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I do not wish for taxpayer dollars to fund private school (religious or otherwise) or homeschooling. One of the things I love most about this country is that Am

I do not wish for taxpayer dollars to fund private school (religious or otherwise) or homeschooling. One of the things I love most about this country is that America is a civic nation. This country is built on shared civic ideals, values, and vision. This country is not built on a specific racial, ethnic, or religious identity like many, many old-world Eurasian nations.

nine_zeros 2y ago
> One of the things I love most about this country is that America is a civic nation What are you a communist? /s Jokes aside, with the recent election, the country has been sold to capitalists and oligarchs. I genuinely wouldn't be surprised if the school system in some states is fed to vultures to suck money from. You may think it is impossible in America but remember anything has been possible in America, including enslavement and redlining. Selling schools to vultures is not at all outside the realm of possibilities here.
- rbanffy 2y ago
  > Jokes aside, with the recent election, the country has been sold to capitalists and oligarchs. My question is how long will it take for it to be reversed. I have a deep respect for the ideals upon which the US was founded, but it's getting increasingly hard to respect the ground truth of what the country has become.
ActionHank 2y ago
That's weird, I could've sworn America was a capitalist oligarchy working to drive down education to produce a cheaper and less educated labour force.
vinyl7 2y ago
> This country is built on shared civic ideals, values, and vision. Sadly I think that died many decades ago and now we're just an economic zone
econ40432 2y ago
Harvard was given public money in 1636. It was a religious school and trained clergy.
- bilbo0s 2y ago
  Britain, had no separation of church and state. People who objected had no right to express their displeasure. And the United States was a twinkle in the eye of men who wouldn't be born for like 70 years. In other words, non-existent. Nowadays, we have the right to ask for something back if we give universities money man.
locopati 2y ago
"This country is not built on a specific racial, ethnic, or religious identity like many, many old-world Eurasian nations." I know there's an ideal of what America should be, but don't muddle the reality. America was built on whiteness (whose definition shifted over time) and class identity.
- rbanffy 2y ago
  It's true, but that's not a reason to dump the ideals. Quite the contrary, that's a reason to embrace the ideals even more. A professor once taught me that the law is not meant to represent the people, but to frame the ideal we want to be.
snapplebobapple 2y ago
Really? I think taxpayer dollars should be focused on an outcome (creating a cohesive society of high performance critical thinkers able to solve problems independently and in groups would be my outcome measure). With that being said, I see quite a lot of problems with the public system (suboptimal teacher provision partially driven by union pushing for things that help their union members at the expense of students, weird administrator to infrastructure spending ratios, weird far left ideologies being pushed on kids that I think are far outside school responsibility into parent responsibility, etc) and vouchers seem like a reasonable way to address this by taking funding out of the system to places that can perform better. To me, it seems more like a failure of voucher design than anything. The solution is probably to make the voucher worth up to 80 or 90% of what it costs to teach the kid in the public system (because if it doesn't cost less why are we doing it?) and force any school receiving a voucher to not charge more than a small amount more than the voucher, make the same restrictions on religion present in public enforced in private, etc. Declining public enrollment is a problem for crappy teachers and their union more than anything, it's not something to be concerned about. Fire the unneeded teachers and administrators to save costs and it should sort itself out medium term.

nine_zeros 2y ago

> One of the things I love most about this country is that America is a civic nation What are you a communist? /s Jokes aside, with the recent election, the country has been sold to capitalists and oligarchs. I genuinely wouldn't be surprised if the school system in some states is fed to vultures to suck money from. You may think it is impossible in America but remember anything has been possible in America, including enslavement and redlining. Selling schools to vultures is not at all outside the realm of possibilities here.

rbanffy 2y ago
> Jokes aside, with the recent election, the country has been sold to capitalists and oligarchs. My question is how long will it take for it to be reversed. I have a deep respect for the ideals upon which the US was founded, but it's getting increasingly hard to respect the ground truth of what the country has become.

ActionHank 2y ago

That's weird, I could've sworn America was a capitalist oligarchy working to drive down education to produce a cheaper and less educated labour force.

vinyl7 2y ago

> This country is built on shared civic ideals, values, and vision. Sadly I think that died many decades ago and now we're just an economic zone

econ40432 2y ago

Harvard was given public money in 1636. It was a religious school and trained clergy.

bilbo0s 2y ago
Britain, had no separation of church and state. People who objected had no right to express their displeasure. And the United States was a twinkle in the eye of men who wouldn't be born for like 70 years. In other words, non-existent. Nowadays, we have the right to ask for something back if we give universities money man.

locopati 2y ago

"This country is not built on a specific racial, ethnic, or religious identity like many, many old-world Eurasian nations." I know there's an ideal of what America should be, but don't muddle the reality. America was built on whiteness (whose definition shifted over time) and class identity.

rbanffy 2y ago
It's true, but that's not a reason to dump the ideals. Quite the contrary, that's a reason to embrace the ideals even more. A professor once taught me that the law is not meant to represent the people, but to frame the ideal we want to be.

snapplebobapple 2y ago

Really? I think taxpayer dollars should be focused on an outcome (creating a cohesive society of high performance critical thinkers able to solve problems independently and in groups would be my outcome measure). With that being said, I see quite a lot of problems with the public system (suboptimal teacher provision partially driven by union pushing for things that help their union members at the expense of students, weird administrator to infrastructure spending ratios, weird far left ideologies being pushed on kids that I think are far outside school responsibility into parent responsibility, etc) and vouchers seem like a reasonable way to address this by taking funding out of the system to places that can perform better. To me, it seems more like a failure of voucher design than anything. The solution is probably to make the voucher worth up to 80 or 90% of what it costs to teach the kid in the public system (because if it doesn't cost less why are we doing it?) and force any school receiving a voucher to not charge more than a small amount more than the voucher, make the same restrictions on religion present in public enforced in private, etc. Declining public enrollment is a problem for crappy teachers and their union more than anything, it's not something to be concerned about. Fire the unneeded teachers and administrators to save costs and it should sort itself out medium term.