School Vouchers: The Real Agenda

George Will writes about one of today's conservative's biggest issues, educational vouchers and open school choice.  These would supposedly give parents, especially low income parents, funds to allow them to enroll their kids in private schools which conservatives assure us are much superior to public schools (because by their definition the private sector always does things better and more efficiently than the government).

While I believe there are some lower income students who would benefit from such a system, I'm convinced that in the long run all it would do is put an end to public schools, and cut teacher's salaries all over the country in half (need any more reasons to explain why teacher's unions are fighting vouchers?).  It would result in just as many bad private schools as there are bad public schools, but because the schools would now be a private sector activity, it would be much harder to solve the problem without massively regulating education, which the conservatives would fight tooth and nail.

Also, little alarm bells go off in my mind whenever conservatives talk about doing something good for low income children and for improving racial balance, because let's face it, when have you ever heard conservative really give a damn about the poor and racial minorities?  These are not constituancies that conservatives lay awake at night worrying about.  They have spent decades trying to convince voters that the poor are poor because they are either lazy or refuse to take responsibility for their actions.  And the only time conservatives think about racial equality is when they want to scare white bigots into voting Republican (and let me insert here what a hoot is was to read about racial diversity when writing about a program in Utah, one of the nation's whitest states!).

Why then are conservatives so intent on school vouchers and school choice?  Well, their real objective here is to bust the national teacher's unions and abolish public schools.  Conservatives hate the teacher's unions for many reasons, but chief among them is the fact that the unions have been able to negotiate for decent wages for teachers in general.  This drives conservatives crazy because they believe it is imperative that workers be desperate and insecure, always willing to work for the lowest possible wages. They should always be looking over their shoulder believing there is someone out there more desperate than them who is willing to do their job for less.  The idea of a guaranteed decent wage and job security is anathema to their view of unfettered, unregulated capitalism.

Conservatives hate public schools because public schools are subject to public regulation and laws.  In theory public schools are supposed to be secular and fact based.  While they don't always do this well, abolishing them and replacing them with a hodgepodge of private schools - many of them religious in nature - all competing for the voucher money, and subject to no regulation other then what consumers exert over the marketplace, would result in disaster.  In rural school systems where a large majority of the parents are conservative Christians, the local private school (and the marketplace will only support one) will have to teach creationism and conservative politics or a new school will open that does, and that's where the majority of parents will send their kids.  In the outer suburbs of large cities the most successful private schools will be those who can find ways to exclude large numbers of minorities.

I could go on and on about this subject.  I spent 10 years as an officer in the PTAs where kid's went to school, and I saw first hand the dynamics of how parents judge schools, and it wasn't pretty.

--Trakker

Comments

[Dave Baldwin (a.k.a. daveb99)]

George Will revisits the topic of school vouchers fairly regularly. I didn't bother reading it this morning. However, I did take a look at it after reading your comment. Sure enough, I had his entire essay in my head before I read it!

One thing that never fails with Will--he invariably forces me to go scrambling for the dictionary to look up a word. Today the word is "meretricious." I am going to try to use meretricious in 10 different settings tomorrow.

Anyway, nice essay--very thought provoking. Keep writing!

[Trakker]

I don't often read George Will because often I have no idea what his point is, but I do admire his command of the language.

I thought I knew what meretricious meant until you mentioned it and then I decided to look it up. I'm glad I did. I thought it meant "a simple idea dressed up to look complicated" but was wrong:

1: of or relating to a prostitute.
2 a: tawdrily and falsely attractive.
2 b: superficially significant.

I assume George had the second usage in mind!