ManM

Berenger Sauniere,
I do not think poor parents should have to pay the entire bill. It is in everyone's best interest that children be educated.

lpetrich,
I am speaking strictly from experience. When I was in high school I was forced to take a state mandated course on "Life Management Skills". This class involved learning how to cook spaghetti, write checks, sex ed, and self esteem boosting techniques. It was a complete waste of 18 weeks. There was also a state mandated health class that I (as a member of the tennis and soccer teams) found equally worthless. These courses took up time when I could have been studying a worthwhile academic subject. Also I remember being indoctrinated into cultural relativism while in high school. When I later studied ethics in college I discovered many problems with cultural relativism and have since abandoned it. It seems to me that public schools must be "politically correct" and can't hurt anyone's feelings, even at the expense of truth. I do not approve of this philosophy. This insistence on political correctness strikes me as an idealistic attempt at social engineering. In recent years we have been witnessing a backlash from this where political correctness is mocked, not revered. Again, I feel that such idealism and social engineering has no place in school.

My argument in favor of vouchers is the same one you use to oppose it. I do not wish to fund schools that I do not agree with. Under vouchers we might all have to fund schools we don't agree with. That sounds like a good compromise to me.

Eggy Toast

But wouldn't it make more sense for that money to go towards improving the public school so that *everyone* who attends it receives a better education, instead of the few who qualify to go somewhere else?

I'd much rather have my tax dollars go towards improving the overall education of everyone instead of sending a few children to a private school of their own choosing. It doesn't make a very good compromise when it doesn't work for everyone. You very well could've been one of the students who couldn't've qualified for a voucher, for whatever reasons, and you'd not only be stuck at your school which you dislike, but that school would have less funding and therefore be *worse*.

Vouchers are the easy way out for politicians to address education issues. It does nothing to increase the availability or quality of schools.

Gemma Therese

Um, just to clear something up I read a few posts ago.

I attended a Catholic high school (diocesan), where we were taught evolution as truth ... there were no if, ands, or buts about it. Also, in religion class, we were taught the Biblical account of creation was, more or less, a myth told to establish God as creator.

Gemma Therese

Autonemesis

You are fooling yourself. As soon as the formerly private schools are inured to the federal money teat, they will roll over for any federal agenda that comes down the pike, as long as it means they get to keep getting voucher funds.

Vouchers spell the end of meaningful alternatives in private education. Only the schools that refuse the money will retain their independence from whatever agenda is being pushed by those who happen to be in power at the time.

Remember - it is far from certain that people sympathetic to parochial schools will be in power 5, 10, 15 years from now. The green light for vouchers is also a green light for the people with the purse strings to place conditions on that money.

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[ July 01, 2002: Message edited by: Kind Bud ]</p>