columbus (OH) Zoo. Get those lazy monkeys and tigers off the public dole!
https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2014/04/why-the-koch-brothers-are-tangling-with-jungle-jack-hanna
Kozol's "Death at an Early Age" was one of my formative texts as a young(er) teacher. Nice to know he's still kicking.
So Covid Kim got her voucher plan passed last year. And this year, most private schools in Iowa increased tuition for pretty much the amount of the vouchers their students were able to bring them. Net result: more money for private schools, but no new opportunities to attend them. And of course less money for public schools, who get to educate everyone the private schools, with zero accountability, reject.
I've been driving my kids all over for soccer tonight, but here's this thing from my wealthy-ish blue state suburb: even people who send their kids to private schools (and there a lot!) want to have great public schools. From a basic homeowner's perspective, good schools = more money for your house.
Even selfish pricks should realize that their homes won't be worth as much if their school districts suck. Mortgage + private school? GTFO.
Boom! A dude I work with who has kids in late HS discovered his school might go title 1. He wants to move because fear of reduction in value
"..they want an underclass of relatively ignorant culture warriors.."
Completely agree with your sentence as it stands but it's worth noting that this section could also stand on its own. In fact, you could even trim it down to "They want an underclass." Whatever semi-coherent, grammatically challenged, CPAC-
scripted garbage spills out of their mouths, the rich white supremacists' Vision for America depends on a permanent slave class to populate their cannon-fodder ranks and for-profit prisons.
Ta, Robyn. Sigh. I learned to read at age two, and got a library card (in Brooklyn, one could get a card as soon as one was able to sign it, in cursive, which I practiced for a week). I went to Kindergarten in a city in northern NJ. Then my family made its final move to a lily-white suburb of not-so-little boxes made of ticky-tacky. That's where I went to school for 10 years before my mother threw me out for fabricated reasons.
I never belonged there. I loathed it, and was bullied mercilessly. The first week of first grade, the teacher called my parents in for a conference. She suggested a private school in Princeton, which was nearby. Unfortunately for me, my parents were buying that shitty house (they'd always rented), and they wanted me to socialize with the new neighbors. Epic fail.
That said, the love of my life is a public school teacher in my birthplace of Brooklyn. Public schools deserve all the love and all the money. Not a penny of our taxes should fund charter schools, let alone private schools. Not a red cent.
It seems like the moneyed interests that drive the Republican party won't be satisfied until there is no public good left.
If you wonder why our roads are full of potholes - thank Republicans for lower taxes
If you are concerned about the underfunding of schools - thank Republicans for lower taxes
Hey - it sure is taking a long time for the mail to travel - thank Republicans
The US is rapidly heading towards becoming a failed state. This kind of thing, the elimination of all public goods, is shredding civil society.
Sometimes you have to break a few eggs to destroy the village to save it.
That quote from Jonathan Kozol was from 2007 - and yet, here we are 14 years later, and Republicans still don't get it
Here's a song Stevie Wonder wrote FIFTY YEARS AGO to the year -- and if you're wondering why all the issues are exactly the same and the country has made no progress ... consider the fact that it is Confederate Republicans who drag us backward literally every single time
https://youtu.be/0SEGHvLElxc?si=dT3Gz8kMOeLpDYg4
Even though it feels like I am missing a education outcomes joke, Imma go with 2007 being 17 years ago.
Ooops!
You math guys. If you apply Lacan to the problem, it all comes out in roses.
Public schools are also most people's babysitter so the parents can work a minimum wage job.
As a HS sped teacher during the pandemic, I can assure you this is so. I actually had families suffering hardship because one parent or another had to stop working to ride herd on the kids.
We started a food pantry to help, another instance of schools stepping in where others did not.
"[T]hey also want more control over who has access to education and who doesn’t."
What they want is control over what gets taught. Another generation of ignorant rubes willing to vote Republican won't exist otherwise. (See: New College, right down there on the Wonkette home page.)
Yep. No real history or literature, but we'll teach them to write in cursive so they will be able to read a Constitution which no longer applies.
They're being asked to torch their public schools, in exchange for . . . what, exactly? Is it possible that there's a limit to what they're willing to pay, in order to see trans kids forced to use the "right" bathroom?
This project is way older than controversies over trans kids. They are an "add-on" to years' worth of this crap.
In exchange for the hierarchy of RACISM.
They’re willing to torch their healthcare for it too -- to the point where Jonathan Metzl wrote a whole book about it
https://youtu.be/iOyk7VK1A24?si=POcstD8W5JoGQvwv
I remain absolutely astonished at the number of reasonable well-educated White people, who also care about democracy, who either don't understand or won't see the depth of the power of racism in this country when LBJ spoke about it before lots of us were even born
Because most of them, unlike LBJ, never have had any intimate contact with the lower and browner classes.
I grew up in a town the size of Sulphur, and it was the largest town in the county. Other towns were little more than two stop lights and a gas station. We had one high school in a 15 mile radius and one middle school. A few elementary schools. So any change in the system was big.
Same here, in rural Michigan. We lived five miles out of town, though.
"The GOP is playing a long game here. Yes, they want to privatize and monetize schools because they want to privatize and monetize everything. But they also want more control over who has access to education and who doesn’t."
I got in touch with the Tea Party in 2018 after Trump's 17% increase in deficit spending, they told me they wanted to talk to me about school choice. The Tea Party was funded by Charles Koch, along with every other bad idea, dark money, pool in America. The rubes will never figure out that they are just useful idiots.
Conservative hostility to public schools really began in 1954, with the Brown v. Board decision striking down legal segregation. Private "segregation academies" sprang up, whites-only of course, and the Confederate states promptly began diverting tax money to them, and away from public schools.
That eventually got snuffed out (in an excruciatingly long process), but the basic attitude remained. In the 1970s, when Mississippi was considering mandatory kindergarten, a state senator or some such Solon declared that he was damned if he would use taxpayers' money to babysit a bunch of Black kids. Only he didn't call them Black. Most proponents of "vouchers" know now not to use that kind of language, at least in public, but IMO that's what drives many of them.