Dear visionaries,
Morning, everybody. Time for that morning dose of vitriol!
Gary was answered well on the statistical matters by Dale. Our discussion of this whole topic was not precipitated by the discovery that kids were coming into government schools at a “higher rate” than they were “pushing them through the doors of private schools.” The whole discussion was started (and not by us) when a number of supporters of the Moscow schools started loudly inquiring about where the kids had all gone. If Gary’s case is to be taken at face value, then was the school district play-acting, or lying about their declining enrollment?
Tony maintains that voting against levies is an attempt to dismantle the government schools. This is a typical defense of bloated government programs — opposition to increases is labeled as support of drastic cuts. A three hundred pound man is gaining ten pounds a month. Getting him to gain only five pounds a month is thereupon defined as “losing weight,” and the Jenny Craig staff member is a Nazi. But I do not want to be disingenuous here — I do support the dismantling of the government school system as an abstract idea. But we are not laboring toward that end directly at all. We are not the ones causing declining curricular standards, declining test scores, declining standards of morality and discipline, and lo and behold! declining enrollment. Somebody else is doing all that work.
Are there great individual teachers in the government schools? Certainly. Is the system broken? Beyond question.
Linda confuses private schools with private education. Private educators (schools, tutorials, home-schoolers, etc.) share many of the same reasons for not having their kids in the government schools. My kids all went to Logos, but I share the same basic educational convictions of numerous home-schoolers. And on the point in dispute this shared conviction amounts to “not with my kid, you don’t.”
Her point about private “for-profit” schools was interesting. The cost of education in private schools is about half (per student) as it is with government schools. And yet, apparently, we charge this small amount and can still haul the profits off in wheelbarrows! How do we do that? And why does the product offered by the government schools cost twice as much, and yet nobody is making a “profit.” What’s with that? Would somebody on the list do the math for me? But don’t try that new fancy declining enrollment math; it makes my head hurt too much.
And her concluding paragraph reminds me of the marginalia that one minister wrote into his sermon notes: “Argument weak. Shout here.” “Rushdoony! Theocrat! Women’s suffrage! The Klingons are coming!” But of course, putting lighter fluid in your hair, setting it off, and running in tight little circles is not an argument. In the jargon of the day, such attempts to “marginalize” us won’t work. How can we be a fringe element when in a relativistic universe there is no center, and hence no fringe?
Simply try to think of us as just another crouton in your pluralistic salad. Remember your basic faith commitments, and try to choke down the whole thing. Viva diversity!
“Apologetics in the Void” are repostings from an on-going electronic discussion and debate I had some time ago with members of our local community, whose names I have changed. The list serve is called Vision 20/20, and hence the name “visionaries.” Reading just these posts probably feels like listening to one half of a phone conversation, but I don’t feel at liberty to publish what others have written. But I have been editing these posts (lightly) with intelligibility in mind.