Having experienced several different school systems, I can see exactly where the problems are, and they have nothing to do with children of different “needs”. And I do not regard school as just a place to crank out someone to achieve a fat salary either.

Vouchers do one thing at the least, which would be to allow parents to spend the money which the state is going to spend anyway in the type of school system of their choice, whether the local public school or a private school. The education establishment has exclusive rights over children except those of the privileged.
Furthermore, since public schools will not and cannot sufficiently discipline students, their only threat is to chuck offenders out of the school, and generally they cannot do this. As long as the current system is in place, and the college education system for training teachers adheres to the same philosophy they’ve used for at least 60 years, nothing will improve. It doesn’t matter how much money you throw into the schools.

Essentially however, there is too much diversity of opinion now as to what constitutes a good education. I daresay you and I do not agree at all, which is why we each should have the choice. Parents disagree widely as to the extent and mode of discipline, to note one small example. Some parents want their children to be free of all restraints, and don’t care what their kids wear, how they behave, etc.

As far as addressing children of different learning styles is concerned, home-schooling is the easiest solution, but guess who is adamantly opposed to this? Anyone affiliated with the teachers unions. One out of every 7 delegates at the Democratic convention is a member of the Education Association. The teachers unions are permitted to use tax dollars to do their extensive lobbying for each and every left-wing cause imagined. They are a monopoly on the brains of the nation, and have exerted themselves in this direction ever since at least my father’s day back in the 1930s.

The educational establishment regards itself as THE authority over our children, and has no compunction about experimenting with them whenever someone comes up with a new theory which involved having to purchase a whole new curriculum. After all, it’s only the taxpayers money. Every study I’ve seen shows that the average SAT score for students entering college who then major in Education is lower than for any single other discipline. These are the people who whine about their salaries, go on strike, yet have tenure, retirement, and health insurance as well as extremely generous vacation time that few people in other fields have. The unions do what unions always do, try to force every teacher to join, and they have nearly always been successful up until just a few years ago. Our textbooks have been dumbed down bit by bit over the years and, according to actual scientists and historians, are full of misinformation.

So, there really is no point in continuing this particular subject since we have no agreement whatsoever about what is wrong with schools in the first place, even though you don’t really have a solution for what you believe is the problem either.

And the right would have been deservedly slaughtered in spectacular fashion if they tried to make an issue of them. Other issues are actually important. Vouchers are a non-issue. They are not a solution to a problem you claim exists. That’s because the problem you claim doesn’t exist.

Some claim that vouchers allow you to take your child from “bad” districts to “good” districts. Better education, they claim. Ummm, no. At best the “good” district is simply more effective at teaching whatever is on the standardized test. We’ve already seen this very thing many times. Being able to take a test is meaningless. Being able to think is not. Vouchers don’t address this.

Vouchers don’t address the actual problem in education, which is that kids on the right side of the bell curve require a completely different education in style and substance than kids on the left side. Kids on the right learn how to learn. They manipulate abstract symbols. Kids on the left side aren’t capable of manipulation of abstract symbols, and they can’t really learn how to learn. The kids on the right are the engineers and scientists and stockbrokers; the ones on the left are the plumbers and machinists and insurance agents and such.

In the current system smart kids learn something useful on their own despite the efforts of the system to stymie them. Smart kids are smart kids. They’re going to learn no matter what. The kids on the left need rote learning. They can’t learn any other way. For kids on the right side of the curve rote learning is punishment. The kids on the left need trades. Good paying ones. Not college. How you learn a trade is different than how you learn how to be a scientist.

This is the sort of problem that needs to be addressed in national policy from the top levels on down. Local school boards simply aren’t capable of dealing with this. School boards are adept at picking out football uniforms, deciding if the new music program ought to have 4 concerts or 3. They are not equipped for anything more. Deciding how to teach bright kids is far beyond their abilities (due in part to the simple fact that many of the bright kids are brighter than the board members in the first place.) The argument for local school board control is therefore laughable.

Schools need to have classes using the appropriate teaching methods for the kids in that class and the kids need to discovered and segregated early. Vouchers don’t even begin to address this, much less solve it. IQ tests would do the trick. Not vouchers.

The problem isn’t teacher unions. It isn’t the Dept of Education, either. The problem is that kids aren’t equal, and not all kids are college material. Some don’t have the requisite brainpower. Some kids are smarter than the other kids. Not all kids need a world class education. And just in case you’re having your own math trouble, I’m saying that college is a waste of time for at least HALF of the population.

What you are in favour of is that which sounds good, makes you feel good, and that which seems like it makes a difference. It doesn’t. Bright kids will succeed because they’re bright. Always. The school system won’t matter. Johnny can’t read because, by definition, half of us are below average, and Johnny isn’t going to ever read until he gets classes designed for his capacity. That’s simply a mathematical fact. Vouchers don’t solve this, and they don’t help the bright kids, either. The result is that vouchers would be just as ineffective and poorly implemented as what we have now.

To G. Alston–who stated that<>

You’re right, no one talked about them. And the right got slaughtered. My point exactly: our candidates, especially McCain, could not make any of the points which are important, and we paid for it.

With respect to our decaying educational system, I’m in favor of anything which will break up the monopoly of the teachers’ unions as anyone who understands the actual dynamics of the public school system realizes you cannot improve anything substantially within the existing structure. The ignorance of our youthful voters is just further proof of the failure of our educational institutions. If you don’t like my suggestion, I’d be happy to entertain any other suggestions. What’s yours, by the way?
Not all conservatives are my-way-or-no-way-at-all voters.
Again, Ventrue, my sincere apologies for the misappropriation of comments.

If you believe that conservatives in general are busy attempting to intrude in other people’s lives and telling them how to behave, you don’t even get the fundamental idea of conservativism, which is indeed, minding your own business. It is the left which is always attempting to butt in, banning perfume in public, restricting smoking to areas within 10 feet radii of doors, limiting our choices of toilets, invading parents’ rights to raise their own children, helping themselves to our wallets, inflating our currency in order to extract more taxes without having to vote for them transparently, conducting therapy and vaginal examinations of children at school without parental consent, etc. You don’t know who your enemy is, apparently.

I am familiar with Ken Blackwell, as I am originally from Ohio. Trouble is, the Ohio GOP has been a horrible party for years—I’m sure they didn’t give much backing to Blackwell, and I find your description of black conservatives as puppets spewing boilerplate the sort of resentful and racist rhetoric I would expect to come from the left. Do you consider Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas, and Ken Blackwell to be “puppets”?

As far as School Choice is concerned, of course Obama would not bring this up, however, for those who live in the inner city, this is a big and winning issue, which is why, despite the influence of the Ohio Education Assoc., the local courts in Cleveland and the State Supreme Court actually have permitted school vouchers for students trapped in the Cleveland Public School system. I’ve no idea why you are so hostile and rigid on the issue of school choice, but that’s fundamentally far more important to most people over the age of 25 than global warming. And school vouchers are certainly not “my” idea. McCain didn’t mention them, or anything else of basic importance other than national defence, and my point is that he didn’t talk about anything of any importance to ANY community. My reference to the average black voter being more conservative than the average white voter was based on individual issues without any party label or philosophy being attached to them. I don’t think you even understood my point.

On the one hand, you claimed that black voters in California turned out mainly to vote for Obama, but then you say that they won’t turn out in Ohio for a black candidate there. So which is it? And, because while they voted in California a Democrat ticket, they supported Prop. 8. I’m thinking the only way to attract the black voter is to consistently court them with the issues which matter to them and to show them how the Democrat party consistently has hurt their interests, something which many of them already suspect. This is something the GOP has not really done. And I’m not stupid enough to think it would happen overnight just because Ken Blackwell ran for governor. Poor Ken had a whole ton of Democrat money poured into his state because of the national election and the importance of Ohio to Obama and to Clinton.

The Dems turned out a huge mass of young uneducated voters who don’t even know yet what is important. They will find out eventually, at least some of them will. Back in my day, this same voting bloc voted for McGovern. Many of those people later on grew up and voted for Reagan.

I would challenge you to illustrate how conservatism is hindering you in any of the 3 ways you claim–and furthermore, I have not the least idea what you mean in the case of Terry Schiavo, since it was the left who couldn’t wait to terminate her life based solely on the verbal opinion of her husband, without any statement of writing from Terry of any kind. When it is a matter of life at stake, I would never want to err on the side of killing. And you find this an invasion of privacy? What behavior of yours have you found Christians attempting to dictate? Inquiring minds want to know.

Thank you for your thoughtful response. However, I must disagree with your assessment of the black community. While it is true that black voters tend to be more conservative than their white counterparts, black conservatism is of a different isotope(for lack of a better term)than white conservatism.

What I mean by this is, while many blacks(and other minorities)may be CONSERVATIVE, they are not CONSERVATIVES, at least not in the way the term is currently defined. On the issue of abortion, forexample, many black people are opposed to the practice, but are reluctant to empower the government to restrict its availability. The results of Proposition 8 in CA notwithstanding, the same goes for gay marriage, prayer in school, porn on the internet, recreational drug use and a whole host of other conservative pet causes. While I have not conducted any empirical studies on this issue, my hunch is that on Prop. 8, the issue was narrowly tipped toward passage by a confluence of outside intervention(by the Mormon and Catholic churches), conservative CA white voters, and black and latino voters who otherwise would not have voted but were there to support a minority for president. As I alluded to in my previous post, Obama did not receive a significantly greater percentage of the black vote than the previous Democratic presidential candidates since Kennedy’s time, but what he did do was bring a greater number of minority voters to the polls, and in CA, while they were in the voting booth, they pulled the lever in favor of Prop. 8. I submit that had Hillary been the Dem nominee, she would have garnered nearly the PERCENTAGE of the black vote(and perhaps slightly higher percentage of the latino vote)that Obama did, but the overall number of black voters would have been notably less….and Prop 8 likely would’ve failed by the same(or nearly so)margin by which it passed. My point? The black community is a very insular community, and pet causes that do not directly concern that community are not going to draw voters from that demographic to the polls.

Likewise, the Republican party cannot simply trot out black puppets who regurgitate right wing boilerplate into positions of power and expect black voters to support them based upon ethnic identification. Michael Steele and Lynn Swann would concur with me here, but in Ohio, I can tell you that an arch conservative Republican operative named Ken Blackwell ran for governor of the state in 2006. Oh, did I mention he is a black man? Now, granted, ’06 was not a Republican year, and the OH GOP was burdened with a very scuzzy gubernatorial incumbent named Bob Taft(yes, he is related to President Taft….his great grandson), but what I am pointing to here is that Blackwell, a well known Republican who had served on the Bush/Cheney ’04 re-election team was drubbed by little-known white Democratic congressman from Appalachia named Ted Strickland who barely campaigned. And when I say drubbed, I mean forget landslide, Blackwell was swallowed up by the Earth in a 60%-36% laugher in a nominally Republican state. The interesting thing is, he lost by an even greater margin in the black community.

There are understandable, if not necessarily good, reasons for this. I speak, of course, of the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow. While nearly a century and a half has passed since the Emancipation Proclamation and almost two generations have been born since the Civil and Voting Rights Acts were passed, that span of time is not very long in terms of cultural norms. To the extent to which the black community thinks and votes as a bloc, it is because of their historical treatment at the hands of those who identify themselves as conservatives. A few key concepts that need to be understood and considered by those outside the black community as a Rosetta stone of sorts to understanding it are

1. Privacy
2. Pragmatism, and as a corollary to #1,
3. MYOFB(Mind Your Own Freaking Business, euphemism mine)

All three concepts are alien to the conservative mindset, as conservatives, collectively are invasive of privacy(Does the name Terri Schiavo ring a bell?), a sacrifice of pragmantism on the altar of sanctimony(opposition to stem cell research), and the apparent conservative-held belief in the God-given right to determine the private behavior of other people that does not impinge upon them(Exhibit A, Proposition 8). As I said before, while black people may be conservative, they are first pragmatic, private and insular. That precludes them from being conservativeS. You may not approve of abortion, but in the black community, which has one of the highest abortion(and birth)rates of any demographic, you mind your own business and don’t stand in judgment of those who may want or need one. You may not like the fact that people engage in illegal commerce, but in many communities where there are no better options for young people who have criminal records, you show pragmatism and extend privacy by not interfering in the business of others. Those concepts are an anathema to white conservatives, and while they may share a common P.O.V. on specific issues, they will not be trusted or supported by the black community.

Now….what will it take to change that dynamic, you may well ask. Time and trust. Ironically, the election of Obama may provide the opportunity to eventually end the stranglehold the Democratic party upon the black electorate. How? By showing black Americans that whites can be trusted to treat them with respect and take them seriously. Mind you, however, many of your comrades in arms are off to an atrocious start in this regard. Y’know…by calling him “commie” or “marxist” or “socialist” or “terrorist” or “baby killer” or making fun of his non European based name or bashing his wife or his deceased mother, etc. Would Hillary or John Kerry or Al Gore have been treated this way? I highly doubt it. The more level headed among you would do well to advise your more volatile fellow travelers to hold their fire until at least he’s sworn in and actually does something that you can legitimately take issue with.

Beyond that, it’s going to take time….several decades at least, of establishing trust. Perhaps, by the 2040 elections, should we still be around(I will be 77 then myself), we will see a minority community that votes less as a bloc and more upon individually held beliefs.

That is the enduring legacy of America’s greatest shame. With regard to the First Lady-elect’s erstwhile lack of pride in her country, I offer the last line of my favorite passage in the Viking sagas:

“Do you know more now…..or not?”

Sure, I know why. Because just about everyone wants something for nothing.

Poly-sci based arguments always discuss Lincoln’s arrogation of power as if politics live in a vacuum. Simply put, Lincoln was responding — for the first time — to the closest thing to a real-time war as existed in that day due to the recently invented telegraph. If you take into account the effect that technology availability has played throughout history, a great deal more of what was done and why looks a bit different than the vacuum based premises you’re repeating.

I tire of arguments like yours that seek to dictate what a conservative is and is not based merely on your own inadequate understanding of historical events.

#113 Vivian — “GOP wins whenever the campaigns are about real issues.”

And what “real issues” do you have in mind? Many left voters voted that way due to a real issue to them — global warming. Others voted a pocketbook issue and simply believed that banking deregulation was a republican idea. Still others voted for doing something about health care. These are all real issues. The GOP lost on every one of them.

e.g. Vivian — “The ability to select schools of their own and pay for them via school vouchers would be a huge benefit.”

This is an issue to a MINORITY of the GOP voters and not an issue in any way with anyone else. I never vote left, and I think vouchers are an extremely short-sighted idea. Is that one of your real issues? I would think that if you’re going to invent issues then a reasonable starting point ought to be that most of your own party agrees with you.

I don’t think I heard Obama discuss vouchers. In fact I don’t think I heard *anyone* talk about them. I heard health care, war, financial crisis, and so on. No vouchers. Unsurprisingly with a war going on and money markets melting down and fed bailouts are being discussed, people were voting issues that meant something to them. Are you suggesting that the GOP ought to discount these other issues and say “no, no, we don’t need to talk about side issues like overseas wars and knowing WTF we’re doing vis a vis foreign policy; let’s talk about the really important stuff instead: school vouchers!”