The "School Vouchers" Bullshit

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Updated October 16:

McCain's going on and on about school vouchers in the debate right now. It's a scam, a Republican scam. What's it all about? A lot of Republicans are rich. They send their kids to private schools. Even Republicans who aren't rich, still try to send their kids to private schools.

Only rich Americans, or those who really dig deep into their pockets, can afford to send their kids to private schools. It's a luxury. Ordinary Americans living sensibly within their means just can't afford it. So these rich people want the state to pay for them to send their kids to private schools, instead of paying for it out of their own pocket! What a joke!

The fact is that public schools in a lot of places in our country (perhaps not coincidentally, in areas with large Black and/or Hispanic schools) are not in very good shape. I taught for a long time in these schools. There is nothing wrong with the schools! They are out of money, but whose fault is that? The "vouchers" crowd doesn't want to give these schools one more nickel.

The whole problem with these schools is lack of money and the kids. Lack of money means these schools are falling apart, and a lot of them hardly even have textbooks. The books that exist are often old or partly destroyed. Who destroyed them? In some cases, the kids did. Who thrashed the schools? In some cases, the kids did.

There's no problem whatsoever with the either the teachers or administrators in these schools. I've worked with 100's of them and the vast majority of them are just fine. They deserve medals, not slamming. The Republicans hate no one in the US so much as our schoolteachers. The teachers are incompetent, and their unions are evil.

Supposedly, in a poorly functioning area, the private schools are better than the public ones. It's quite possible, but the only reason is because the private schools throw out all the knotheads! Anyone who fucks off, is disruptive or destructive just gets tossed. Public schools can't do that. We have to take everyone. We can hardly throw out anyone, or at least we hardly could when I worked there.

There is no a priori reason why a private school should be better than a public one. I taught in the public schools for years and I assure you that we are under a Hell of a lot of pressure on the job. Pressure from students, from other teachers and especially from administrators. We can't fuck off or screw up. The administrators are breathing down our necks all the time.

Many of the kids are scummy little brat shits who monitor our speech for the slightest little unacceptable comment and then run to the administration or Mommy and Daddy and say, "Teacher said bla bla bla".

The White kids are by far the worst ones of them all - and the wealthier the White kids are, the more evil they are. Hispanic kids were generally pretty good - at least, they seemed to have the same sort of "fear and respect the teacher" that my Mom did.

Blacks are sort of a mixed bag and you really have to watch what you say. They like to go running to Black administrators and teachers and say, "The evil White teacher said bla bla bla." Usually they try to construe something "racist" out of this. The Black teachers and admins, in too many cases, just back up the kids against Whitey, I guess on the basis of racial solidarity.

We've given these little bratty shits so much power that they think they control the schools and hire the teachers.

The real power in the schools is the parents. Parents act like they hire and fire the administrators and teachers and are always marching off to complain about this or that teacher. Why? Who the Hell knows? Usually it's, "Evil teacher picked on my precious little (devious and wicked brat) Johnny". Almost always White parents running off to bust the teacher too.

My Mom says that when she was in school, this was unthinkable. Only the most grotesque untoward behavior by a teacher would conceivably send them complaining to parents or administrators, and she can't think of one time when it ever happened. She said that if they ever would have come home to complain about the teacher, their parents would have defended the teacher and told them to shut up and knock it off.

They lived in fear of the teacher. Teachers were not supposed to be nice. You weren't supposed to like the teacher. The teacher was supposed to kick your butt and make your lazy punk ass learn something.

We teachers can hardly talk about anything. We can't talk about our personal lives and we sure as Hell can't talk politics. We can't talk about race, religion or all sorts of stuff. I was paranoid the whole time, watching every word coming out of my mouth, and the brats would still keep try to bust me.

There is also a problem with this whole debate. If kids aren't learning anything or are failing, it's the teacher's fault! Well, maybe in a few cases. In most cases, I say no way! Kids fail classes or don't learn either because they are dumb or because they fuck off and don't try.

There's no reason private schools are better than public schools, and the truth is that they are not. My father taught in private schools and they are a joke. I guess some of the really expensive ones are pretty good, but your average private school sucks education-wise.

They horribly underpay and overwork the teachers. They scrimp on everything, don't spend shit on the school and throw it all over to the teachers. My father was buying paper, pencils and all sorts of school materials because the school wasn't providing shit.

There were strict orders to pass X number of students and give most students A's and B's. If a teacher gave too many failing or low grades, he was threatened with being fired! The whole thing was one big fraud, a grotesque, cynical joke. The owners of the private school were rich shits who cared nothing about the schools and spend most of their time flying around in a private helicopter!

By all objective criteria, kids seemed to be getting a better education in my father's public school classes than in his private school classes.

Furthermore, the vouchers scam defunds the public schools at the same time that it increases that number of "special needs" kids, problem students, brats and fuckoffs (since these will all get kicked out of the private schools) while many of the better students will take off.

It's a recipe for destroying the public schools in the US. Yes, it is true, but the Republicans are so reactionary that they actually want to get rid of public education in the US or at least defund it so much that it doesn't work.

This whole "vouchers" debate has a Hell of a lot to do with race, but no one ever discusses that. I'm going to end this post here without spelling it out for you. I invite you to ponder the obvious fact that the vouchers debate here in the US, like so many things, is shot through and through with race.

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