Good ol' Mayor Bloomberg is working hard to ensure that no child will be left behind when the United States formally transitions to a police state:
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced yesterday that police officers with metal detectors would conduct unannounced sweeps of students and their bags at middle schools and high schools throughout the city beginning later this month.
The scanning, as students arrive for classes in the morning, may be conducted at any of the roughly 80 percent of secondary schools that do not have permanent metal detectors, Mr. Bloomberg said, but schools where officials perceive there is a heightened risk will probably be searched more frequently.
In announcing the plan, the mayor cited a recent increase in the number of guns and other weapons confiscated in the public schools even as major crime in schools citywide has declined this year.
Students and school officials will get no warning of the scanning, but to comply with legal restrictions, the mayor said the city would post notices outside schools alerting students that they can be searched on entry.
I know what some conservatives are thinking about this. "Kids have no right to privacy in school." True to a point, but the government is forcing most of these kids to go there because their parents don't have the money to send their kids to a private school. The government says sure, you can send your kids to a school where they won't be subjected to this treatment, but you'll have to not only pay your taxes to support our school, but pay probably at least $10,000 a semester more to send them to a good private school. It's like the right to freedom of speech in the PRC these days. It looks great on paper, until you read the fine print at the end of the PRC's constitution and legal code.
This is just another good reason why we really need some major school reform in this country. We wouldn't have half of the discipline problems we face today if there was a free market for public education based on a voucher system. Parents would actually be held responsible for their little hoodlum's behavior because the school could expel them for bringing a firearm into the school, and then the other schools could refuse to provide them services.
I also wonder how many conservatives who are sympathetic to the school administrators have themselves been through a modern school lockdown. They feel a lot like what one would expect a prison lockdown to be like. Combine that with random searches and a curriculum that enforces conformity and crushes critical thinking and you have a recipe for a passive citizenry.
I agree, but vouchers are not the way to go. For example,
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig3/huebert3.html
http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul132.html
Homeschool. Homeschool. Homeschool.
No metal detectors so far. :)
You might want to get them anyway, just so that you can convince the social services people that you aren't being an irresponsible parent ;)
Mark, tviper...
I am a little dubious as to how we could get many kids educated without any sort of socialized assistance. Do we really want a system where they cannot be sent to private schools? What we need is an update to the first amendment that states:
"This amendment shall not be construed to mean that any government shall be prohibited from supporting any religious organization that is providing a valued public service unless the primary focus of that organization is the evangelizing of the public. The use of public funds to provide for a religious education that covers at least full literacy, basic comprehension of mathematics, history and the hard sciences shall not be considered an establishment of religion in any case where all religions are allowed equal opportunity to educate the children of their congregations pursuant to their religious doctrines, except in such cases where their religion's scriptures encourage violence against the republic and its citizens. No lawsuit shall be brought to obstruct the provision of funds for these purposes, nor shall discrimination be imposed on the amount provided."
What I worry about is that if we don't provide vouchers, it will be nearly impossible to get things right at all. The number of reforms necessary to make no government support required is too unrealistic to get it all in place at once.
How about this one, then? The states provide a "tax return" equal to the voucher and place a legal requirement to enroll the children in either a school or work fulltime at homeschooling?
Mark,
That's not my point. What I was getting at is what do you do about the people who are too poor to educate their kids? Shouldn't parents have a legal responsibility to take reasonable steps to ensure that their kids can read and write as well as do basic math?
I'm conflicted here because the issue has some very damning consequences in every direction if we don't get it right. Again, why I am a "Fabian Libertarian." Our currency, wages, etc. are too f$%^ed right now to make a complete abandonment of public funds for education viable.
The question you ought to be asking is why is it that even France can get it right, but we can't? They fund religious educations too, except for the religious classes. They don't discriminate against the schools you choose, they just pay for the baseline reading, writing, math, history and science regardless of where you send your kids. Why can't we have that here is a good question.
I admit, that without vouchers I would rather get rid of public education altogether as it is worse than a lack of education.
No offense, Mike - but all three of BigBroBranches have shown an amazing tendency to utterly ignore the Bill of Rights anyway, and the more any proposed additions exceed five words (like "congress shall make no law" or "shall not be infringed") the greater the likelihood of Bogus Construction.
No one is saying YOU can't choose to homeschool your children, or send 'em anywhere you want.
Just don't steal from your brother to do so, and expect God to bless the effort.
Mark,
I will look into that sometime when I get the chance to do so. The one area where I do completely support government assistance is the GI Bill. Even if we need to get a constitutional amendment passed, I would like to see it continued. It would probably work better, though, if the federal government would just hand over the entire $36,000-$40,000 grant all at once on a non-taxable basis and let the member of the armed forces handle their education from that point on. It is a very good incentive for getting people to serve in the military in good times for the economy.
PS, MikeT - look into the history of socialist "public" education ("Prussian model") sometime. It was NOT a part of early American tradition, where literacy rates were higher than today.
Mike -
One could argue that the GI bill is a contract incentive; different thing entirely.
Sometime I'll repost the old Prof. Walter Williams parable "what is theft?"; meanwhile, I continue to argue that we have SOOO departed from Torah (starting with "love God" and climaxing in an utterly fake "money" that makes His proscriptions against dishonest weights and measures seem tame) that most people CANNOT see the difference between the qadosh (set apart, "holy") and the profane.
The bottom line is still - if you steal (and that means a "vote" to use guns to take somebody else's stuff - even if a million other thieves vote with you), don't expect a just God to bless the violation.
And don't confuse that with a moral obligation to GIVE to widows, orphans, and His Kingdom.
Mark,
In general, I agree with you, but the federal government does need to continue to provide some competitive reasons to work for it otherwise we'll get nothing but idiots. I know that a lot of libertarians assume that the government is one bumbling mass of idiocy, but most of them would be shocked at how much talent some agencies like the NSA have been able to get to work for them. The NSA, for example, has a hardware engineering program that is closer to what Intel and AMD have working for them than what most people expect from the government.
What I would like to see is an approach to federal tax revenue raising based in part on how Switzerland determines their taxes. They use a popular referendum to authorize taxes. We should not only strip Congress of the power to raise any direct income tax on its own (property, income, capital gains, etc.) and have a system where no one's vote is anonymous. By voting in favor of the bill, you agree to share an equal percentage of the burden, regardless of income level. That means that if you are dirt poor, you still get taxed 10% of the cost because guess what junior... you voted for the damn thing. Imagine how few eminent domain takings there would be if the poor and middle class knew that by voting in favor of it, the government would levy on each of the supporters a special tax to pay for it.
In case you can't tell, I am a bit technocratic. It comes from being a software developer. We're forced to plan ahead, find flaws and try to preemptively fix them. It's the main reason why I'm so skeptical about our country's future when without some sort of voucher system in place while other reforms are brought to bear. I think that the following reforms would need to be firmly in place for at least a few years in order to get things rolling on ending public education:
1) Return to the gold standard
2) Cut the national debt down by fifty percent
3) Impose measures to deregulate aspects of business operations that increase payroll expenses.
4) Impose a slew of business reforms aimed primarily at cutting down on the cost of running a small or medium-sized company.
The economy and government are not forgiving enough right now for an end to public education. I understand the desire to cut it and trust in God, but I worry that cutting it all at once might be more along the lines of **tempting** God, not trusting him knowing the way our culture does these things.
I go back to our original "Fabian Libertarianism" discussions to say that the solution is to get people in the mode of actually handling a lot of their tasks on their own. Society is too well-managed and controlled to just have it ended in one or two election cycles. It needs to be a process that is started in say... 2008 and ended by at least 2028 if it is going to take root in the culture, especially among non-Christians/Jews.
MikeT, your suggestions are good, but wholly unrealistic...thus, the best course of action is to attempt to retard the creeping growth of Leviathan, which is why vouchers are a terrible idea as it gives the State yet another foothold into corrupting the minds of our youths...at least the well-off (private schools) and Christians (homeschoolers) will raise well-educated kids to hopefully effectuate change in the coming decades...
tviper,
I think it is even more realistic to expect people to give up on public education while the economic and political systems are structured the way that they are. Most families don't have the resources to go it 100% alone. In today's competitive economy, kids do need access to good science and math curricula, and that's something that neither most homeschooling families nor most public schools can provide.
There are issues that affect our ability to do this like the wage distribution, immigration, taxes and business regulation that need to be ironed out first. Eliminate the property taxes, cut the income tax down to at most a 5% flat tax, increase the sales taxes and deport the illegals and then we can start working toward this. Until then, ending public education altogether is a non-starter as an issue. Most people won't even consider it with the way things are right now.
MikeT - color me more cynical, too. I've probably said this before here, but I no longer believe that even a plurality of Americans are going to ever "get it". (I once was convinced that blatant enough lies would blow the lid off - OKC was a fraud even an HS frosh with half a brain could see, and TWA800 "arcing skyward" with no front half had every pilot I knew laughing at the CIA "cartoon" in derision. Ain't happenin'.)
It's about the Remnant now. They'll take their kids Out.