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Yes, better to have no education at all in the failing public schools, don’t u think?</p>
<p>THEN FIX THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. They are not all bad, everywhere. In my city they are better than the private schools. </p>
<p>Rexximus, I was not setting up a “dichotomy,” I was asking a question. We all pay for lots of things we don’t all benefit from. THAT is the false dichotomy–treating education like a consumer good, a commodity that can be had for the lowest price without negative impact.</p>
<p>Our educational system in NC and across the country is in need of major overhaul. It is a disgrace that poorer children in this country are not provided the same education as children from wealthier communities. I am not against finding ways to trim the waste out of the educational budget, but, in my opinion, taking money away from the schools and giving it to private institutions is not the answer. Vouchers are not palatable to me for the reasons I said in my earlier post. We are supposed to have a separation of church and state in this country and, private schools are private. If they can’t get students without vouchers, then they need a different plan or donor. We need a real plan to fix our schools, but a government that truly works bipartisanly for the people doesn’t appear to be anywhere in our near future, so I’m not sure how improvement can happen.</p>
<p>Remember that the objective is to make sure the kids are educated. It shouldn’t be about supporting any particular school system, public or private. </p>
<p>I agree that there are plenty of good public schools, including the one I graduated from. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. </p>
<p>But the FAILING ones have had half a century to fix themselves. How much more time are you happy to give them to sort it out while the kids are robbed of an education? **It’s like telling the families not to take their chances in the lifeboats, but to stay on the Titanic because you’ve given the captain a roll of duct tape.
**</p>
<p>We will have to agree to disagree. In NC, I don’t see the options that are coming forward as better. I certainly don’t see vouchers as the answer to the problems in our schools. Vouchers for private schools are something that may help a few, but the larger school problem isn’t going anywhere. It would be nice if the voucher idea wasn’t coming from a place with an agenda that (my opinion) isn’t necessarily in the best interest of the masses. The problem isn’t just with our schools. The problem is with our government and it’s inability to govern effectively. Too many people and corporations with their own agendas. It’s pretty sad.</p>
<p>I’m not sure in NC that the objective is entirely to make sure the kids are educated. I suspect that, since our legislators have not succeeded in getting prayer back into the schools (remember, this is the state that tried to establish an official state religion this year), that vouchers are a back-handed way of getting public funds to pay for kids to get fundamentalist Christian educations emphasizing prayer over quality of education. Now, if our legislators DO approve funds for Hebrew schools, and Islamic schools, and Atheist schools, then I’ll apologize. But I’d be very surprised if that were the case. Yes, our country was founded by people seeking religious freedom. But our founding fathers recognized the need to NOT establish a government-sponsored religion. Just like the Pilgrims did not want to be told how to worship, non-Christians (and given that this is NC, as a Catholic, to many I fall into the non-Christian group) need the same right. Publicly funded schools should not be teaching religious principles. I have no problem with studying how private schools do things better and using them as models. But having my tax dollars used to teach children that girls wearing pants is the work of Satan - that I have a problem with.</p>
<p>I don’t think the objective is AT ALL to get kids educated. It’s to get kids indoctrinated into the “state religion” and make rich people richer, like the DeVos and Walton families. </p>
<p>[Billionaires</a> Behind Push In North Carolina To Transfer $40 Million Of Taxpayer Money To Private Schools | Republic Report](<a href=“http://www.republicreport.org/2012/billionaires-behind-north-carolina-privatization-pus/]Billionaires”>Billionaires Behind Push In North Carolina To Transfer $40 Million Of Taxpayer Money To Private Schools | Republic Report)</p>
<p>As always, follow the money.</p>
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<p>The people who are obsessed with creationism are the ones who are trying to get it taught in the public schools – or trying to get funding for private schools that teach it. The reason I mentioned creationism is because that is a huge rallying point for the pro-voucher crowd. THEY are the ones who talk about it constantly.</p>
<p>My point is that schools that teach creationism and not evolution are not teaching an adequate science curriculum. That’s like a school teaching addition, subtraction, and multiplication, but not division because numbers “can divide themselves”. Would we want non-division teaching schools to receive vouchers?</p>
<p>As a Christian, I believe that God created everything. Call that creationism, intelligent design, whatever. What it isn’t, though, is science.</p>
<p>To follow up on one of Inigo’s points, I know of at least two fundamentalist Christian schools in this area that are excited about vouchers. They both teach as part of their required religion curriculum that Catholics are not Christians and are going to hell. (They wouldn’t like most Protestant churches either.) Would we want vouchers going to a fundamentalist Muslim school that teaches that Christians are the enemy? Or any kind of fundamentalist school that teaches that members of any other religion/denomination are going to hell or are the enemy?</p>
<p>I’m all for public school reform, and I have lots of ideas, some quite radical. 
However, taking money from the public schools to put into this kind of school (and don’t kid yourself; these are the schools that have been pushing vouchers) is unconscionable.</p>