I emailed a devout Catholic (but very liberal) friend of mine to ask what he thought about the Catholic church’s steadfast support of Republicans. He wrote:
U.S. Catholic bishops support conservatives because they are conservatives. Unlike priests and bishops of the past who grew up in blue collar pro union Democratic families most today grew up in more afluent conservative Republican ones. Also, Pope John Paul II appointed bishops who were 100% on board with all Catholic teaching and would be 100% loyal to him. Despite his friendly popularity he was extremely conservative and began what Catholic Retros call “the reform of the reform” rolling back the changes of Vatican II.
I realize that I may sound like a paranoid liberal here, but my view is that conservatives are much more serious about controlling institutions than liberals are. The American Catholic church will always support Republicans, the NRA will always support Republicans, the Chamber of Commerce will always support Republicans. There’s no real analog for Democrats; it’s tempting to think that organized labor is an example, but here in New York State, they often support Republicans in the State Senate and sometimes even endorse them for Congress (though the latter is less and less frequent).
That’s why the movie “Waiting For Superman” frightens me. I see vouchers and, to a some extent, charter schools as a way for conservatives to take education over. It’s one of the few institutions that is not now under conservative control; I would argue that religion, big business, and the national media all function to some extent as proxies for the conservative movement. There’s no denying that conservatives have a hard-on for education: Bobo, for example, not only thinks that vouchers will save our public schools but that colleges should have affirmative action for conservatives.
Be afraid, be very afraid.
Daddy-O
“…conservatives are much more serious about controlling institutions than liberals are.”
You’re not paranoid, or wrong. That’s their goal, plain and simple: Control.
And it is an illusion of the grandest sort.
The Grand Panjandrum
C’mon Sully you can stop hiding behind the DougJ spoof.
How is it possible for conservatives too control everything? Ask any good Teahadist and they will tell you that the embedded secret Muslims will kill all of us, if the Jewish bankers don’t enslave us all first.
DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.
@The Grand Panjandrum:
Does Sully say “be very afraid”? I don’t read the posts there very much, I just got there for the links and the videos.
I got the “be afraid, be very afraid” thing from “High Fidelity”.
Jewish Steel
Such a plan, to the degree that there is one, has the seeds of it’s own destruction sown into it. Education is the most effective disinfectant against conservatism.
Whenever someone refers to a “conservative intellectual” it just makes me scratch my head.
kdaug
Oh, reallllly? ‘Cause here in my town, we’ve got a bunch of conservative whackjobs who are going to determine which textbooks half the nation has to buy for your kids, filled with nifty things like “separation of church and state is a myth” and “McCarthy has been unjustly smeared by the liberal media”.
The whole “Seven Mountains” thing is about absolute, Christianist control of your life. Just ’cause they haven’t yet hit 100% doesn’t mean the true believers are going to stop trying. It’s a faith-based thing.
Like I said to a buddy on FB last night, I think ideologues generally have always run the asylum. Politics tends to self-select for people who want to impose their opinions on others. And hate-filled faith is a powerful generator of said opinions.
master c
How about just be afraid of the Catholics?
I’m a dyed in the wool Catholic and they scare the shit out of me.
Liberal Catholics are on the ropes right now, not the church I grew up with-Im 45.
licensed to kill time
@DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.:
I thought that was from “The Fly”.
Daddy-O
@The Grand Panjandrum: If Hitler was unable to control everything HE wanted to control, then NOBODY will. It is an illusion, an outright hallucination, this idea that you can control another person. It is a symptom of a common but intense psychological fallacy, bordering on illness or pathology.
Reminds me of this timeless entry into one of my favorite well-thumbed tomes, The People’s Almanac, 1975, p. 1076, under the title “Drugs”:
c. 1650
The use of tobacco is prohibited in Bavaria, Saxony and Zurich, but the prohibitions are ineffective. Sultan Murad IV of the Ottoman Empire decrees the death penalty for smoking tobacco: “Whenever the Sultan went on his travels on or a military expedition his halting-places were always distinguished by a terrible increase in the number of executions. Even on the battlefield he was fond of surprising men in the act of smoking, when he would punish them by beheading, hanging, quartering, or crushing their hands and feet . . . Nevertheless, in spite of all the horrors of this persecution . . . the passion for smoking still persisted.”
If you can’t get people to stop smoking on the pain of death and torture, you can’t control them, and you never will.
Mark S.
That’s true to an extent, but the main reason is abortion.
Menzies
It’s even more insidious than that. This new emphasis on constant standardized testing as a panacea for problems in education, the idea that education should be run by the same standards as a business or a sports team, and the “blame-the-teachers” mentality that has erupted over the past fifteen or so years in education: none of these is just espoused by out-and-out conservatives/Republicans, but also by plenty of Democrats/liberals who otherwise have their heads pretty well screwed on their shoulders. Ted Kennedy co-sponsored NCLB, after all.
Menzies
@kdaug:
From what you’re saying, I assume you’re in TX?
kdaug
@Menzies: Austin, to be exact.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@Menzies: It’s really more about the profits. After all, Wall Street can’t profit that much off public schools. They can profit a lot more off charter schools.
300baud
This seems like an odd thesis to me.
One of the things driving my political preferences is distributing power. Most liberals these days seem to lean in that direction, while a lot of conservatives favor centralization, which as you say works well with their desire for control.
To me, vouchers are a way to distribute power. Giving parents the power to decide where their children go and allowing the creation of a variety of schools strikes me a maximally little-d democratic.
Corner Stone
They hate public education. They would end it tomorrow if they could. The only thing more hated is having to pay into SocSec.
They are doing to it what they do to every organization they touch. Set unrealistic goals, underfund, then point fingers.
Amanda in the South Bay
@Mark S.:
And, only to a slightly lesser degree, homosexuality and contraception. Basically, the Catholic Church has followed the social conservative movement pretty closely.
TomFactor
its all part of the seven mountains movement, to gain or regain control of the 7 mountains of cultural influence – media, business, education, the arts, gov’t, family and religion.
ETA that the 7 mountains movement isnt a catholic one. Same goals, maybe?
wlrube
@300baud:
Which is why “strikes me as” and “appears to be after a thorough study of the issue at hand” aren’t the same thing.
Svensker
@Daddy-O:
Yeah but you can try and make a lot of people miserable — or dead — in the trying.
srv
The bishops are nutters, but then they have always been. Catholic schools back in the day tended to be liberal, filled with Jesuit and Marist types and liberal post-hippy layfolk. It became fashionable under JP to go all Opus Dei, but I think that movement’s effect is more outliving the Jesuit-raised than really being successful replacing them philosophically. Bishops really aren’t that effective at ideologically managing their diocese – that should be apparent from just how bad they’ve been at managing the scandals.
I know a number of folks who went all Opus Dei in their youth and are as irked with the church as the rest of us are.
As for vouchers, if we had a million Jesuit educators laying about, I’d be all for it. But I’ve watched the Baptists and their voucher crusade for decades and I have yet to see a Baptist elementary or HS that comes even close to having the reputation as the Catholic schools. Evangelicals just think their kids can be taught on the cheap.
I’ve never met a parent with kids in a Catholic school who thought that way. That may be a holdover from their own Jesuit educations…
Mogden
When I look at public schools, I see a debacle. The reason? Terrible incentives for teachers and administrators.
Menzies
@Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle:
I think that’s part true, yeah. Most of the “entrepreneurs of education” I get to read about don’t even try to hide behind the idea of charter schools and go straight into how much better it would be to just abolish public education in general. Furthermore, if they really think they’re going to wring a lot of profit out of primary and secondary schools, I have no idea what’s wrong with them.
I count my own Governor among those, too. I imagine it must be a great time to be an aspiring schoolteacher back home.
Basilisc
If they do make a play for education, it won’t be through vouchers. They tried that several times over the past 30 years, and discovered something interesting: the moment exurban whitebread families realize that vouchers will allow darker-skinned folks to send their children outside of the city to where the good schools are, popular support for vouchers drops like a stone.
Conservatives don’t want to control all education. They just want to control their kids’ education, at least up to the point where they can keep the riffraff out. The rest of the system exists to teach the darkies their place (remember Principal Joe Clark?) and to get them up to, but by no means beyond, the level of literacy that enables them to operate a McDonalds cash register. That’s why we’re likely to see a revival of the “tuition tax credit” idea, so they can get society as a whole to pay for their own selective “academies” where they can teach creationism as fact, Muslims as demons, the Blessed Phyllis Schlafly as our national saint etc.
Such institutions sprang up across the South in the 60s and 70s, once it became clear that open segregation would have to go. And once they’ve spread to the rest of the country, they will stand as yet another way that the old Confederacy has triumphantly used the party of Lincoln to impose their culture on their erstwhile enemies.
BombIranForChrist
I think liberals have a stronger control over the “culture”, and by culture, I mean movies, TV, music, video games, etc. It’s not as cut and dry as conservatives owning the NRA, etc., but it’s definitely nothing to be sneezed at. It’s probably one of the few things that keeps the country from becoming arch-conservative across the board. It’s hard to be a rock-ribbed conservative and dress as Lady Gaga for Halloween.
And it’s not difficult to see why. No one, even conservatives, want the highlight of their entertainment for the week to be Wednesday night Bingo at the Methodist Church. Men want titties and beer. Women want …. I don’t know what women want.
– a man
burnspbesq
@DougJ:
Well, if you erroneously conflate the views of the hierarchy and the views of the faithful, I can see how you would believe that. However, it is largely false.
@Amanda in the South Bay and master c:
See above.
@master c:
Did you take part in the Peter’s Pence protest (instead of putting money in the envelope, people enclosed a note explaining why they weren’t giving)? It may not make a difference in the short run, but it sure did feel good.
debbie
Conservatives want control of institutions; they just don’t want to be bothered with the quality of said institutions. I watched the filmmaker and Gregory Canada interviewed on Tavis Smiley, and they acknowledged that many charters were not any better than the public schools in the same districts. Elsewhere, I heard the number of better charters over public schools was 17%. Hope this gets pointed out in the movie.
DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.
@burnspbesq:
When I say the church, I mean the hierarchy. That’s common usage. When people talk (for example) about the “scandals in the Catholic church”, they don’t mean among parishioners, they mean among the clergy.
Roger Moore
@Jewish Steel:
A good education is an effective disinfectant against conservatism. Indoctrination with a narrowly designed curriculum is a great way of infecting people with conservatism. Converting our education system from one to the other is why conservatives are so eager to control it.
Cain
@TomFactor:
Menzies
@debbie:
I remember having to write a paper on charter schools for one of my first classes in education. The situation in some of them is really very disgusting – entrepreneurs creating small schools, paying teachers next to nothing, and skirting the edges of the law in order to avoid review from governmental agencies.
On the other hand, I hear recently Boston Latin was displaced as the best school in MA by a charter school. It really seems to depend on who the organizer is and what their goals are, which makes it a great movement to be used (and abused) by pretty much everyone.
DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.
@burnspbesq:
By the way, I realize that Catholic church-goers are more liberal, on average, than say evangelicals. That’s why I refer to a conservative take-over of the church (meaning the hierarchy) rather than saying that Catholics are just conservatives to begin with.
PeakVT
my view is that conservatives are much more serious about controlling institutions than liberals are
Liberals are driven by ideas; conservatives are driven by power.
Nick
Hello, welcome to 1980.
monkeyboy
Here is one plan I found:
The right-wing-oligarch/libertarian-stooge philosophy on public schools and public education:
1) Destroy public education because nobody should pay taxes to help educate any other person’s children.
2) The first step in destroying public education is to destroy public schools. Rather than having schools directly funded through taxes, schools should be turned into businesses (firstly with tax funded vouchers) so that they can compete in the “free market”.
3) Once all students are in private schools, taxpayers will naturally vote down the voucher size and such schools will become more dependent on supplemental direct payment from parents.
4) End result? Only children of wealthy parents get a good education. What better way to perpetuate a class system where poor children will be no competition to those of the rich.
Lowkey
@kdaug: From the Seven Mountains site:
Blech. It’s so… existential. All Harry Potter and whatnot, “As long as both survive, neither can live” or whatever. If the Christianists would just let me fuck on my own terms, smash drugs into myself, and teach my kids real science, we’d get along just fine. But no, taking Syndee and Taser to Bible Study after school is too big a pain in the ass, so in reality, I must be out to mind-rape America’s Youth with Communism and Satan worship.
Good Lord, I’m sick of the culture wars.
MikeJ
@DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.: Many people don’t realise that the same was also true of the Southern Baptists. Yes, more of the members probably are conservative, but the religion as a whole wasn’t a conservative political force until about 1980, when the right highjacked the governing body, the SBC.
Before that, Baptists were very big on “priesthood of the believer”and how everything was between you and god. After the takeover there was a lot less tolerance for anything the right didn’t like.
Uloborus
@monkeyboy:
Alas, it integrates well with the plans of a different group. The Christian Conservatives do not want a public school system. If it exists they want it to be very locally controlled. If you’re part of the Reality Independent Community you don’t want your children actually learning about reality. It’s not just directly religion. They want their children to be taught the morals and social system that conforms exactly to the standards of their little village. If they don’t like the village they’re in they want it to be easy to take their children out of the school system entirely.
You see this a lot in Tea Party Manifestos.
James E. Powell
The corporate ruling class wants the money that taxpayers spend on public education. Just like they want the money that goes into social security. Just like they already have the money that goes into “defense” spending and health care. To them, these are income streams that can be acquired through the purchase of a handful of senators and congresspersons.
We can be certain that the ruling class does not want the schools to produce critical thinkers who understand the world. There is no greater threat to the ruling class than an educated population.
ciotog
My father, a public school teacher, has always seen school vouchers as an attempt by conservatives to bust the teachers’ unions (with the side benefit of peeling away minority parents from the Democratic Party using vouchers as a wedge issue). I never was quite sure this was right, but after this Waiting for Superman film and the discussions about it, I’m starting to wonder.
Winston Smith
@DougJ
Your friend wrote:
He’s got this wrong. As a Cardinal, Karol Wojtyła was a major contributor to Vatican II. He wanted it to go further, not be rolled back.
The hand behind this is Cardinal Ratzinger, who PJP2 appointed to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to “add balance” to the administration of the Catholic Church. If you look at the chronology of PJP2’s failing health, you can see how the Vatican became increasingly conservative. That’s was Ratzinger asserting his authority. Ratzinger even tried to get PJP2 to resign, knowing full well that he had a shot at Pope.
The overall assessment is correct, but it’s unfair to lay the blame on PJP2. If the Pope deserves any blame, it’s for putting Ratzinger in a position of global authority the first place.
Amanda in the South Bay
I’d argue that the Catholic Church’s embrace of the culture wars is bad sacramental theology. It makes conservative Catholics think that they are a’ok in the sin department if they avoid homosexuality, abortion or contraceptives. That’s it. Who cares about anything else since those issues have been elevated waaaay out of importance (in addition to the Church having the wrong views on them to begin with).
Amanda in the South Bay
@Winston Smith:
True, but wasn’t JP2 the author of all that “Theology of the Body” bullshit that gave some vacuous intellectual support for social conservatism?
Corner Stone
@ciotog: Of course it is. Talk to any teacher at a private school for five minutes.
Napoleon
That is all it has ever been about.
Corner Stone
I just don’t know if there’s ever been a better name than “Ratzinger”.
Isn’t that the apex, the balls, and the shit all rolled into one?
Mnemosyne
It’s been really fascinating to watch the Catholic Church and the Southern Baptist Convention slowly turn towards one another and adopt more and more of each others’ beliefs. Twenty or thirty years ago, it was very unusual for Protestants to be anti-contraception, but now they’ve embraced that wholesale to align themselves more closely with Catholicism.
I guess when it comes right down to it, political ideology is more important than doctrine and dogma.
Mark
A little OT, but I went to a high school (grades 10-12) that had the IB program. Before I got there, I did nothing but screw around in class and get in trouble. I suppose I did a little spot-welding.
The high school experience was a revelation – lots of work, lots of thinking, lots of opportunity. When I was in 11th grade, they added 9th grade to the school, but they still didn’t start IB until grade 10.
I ended up meeting one of school board members. I asked him why this was. He said that if IB started in 9th grade, it would pick off all of the good students at junior high schools that still had 9th grade. Yeah, so????
He said it was wrong to rob the students and teachers at those other schools of their best students.
Even if it hurt the good students???? Yes.
I recently talked to my dad about this and he tried to give me the same b.s. I graduated from high school 15 years ago, so maybe my dad has forgotten that when I was 14 he was constantly dealing with the principal and periodically the cops…I’d expect him to make the link between me having some purpose in my life and me no longer committing petty crimes.
There are some places where prevailing liberal policies are just plain wrong. The idea that smart kids should have crappy teachers and classmates because the latter will benefit from being around them doesn’t stand the smell test. And I lived in a middle-class neighborhood – put my school in the ghetto and multiply this disaster 10x, and you can see why parents who care about their kids want vouchers.
Corner Stone
@Mark:
Holy sweet Jeebus Christ on a cracker.
Corner Stone
It’s been proven in study after study. When vouchers are allowed the private/charter schools raise their prices to alter enrollment.
Please stop with this voucher nonsense. It’s just a way to destroy publicly funded education.
Paul Siegel
You have it backwards. The guys who want to be – and ARE – in control are those running Big Business. They like conservatives because conservatives leave them alone to do as they please, while Democrats want to regulate them so ordinary people may benefit too.
Since there are fewer Big Business tycoons than ordinary people, Big Business endorses religious nuts and anyone else that has any kind of beef in order to stay in power.
The true enemy is Big Business. They pay big for their legislators and they make it tough for Democrats to get anything done. The only way to change this is to remove the importance of money in election campaigns.
Menzies
@monkeyboy:
Exactly. And this, as I say, isn’t exclusive to either side of the political spectrum.
kdaug
@Lowkey: Yes. This is precisely it. The goal isn’t control of politics, or knowledge, or science.
It’s the control of the culture.
Everything. Everyone a good Christian. Everyone thinking exactly the same way.
OT, but coincidentally, SciFi is running “Children of the Corn” tonight.
kdaug
@Mnemosyne:
I believe that’s called a black hole. Of faith.
kdaug
@Paul Siegel: I was going to write a post mirroring this exactly, got halfway through and deleted it, thinking I was sounding too shrill.
But you’re dead-on.
Corporations are the means of financing. Religion is the means of control.
Corner Stone
@kdaug: “He wants you too, Malachi!”
Svensker
@Mnemosyne:
Not all Protestants, just the fundie ones. And they’re not doing it to align themselves with Catholics — most fundies I know still think the Catholic Church is the anti-christ. It’s just that both groups have gotten more conservative and agree on a bunch of stuff that neither side thought was a big deal a 20 – 30 years ago.
sven
@Napoleon: The whole movement on ‘accountability’ or ‘Value Added Models’ for teacher evaluation reminds me of the run-up to the war in Iraq. A number of liberals with good intentions (MYglesias and Jon Chait for example) get sucked in because they take claims of conservatives on their face. Folks at AEI and Heritage will swear up and down that they just want better schools in the inner city and elections for the poor downtrodden Iraqis. Fine, if it isn’t all about partisan advantage then they won’t mind starting with proven ideas from the left. When AEI is clamoring to spend big bucks on pre-k access for the poor, the expansion of high quality nutritional programs, and parental education let me know. Until then I’ll assume ‘accountability’ is a stalking horse for union bashing and ‘local control’ of science, social studies, and health curricula.
silentbeep
@ DougJ
I can only give you my own anecdotal experience for what little its worth. My brother is in the seminary to become a Roman Catholic priest. He is 30 years old, and after 7 years in the seminary, he will be ordained in April of ’11. We were raised in a liberal, feminist, democrat straight-ticket voting household, that happened to be Catholic. We are from Los Angeles
When he was living in the Midwest he told me he changed his voter registration to Independent (he had been a registered Democrat) for political parish reasons. Meaning, everyone was a Republican and when people asked him what his political affiliations were, it was easier on him socially to just say “independent” because it was too much of a hassle to constantly explain his liberal and democratic leanings.
He now works in a parish (not in the midwest) that promotes “social justice” especially in terms of healthcare. I looked at their website and was stunned to see the words “social justice for healthcare” splashed all over the place. He is much happier now.
Corner Stone
@sven:
Awesomely correct.
Take the worst “performing” children as a whole, make sure they get proper nutrition every day and they can get to and from school safely, then let’s see what happens.
But that will never happen. More standardized testing, more metrics for teachers. That is what we will spend our money on.
Mnemosyne
@Svensker:
You are less cynical than I. I think groups like the SBC realized that they needed to bring the RCC in as their allies in the conservative takeover of the government, and so they bought into Catholic beliefs about “life” that are antithetical to everything the SBC used to say. Each group may hope that they’re going to come out on top when push comes to shove, but both of them have changed their beliefs to more closely conform with the other. There’s a lot of evangelical crap that’s crept into the RCC over the years that’s quite startling if you show up for a wedding or funeral after a long absence.
Don’t forget, the Baptists were the most vocal proponents of the separation of church and state … until they realized that glomming onto the Republican Revolution would let them dictate things.
kevina
DougJ is on to something on the Church (of which I am a member), particularly on JP2’s appointments of Cardinals. That’s how an arch-conservative like Ratzinger becomes Benedict XVI.
But it mostly comes down to, for the hierarchy, Abortion, with other “social issues” thrown in. Been that way since the 70’s (really, since Roe), and given Church teaching on it, that won’t change. Period. Do I wish the Church wasn’t so “one-track mind,” and give more prominence to its social justice teachings? Abso-freakin-lutely. But, for now, it won’t.
On public schools, I oppose vouchers (for multiple reasons), but public school reform, partially along the lines of Rhee, is BADLY needed. As it is now, public education should embarass progressives. Why?
B/c it works best for the already-affluent/well-off. For the poor (rural or urban), it’s a travesty. Under-performing, but tenured teachers with little innovative thinking going on that, in many cases, just assume their kids can “only do so much.” To be clear, there ARE great, dedicated teachers in these settings. But not enough.
The status quo is untenable.
Svensker
@Mnemosyne:
May be. I’m not around the institutions, just individual folks, so perhaps you see more shenanigans going on at the macro level than I do at the cellular level.
toujoursdan
If you really want to understand how far the Southern Baptist Convention swung right, read their statement on abortion passed in 1970:
Resolution On Abortion, adopted at the SBC convention, June 1971:
WHEREAS, Christians in the American society today are faced with difficult decisions about abortion; and
WHEREAS, Some advocate that there be no abortion legislation, thus making the decision a purely private matter between a woman and her doctor; and
WHEREAS, Others advocate no legal abortion, or would permit abortion only if the life of the mother is threatened;
Therefore, be it RESOLVED, that this Convention express the belief that society has a responsibility to affirm through the laws of the state a high view of the sanctity of human life, including fetal life, in order to protect those who cannot protect themselves; and
Be it further RESOLVED, That we call upon Southern Baptists to work for legislation that will allow the possibility of abortion under such conditions as rape, incest, clear evidence of severe fetal deformity, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother.
Historic position on Abortion
No wonder Jimmy Carter walked away.
jcgrim
Charters are public schools that get public money with little to no public accountability. Catholic schools would love to get some tax dollars to indoctrinate the young against abortion.
As for the privatized charters a la KIPP, Imagine, etc. -they have other motivations:
http://www.stickwithanose.com/2010/02/17/charters-real-estate-speculation/
http://www.stickwithanose.com/2009/12/06/hedgistan-charter-schools/
kdaug
@kevina: You’ve just cam dangerously close to naming that-which-cannot-be-named.
(Hint: It’s class warfare, kids. Been going on since Reagan, and you’re losing).
An educated populace is simply not in their… interests.
Corner Stone
@kevina:
Teaching is the art of the possible. The students just weren’t to a level in order for the teachers to succeed.
Jewish Steel
@Roger Moore:
Too true. I show my naiveté.
Brachiator
Liberals want to “speak truth to power.” Conservatives will settle for just the power.
This is a tougher one. Vouchers just seem to be a bad idea, charter schools less so. The educational establishment seems so intent on preserving public education as it is, that they will accept the existence of crappy schools, even sit back and watch schools and school districts decline, as long as the system can remain intact.
And as an aside, no one has been able to satisfactorily explain to me why Jaime Escalante, the teacher featured in the movie Stand and Deliver, was vilified by some of his fellow teachers, by the teachers’ union, and even some parents.
birthmarker
@Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle: Yes. The stated goal is to break the monopoly of the public schools. Then you’ve created smaller government, and created a for-profit school system. Indoctrination is another benefit.
Parents will receive a government voucher to partially offset the costs.
Basically neocons don’t like anything they see as a threat to them or their cronies. They hate any group thought to traditionally vote dem.
It’s the slow drip drip drip of destruction of any opposition.
birthmarker
@Paul Siegel: This needs to be repeated daily. The rest is just distracting noise.
debbie
@ Menzies:
There was a charter school here (central Ohio) that opened up in a unused retail space in an upscale shopping mall and was shuttered in less than a year, with $1 million of computers mysteriously disappeared.
Another charter opened, as a boot-camp style school, closing relatively abruptly after parents’ complaints regarding the excessive physical abuse.
It’s bad enough these kind of schools exist, but how stupid (or corrupt) are the clowns running the application/approval process?
jcgrim
Blaming teachers and teacher unions is a red herring for neo-liberal practices that have decimated inner cities. Business needs to take some responsibility for poverty. They lobby against tax increases, leverage their influence to eliminate workers protections, refuse to pay pensions or health insurance to part time and low wage earners. Their practices created the impoverished conditions in communities that contribute to student school failure.
Diane Ravitch, education researcher and former charter school supporter, explains why she changed her mind about privatizing our schools.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_HwI6S92Eo
sven
@Brachiator: I don’t think the issue is whether charter schools themselves are inherently good or bad, the issue is how charter schools have been used. Charter schools, by definition, have permission to operate differently than other public schools. Some charter schools have a particular focus like magnet schools. Some charter schools are thinly disguised attempts to push an specific agenda like the Nampa Classical Academy. Many charter schools have little or no support for special education or students with emotional or behavioral needs. These differences mean that a direct comparison between charter schools and mainstream public schools is not appropriate but nonetheless is often heard in political debate.
Mark
@Corner Stone: don’t be a douche. I know it’s hard for you, but seriously, try it out.
DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.
@silentbeep:
That is very interesting. Thanks.
Comrade Luke
This is the key. It’s just like Bush coming in to office and appointing right-wing wackadoodles for literally every postion in government…with a lifetime term.
Al
The changing social dynamics your friend points to may be a factor. From the standpoint of someone immersed in Catholic culture in the fifties, the change is extreme, to the point of being unintelligible. I went to ten Catholic schools as my family moved around, so I got a broad exposure, and those nuns, priests, and brothers handed me my left politics.
My wife tells the story from third grade in Chicago, which had a bigger and better Catholic school system than the public schools, about how sister closed the door one day in 1953 and explained how there was nothing wrong with communism, why us nuns lead a communist life, it’s just the godless part that is wrong.
Now it’s a right-wing cult. Mind-bending.
Corner Stone
@Mark: I don’t believe your story and I’m calling you a fucking liar.
So fuck you.
maus
@Mark:
Yes, “liberal policies”, yes… or perhaps you’re a moron.
@Corner Stone: I don’t think it’s a surprise bureaucracy-wise, however to assign liberality to it is really a pathetic smear.
Slowbama
If it’s true that public education is the only thing left which liberals have some control over…
Given public education’s catastrophic state, doesn’t this beg the response that perhaps the priority should indeed be forcing liberals to relinquish control as fast as humanly possible?
Sorry, but you walked right into that one….