This reading left me pretty conflicted and it took reading some other people's blog entries (thanks guys!) to help solidify my own views. At first I was leaning towards support of vouchers because it gave people a choice and a chance that the originally not might have had. But then I felt more conflicted as I read on about the inclusion of religious schools because the funding of religion by the state is something I am very opposed to but then I was further conflicted by the really painful statistics about the Milwaukee schools.
This issue basically moves me away from my usual egalitarian position and into utilitarian and even libertarian views. I really felt it was unfair that the whole state had to pay for the benefit of a small group of people especially as I have agreed with other blogs that the money could have been used better. For once I take a libertarian view say that is not legit, seeing as those people can't ever reap the benefits of that program, therefore it's not right to force them to pay for it. I am also against the funding for religious schools, though that might be my own bias against religion, because as Candi said they usually have their own forms of financial aid for low income students. Even if the student can opt out, they fundamentally exist to promote religious beliefs in their students and therefore should not be funded by government money.
But over all I agree most with argument that vouches detract attention from public schools where the most benefits could be gained to the most about of people. I think that working to give everyone a decent education in a public school is worth more than sending a few to private schools. It really blows my mind that if their schools were that bad (less than half graduate) then why did they never make any effort to fix those schools and vouchers were the best they came up with? It's like they gave up or something. Public schools need to be funded because while they can't provide the BEST education usually, they can provide one that is decent and available to all people.
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Governor Thompson made less and less sense as his speech continued. Really? We should just give up on public schools completely when we've invested so much in them over the years? Of course, it feels as if we invest nothing in them these days; cuts are constant, and it's all about numbers, not quality of education. But to decide that private and religious schools ARE public? That's just ridiculous. It goes against the very definition of public: a shared entity or space. Something should not become public in name when it remains private in nature.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely agree with you there. I mean public private school is such an obvious oxymoron. I almost wonder if he was trying to ignore the public schools because he didn't want to come to terms with having to fix the failures. It was easier to say "look private schools work!" rather than "man, we should really work on fixing our schools."
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