The problem is state-funded education
By Shane Solano 04/12/2012
You can’t fix a problem if you don’t know what the problem is. All too often today, even when the problem is hitting folks square in the face, they still can’t (or won’t) acknowledge it, let alone come up with any actual solutions. The editorial in the March 22 VCReporter was a case study in this kind of maddening myopia, which is depressingly rampant these days. The author admits that the state education monopoly has utterly failed (referencing the $200,000/wayward teen the state spends to cage the children that it has so dramatically harmed with its “education” system) and that the thugs dba the state of California have chosen to cut spending where the negative results will impact children, the most vulnerable of society.
Where are those great and faithful “servants” of the public whose only desire is to ensure the common good? Will none of our heroic “leaders” volunteer to take drastic pay cuts or serve without pay, or make cuts to those “problematic unfunded pensions”? Is there nowhere else to cut … no governmental agencies, “advisory” panels or “consultants” that can be done without? What about the supermen/women in the state policing and firefighting monopolies? Those selfless souls who put their very lives on the line for us, dear taxpayer, out of sheer goodness! Surely they’ll step up and sacrifice a portion of their incredibly generous compensation packages for the children?! What about the entire state education bureaucracy itself? I’m sure each and every member of this selfless group believes children are entitled to a free education. … Well, I say, “Here’s your chance to practice what you preach.” Educate and administrate for free! What’s stopping y’all from volunteering your services?
None of the parasite class functioning within the state apparatus will volunteer to stop leeching off the productive class. They’d sooner knock a child into the gutter than sacrifice a measure of their own ill-gotten wealth. Anyone surprised by this has their head firmly planted up their ass. Speaking of asses … it’s appalling, but predictable, that the writer of the “dismantling public education” editorial ultimately offers the reader a false choice between either acceding to more taxes in order to continue funding the failed state education monopoly or … more taxes in order to fund the warehousing of youths failed by the same state education monopoly. According to the editorialist, our only choices, apparently, are to fork over more money now to the education bureaucracy, or later, to the state prison bureaucracy; we should give more money to the same politicians and bureaucrats who’ve PROVEN that education and children are a low priority to them! How completely insane! What about massive tax CUTS that would allow a family to live off of one income so that one can stay home and educate their own children? How about COMBINING massive tax cuts with an ABOLITION of the one-size-fits-all-cookie-cutter state-run education system so that parents and communities are empowered to see to their own children’s educations? What is it about empowering individuals that so frightens so many people? Why does anyone imagine that strangers care more about educating children than the parents of children?
The editorialist asks, “If we pronounce loud and clear that education isn’t important, should we expect anything different from our children?” I’d ask in return, “Haven’t we already done that by turning the education of our precious children over to unaccountable strangers — and then, once it’s become undeniably clear that the system has failed, continuing to force them into it?” I know many folks reading this will probably think I’m “against education” since I’m against the state monopoly system currently providing (but not really) for education. I don’t care! This topic is far too important and complex to let such asinine, simplistic, and ignorant opinions drown out reason and common sense. The problem IS state-run education. The ONLY rational solutions are those that seek to transition from and eventually END state-run education. Will this happen before the entire system totally collapses under its own bloated and dead weight? Can we, as a society, have an intelligent discussion about it? Or, will prevailing ignorance and politically entrenched special interest groups prevent REAL solutions?
I urge anyone truly interested in pursuing this topic to check out schoolsucks.podomatic.com/ and theultimatehistorylesson.com/the-interview/johns-biography/.
Shane Solano lives in Ventura and believes in the separation of education and state.
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