Here we go again
Well, just days after the era of the Puppet King has commenced, we?re back to that old saw, vouchers, or as new-age media conservatives like to call it, ?parental choice.? The simple fact is, conservatives have two goals here: dismantle the public school system so they can stop paying school taxes, and grab the resulting multi-billion-dollar private education market. It?s a double whammy of economic benefit for wealthy conservatives, who aren?t really convinced that everyone should get an education, anyway.
They realize they can?t attack public education head-on, which results in a lot of hypocritical ?No child left behind? rhetoric (sound familiar?). Meanwhile, they chip away at it, bit by bit. They?ve already created the conventional wisdom which says U.S. public schools are failing, and greedy teachers and overzealous bureaucrats are mostly to blame. At the same time, Bush proposes mandatory testing, piling on federal bureaucracy while promoting private schools which don?t have to educate disabled or even underachieving students if they don?t want to. While we?re at it, let?s drain the underperforming schools in poor neighborhoods of tax money ? that?ll encourage competition!
It?s an amazing triumph of rhetoric over reality. Words mean things, indeed.