Op-Ed: School Choice Debate
By Julie Paine • January 11, 2022The following Op-Ed was submitted by Julie Paine. Note: Op-Eds do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the Idaho Dispatch.
With campaign season ramping up, one of the current buzz words is “School Choice”. It sounds like a wonderful new idea, but would it surprise you to know that school choice is available now and always has been? What is being so benignly packaged and sold to parents who are concerned about the state of public education is nothing more than an expansion of the socialist-welfare state. What is being proposed to the public is the idea that once again, a government solution is the only viable solution.
If so many parents are dissatisfied with government education, why aren’t they seeking other options en masse? Why aren’t they asking the fundamental question of why the government has an education monopoly in the first place? Why aren’t private schools popping up as quickly as car washes? Why hasn’t the free market been able to respond? Perhaps people don’t actually believe in freedom after all.
If they did, they would have to come to grips with their fundamental beliefs about the proper role of government. In circles of people that claim the heritage of freedom it should be universally understood that the proper role of government is to protect equal rights, not provide equal things. The greatest stumbling block is erroneously thinking that education is a right. That is only true if you subscribe to the false doctrine of Franklin Roosevelt or the United Nations. Nothing is a right which requires the money or services of another person.
It is astonishing that the prospect of getting a check from the government to pay for education in any manner does not raise serious concerns for parents. For example, “Where does the money come from when I am handed a voucher?” Do people still not understand that the government is not a house of cash? Every dollar handed out for any reason comes from taxes. If “School Choice” becomes a reality, taxes will increase.
One might argue that raising taxes is justified for something as noble as educating the masses. Is it? How has that worked so far? How long can people justify stealing from their neighbors through the approved bully (Government) and still maintain their moral compass? How do people actually believe they can become independent of government interference while accepting money from the government?
The only morally acceptable solution to the cesspool that public education has become is to build track two and phase out government education altogether. The biggest obstacle to this reality is definitely money, but not it in the way politicians would have you believe. They still want you to vote for them with the promise of a handout. The American way is to build it yourself. The original American way is to shrink government so small that enough money remains in the hands of the people so that they do not need dual incomes, so that they have enough capital to build private institutions, and form their own organizations.
Those peddling “School Choice” while at the same time decrying Republicans as “socialism light” are fulfilling their own prophecy. Believing you can liberate a people using the same method that creates their dependence is a contradiction, at best. Get rid of your middleman government and educate the rising generation in a style truly worthy of American ingenuity.
Tags: Freedom, Julie Paine, School Choice, Socialism
In reading articles addressing issues such as this I always am curious why there is not a larger public outcry from those of us who no longer have children of school age living at home. Why must we, who paid our fair share for all the years our children attended school now pay taxes for services and salaries we no longer utilize in any way?
I know that it started somewhere, and so there might be those saying if we suddenly were no long required to support “the system” that they should receive reparations for the years that not paying when their children no longer attended, but I believe what is wrong…is wrong.
Taxes have been, over the years, the government’s cash cow and we all know it. Taxes on this, and taxes on that…there is, as we know all too well a sales tax on used vehicles. USED!! Like many other taxes that some bureaucrat dreamed up to fund their agenda at some point it was adopted and now having been levied on the taxpayers for many long years, has been somewhat lost in the shuffle and is just seemingly accepted. It is still…wrong.
Sales tax on groceries, ever-rising property taxes, income taxes, where does it end?
As the saying goes…”If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.” Study the candidates, folks, do your research and most importantly in my humble opinion, look up each one’s voting record! Only then does yours and my vote have a true impact.
Good advice!
While everything you say is basically true, what would the plan be? Confiscate the media companies and voting machines by force?
Short of that, the country is lost anyway, so school choice is deck chairs on the titanic
First let’s deal with the strawman. Taxes are NOT the government’s money. Taxes are government levies on OUR income, the money WE earn. If we are allowed to keep a larger portion of OUR money, which the government has confiscated for taxes, and divert it to invest in educating our children, then we are spending OUR money, NOT government money. Certainly, our government may resort to levying additional taxes against OUR incomes in order to recoup the deficit created. However, therein lies the real problem. Limiting the government’s ability to raise taxes on OUR money. We simply must divest ourselves of this mentality that the portion of our incomes the government confiscates is “government money”. IT IS NOT.
Excellent article. Freedom Man has an article about this where he basically says that any conservative who sends their kids to public school is a socialist. https://www.freedomman.org/2021/over-90-percent-of-all-conservatives-are-all-actually-socialists/
Thank you for posting this. I had not read Gunner’s article. It’s much better than mine.
I keep telling the parents who send their kids to school with masks but then go down and yell and scream at the school board that the whole thing stops the moment you pull your kids out.
It’s babysitting. Public or private. They want a babysitter while they go to work. Let’s call it what it is.