Ringing defense

[Douglas <dougwils@moscow.com>]

Dear visionaries,

Morning, everybody. Time for that morning dose of vitriol!

Greg Burton was answered well on the statistical matters by Dale
Courtney. Our discussion of this whole topic was not precipitated
by the discovery that kids were coming into government schools at a
"higher rate" than they were "pushing them through the
doors of private schools." The whole discussion was started (not by
us) when a number of supporters of the Moscow schools started
loudly inquiring about where the kids had all gone. If Greg's case is to
be taken at face value, then was the MSD play-acting, or lying about
their declining enrollment?

Ted maintains that voting against levies is an attempt to dismantle the
government schools. This is a typical defense of bloated government
programs -- opposition to increases is labeled as support of
drastic cuts. A three hundred pound man is gaining ten pounds a
month. Getting him to gain only five pounds a month is defined as
"losing weight," and the Jenny Craig staff member is a Nazi.
But I do not want to be disingenuous here -- I do support the
dismantling of the government school system as an abstract idea. But we
are not laboring toward that end directly at all. We are not the
ones causing declining curricular standards, declining test scores,
declining standards of morality and discipline, and lo and behold!
declining enrollment. Somebody else is doing all that work. 

Are there great individual teachers in the government schools? Certainly.
Is the system broken? Beyond question.

Melynda confuses private schools with private education. Private
educators (schools, tutorials, home-schoolers, etc.) share many of the
same reasons for not having their kids in the government schools. My kids
all went to Logos, but I share the same basic educational convictions of
numerous home-schoolers. And on the point in dispute this shared
conviction amounts to "not with my kid, you don't."

Her point about private "for-profit" schools was interesting.
The cost of education in private schools is about half (per student) as
it is with government schools. And yet, apparently, we charge this small
amount and can still haul the profits off in wheelbarrows! How do we
do that? And why does the product offered by the government
schools cost twice as much, and yet nobody is making a
"profit." What's with that? Would somebody on the list do the
math for me? But don't try that new fancy declining enrollment math; it
makes my head hurt too much.

And her concluding paragraph reminds me of the marginalia that one
minister wrote into his sermon notes: "Argument weak. Shout
here." "Rushdoony! Theocrat! Women's suffrage! The Klingons are
coming!" But of course, putting lighter fluid in your hair, setting
it off, and running in tight little circles is not an argument. In the
jargon of the day, such attempts to "marginalize" us won't
work. How can we be a fringe element when in a relativistic universe
there is no center, and hence no fringe?

Simply try to think of us as just another crouton in your pluralistic
salad. Remember your basic faith commitments, and try to choke down the
whole thing. Viva diversity!