My friend James says:

OK, Hartmann is talking a lot today about education policies. He’s brought a right-winger on, who wants “vouchers.” I shouldn’t be surprised that pops up again, with Republicans in power.

Anyway, if you just want “private” businesses, then schools need to offer a product, and get paid by the consumer for it. Government should not be involved in financing private schools by vouchers.

The Public Schools need to remain, and those people who want those vouchers, want to “extract” that money from the public schools, and use it as a coupon for private schools, which is essentially just going to be giving people who already attend private schools, a huge benefit. And most of these are at least upper-middle class incomes, above sixty thousand a year.

So to get their voucher, which they claim they deserve, they will hurt public schools.

The government should have nothing to do with financing private schools, whether they call them Charter Schools, or “privatized” schools, or what they are called now, they are “private” because they pay for them, and have no government rules imposed on them.

Essentially were we to go to voucher schools, each student would provide their money, to a school–it’d be freedom to choose, so they’ll get to overcome integration, which they have always wanted to do.  Worse, the rich folks that manage the school, like private prisons will have as their motivation, extracting as much profit, from the government money they are paid, as possible. Educating children will be secondary. So employees (teachers custodians, administrators) will be paid less, little to no money will be spent to update technologies needed, and they will simply be trying to pocket all the money they receive.

It is a bad move. Certainly we can talk about equalizing some of the worse schools, but solving the problems, many of them that come from the poverty of the parents of the kids attending the schools, or the unstable, perhaps dangerous atmosphere of some of the schools, or other problems that plague schools–and most of these are because of under-funding. But this is no solution, this is more madness, more policy that has proved to not educate children any better than public schools, and might in many cases end up being worse.

And it cuts demand, which as I keep saying, is the problem with our Economy, Demand, and distribution.

To which I reply:

If any of these people are Christians they have the Biblical duty to teach those amongst us; not profit off of their backs. Every child you teach can contribute to you later with: a laugh, opening a door, working for you, healing you, or burying you.

We have some Charter schools in New Mexico and they are gutting the central high schools where “the Others go.” So we will raise a generation of drop outs and that one janitor who can’t read labels (because of the education we gave him) will mix ammonia and clorox to mop the floor and leave it by the intake ducts of the HVAC system in his janitor’s closet and the Republicans on the school board will be killed at a board meeting. Karma…..