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Libertarian Utopia: Private Schools Teaching Separate Social Fragments

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BurtWorm Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-16-05 09:47 AM
Original message
Libertarian Utopia: Private Schools Teaching Separate Social Fragments
To me, it sounds more like a nightmare and would only increase the rate of social fragmentation and political decadence. And there's one point Jacoby gets seriously wrong: secularism is not a "view" that secularists want reflected in the schools. It's the only practical means of teaching a diverse cross-section of students without violating the First Amendment's establishment clause.


http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/06/12/separating_school_and_state/

JEFF JACOBY
Separating school and state
By Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist | June 12, 2005



From issues of sexuality and religion to the broad themes of US history and politics, public opinion is fractured. Secular parents square off against believers, supporters of homosexual marriage against traditionalists, those stressing ''safe sex" against those who emphasize abstinence. Each wants its views reflected in the classroom. No longer is there a common understanding of the mission of public education. To the extent that one camp's vision prevails, parents in the opposing camp are embittered. And there is no prospect that this will change -- not as long as the government remains in charge of educating American children.

Which is why it's time to put an end to government control of the schools.

There is nothing indispensable about a state role in education. Parents don't expect the government to provide their children's food or clothing or medical care; there is no reason why it must provide their schooling. An educated citizenry is a vital public good, of course. But like most such goods, a competitive and responsive private sector can do a much better job of supplying it than the public sector can.

Imagine how diverse and lively American education would be if it were liberated from government control. There would be schools of every description -- just as there are restaurants, websites, and clothing styles of every description. Parents who wanted their children to be taught Darwinian evolution unsullied by leaps of faith about an Intelligent Designer would be able to choose schools in which religious notions would play no role. Those who wanted their children to see God's hand in the miraculous tapestry of life all around them would send them to schools in which faith played a prominent role.
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SmokingJacket Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-16-05 09:49 AM
Response to Original message
1. Right, and poor children would have no education
and no opportunity to ever rise out of poverty.

What a load of horseshit.

Scary, too, that he thinks it's reasonable to equate education with clothing, over and over again.
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Lydia Leftcoast Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-16-05 09:52 AM
Response to Original message
2. I've got one word--two, actually--for that idiot
Northern Ireland.

For generations, it has had separate Protestant and Catholic school systems, both state supported, since the UK government supports religious schools.

A couple of decades ago, at the height of the violence, a group in Minnesota sponsored summer vacations in the Midwest for children from Northern Ireland as a means of giving them a respite from the violence.

The children were astounded to see Protestants and Catholics being friends with each other. Thanks to the segregated school system, they didn't even know any people of the other religion.
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BurtWorm Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-16-05 09:59 AM
Response to Reply #2
4. Excellent point.
I don't see how anyone but someone with severe anti-social tendencies would think it's a good idea to segregate children based on what their parents believe. Schools aren't--and shouldn't be--education boutiques or factories. They're also supposed to be for socializing individuals and bringing children in contact with their peers.

Of course Libertarianism is at heart anti-social.
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getmeouttahere Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-16-05 10:04 AM
Response to Reply #2
5. Fascinating AND powerful, Lydia Leftcoast...
Education is just one area that BushCo wants to privatize, but it could be the most telling in terms of their aims for this country, and of course most damaging. Wasn't it Greenspan who said the other day that he was concerned that we are not educating our children. Well, you have to education ALL your children.
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bennywhale Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-16-05 10:25 AM
Response to Reply #2
8. Good point. I'm from the UK and have been arguing this very same
thing for years. On leaving school, kids from each community tend to then gravitate towards employment with their "own" and so on and so on. I know people in Northern Ireland who live in the next street to Catholics, but simply do not know them.

This way its easier for the paramilitaries in each community to spread propaganda about the other community and on to violence and death.

Ban religious schools in Northern Ireland and in 20 years a better society.
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getmeouttahere Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-16-05 09:58 AM
Response to Original message
3. That was the part I found most offensive as well....
they'll always believe that the free market is the answer to everything.

Anyone who wants to read good arguments for the case for good government, take a look at "The Efficient Society; Why Canada is As Close to Utopia As it Gets" by Joseph Heath. It isn't JUST a Canadian perspective, and I think it supplies some excellent ammunition for the left.
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Tux Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-16-05 10:13 AM
Response to Original message
6. More libertarian bullshit
Secular education prepares people to function in a democracy and get jobs. Secular culture connects people together (corporations are really doing well there). This crazy shit has to end. Someone has to tel libertarians that the gov can't do anything other than protect property of the wealthy while the poor get trashed for fun.
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Telly Savalas Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-16-05 10:27 AM
Response to Reply #6
9. The phrase "libertarian bullshit" is rather redundant.
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zbdent Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-16-05 10:19 AM
Response to Original message
7. Jeff Jacoby had a brief moment of clarity and clear thinking last year
(wrote a column which might have been considered critical of W)

I e-mailed the paper and asked if he was ill . . .
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Warpy Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-16-05 10:27 AM
Response to Original message
10. Libertarians are dreamers, utterly ignorant of history, who only
make sense when they're talking about the drug war. Otherwise, they can be dismissed like other Utopian thinkers, as all theory, no practicality. They seem to be as incapable of thinking things through as they are of acknowledging the lessons of history.

Their crackpot theories all depend upon the perfection of the human species. When that happens, perhaps I'll bother with them.

Pardon me, but why waste time with this stuff?
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BurtWorm Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-16-05 10:30 AM
Response to Reply #10
11. Because it's out there (in more ways than one).
Any time such an idea is put out for public consumption, it offers an opportunity to sharpen thinking about why it's wrong.
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NMMNG Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-16-05 07:08 PM
Response to Original message
12. Sigh
Parents who wanted their children to be taught Darwinian evolution unsullied by leaps of faith about an Intelligent Designer would be able to choose schools in which religious notions would play no role.

That already exists in most public schools (except those tainted by the efforts of the RR to instill Intelligent Design into the science courses).


Those who wanted their children to see God's hand in the miraculous tapestry of life all around them would send them to schools in which faith played a prominent role.

Yeah, they're called religious schools, and they already exist.


Imagine how diverse and lively American education would be if it were liberated from government control.

Imagine how uniform schools would be under Jacoby's scheme. Instead of public schools where children of all flavors come to learn, there would be Religious Schools, Sports Schools, Trade Schools, Alternative Sexuality Schools, Black Pride Schools, Latino Pride Schools, and who knows what else. Kids could go their entire school careers and never meet anyone outside their immediate peer group, never know diversity, never learn to interact with others and problem solve.

That would be a tragedy.




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