-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
That’s the kind of science nonsense that Louisiana’s taxpayers are going to be funding this upcoming school year. Governor Bobby Jindal’s bill will divert public school funds to pay for vouchers for students to attend private Christian schools like Eternity Christian Academy, in Westlake, LA.
The Eternity Christian Academy follows the Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) curriculum. What comprises the ACE science curriculum?
ACE’s science material claims scientists have speculated that Noah took baby dinosaurs on the Ark and that some may still be alive today:
Have you heard of the ‘Loch Ness Monster’ in Scotland? ‘Nessie,’ for short, has been recorded on sonar from a small submarine, described by eyewitnesses, and photographed by others. Nessie appears to be a plesiosaur.
Creationists, using an imaginary being to disprove evolution.
The big losers in Jindal’s diversion of taxes to these establishments of religion, are the kids who go to these Christian Madrasahs. None of their high school level science courses will be accepted by any reputable university. Any university curriculum that requires even a general knowledge of science will not be open to them.
As more and more states slash funding for public education and divert those funds to the Christian Madrasahs, the pool of students exposed to actual science will shrink. Industries that rely on scientific expertise, such as medicine, pharmacology, oil and gas exploration, and defense, will have to look outside the United States to fill their requirements for qualified job applicants.
While ExxonMobil funds ALEC to get states to approve weak fraking legislation, ALEC is also the driving force behind Jindal’s voucher program. With Jindal’s taxpayer subsidy, more of the Religious Right will be able to afford to yank their kids out of the public education system, and many corporations, that fiscal conservatives love, will find the number of scientifically literate job seekers diminish. The marriage of religious conservatives and fiscal conservatives has always seemed like an alliance with opposing agendas on critical issues.
There may be some parents who use their vouchers to send their children to a secular private school that provides a better education than found in the local public school. However, the net effect of vouchers is to divert funding from schools that teach secular science to schools that teach creationism. Wealthy parents can already afford to send their children to private schools so the voucher is an outright taxpayer funded gift for them.
H/T: Bruce Wilson, Michael LaBossiere, The Independent Weekly, Leaving Fundamentalism, John Nichols, Julianne Hing, Kristin Rawls.
Scotland is laughing at us:
How American fundamentalist schools are using Nessie to disprove evolution
IT sounds like a plot dreamed up by the creators of Southpark, but it’s all true: schoolchildren in Louisiana are to be taught that the Loch Ness monster is real in a bid by religious educators to disprove Darwin’s theory of evolution.
Tony C- Allow me to clarify, and reiterate a couple of points. First, I was being hyperbolic in my first post, without much thought, which is a good way to get bashed in this forum, I know. I’m not calling for the funds to education to be cut. I’m advocating they be transferred from the current public school system, using tax dollars, to using tax dollars to fund a Japanese style school system, where education is a mix and match of private and public funding, and it has worked out very well there. In fact, that would call for an increase in funding for education, a dramatic one, but one that I feel would be far better invested than how our government currently spends money.
Secondly, I did not argue (intentionally) that teaching was solely a motivation of money. It is a mix, of public interest and private interest, in educating people and of still being able to support the best lifestyle one can. I do not doubt that the good Prof. could make a great deal more money in the private sector (and I also mischaracterized his probable reaction to being offered a job at a community college, based on no known precedent). I do believe, however, that he chose GW because it pays more and offers benefits other than purely altruistic ones. Not because he could help more students there. In other words, more money attracts better teachers, and I believe that a competitive school system (sub university and at the University level) is better for education than the current format with low accountability, little to no individualized curriculum, and poor drop out rates. 857 students per class hour drop out of school.
As far as my argument being based on sand, well, I like sand. It feels good between my toes. And because when I argue on sand, my arguments can then shift, and I can learn from the debate process 😀
@CLH: Ask Prof. Turley if he would be willing to take a pay cut to go work for a Community College, as GW is too wealthy and exclusive, and not tax payer subsidized.
Let me note that Professor Turley is, in fact, teaching when he could be earning three times as much in a full time practice.
I will also note that I myself, in my late forties, gave up about 2/3 of my income (with my wife’s blessing) in order to return to Academia and full time research instead of simply continuing a series of projects I found profitable but not very meaningful.
Your premise that people will ALWAYS follow the money is simply wrong.
Which makes your logic wrong, it is built on sand, and your business logic is naive as well.
No one is talking about shutting down publicly funded education.
You explicitly called for that, don’t tell me nobody is talking about it.
While my arguments were, and were intended to be, hyperbolic, the response still doesn’t address the core issues. The core issue is that public school is failing, and people want alternatives. There is no short term solution to repairing poorly performing school districts. While there is a possibility of long term reform, it will NOT happen with the current political setup. I could be wrong about the latter, but I know I’m right about the former. And a short term solution is needed now. More money does not a better school district make, not by itself. There is no correlation between money and grades, directly. The correlation come in with the motivation of teachers and students. Both elements have to be there. Many teachers are motivated by a desire to help children. Most teachers I know were motivated by a desire to make a living, doing something they found rewarding, but still making a living. My favorite high school teacher ditched us without a second’s notice to grab a job offer with increased salary. At a private school. Ask Prof. Turley if he would be willing to take a pay cut to go work for a Community College, as GW is too wealthy and exclusive, and not tax payer subsidized. He’ll wax rhetorical all day, but in the end, he’ll keep his well paid butt exactly where it is, because that’s in his best interest (and in the best interest of very talented students who attend GW).
But simply motivating low quality teachers through increased pay does not mean they become more effective teachers. It just means they become wealthier teachers. While a better salary would eventually attract better qualified educators, what do we do with the students currently in school? And wealthier schools do better because of familial wealth and stability and emotional support, not solely due to the wealth of the school district itself. A stable family environment provides opportunity and time for children to become engaged with their education, in a way that poverty ridden children cannot. In addition, the current culture of selfish nihilism propagated from parents to children is another detrimental factor in the public education model. Why in the world would you choose to have your child in a disruptive environment, knowing that their education would suffer? Just so someone else could get an equal opportunity, even though they will simply piss all over that opportunity? My father was often known to rant at length bout the Texas “Robin Hood” laws, which move money from one tax district to another. He paid a huge amount in property taxes (which fund schools in Texas) and wanted that benefit to go to his children and his neighborhood, not some neighborhood on the other side of the state. All so the state could continue to have one of the lowest standards, as a whole, of public education in the nation. And I couldn’t blame him. His responsibility was not to society as a whole. His responsibility was to the nine children he had adopted, to make sure that they received the best possible education he could afford (and I’ll admit, that was much more than the average citizen).
Now take the issue of vouchers. Why is it that libs have absolutely no qualm about every other government voucher? Medicare. Voucher. Medicaid. Voucher. Section 8 Housing. Voucher. Every liberal platform out there is funded through vouchers. No one is talking about shutting down publicly funded education. They’re talking about pushing money away from government ran and demonstrably failed institutions, and giving the opportunity for children (though not all, obviously) who would not otherwise have a chance to attend quality schools to do exactly that. It would also force schools to compete, to actually drive themselves in order to make money by being competitive. And while you talk about the profit curve, the curve is set by the quality of the education, as well as demand. Of course they’ll attempt to maximize profits. And they’ll do that by raising rates and raising the quality of their programs. (A government cap on profit margins would not be out of order, I’m not a PURE libertarian, just a lower case “L” one.) A privatization model of education has worked wonders in Japan. (Most High Schools are Charter). And the government subsidizes those that can’t afford to pay, and has laws regarding parental obligation to pay for education unless they fall below a certain income threshold.
In other words, the current system does not work, will continue to get worse, and will not be corrected. Period. Therefore, another system must be brought in, before the entire house of cards collapses. I could very well be wrong (and lord knows that happens A LOT) but even if the concept of private education fails, it can’t be any worse than the current system.
(I did go to public school, but that was because me and my parents had already parted ways on religious beliefs, and me and my brother rejected a religious education.)
“There is no correlation between money and grades, directly.”
CLH,
If you start with a false premise, then your whole case becomes shaky. There is an absolute correlation between money and grades and even success in later life. It depends what school district the child is in. Look up the top 50 school districts in the country in terms of any measure of outcomes and you will find that all of them are in wealthy, or upper middle-class venues. Where we see our educational system failing is in working class and poverty stricken neighborhoods where the schools receive less money per capita and the educational staff drawn to them is less experienced and receives less assistance in terms of materiel.
@CLH: The vast majority of people in this country are, in fact, able to read and write. Just as a technical note without animus, it doesn’t sell an argument to hyperbolize it, it gives people on the fence something to latch onto as being obviously exaggerated or untrue and reason to believe the entire argument is exaggerated or untrue.
For example, many teachers (including my sister) would laugh at your assertion that, “we have a fully funded public education system now”.
Your argument about your family is irrelevant; the question is not whether private schools can do a good job of education, or even a better job of education, the question is about what will happen if public education did not exist and only the children of the rich that COULD afford private schools were to be educated.
In that circumstance, the very ill you hyperbolized about becomes reality; the vast majority of children, like in the days BEFORE mandatory public schooling, become functionally illiterate laborers, like pre-1840.
Calling school a free daycare is more hyperbole; it is arguing that schools teach NOTHING. That is an unusual claim from a person that claims they were educated by a public school.
I attended public schools through high school, in three states and five school districts, and I learned plenty. I remember learning to read, I remember learning to write, I remember learning to add, multiply, type, and solve for X. I learned trigonometry, differentiation, and integration of equations. I learned basic chemistry, basic biology, American history, World history, English and the religions of twenty cultures around the world.
Public schools teach plenty. Whether they teach more or less than private schools are irrelevant. Whether parents help or not is irrelevant. If a more educated work force is a public good, then the public school is a public good. If they have some aspects of a daycare; well two working parents instead of one is a public good too.
That public good would disappear if parents were forced to pay a for-profit school. The majority simply would not do it, for the same reason they do not save sufficient college funds or retirement funds: Short term thinking overrides what is in their long term best interest, for them or their children. That is human psychology and won’t be changed by demanding it change or wishing it will change, it is just a true and unchangeable fact.
The for-profit school would not encourage attendance by everybody, that is just bad business logic. You can make far more profit by charging more and excluding some of the poor. The higher price creates higher margins with fewer teachers, real estate, and troubled students. In a for-profit enterprise, we look at the multiplication of margin times customers, and that forms a hill-shaped curve as price increases, even though customers are decreasing. Because if I increase the price 10%, I might increase my profit margin by 30%, and I might only lose 5% of the customers. So 95% of the customers, 30% more profit on each: I increased my profit by 28.5%. But eventually the price gets so high we lose more in customers than we gain in profits; so there is a peak to the curve.
That peak reveals the ideal price, and it necessarily excludes many potential customers, mostly the poor, because even if they think the price for the education of their children would be fair, after life support functions (food, shelter, transportation, medical care) they do not have that much money left over.
A call for the abandonment of public schooling is a call for class-based elitism and plutocracy, it is a call for rule by the wealthy and a return to feudalism, with the majority of people born into serfdom taking direction from a few educated lords, and never having the monetary means or even understanding of how to escape it themselves, or help their children escape it.
All for-profit organizations are exclusive, all the poverty stricken are continually forced to sacrifice their long term self-interest for short term survival. It is a public good to not perpetuate the cycle of parental poverty leading to offspring poverty. Public education, public healthcare, public transportation, and subsidies for food and shelter can all contribute to breaking that cycle, and minimizing poverty.
CLH, when you’ve got lots of money and somebody wants to take a little bit of it, that’s one thing. But when you have just enough to get by and put food on the table and there’s a law about to be passed to take a little of it, that’s a serious life-altering problem. That’s one of the issues about the public schools and the voucher programs. The schools are already at a point where they cannot do what they need to do; they started this long slide downward decades ago and it had nothing to do with the competition from the private schools or anything else. It has become critical now and there is the additional problem of the economic crash that has eroded the tax base FOR the public schools. So the voucher system could easily be the death knoll for public education, which is, as you aptly point out, already sick unto death.
We cannot talk this away. You don’t like how the people spell? Try, “The People Cannot Read.” We are spiraling toward an economy where nobody can read and everybody owns a gun.
Why not use vouchers? Sure, it’s their state, and their choice. I would either cut ALL taxes to support schools, or no voucher, but I don’t live in LA.
Aside from myself and my oldest brother, my other 6 siblings were all private schooled. All in religious school. All have done well on the SAT, all were far ahead of their age groups, and all but the youngest have graduated from or are attending major universities. (The youngest is mentally challenged). Frankly, most public schools suck. I don’t like paying for things that suck. The creationism vs. evolution argument is irrelevant if the students can’t freaking spell either of them. Either fix the public schools, or do away with them. I would vastly prefer the Japanese style of schools over our own, minus some of the more outre rules
Many argue that education is for the public good. It is, to a point. However, when a vast majority of people lack writing, reasoning, critical thinking, or scientific knowledge of any significant variety, then what’s the point? We have a fully funded public education system now, and it’s not exactly done this nation much good. It’s basically a free day care for a good number of parents who can’t be bothered to invest the time, effort, and emotional commitment needed to properly educate children.
So, basically, let them try the vouchers. The vouchers are a partial tax break, not a full one, and they will barely cover a fraction of the costs in any private school. Who knows? Most religous schools are not so stupid as the isolated example in this case. It could actually be good for the state. Lord knows their public education system is a farce and a shambles now.
Mike S
add to that many religions view that “our way is the only way” and that everyone else is not only wrong but possibly evil and will be punished for different views and you can get some very scary (and annoying) neighbors.
Bobby Jindal for Vice President. What a voice for the Southern Strategy. He proves evolution. Look how the kids in La are progressing in the SAT scores. Huh? What do ya mean they are not progressing in SAT scores?
[Dog pack arguing here] La is ahead of the nation in alligator exports. …..
The churches in Sweden are empty except for the last survivors. It still gets a dime or two from the tax bite.
Tha last archbishop but one admitted, in a deep interview which became a book, that much we were asked to believe was quite difficult to ask people to do.
Why we should create a god who worries about each and everyone is an open question. Can we not live with our aloneness. We share the earth with all life here. We
came from the same original cell. DNA proves that. What more do we need?
We are here so short a while. Let us hold hands in the meantime. And that may apply to us as a species—our short lifetime.
The universe is a mystery. We may find more answers. In the meantime let us live at harmony with each other and the rest of the earth.
I believe that children begin to think about death around age five. This coincides with their being at an age of “magical thinking” where they feel themselves the center of the universe. The idea of death, non-being, is both frightening and inconceivable. Religion ameliorates that dread and assures continuity. Thus it is clung to beyond reason, or contrary facts. Unfortunately, rather than the preaching of great philosohic prophets trying to create human harmony, what is clung to in religion is fairy tales to reassure us we will exist after we die. Thus many fundamentalists share a five year olds view highlighted by magical thought.
But Poppy also knows Arabic. I’ll leave it to you to guess which phrases.
Especially USA imperialists and CIA spooks. Look what it did for Poppy.
Nal,
Like most fundies…. They abhor immigrants…… They generally do not allow the children to learn multiple languages…… At least the ones in Texas….. They are afraid I guess…..
If my figures are correct…. The South American countries will be booming for the next few decades and being bilingual especially in Spanish or Portuguese will serve many folks well……
The idea that because parents have a right to teach their children any kind of clap trap they want does NOT support forcing me to pay for instruction in religion of any kind via any program vouchers, direct grants or charter school programs. If parents want churc schools the should pay for them. Any other option involving public money equals establishment and breaches my first amendment right by forcing me to pay taxes to support religions. In the 50s and 60s this constitutional frame work was clearly understood even by the Roman Catholic Church but now that they cannot get their parishioners to pay for Catholic based schooling the are turning their back on this clear eyed understanding in order to get more money! What happened to my rights; who is going to protect them?
Well hopefully tyhat leaves Jindal off the future president/vice president list
pete,
It’s a good thing for us that Nal has a sense of humor and doesn’t mind playing the straight man.
idealist707 1, June 24, 2012 at 2:10 pm
Just to give you a good taste in your mouth.
A year or so ago, Hugo Chavez was in Louisiana or somewhere in the regressive South to look at charter schools and voucher systems.
Whom he was planning on suppressing was not clear to me, ie which part of the population of Venezuala.
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I think it was the Southern Mississippi part.