Private religious schools should never get one cent of public money, for any reason. It is not the government's job to back-stop anybody's religion. The smoke screen of giving parents a choice, is in fact making Arkansas' already awful schools even worse by taking funding away from them. Once you realize the Republicans want to create a permanent American underclass, much of what they do becomes apparent.
From the first I heard of "voucher" programs, I have been utterly and adamantly opposed to them. Too often, they drain monies away from public schools which are operating on the margins of competency and render them even less effective at their missions than they already are. Considering her previous decision regarding child labor, Governor Sanders' actions here just continue to follow the same dangerous pattern.
Her goal is simple, insofar as I can see it: the dismantling of public education and the de-education of Arkansas' kids, who apparently are meant for the labor pool of the Natural State ... though what's "natural" about that utterly escapes me.
Texas Governor Razor Wire McPanderWheels is forcing a special legislative session to set up the same entitlement program for Texas. This is the only issue some leges are bucking him on. The rural districts can’t afford to let their public schools rot on the vine like the Karenland suburbs can.
Arizona started their voucher program a few years back, and estimates are the program is going to cost the state over a BILLION dollars a year to maintain within 5 years.
Can you imagine what their public school system would look like with an infusion of a billion dollars?
My mother was a teacher here in AZ. She left the profession for awhile then decided to go back under her own terms. She wanted to teach 2nd grade. She has a Master's degree as a reading specialist but the state of AZ wanted her to accept a starting salary as a new teacher that was below the national average for new teachers. She moved to Blythe CA (just across the state line) and got paid more than double what they offered in Phoenix. She retired 20 years ago and things are not much better for teacher now.
The AZ legislature has been treading the public school budget as a piggy bank for years, too. Public schools here have yet to see anywhere near the money they get promised time and time again, and I'm every bit as fed up with it as you are despite also not having kids.
Same here in Kansas, but the Republican supermajority can't get enough votes to overcome our Democratic governor's veto (thank goodness) to get a voucher program going. She actually supports an equitable, regulated voucher program, but of course that's not on the Republican's agenda.
A lot of rural Texans oppose this effort because it will take funding away from them. The only places these private schools exist are in larger towns and big cities Texas has hundreds of small towns where private school isn't an option.
Of course it’s wealthy families benefiting from this, I’m betting they’re majority white. Of course it’s religious schools benefiting from this, I’m betting they’re majority evangelical Christian. Corporate America has teamed up with the theocrats to create a caste system in the USA so they have an endless supply of disposable workers who don’t complain when they’re abused.
They’ve been looking to defund public education for generations. Especially if it benefits people of color. This is the way they’ve found to package it as something the base approves or they can get away with it without the immediate ire of the folks on the left.
> "...so they have an endless supply of disposable workers who don’t complain when they’re abused."
Well good gosh, you wouldn't want to see workers who know more and have sharper minds than their managers, would you? I mean, I know that isn't hard in most cases, but still! That would be the end of everything!
I've been lucky enough to only work for companies on the side, so to speak--in between writing gigs. But I say with no exaggeration that every upper level manager I've ever worked for was a dope. One bank VP I worked for quite literally couldn't read or write. (He had been a college jock, and he was great at talking sports with the higher-ups, so he kept getting promoted.) His secretary had to read his mail to him every morning--slowly--and compose the responses for him then read them to him before she mailed them. And every other manager I've worked for was almost as bad. Not quite as bad, but not really much better, either.
Happy Indigenous Peoples Day. A big salute to all the native populations of this hemisphere. And a big middle finger to all the Christian invaders who made those peoples lives a living hellish nightmare.
Today also marks what would have been John Lennon's 83rd birthday had he not been assassinated by a devout Christian. If Yoko Ono has her way, Mark David Chapman will never taste freedom again. Good!
As it turns out, this is also the birthday of John and Yoko's son Sean. He turns 48 today, meaning he outlived his father by almost a decade.
The state of Texas doesn't get today as a holiday. The parent company does starting this year, but since we work with several state programs as well as a few federal we only officially get the day off when both are closed.
We didn't get the day off when it was Columbus Day, and with Gregg Abbott as governor we certainly aren't going to get off anything called 'Indigenous Peoples Day'.
All the usual stuff is closed here today, libraries included.
Since there's no library computer to switch over to today, think I'll post until 11AM my time and take advantage of the extra hours to find some items at Northgate Mall. That should take about 4 hours or so, due to all the traveling.
I am not only against vouchers. I am against private schools. If there is a need for special schools let them be run as public schools open to everyone who needs them.
That's true of most private schools, which only cater to the hoi polloi. But the really elite schools, the ones that enroll only the wealthy and the privileged...well, horrors, we can't deprive the privileged class of their privileges, can we? We can't expect their children to mingle with the children of ordinary people, can we? I mean, imagine what someone like Donald Trump would be like if he actually knew people whose families struggled to live even at a subsistence level. That would be the beginning of the end of America, I tell ya.
If you have the means to pay for a private school, you pay out of your pocket or you try to get a non state funded scholarship, point.
A little of my school history. My parents had the choice for boarding schools, three (that I know of) specialised for children whose parents travel a lot for work (bargees, carnies, gypsies). They also have a pick of others private and public boardschool. They choose C, even if it was not convenient for them for two reasons :
A) My paternal grandparents lived less than 5 kilometres away.
B) Theses boardschools are actually dormitories and have a contract with public schools. DM especially wanted me to have contact with children outside my subculture.
I would imagine everyone here already knows this, but I'll say it anyway: We cannot kick religion out of education fast enough. These all-too-Christianized schools are a burden on society as a whole, and not just because of the tax dollars lost to them. Indoctrination is for Sunday School, not for actual education of future generations.
I don't have kids, but somehow the Republican party has managed to offend me over this time and time again. They insist on things like 'school choice' that mean spending taxpayer dollars on Little Junior Bigbucks going to a private school, while denying Little Sammy Poorguy any education at all. It's got to be one of the worst forms of elitism, and they refuse to stop doing it; what makes it even worse is they've convinced their base that it's a 'good thing'! The very base that is suffering though this BS is voting for it, so far as I can tell.
I don't know how it is elsewhere, really. I know that here in Arizona, the legislature starts staring at the public education budget every time money needs to be spent on a project of any kind. This state is so red it's practically bloody, so voting the Republicans out just ain't gonna happen. I keep trying anyway, and telling myself that neither violence nor jail time will solve the problem.
When Rusty Bowers, former AZ Speaker of the House, is deemed a hero and awarded the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award (and then censured by the AZ Republican party) for refusing to go along with the illegal scheme to replace Arizona’s legal slate of electors with a false slate of electors who would elect Trump, then enduring persistent harassment and intimidation tactics from Trump supporters, and finally getting primaried out from the right to lose his re-election bid, you know your state is in Deep Shit.
You don't get much more mean-spirited than Sarah Sanders - all in the name of her performative christianity. This is the same person who lifted legal barriers against minors working in sometimes dangerous industries. The same person who made it more onerous to apply for medicaid with over 82,000 losing coverage due to deliberate measures enacted by the governor. The same person who put in place a near total ban on abortion risking the lives and health of women in Arkansas and condemning some non-viable newborns to a slow, cruel death. Oh, but she revels in her unyielding position against pressure to remove a chalk drawing of a christian cross at the capitol building - not to mention the ever-present cross hanging around her neck. https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2023/jul/01/sanders-vows-not-to-erase-chalk-drawing-of-cross/
I have to take city streets to get to the pickleball courts, but there's not a direct route. I have to keep making left and right turns, just like everybody else who uses city streets. How horribly inconvenient! I want a straight-line shot directly from my house to the courts, cutting diagonally across all those city blocks, and a parking lot immediately adjacent to the courts as soon as I arrive. I call it "pickleball choice", and I absolutely insist that the city government has to pay for it. Maybe if I formed my own church people would take me more seriously.
OT : I take back what I said. I was better off without the proteinated drink. They changed the brand, it's sweeter than the previous one and I mean nausea inducing sweet 🤮
It didn't? So much for a U.S. History education? :)
(Truthfully, no U.S. history class I ever took before college covered WWII, somehow there was never enough time in the school year to cover much beyond the immediate aftermath of the Civil War.)
I don't think I ever got an A 4 anything until I went back to university (part-time and correspondence) in my 40s – then they came regularly. Just goes to show the influence of the Demon drink.
I'm curious--how did they cover the Vichy/collaborationist government? If France is like the US, they gloss over it with terms that make it not sound so horrible. I know the Germans avoided talking about the Third Reich's most heinous behavior till they couldn't avoid it anymore. And we Americans are masterful at maintaining all the myths about what a wonderful place this is now and has always been.
From what I remember they put everything on pétain, whitewashed of course and papon wasn't even mentioned. Vel d'Hiv was studied very quickly (the part where the French government offered Jewish children as a bonus = nada). German concentration and death camps were not whitewashed, there was several pictures of emaciated prisoners taken when they were freed.
No mention of American Japanese put in concentration camps. And except for Pearl Harbour, nothing about the Pacific part of WWII.
But it was about 25 years ago. I have no idea if it's the same.
I taught World War II to 18-year-olds years ago. I don't know if it's taught now, they've tended to move away from world history to more local stuff. Which is good but World War II is a hugely important world event. Everyone should know a little something about it.
Sarah Huckleberry Slanders is one of the byproducts of America's worst decision and most unqualified, inept, destructive president in its history. Jesus should be proud of his work.
Private religious schools should never get one cent of public money, for any reason. It is not the government's job to back-stop anybody's religion. The smoke screen of giving parents a choice, is in fact making Arkansas' already awful schools even worse by taking funding away from them. Once you realize the Republicans want to create a permanent American underclass, much of what they do becomes apparent.
From the first I heard of "voucher" programs, I have been utterly and adamantly opposed to them. Too often, they drain monies away from public schools which are operating on the margins of competency and render them even less effective at their missions than they already are. Considering her previous decision regarding child labor, Governor Sanders' actions here just continue to follow the same dangerous pattern.
Her goal is simple, insofar as I can see it: the dismantling of public education and the de-education of Arkansas' kids, who apparently are meant for the labor pool of the Natural State ... though what's "natural" about that utterly escapes me.
It's the goal of Republicans to stop funding public education and put all children in subsidized religious schools.
Close. The leaders get expensive - and, obviously, exclusive* - private schools.
*(exclusive - y'know... exclusive, you get me? Right?)
Absolutely.
She needs the money to pay for the "art" allegedly made by her children (masterly debunked by Val).
Arkansas. Ranked 5th from the very bottom of states to live in. Ranked an even worse 47th in health care.
Education? 43rd. Which Sanders & Co. look to torpedo and send to the bottom.
None of 'em will be happy until they're 50/50 across the board.
Texas Governor Razor Wire McPanderWheels is forcing a special legislative session to set up the same entitlement program for Texas. This is the only issue some leges are bucking him on. The rural districts can’t afford to let their public schools rot on the vine like the Karenland suburbs can.
Arizona started their voucher program a few years back, and estimates are the program is going to cost the state over a BILLION dollars a year to maintain within 5 years.
Can you imagine what their public school system would look like with an infusion of a billion dollars?
What ? Are you a communazi for wanting decent meals and textbooks in schools ? Do you want teachers to be paid too ?
I don't even have kids in school, but I see the condition of the books they bring home (crappy and OLD).
Every improvement we've made in this school district has been paid for by local bonds, not a dime from the state.
My mother was a teacher here in AZ. She left the profession for awhile then decided to go back under her own terms. She wanted to teach 2nd grade. She has a Master's degree as a reading specialist but the state of AZ wanted her to accept a starting salary as a new teacher that was below the national average for new teachers. She moved to Blythe CA (just across the state line) and got paid more than double what they offered in Phoenix. She retired 20 years ago and things are not much better for teacher now.
The AZ legislature has been treading the public school budget as a piggy bank for years, too. Public schools here have yet to see anywhere near the money they get promised time and time again, and I'm every bit as fed up with it as you are despite also not having kids.
Same here in Kansas, but the Republican supermajority can't get enough votes to overcome our Democratic governor's veto (thank goodness) to get a voucher program going. She actually supports an equitable, regulated voucher program, but of course that's not on the Republican's agenda.
A lot of rural Texans oppose this effort because it will take funding away from them. The only places these private schools exist are in larger towns and big cities Texas has hundreds of small towns where private school isn't an option.
The local church will open a school and for those heathens it won't admit, what's a 3 hour bus ride each way to and from school?
Of course it’s wealthy families benefiting from this, I’m betting they’re majority white. Of course it’s religious schools benefiting from this, I’m betting they’re majority evangelical Christian. Corporate America has teamed up with the theocrats to create a caste system in the USA so they have an endless supply of disposable workers who don’t complain when they’re abused.
They’ve been looking to defund public education for generations. Especially if it benefits people of color. This is the way they’ve found to package it as something the base approves or they can get away with it without the immediate ire of the folks on the left.
> "...so they have an endless supply of disposable workers who don’t complain when they’re abused."
Well good gosh, you wouldn't want to see workers who know more and have sharper minds than their managers, would you? I mean, I know that isn't hard in most cases, but still! That would be the end of everything!
I've been lucky enough to only work for companies on the side, so to speak--in between writing gigs. But I say with no exaggeration that every upper level manager I've ever worked for was a dope. One bank VP I worked for quite literally couldn't read or write. (He had been a college jock, and he was great at talking sports with the higher-ups, so he kept getting promoted.) His secretary had to read his mail to him every morning--slowly--and compose the responses for him then read them to him before she mailed them. And every other manager I've worked for was almost as bad. Not quite as bad, but not really much better, either.
But America's economy is sound. Yeah, sure it is.
I’ve never had a manager that bad, but I’ve had some that are just in love with the sound of their own voice.
"Religious education" is an oxymoron.
First, tax-exempt status - we literally subsidize religion. Then
Second, funding religious schools - we subsidize indoctrination and grooming to boot.
What's wrong with this picture?
OT
Happy Indigenous Peoples Day. A big salute to all the native populations of this hemisphere. And a big middle finger to all the Christian invaders who made those peoples lives a living hellish nightmare.
Today also marks what would have been John Lennon's 83rd birthday had he not been assassinated by a devout Christian. If Yoko Ono has her way, Mark David Chapman will never taste freedom again. Good!
As it turns out, this is also the birthday of John and Yoko's son Sean. He turns 48 today, meaning he outlived his father by almost a decade.
The state of Texas doesn't get today as a holiday. The parent company does starting this year, but since we work with several state programs as well as a few federal we only officially get the day off when both are closed.
We didn't get the day off when it was Columbus Day, and with Gregg Abbott as governor we certainly aren't going to get off anything called 'Indigenous Peoples Day'.
All the usual stuff is closed here today, libraries included.
Since there's no library computer to switch over to today, think I'll post until 11AM my time and take advantage of the extra hours to find some items at Northgate Mall. That should take about 4 hours or so, due to all the traveling.
I don't think the library is closed, the schools aren't, but the federal offices are closed and a few (but not most) businesses.
May I ? The American Native singer/flute player is John Two-Hawks.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ovZxa7KYRu0
Thank you.
...imagine there's no heaven...
I know many people love it, but that song grates on me. Too far from reality.
Just paying a bit of homage to Mr. Lennon who would have been 83 today as noted in the original comment.
Speaking of Indigenous Peoples Day, anyone who doesn’t watch Reservation Dogs should lose all rights to the internet.
Every private school will get a $20,000 podium.
Gold-plated toilets?
I hear they're all in vogue these days.
And the bathrooms serve double duty as sensitive document storage!
I am not only against vouchers. I am against private schools. If there is a need for special schools let them be run as public schools open to everyone who needs them.
That's true of most private schools, which only cater to the hoi polloi. But the really elite schools, the ones that enroll only the wealthy and the privileged...well, horrors, we can't deprive the privileged class of their privileges, can we? We can't expect their children to mingle with the children of ordinary people, can we? I mean, imagine what someone like Donald Trump would be like if he actually knew people whose families struggled to live even at a subsistence level. That would be the beginning of the end of America, I tell ya.
If you have the means to pay for a private school, you pay out of your pocket or you try to get a non state funded scholarship, point.
A little of my school history. My parents had the choice for boarding schools, three (that I know of) specialised for children whose parents travel a lot for work (bargees, carnies, gypsies). They also have a pick of others private and public boardschool. They choose C, even if it was not convenient for them for two reasons :
A) My paternal grandparents lived less than 5 kilometres away.
B) Theses boardschools are actually dormitories and have a contract with public schools. DM especially wanted me to have contact with children outside my subculture.
I would imagine everyone here already knows this, but I'll say it anyway: We cannot kick religion out of education fast enough. These all-too-Christianized schools are a burden on society as a whole, and not just because of the tax dollars lost to them. Indoctrination is for Sunday School, not for actual education of future generations.
I don't have kids, but somehow the Republican party has managed to offend me over this time and time again. They insist on things like 'school choice' that mean spending taxpayer dollars on Little Junior Bigbucks going to a private school, while denying Little Sammy Poorguy any education at all. It's got to be one of the worst forms of elitism, and they refuse to stop doing it; what makes it even worse is they've convinced their base that it's a 'good thing'! The very base that is suffering though this BS is voting for it, so far as I can tell.
I don't know how it is elsewhere, really. I know that here in Arizona, the legislature starts staring at the public education budget every time money needs to be spent on a project of any kind. This state is so red it's practically bloody, so voting the Republicans out just ain't gonna happen. I keep trying anyway, and telling myself that neither violence nor jail time will solve the problem.
I just wish I knew what would solve it.
When Rusty Bowers, former AZ Speaker of the House, is deemed a hero and awarded the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award (and then censured by the AZ Republican party) for refusing to go along with the illegal scheme to replace Arizona’s legal slate of electors with a false slate of electors who would elect Trump, then enduring persistent harassment and intimidation tactics from Trump supporters, and finally getting primaried out from the right to lose his re-election bid, you know your state is in Deep Shit.
We've just had 5 Libertarian candidates withdraw from the election because they are batshit crazier than usual. It seems to be a race to the bottom.
You don't get much more mean-spirited than Sarah Sanders - all in the name of her performative christianity. This is the same person who lifted legal barriers against minors working in sometimes dangerous industries. The same person who made it more onerous to apply for medicaid with over 82,000 losing coverage due to deliberate measures enacted by the governor. The same person who put in place a near total ban on abortion risking the lives and health of women in Arkansas and condemning some non-viable newborns to a slow, cruel death. Oh, but she revels in her unyielding position against pressure to remove a chalk drawing of a christian cross at the capitol building - not to mention the ever-present cross hanging around her neck. https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2023/jul/01/sanders-vows-not-to-erase-chalk-drawing-of-cross/
We say it all the time here, but it bears repeating still again: There is no hate quite as hateful as christian love.
I have to take city streets to get to the pickleball courts, but there's not a direct route. I have to keep making left and right turns, just like everybody else who uses city streets. How horribly inconvenient! I want a straight-line shot directly from my house to the courts, cutting diagonally across all those city blocks, and a parking lot immediately adjacent to the courts as soon as I arrive. I call it "pickleball choice", and I absolutely insist that the city government has to pay for it. Maybe if I formed my own church people would take me more seriously.
OT : I take back what I said. I was better off without the proteinated drink. They changed the brand, it's sweeter than the previous one and I mean nausea inducing sweet 🤮
I'm sure proudly made in the USA. I find very little too sweet, but when it is, it's bad.
If D-Day happened in your country, yes.
It didn't? So much for a U.S. History education? :)
(Truthfully, no U.S. history class I ever took before college covered WWII, somehow there was never enough time in the school year to cover much beyond the immediate aftermath of the Civil War.)
In my high school years, I took a class called American History: 1880 - 1950. It covered both world wars.
Got an A (wellllll, A+ actually) :)
So your class covered the future?
Post Civil-War history wasn't until college and I got a D. The textbook was a better sleep aid than Ambien ever dreamed of being.
In my case, it just shows what a teacher with a passion for their subject can do.
Try taking a class in Spenser and Milton (which I was required to do) and learn what boredom really is.
https://i.makeagif.com/media/11-03-2017/H6Z3CP.gif
I had a class like that. I don't remember the exact name, but it covered 'some date' to present. The textbook was 20 years old.
I don't think I ever got an A 4 anything until I went back to university (part-time and correspondence) in my 40s – then they came regularly. Just goes to show the influence of the Demon drink.
History and Sciences Naturelles from third to fifth grade. History and biology from 6th to 13th 😁
Nobody likes a showoff, Smarty Pants. 😝
It's hard to humble when you're as great as I am. ;)
I studied WWII in 9 th* (twice), 11 th and 13** th grades. I didn't even need to revise anything for my Bac Pro (12th and 13th grades).
* I didn't know which kind of high school to choose so DM had me retaking the class
** Not a typo.
I'm curious--how did they cover the Vichy/collaborationist government? If France is like the US, they gloss over it with terms that make it not sound so horrible. I know the Germans avoided talking about the Third Reich's most heinous behavior till they couldn't avoid it anymore. And we Americans are masterful at maintaining all the myths about what a wonderful place this is now and has always been.
From what I remember they put everything on pétain, whitewashed of course and papon wasn't even mentioned. Vel d'Hiv was studied very quickly (the part where the French government offered Jewish children as a bonus = nada). German concentration and death camps were not whitewashed, there was several pictures of emaciated prisoners taken when they were freed.
No mention of American Japanese put in concentration camps. And except for Pearl Harbour, nothing about the Pacific part of WWII.
But it was about 25 years ago. I have no idea if it's the same.
I taught World War II to 18-year-olds years ago. I don't know if it's taught now, they've tended to move away from world history to more local stuff. Which is good but World War II is a hugely important world event. Everyone should know a little something about it.
See my answer to Jomicur.
Sarah Huckleberry Slanders is one of the byproducts of America's worst decision and most unqualified, inept, destructive president in its history. Jesus should be proud of his work.
And now, just like Jesus, Trump is elevated by the Christians to a perpetual victim. The ultimate con is underway.
My new name for '45' is '91.' The latter speaks more to his legacy as a POS rather than POTUS.