Back Off Man

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Dear visionaries,

Susannah writes: “But I suspect that ‘attitude’ doesn’t restrict itself only to public school teachers . . . and I am certain it extends itself to many in the religious vocation. As in “back off, man, I’m god’s spokesman”.”

The problem with professional educators in the government schools is not that they speak with confidence. This also is inescapable in every society — someone will be authorized to speak with moral authority. Someone is always “god’s spokesman,” and the only question that faces every society is “which god?” In America currently, that god is demos, vox populi vox dei.

So here is one important difference between my “Thus says the Lord,” and the “Thus says the trained professional” of the government educators: when you differ with what I say you don’t get a bill in the mail for tens of thousands of dollars anyway.

This is the thing that makes the “back off, man” of the government educators so offensive. Money is coercively taken from us “for the kids.” If parents try to take advantage of the “benefit” paid for by this money, enroll their kids in the government schools and then try to exercise any parental influence by volunteering in the classroom (let’s say), they are routinely told that their presence there is unnecessary and unwelcome. Their money is essential, their kids are grist for the mill, but their presence and input is summarily rejected.

It is far easier to find or establish a private school where it is assumed that parents have wisdom, and where that wisdom is solicited or encouraged. Again, you get more of what you subsidize and less of what you penalize. Government schools, by their very structure, subsidize parental non-involvement and penalize attempts to get involved.

“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.

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