Betsy DeVos, our new president’s nominee for Secretary of Education, is not a product of our government school system. She attended private school herself. Her children are not products of the government education either. They all attended private school. She is, therefore, according to some of our education bureaucracy mavens, not a suitable choice to head up the Department of Education. This is one of those claims that might, in the wrong light, seem reasonable for a couple of seconds, and so I thought I should try to hold your attention for more than a couple of seconds. Here. Step out into the sunshine.
Quick. Who was the last president to have their school-aged child attend the government schools of Washington D.C.? You are correct. It was Jimmy Carter, who seems entirely capable of a stunt like that. His daughter Amy, age 9, attended public school in D.C. Not so Sasha and Malia Obama. Not so Chelsea Clinton. Not so Julie and Tricia Nixon. You get the point. And prior to Carter’s grandstanding, the last time a sitting president entrusted the education of his child to the ministrations of tax-supported knowledge insertion was 1906.
Why are we requiring for the Secretary of Education a standard that none of the presidents of the last 100 years would have met? Let us not count Carter. Let us look the other way politely.
DeVos is an intelligent, highly-qualified, well-educated woman, one who is unlikely in the extreme to carry on business as usual. If the system is failing, as the public school system is, then why on earth would you want to select—as the one appointed to fix it—someone who was shaped by that system, and who was entirely beholden to it? To say that she cannot bring real reform because she is an “outsider” is to argue that the CTo say that she cannot bring real reform because she is an “outsider” is to argue that the CEO of JiffyLube would make a terrible choice to head up the DMV in inner city Baltimore. He has these crazy ideas about how long people should be standing in line, and that word jiffy sends the wrong signal entirely. In fact, we think it borders on hate speech.EO of JiffyLube would make a terrible choice to head up the DMV in inner city Baltimore. He has these crazy ideas about how long people should be standing in line, and that word jiffy sends the wrong signal entirely. In fact, we think it borders on hate speech.
And notice what draws everyone’s ire about DeVos. She is an advocate of school choice. And lo—all the pro-choicers suddenly disappeared. They were just marching on Washington in their vagina hats a few days ago. So some lame defenders of the women’s march thought we had a surfeit of responsible voices shouting their quaint obscenities about the need for choice. But then, when a nice Christian lady appears, offering an actual choice to parents all across the country, the machine moves into opposition mode. “We are pro-choice, not pro-effin-choices.”
Her emphasis on school choice, and on the empowerment of parents in local settings, and her opposition to the swollen engorgement of educational decrees emanating from the DC Death Star, is simply glorious.
I say this as an advocate for private education. I am entirely about private education. My focus is private education. And I am delighted with the nomination of Betsy DeVos. Anyone who is acquainted with the challenges that were looming for private schools in the event of a Clinton presidency knows that all of us dodged a bullet there. Actually we dodged a whistling howitzer shell.
Not to put too fine a point of it, Betsy DeVos is an answer to prayer for everyone who wants the freedom from government regulation and overreach as we attempt to provide real education for the next generation. A real answer to prayer.
“I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men; For kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty” (1 Tim. 2:1–2).
Thanks Doug. Needed.
I don’t do this frequently, but I’m gonna have to disagree with Doug here. I think he’s wish-casting private education dreams on someone who has done more to support the Common Core and educational bureaucracy of the Bush cronies than she has school choice. With that said, her pro-school choice statements in the hearings have been promising and we should hold her feet to the fire and keep her accountable to her school choice promises. But let’s not be fanciful. She was a long time Common Core supporting Bush crony before she was a school choicer today. She’s got a… Read more »
Just ask the school choice advocates in Michigan: DeVoa was not a friend to their movement.
Does Mrs. DeVos ever get to answer any questions? The little I have seen is but Al Franken and Fauxcahontas grand standing to their own conclusions. (?). ????
That’s the sound of winning!
I have always thought that “pro-choice” as a principle belongs much more on the conservative side than the progressive. Most things the progressives do are (borrowing their pejorative) “anti-choice”. It’s only when it comes to stuff like murdering or mutilating people that they suddenly act like they’re principled pro-choicers.
Any MVA (Motor Vehicle Administration) office in Baltimore City (and I got my license renewed in one once) cannot compare to the horrors of the main office in Glen Burnie (Baltimore County). I bet the JiffyLube guy would have access to some useful substances to help get that place burned to the ground in a jiffy. #happythought #thingsidonotmissaboutmaryland
I made the mistake of going to the social security office in downtown St. Louis once. And I also had to go to the DMV in Baton Rouge on the first business day after Katrina. Line was way out the door.
Shout out to Baton Rouge. I think Katrina was in ’05. Some of those same people are still in that same line today.
Yep, Katrina was Aug 29, 2005, a Monday morning. We had moved to Baton Rouge about 6 weeks earlier. Traffic was already bad there – there’s still no interstate loop around the city – and the population about doubled overnight. I volunteered at a church near my house during the week after, mostly trying to help people find their family by searching online forums, message boards etc.
I still read Chris Rose’s letter every August 29.
http://www.nola.com/katrina/index.ssf/2005/09/chris_rose_katrina_column.html
I follow Wilson’s reasoning about DeVos’s qualifications as an outsider, however, I am not at all convinced that I want the government school system fixed. I want it ended. I don’t want education vouchers or education “foodstamps” either. I want the education entitlement mentality to end.
I’m eager to see how 40 ACRES and ashv are going to contradict you here.
I’m sure it will have something to do with race.
You’re obsessed with race.
Not much to contradict here, but I will note that expecting the government to be able to get out of the business of shaping the worldview of its subjects while keeping the principle of government by popular opinion is, to put it mildly, unrealistic.
That reasoning is exactly backward. Talk about conflict of interest. “In this system, the public is the final authority. Let’s brainwash them, shall we?”
What else can political power do? Any political system that does not support its own basis for legitimacy is not long for this world.
Its legitimacy is not dependent on state indoctrination. The nation thrived long before government schools were installed.
Did it? The children and grandchildren of those who fought for independence fought each other more fiercely. Government schools became ubiquitous shortly after.
Is it your position that government schools saved us from our base instincts? Or are you trolling?
Well, I think the wrong side won. So, no.
How ’bout “fixed” in a veterinary sense?
I want almost every branch of government “fixed” in that sense.
I want the education entitlement mentality to end.
katecho, could you explain what you mean by education entitlement mentality? This is not a topic I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about, and this is new to me.
Thanks.
By education entitlement mentality, I mean the cultural expectation that the government owes its people an education. It’s part of the cradle to grave socialism that has seen the government invade all areas of life, from retirement savings, to day care, to health insurance, to health care, to EBT cards, to education loans, to savings insurance, to housing loans, to contraception, etc, etc, etc, etc, ad nauseam.
Thanks, katecho. If we were still a church and family centered culture, probably this problem of education would be greatly alleviated. The apparent downside is that we’d have to let parents have true responsibility for their children, whether for good or bad. I see I have some kinks to work out on this!
Agreed. If we were a properly ordered society, we would still have problems, but they would be very different problems than the ones we tend to worry about from the vantage point of our current culture.
I agree with you. But if DeVos helps to set a precedent for parental choice and less government interference, that would seem to be enormously beneficial to the educational freedom of homeschoolers and Christian school advocates.
“If the system is failing, as the public school system is…” I love how this is presented as so obviously true within mainstream conservative circles, without any deeper reflection. For instance, is the public school system failing at Harriton High School in Byrn Mawr, PA? Or Lakewood (CO) High School? By any academic metric or rating system, these schools (and many others) are examples of the public school system being a success. Of course there are “bad public schools,” but it’s odd how public schools tend to either “succeed” or “fail” based on social factors such as racial demographics, parents’… Read more »
Bingo. The “Public schools are a failure” idea is almost entirely a product of selection bias.
The system is an inherent failure because of the secular worldview driving it. It is producing progressive dependents of the state. The grades on the standardized tests are not the measure of success or failure here.
More word games. “Success” and “failure” only make sense relative to intent. Just because you don’t want them to do certain things doesn’t affect whether they succeed at doing them or not.
Succeeding or failing, the system is wicked. But that doesn’t mean we can’t notice how things work (or don’t) in various places.
ashv wrote:
No, I don’t mean success or failure relative to their intent, I mean relative to God’s standard.
Speaking of word games, if we measured success and failure relative to the government’s intent, as ashv suggests, that would be to engage in relativism that Wilson just warned about.
Yeah, always an interesting conversation. “Oh yes, we bought a house in <insert neighborhood here>. Very good schools there.” “Really? How are they different, what makes them good?”
I don’t make a lot of friends this way.
As predicted, ashv comes in with a racial perspective on the issue. Or did he mean wealthy as opposed to poor neighborhood, regardless of race?
You’re obsessed with race.
I’m obsessed with race because I point out that ashv’s comments almost invariably hinge on which races are involved?
Not that I have a horse in this race, no pun intended, but racial demographics are one of the most influential factors to consider for the academic “success” of a government school system.
Find yourself a school system with a heavy dose of East Asians, Persians, Jews and Whites, and the school’s only problems will be an unhealthy academic competition and perhaps some Ritalin abuse to stay up all night studying.
Durden wrote:
The Appalachians have a heavy dose of 84% whites. Is the Appalachian government school system’s only problem an unhealthy academic competition? I’m sure they will be so pleased to discover this.
Our local school is nearly exclusively white and their issues don’t stem from a lack of money or poor education standards, it stems from their belief that their own authority completely trumps a parent’s, that they own people’s children as monetary units for funding, that families must serve them and submit to their authority. So they constantly undermine parents and believe they are entitled to control and define families. This all came to a head when for the forth time in a matter of months we shot down another school bond. The stories about why people were rejecting funding it… Read more »
An anomaly like that doesn’t disprove his point.
It’s an “anomaly” that extends across a dozen states.
That doesn’t change KG’s initial point, which is still valid.
Every point is valid if we ignore all of the exceptions to it.
Durden made a claim about white schools, that their “only problems” would be “unhealthy academic competition” and Ritalin. This is simply false and invalid, and I gave an example to demonstrate why it is false. Because of the nature of his claim, I only needed one counterexample to invalidate it.
I did no such thing.
I said this:
Do you dispute this? I acknowledged your exception. Why try to wrench my claim to the far corners of statistical absurdity? Do you deny that East Asians have been arguably the most successful academic minority in America? Only Persians and Jews have comparable success.
I wrote: Durden made a claim about white schools, that their “only problems” would be “unhealthy academic competition” and Ritalin. Then Durden wrote: I did no such thing. Unfortunately, Durden did. He wrote: Find yourself a school system with a heavy dose of East Asians, Persians, Jews and Whites, and the school’s only problems will be an unhealthy academic competition and perhaps some Ritalin abuse to stay up all night studying. It was not difficult to find an exception to this claim. Others have provided similar exceptions. Note that I said nothing about Durden’s other claims, so repeating them doesn’t… Read more »
I think we have had some really fruitful chats in the last few weeks, and I do appreciate them, but if you want to tie yourself in knots over rhetorical examples which were not the actual point of the post, then knock yourself out. Just know that I was the one trying to move on long ago. But it also makes me wonder, if the only point of your response was to nitpick the wording of my example, then why bother? No opinion on the actual claim? Just wanting to poke a poster for fun? The reason I started posting… Read more »
The issue is that, once you admit that your absolute generalization was in error, and then look at the breadth of the exception Katecho notes (along with the additional exceptions that I noted), and then ask yourself why those exceptions exist…then you may be on your way to discovering why it could very likely be a simple correlation that you are looking at and by no means causation. In India, one of the surest means of identifying the high-performing schools is to look at average height. Whenever you see a lot of tall kids, you can almost guarantee that they… Read more »
Perhaps you missed this part of my chat with Katecho:
My claim was about correlation, which is true.
If it had been a random statement in a random conversation, then yes, you would be right that you were doing nothing but pointing out a potentially meaningless correlation.
But you intended the statement to do real work in this conversation, work going beyond meaningless correlation. And I believe that what Katecho and I are challenging is that your observation does the work you hoped for it to do.
The only reason I jumped into the conversation, which is feeling like a bad choice at this point, because it has been like spinning wheels, was to highlight that there is a racial correspondence to academic success. My claim was to connect what public schools consider success to a disparate distribution among racial demographics. Here is my original claim: racial demographics are one of the most influential factors to consider for the academic “success” of a government school system. This claim is statistically accurate and verifiably true. It is an interesting fact that I thought would bear out some interesting… Read more »
Durden still seems to be tit for tatting and accusing others of dishonest reading. Durden wrote: There is no school in the world of any racial make up whose “only” problem is Ritalin abuse, seriously. I’m glad to see Durden reverse himself on that particular claim. Durden couldn’t have done anything more to derail his original claim than to combine it with another claim (hyperbolic or not) that was so demonstrably false. Others are not to blame for his poor rhetorical choices. As for his prior claim that: … racial demographics are one of the most influential factors to consider… Read more »
Once again, I am sorry to have bothered you with my poor rhetorical choices.
Durden wrote: … if you want to tie yourself in knots over rhetorical examples which were not the actual point of the post, then knock yourself out. Durden made several broad claims in that post, but the one that was easiest to refute was the specific one that I quoted. No knot tying was needed on my part to refute it. Durden wrote: … if the only point of your response was to nitpick the wording of my example, then why bother? I wasn’t nitpicking the wording of Durden’s claim. The wording was fine. The one claim itself was simply… Read more »
Then I won’t waste your time any further.
Bro. katecho,
I appreciate your vehemence for truth, but I think you kind of killed an honest conversation with a brother here.
I simply pointed out an erroneous claim, and then didn’t back down when Durden denied making the claim, and then accused me of dishonest reading, and then engaged in other defensive posturing. Some people are extremely sensitive about being corrected, and try to push back. That’s fine. I can handle it. I’m sure Durden and I agree on more than we disagree on, but I’m not the one trying to kill honest conversation. If Durden acknowledges that his one claim was false (or hyperbole, as he now says) then he should have just let it go rather than engage in… Read more »
In any statistical analysis there are always going to be outliers. I was not trying to insinuate that there is a genetic correlation between skin color and intelligence, but the stats do bear out the fact that certain populations do much better academically than others. We can debate all day about the reasons for that statistical disparity among certain demographics, and there will always be disparate examples within that population as well. Assuming the data that has been collected is an accurate reflection of reality and I assume it is the racial demographics of a population are probably more important… Read more »
So you’re saying that all-White Appalachian public schools are among the success stories? Or that West Virginia and Alaska and Arkansas and South Dakota don’t have some off the lowest-performing public schools in the country? Or that LA schools in Vietnamese/Cambodian neighborhoods are all rocking? Heck, Thailand’s public school system produces some of the worst products I’ve seen.
While it is certain that our nation’s racial history has been written into a lot of its neighborhoods, the correlations aren’t nearly as neat as you try to make it seem.
No.
No.
No.
Please learn to read.
I did read. You said this: Find yourself a school system with a heavy dose of East Asians, Persians, Jews and Whites, and the school’s only problems will be an unhealthy academic competition and perhaps some Ritalin abuse to stay up all night studying. Was I not supposed to take you literally? Because you said that if I find A school system with those racial demographics, then its only problems WILL BE unhealthy academic competition and some Ritalin abuse. And very very amused that you made an actual error in misreading one of my comments at nearly the exact time… Read more »
Perhaps you should back off the Ritalin a bit and try to get some rest.
No, Moses did alright in Egyptian schools, and Daniel did alright in Babylonian school.
In Daniel’s case, the Hebrew schools in Jerusalem, may have been run by pajama boys, at that particular time!
????
And, as our host knows all too well, even New St. Andrews has put out a show poodle or two in its day! ????
I am ready to dedicate my life to Education being seen as the responsibility of parents and voluntary communities (i.e. churches). I wanted to work in a school but avoided it because I saw it as the state taking over the roles reserved for others. And Education not being neutral, etc.
A free society does not dictate people’s view of History, Literature, or anything else.
School choice will end the leftist indoctrination of our children and put the focus back on education. This is the reason the democrats oppose it.
This is an NYC thing rather than federal, but still:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reassignment_centers
“And notice what draws everyone’s ire about DeVos. She is an advocate of school choice.”
From here (UK), rather than that, she is being reported as lacking the basic knowledge of different theories and terminology of how to measure educational success and improvement. She seemed to flounder when asked those questions.
She doesn’t know the latest common core jargon?
I think Wilson has an accurate read here, at least when it comes to the liberal gestalt.
Liberals believe two things generally:
1. Conservatives are anti-government
2. Conservatives don’t care about inequality
So it becomes less a question of whether a given conservative is technically competent enough to manage the educational system, and more of whether they secretly wish to undermine and destroy the whole thing. “School choice” is suspected of being a scheme to dissolve the public schools by slowly starving them of funds and (decent) students.
Yes, it’s tragic, isn’t it, that she doesn’t know all of the management buzzwords that make her audience feel privy to special knowledge that the proles don’t share, but in the end are all sound and fury, signifying nothing.
/sarc
They were terms to define level of knowledge, or increase/added value of knowledge.
i.e. signifying something.
I have no idea of her agenda, but actually listening to her made her sound ignorant of the area under her responsibility.
Uh, don’t you realize that by pointing out how low the bar is, you’re REALLY putting her down now?
Not sure why being an actor or winning a election by a close margin would be evidence for someone not being able to form questions. The first attribute appears likely to improve the likelihood of understandable questions, and the second is irrelevant. But you got me to watch the video, which I hadn’t done before. Franken did a bit of grandstanding trying to state his point before asking the question, but his question was really easy for me to understand. It wasn’t just that she misunderstood it, which she clearly did. It’s that she proceeded to use the words completely… Read more »
Stuart Smalley!
That could be true. I’ve probably only heard him 3 times in 8 years.
But, in this particular instance, he asked a clear, reasonable question, and Betsy DeVos responded with complete ignorance.
It is probably much to her benefit that she doesn’t know different theories and terminology of how to measure educational success and improvement. Quite frankly, that’s what got us into this mess.
Jez, right you are. It’s not just about school choice. If you ask teachers if they would rather have an administrator who has spent time in a classroom, or an administrator who has only administrated, the experienced one wins every time. The truth is the way an administrator (with classroom experience) interacts with the teachers with have empathy and understanding in a way that a someone who has no classroom time experience does not or cannot. It’s not that they can’t administrate, but the decisions they make and the way they communicate them is often without understanding of how it… Read more »
Choosing the best school for our kids sounds wonderful. But in truth the ability to actually choose schools is only an option for wealthier families with a non-working parent who are able to transport their children to those schools. A poor family (such as a single-parent household or a household where both parents have to work to make ends meet), does not have the opportunity to take advantage of school choice. Their kids have to go where the school bus takes them–the public school. Our education funding should go to make those schools the best schools they can be, not… Read more »
Why?
No.
I was speaking from a Christian worldview, and I guess I shouldn’t assume that applies to all. Sorry about that.
When any of these schools are allowed to teach that Jesus is Lord, what men and women are, and what families are, get back to me. Until then, I stand by my proposal to convert these facilities into nuclear spent-fuel storage.
Do you have any suggestions for what kind of education poor kids should receive in the meantime? My whole point is that it’s not just about our OWN kids when we make these policy decisions.
None at all is preferable to what’s available in government schools now. Ignorance is better than being trained in wickedness.
“Ignorance is better than being trained in wickedness.”
Yes. I came to that conclusion myself. Kids are amazing, we will learn without any formal “teaching” at all. The idea that kids must be taught, (programmed) is relatively new to our culture and today we have people practically convinced that if we don’t educate the kids…they’ll just remain forever in a childlike state and start inbreeding or something.
I agree with that when we are talking about bright children living in families that value learning and provide opportunities for it. But I am not sure that most kids will teach themselves to read. Maybe we all did, but many kids who are not taught to read will miss that window and end up virtually illiterate. And I could not have figured out pre-calculus without a teacher! My concern is that kids left to themselves are going to be unable to compete in the workplace. My sister was a primary (public) school teacher for many years. I used to… Read more »
“Maybe we all did, but many kids who are not taught to read will miss that window and end up virtually illiterate.”
The vast majority will actually learn to read, but you bring up a good point, I know at least a dozen graduates of the public school system,all men,who had to teach themselves how to read as adults.
Point of fact: my three-year-old reads. Not simply three-letter-words, mind you. Whole paragraphs, road signs, entire books. She is bona-fide on a full-blown 2nd-grade level. Why? Not because she’s super-smart or quasi-genius, but because her parents co-taught her. After hours. While we were busy living life.
(It occurs to me that I just included eight different hyphenated parcel-words. Make that nine.)
Great policy position. “Best charter schools possible for my kids, and for yours … whatever. I don’t care.”
Speak for yourself, my wife and I were homeschooled and are doing the same for our kids.
Homeschool is wonderful. But not every family can do it. A single mom with a full-time job to support her family can’t homeschool her children. Nor may she be able to transport them to a charter school further from home. Once again, those kids deserve a decent education too.
Not every child needs to go to school.
Any family can do it, including single moms with jobs.
Absolutely true! It requires only “creative thinking,” but we can thank the public school system for stripping that useful skill from our mental toolbox.
Moms with tenth grade educations and abjectly low IQs? Moms working two shifts? Moms who don’t speak English? Mom who can barely read themselves? You are usually supportive of women’s struggles. How do you envision the way in which a minimum-wage single mom is going to be home teaching her kids?
Moms with no education,low IQ, who speak poor English, are going to be far better off starting a business for themselves, an in home daycare, elder care, janitorial services, that allow them to not only make more money, but to control what hours they work.
I agree with you, and I don’t think an illiterate, innumerate citizenry promotes the common welfare.
“I don’t think an illiterate, innumerate citizenry promotes the common welfare.”
Me neither. Which is why I think we should just eliminate public school.
There are many public schools that are not doing a good job with this. But that it is not an inevitable consequence of public schooling. The nations (Singapore, South Korea, China, and Finland) that lead the world in reading, science, and math proficiency at high school level have strong public school systems. There are many schools within even a troubled system like LAUSD that produce stellar results. Many of my daughter’s friends got into elite colleges after attending an LA public school. I am not sure that homeschooling or for-profit private schools could have done better, especially in the academic… Read more »
And we’ll never replicate the results of homogeneous cultures in our schools. It’s also interesting to note that black homeschoolers score much higher on standardized tests than their gov’t school counterparts.
As for homeschooled being weak in science, there’s really no data to support that. I know of a Ph.D. in chemistry who didn’t teach any of his kids science until they finished calculus and were almost out of school. If you know how to think, you can learn pretty much anything.
If Christians cared about policy not just our kids but EVERYONE else’s kids, we would be running our town’s school board members out on a rail after a good tar and feather party. We would then start teaching the Bible in school and how everything in this universe comes from God and how scripture relates to those subjects.
If we really cared about everyone’s kids that is.
“But in truth the ability to actually choose schools is only an option for wealthier families with a non-working parent…” We’re fairly working class and we got to homeschool all our kids for at least a few years. Also, I’m part of a group of relatively “not wealthy” people who really believe our local public school system is responsible for dumping a whole lot of hardship on us as families,the kind of hardship they should face legal charges over. So I read something like this plaintive wail, “We Christians need to start thinking less about policies that benefit our own… Read more »
My parents homeschooled five children all the way to high school graduation, despite being pretty poor the whole time. I suppose it helps if you have the expectations for the ends that need to meet set by foreign missionary work, though.
The best thing a poor family can do for the educational attainment of their children is join a serious Reformed local church and start homeschooling. They will gain in that move alone enough free volunteer educators to last a homeschooler a lifetime and many highly educated people to help them figure out a way out of poverty in five years or less.
I know because I lived it.
That’s a wonderful program and I agree, but homeschool isn’t an option for every family. A single mom who has to work to put food on the table can’t homeschool her kids. Or her work hours might prevent her from transporting her children to a school such as you mentioned. Whatever the case may be, there are always going to be children who have to attend public schools. I’m simply saying we shouldn’t ignore them. They are our kids too.
I’ve heard you say “single moms” a few times. So we need public schools because we can’t figure out how to stay married? Is the system than becoming like a substitute father?
Seriously? Not all single moms are single because they “couldn’t stay married.” Some single moms are single because their husbands were killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, or from illness. If they have to be at work at 7am and can’t drive their kid to a charter school, what do we say? Too bad for you? One of my close friends is a single mom because she was raped and chose not to abort the child. A noble choice, right? One that many of us would support? Well, because there is no father in the picture, she has to work to… Read more »
I’m not assigning judgement here, it’s just a simple fact, single mom’s are single because they couldn’t stay married for whatever reason, including, death, war, and rape. So my question still stands, are we trying to use the public school system as a surrogate father?
Of course not. We’re just saying these kids deserve investment in their education too.
I’ll tread carefully here, but I do need to point out that no one “deserves” an education. It is not actually a fundamental right, whether you look in Scripture or in our Constitution. That is, neither God nor our country’s charter provides for the “right” to an education. That is truly a modern-ish invention. As for all the sad cases that can be brought forth–single moms, illiterate parents, orphans, special needs children, etc.–there is a solution that can be easily imagined. But these solutions cannot be easily implemented with the humongous monolith of the NEA and all its brick-and-mortar affiliates… Read more »
Well said.
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Let’s stop legitimizing secular competition to this truth.
The state is a sword-bearing institution anyway. If there is a genuine destitute family, the Church is the proper institution for charity to help with education, not as a right, but out of compassion.
“Some single moms are single because their husbands were killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, or from illness.”
And some are single because of a profitable frivorce. And some are single because their husband wasn’t as rich or hot as the dreamy guy they met. What’s your point? Moms are single for many reasons. Let’s not pretend all of the reasons are noble. The ones who are single because their husbands died in Afghanistan are a tiny, tiny blip.
“Single moms” whose husbands died (from whatever cause) are properly called “widows” and should have the support of their churches.
Let’s not confuse the categories for sympathy points.
And some parents are barely literate themselves, and a great many where I live do not speak English. I don’t understand the animus against public schools. I understand the belief that education is the business of the church, not the state, even though I don’t agree with it. I understand the concern that schools don’t teach religion (although I would be very particular about which Christian doctrines a public school teacher was presenting to my child). But I don’t understand the position unless you can afford to educate your child privately or do it yourself, your child should not be… Read more »
I’m starting to realize this whole blog basically operates under the assumption that all of secular culture is explicitly anti-God and exists to ensnare your children in the clutches of Satan. I’m a Jesus follower and believe in the reality that this world is subject to real evil, but I’ve also become convinced its influence is also seen in the paranoid fear of outside culture that has infected the church. I’m seeing now on this thread that there is a real fear that public schools are hell-bent on turning our kids against God and converting them into queer lifestyles. Of… Read more »
The Dav wrote: I’m starting to realize this whole blog basically operates under the assumption that all of secular culture is explicitly anti-God and exists tto ensnare your children in the clutches of Satan. The Dav appears to be operating under the myth of secular neutrality. The Dav wrote: … the overreaction of seeing public schools as inherently evil and intentionally anti-God simply promotes a Christian retreat from the world that is actually against what we are called to as Christ’s disciples. This is a classic error. The Dav clearly isn’t familiar with Wilson, or with the kind of worldview… Read more »
jillybean wrote: I understand the belief that education is the business of the church, not the state, even though I don’t agree with it. Not quite. The role and authority and duty to educate children in the fear of the Lord belongs to the parents and the family. The Church only comes in to this picture in relation to its role in charity and compassion. When the need is significant, as it has been in history, the Church may organize to meet that need directly and efficiently, by forming their own schools and universities. Parents who are not needy may… Read more »
I have thought about this for quite a while, and I agree that it is not as simple as it first appears. First,for the sake of discussion, can we posit hypothetically that public schools are not invariably illegitimate on the grounds that they are not the province of the sword-bearing magistrate? My initial remark about what kind of Christian teaching would be acceptable to me, in a public school, came from my thinking about ashv’s comment that public schools would have to be explicitly Christian for him to reconsider them. In an explicitly Christian state, where all schools are explicitly… Read more »
Tom Woods has a free ebook on this subject (tomwoods.com). Suffice it to say, the “if we don’t spend enough on public schools, we’ll have an illiterate society” scare tactic has a lot of flaws.
I have seen you speak about your “snowflake.” Do you not credit the school system for instilling some of that dysfunction? If so, why would you still support a system that took the family faith and destroyed that in your child?
I don’t think the school was responsible; in fact, I credit her school for the support and counseling they provided. I followed her studies closely, and there was no attempt to undermine her religious faith. Some of her teachers made no secret of the fact that they were Christian. My daughter is the product of an interfaith home (Catholic and Jewish). She was raised as a Christian and attended church and youth groups until she was 15. At that time she found out, before I did, that her father whom she hero-worshiped was having affairs. He shared inappropriate information with… Read more »
Thanks for sharing. I can definitely see how circumstances far more important than her Public School attendance could have shaped that outcome.
I was out of line for insinuating that conclusion without knowing. Please forgive me.
No need, I wasn’t offended. But thank you anyway! I would be happy to think you would pray for her from time to time.
Be happy, then, because I will.
Thank you! I don’t like to use her real name here, but I think God knows her as Jilly’s Snowflake!
A huge number of poor families wouldn’t be poor families if they had the resources to homeschool. And I don’t know the truth about all demographics in America, but in my limited experience, Reformed churches more often than not avoid poor communities.
Between your unfounded swipe at Reformed communities and sheer ignorance of the educational generosity of huge numbers of Reformed churches, it seems clear that your comment justifies being ignored. I will, however, try to set the record straight. The resources it takes to homeschool are hardly more than a willingness to read free books from the library and write stuff down in donated notebooks with donated pencils. Add to that a free walk in a community park or a natural preserve which usually provide free literature and free classes by volunteers. Your ignorance of Reformed communities was bad, but your… Read more »
I’m not talking about material resources. I’m talking about time, emotional energy, and personal educational level (in the broad sense, not credentials). And I didn’t say “poor people can’t homeschool”, I said, “a huge number of poor families”. It is highly amusing that you’re simultaneously misreading my statement that way while then saying, “learn to read” when you thought I did a similar thing on one of your comments! Would you disagree with my factual statement that Reformed churches are more often than not outside of poor communities? I’ve lived and worked in poor communities in five very different situations… Read more »
You are a slippery, dishonest one, young sir! You said, “A huge number of poor families wouldn’t be poor families if they had the resources to homeschool.” “If they had the resources to homeschool…” then “they wouldn’t be poor.” Again, insinuating that poor people can’t or won’t expend the energy or time to educate their kids at home is degrading. Educational level is a bit more of an issue, but by taking advantage of free resources, that is easily overcome with a little focus. I know firsthand. Please stop trying to help poor people by treating them as if they… Read more »
No, I am not saying that “poor people” as in all of them, can’t or won’t expend their energy or time to educate their kids at home. I know personal counterexamples to that claim. What I am saying is that there are a huge number of poor families whose reason for poverty is primarily built around a lack of margin – i.e., that they do not have the excess time, or the necessary resources (including personal abilities) to escape from poverty, and that same lack of marginal time and resources would also keep them from effectively homeschooling. What I said… Read more »
Good, then I don’t disagree with you. The next and most logical step in that case is to ask for and seek help. Church resources, specifically Reformed churches, are bastions of willing helpers and willing givers, many of whom are educated, even teachers themselves. Margin is a huge problem, but interestingly once the family accepts homeschooling, they tend to have much more time. Kids waste huge amounts of time in class and in school generally. There is no time wasted rushing to get ready and for traveling. At home, kids can get a solid lesson in an hour, then they… Read more »
The Dav wrote: Choosing the best school for our kids sounds wonderful. But in truth the ability to actually choose schools is only an option for wealthier families with a non-working parent who are able to transport their children to those schools. … School choice just lets the better-off opt out, and does nothing to help better educate our underprivileged children and set them on course for a better future. Our instincts for Christian charity to the truly needy are not to be discouraged, but The Dav doesn’t seem to be aware of the trajectory of the secular government school… Read more »
You’ve completely missed my point. Nowhere did I say that all parents should send their kids to public schools. I’m talking about our federal education policies. Investing resources in school choice & vouchers says “we should invest in enabling parents to send their kids to whatever school they wish.” That would be all well and good, if this were an option for all parents. But as I’ve said numerous times now, not all families have the ability to send their kids anywhere but a public school. I’m simply saying that because of that fact, we shouldn’t ignore the public school… Read more »
I’m not advocating for the immediate destruction of the government school system without a functioning private school system in place, but I don’t accept the legitimacy of government education of children. Period. It is an intrusion into the family that needs to come to a complete end. The civil government is a sword-bearing institution, not a kindergarten. Vouchers may be a compromise path toward a return to privatization of schools, but vouchers are not an end goal in themselves because they still place the government as a middle man, handing out charity money and government dependence. The fact that government… Read more »
If the Secretary of Education followed her Constitutional responsibilities, she would return education to the state level where it should be and close out her office.
Is that the responsibility you were thinking of or were you considering something more along the lines of better common core forced upon everyone by the Federal government?
I’m not advocating specific policies here, nor would I pretend to know enough about them to propose how to “fix” the public school system. The only point I’ve been trying to make, is that even if the Sec of Ed wants to advocate for school choice, which is fine by me, he/she still needs to be knowledgable of the operation of public schools, because not all parents will be able to choose anything but their local public school. While we may appreciate DeVos’ advocacy for school choice, her weakness is that she has no experiential knowledge of public schools. School… Read more »
A whole nation to consider . . .that’s right and someone from the outside is needed to point out the problems and give solutions that will work right now. Not knowing the jargon is a good start because for years educators have used jargon to bamboozle Congress and us low life folks who just don’t know any better. Growth versus proficiency doesn’t matter when government schooled kids can’t read. That is because Ed supports look say instead of phonics. Ed supports sports instead of academic excellence. Ed supports feelings rather than education. Ed supports common core, a program that doesn’t… Read more »
I agree with you in many ways, but you’d be hard-pressed to convince me that the right “outsider” is a billionaire who went to private school, never had to pay student loans, etc.
I don’t object to the desire to overhaul our education system. I just object to this particular choice to do it.
Well now we know the bottom line. Thanks for that information because unless we get someone from outside the education system to change things they won’t change. Idaho keeps crying that our schools are in trouble because we can’t pay for high quality teachers. Over half the Idaho state budget goes to education yet we still are in poor standing. The reason is that Idaho will never step out of the school box. The taxpayers pay for wifi in all Idaho schools yet Idaho refuses to use the wifi to have the best math teacher teach math to the entire… Read more »
I do not know how it works everywhere, but in Pennsylvania, your premise would be entirely false. The local public school system is legally required to provide transport for children living within its boundaries to any school within 15 miles of the student’s home.
Are you aware of jurisdictions where children are only able to obtain transportation to their local public school? I think this must be an uncommon situation, or charter schools would not be able to exist at all, anywhere.
It’s my understanding that it varies by state and district. In Tennessee where I live, the charters are not required by law to provide transportation, but they may if they so choose and if they follow state transportation guidelines.
Then it would seem like the solution would be to address the transportation issue in one way or another, rather than throw up our hands and say that kids will just have to stay stuck in public schools regardless of the quality of those schools. Oh, and of course, we can start reforming them, so that they’re halfway reformed two years after the current kids graduate. That should benefit them.
The mammoth LAUSD does not provide transport for charters, only for magnets. My daughter went to school with kids whose mothers made a 90 minute commute twice a day. For a while there was a celebrity’s child who was helicoptered in each day!
The lack of transportation does make charters inaccessible for some kids, especially the younger ones. Until they’re old enough to ride public transit on their own (13 or so in LA?), they are restricted to neighborhood schools.
The charter school I worked at did not provide free transportation for any students. Most students lived close enough that transport was not needed, those who lived further away figured out a way.
Your point is a tired one from public educators and the Great Society thinkers. The Southern Baptists alone could easily establish good schools instead of sending g their kids off to worship at the foot of Baal for six or eight hours a day. But they won’t because it costs them a bit extra to Homeschooling or Christian school their kids. There are.pmenty of Christians who are willing to put their money where their mouths are.concerning education. Even the poorest church can have a.private school worshiping God instead of Malek. When Christians get serious about living for God they will… Read more »
Having wealth has advantages.
Having good parents has more.
Having Jesus has the most.
Can someone explain vouchers to me?
A voucher represents a certain amount of money that will be paid to the school that the child will attend. So if the voucher is worth 8k and the child goes to school X, then school X will be paid 8k. So the parent can now choose to send their kid to a private school and that voucher can be used to pay for or offset the tuition to that school. In an ideal voucher system, all the kids would get vouchers and schools would compete for these voucher dollars, with parents having a wide range of choices for their… Read more »
Thanks. I take it that not every child now gets vouchers?
We don’t need no stinking vouchers. We need to stop paying school tax, and then we could use that money to pay for, you know, school.
A voucher is like a government food stamp, only it’s redeemable for education. A voucher is given to ensure that parents feel they have a choice in how to educate their children, because the government is so magnanimous and generous. The point of vouchers is to keep the government in a position of control as a bureaucratic middle man, handing out money and teaching government dependence.
Yup. This doesn’t explain the left’s opposition though. The left hates vouchers because they return a modicum of control to parents.
I would prefer someone who had actually worked in a school setting.
You said: “Anyone who is acquainted with the challenges that were looming for private schools in the event of a Clinton presidency knows that all of us dodged a bullet there. Actually we dodged a whistling howitzer shell. Not to put too fine a point of it, Betsy DeVos is an answer to prayer for everyone who wants the freedom from government regulation and overreach as we attempt to provide real education for the next generation. A real answer to prayer.” I agree entirely. The trouble I have is that you’re making this point after spending the last year talking… Read more »
A brother and I were talking prior to the election. He said, “maybe God has put Trump here for such a time as this.”
My response was “If God want’s Trump to be president He is well able to do it without my vote.”
Well He sure did.
I dunno if it’s abdicating responsibility (well, I clearly don’t think it is, but I’m not completely sure on that one), but I had the same approach (though I thought it was going to be Hillary).
I also thought it was going to be Hillary, and there was a candidate running for whom I could cast my vote and still look at myself, in the morning, so I went that way. And God still wanted Trump to be president.
Yup. Exactly what I did.
guess I took the bullet for y’all…
I have been wondering lately if this debate, at a more subtle level, has more to do with expecting justice or mercy from God. Is the country entirely evil and in need of the fire of judgment or does God hear the cries of his people to heal the land? Maybe the answer includes some of both.
In other words, how many instances of answered prayer is it going to take for us to see you write a retraction?
That’s a good point.I don’t care about Wilson’s retraction, but in a matter of days Trump has managed to do several things that are an answer to some pretty desperate prayers. We should take note of these things and thank God for hearing us, regardless of how it has come to be.
Well I’m interested in seeing a DW retraction. For the last year this blog, which has a large viewership, has been blasting Trump. DW has said over and over and over and over again how he couldn’t vote for him. He bashed him and bashed him. Now, basically without skipping a beat, he’s praising everything he’s doing. His appointments are great. There’s real change happening. Prayers are being answered. Etc., etc. For the last year this blog has consistently got this all wrong, and in a very big way. Now if someone just had a private opinion about Trump, and… Read more »
Gabe I feel your pain. I think Trump is a bum but I also know that God is in charge no matter who is in the White House. I get tired of Christians rooting for politicians who are evil but supposedly have the best chance of getting elected. My Louisiana friends would tell me they voted for a crook but they knew just how big a crook that politician was. We shouldn’t be voting for the lesser evil but should be supporting solid Christians running for office. I think the apologies should come from those Christians who say stay out… Read more »
Amen. And DW who supported John McCain.
http://humanevents.com/2008/02/01/john-mccain-the-anticonservative/
http://humanevents.com/2008/01/23/john-mccain-the-geraldo-rivera-republican/
Exactly. And there were folks, even some commenters on this blog, who were more or less predicting what we’re now seeing. Incidentally, John Piper does seem to be doubling down, as he’s produced a wretched piece on “living under a morally unqualified president” since the inauguration. No acknowledgment whatsoever of the good Trump is already doing, just “how are we poor Christians going to survive living under the administration of such a worldly man!”
Serious question: do you think the government needs to play a role in providing education for special needs children?
As it stands, every family I know with a special needs child sends them to public school because private schools don’t provide the necessary services.
I don’t. I think we’d all be better off with a purely private system. I think it would actually be easier for poor families to get good education if it weren’t “free”.
Like I said, the vast majority of private schools, even the high end ones, don’t provide special needs services, especially for severe students. I’m not sure on what basis you would expect private schools to pick these up.
It would be a different world and very different environment without public education sucking all the air out of room.
There are other countries that don’t have government education. Do any of them provide the services for special needs kids that you assume would suddenly emerge in this gap?
In America, a lot of charter schools even avoid serving special needs kids, and those charters are funded at he same rates that the public schools are.
Beats me. Also I don’t know about “suddenly”. How quickly did Uber emerge?
In Robtopia there would be no charter schools because there would be no government schools at all. It would be up to parents with whatever charity they could cadge to create the schools they want.
I understand your joy in DeVos as the Secretary of Education. I get your viewpoint, but I’m not 100% there. I have no problem with school choice or with someone in an office that has sent her kids to private school. However, I think all government-funded schools should be held to at the same academic standards. Not to say that all the school has to teach the same subjects the same way with the same curriculum, but when it comes to TAX payer’s money, there should be measurable results. I went to a private school and my kids go to… Read more »
Jessica Ubel wrote: … when it comes to TAX payer’s money, there should be measurable results. On this basis alone, we should have shut down the government school system long ago. But even if the government was producing graduates with high test scores, it is still simply outside of their God-given jurisdiction. The civil magistrate is God’s sword-bearing institution, and minister of God’s wrath and justice, not an administer of kindergarten. We should sooner ask the civil magistrate to lead us in worship, or ask parents to execute criminals. Jessica Ubel wrote: While some would argue that the church or… Read more »
The reason we need school choice is that a certain swathe of the US population is ineducable, and in attempting to provide “equality,” we’ve shackled children down to the lowest common denominator and introduced violence into schools with the idea that spreading out “demographics” would make people smarter. Actually, according to studies by Robert Putnam (to his horror), this decreases performance for all demographics. Additionally, every new generation of educators since the 50s has been an even more fervent and rabid crop of Marxists both proportionally and dogmatically. I left college less than a decade ago and the things my… Read more »
She agreed to head a Federal department that I’d think would be the first one you’d want to do away with, so how pleased can you really be with her?
Uhm… Mr. Wilson, we here at the Dept. of Ed object to the Term “DC Death Star”. In the future, we prefer if you would kindly use the term “National Progress Sphere”. Thank you
No, no, no, it’s clearly the Peace Moon.
Jiffy Lube was probably a poor choice for the example. They’re famous for being exposed over and over and over in cheating customers in so many ways, and which such consistency, that it appears to be corporate policy or a natural outgrowth of how they are instructed to work. Just about the epitome of “how does profit motive and the elevation of marketing and mass audience over competence and relationships create perverse incentives which screw over the consumer.”
http://www.complex.com/sports/2013/09/jiffy-lube-scandal-scam/stop
I’m surprised buddy Sather isn’t here to preach about the necessity of sending kids in to be witnesses…