The following is a rant.
School Choice.
Don't believe it. Those are words made to deliberately convince you that it's okay to take funding away from our public schools in the form of private school vouchers.
There is a shady group of extreme capitalists who hate the very idea of public education. They don't like public anything. They want to privatize everything including our schools systems. They even want to change the lingo. They want you to call public schools, "government schools." They think that terminology will put a bad taste in people's mouths when it comes to our public school system. Don't be fooled. They don't want to reform our public schools. They want to kill them. They want them dead. They want schools run as a business. For profit.
Like private prisons. Look how humane and well run those are.
School choice already exists for those who actually want it. Most school districts, including mine, accept transfer students at the elementary and junior high levels. You don't like the schools in your area? You do have the freedom to move. Now, I realize that can create a hardship for many of those who struggle in situations of poverty. I'm not suggesting you can move to the ritziest of suburban school districts. But there are plenty of decent school districts that have affordable housing. There's low income apartments within sight of my classroom windows right now. I work in a Title One district where a huge majority of our students are low income. Our district is in no way perfect, but you will get a good education in a safe environment. And you don't even have to live here to transfer in. But there are options. And jobs.
That may not be true all over the United States. Moving may be a very difficult option for some. But the option does exist. Don't let anyone say we don't have school choice.
Besides, it's not the poor who want the private school vouchers. That's just a distraction. It's really the people who fear the public schools, usually white middle class Christians. They don't like that public schools may have people there who don't look like them. They don't like the science being taught there. They don't like ideas outside their narrow and fundamentalist view of one particular version of their religion being taught. They don't like history actually being taught, you know, studying what really happened, good and bad. They want just the good parts of American history taught rather than the bad. It would be a shame if we could learn from the negative moments of our past so we can make a better future. They equate Christianity with American nationalism.
Jesus taught that we should be in the world, not of it. But in it nonetheless rather than hiding and building a fortress to keep the bad out. Those fortresses don't usually end up working anyway. Your kids eventually discover outside ideas which look very intriguing since they were hidden from them their whole lives. Instead of equipping them for living in the real world you are infanticizing them. They won't know how to live their faith in the real world. Their faith will come down tumbling and it will be the parent's fault for not teaching them how to be a Christian in a world of pluralities.
I can't tell you how glad I am my parents kept me in public school. And exposed me to science, and literature and secular music and philosophy, etc.
I can't tell you how many kids I saw at my private Christian university lose their minds once they left the "safety" of their parent's guidance. Kids who had been sheltered in an intellectual and religious bubble exploded at the new ideas all the sudden rushing in at them, even at a supposedly safe place like a conservative Christian college. They usually ended up forsaking their faith entirely and going down roads that horrified their parents. They hadn't been equipped for the real world.
People often say they put their kids into private school or home school because society took God out of schools. Do they really think having the Ten Commandments hanging on the wall would have kept our schools from falling apart during the era of white flight and the lack of money for schools that happened as a result?
Schools are just a convenient whipping boy for all of society's ills. Schools didn't fall apart when they took prayer out of schools. Schools fell apart when people stopped praying in their homes. Schools fell apart when people valued youth league sports over going to church on Sundays. Schools fell apart when people's religious ideas became so judgemental and rigid that their religion became distasteful to their children.
They really think they can keep God, the Creator of the Universe, out of a school? Maybe their concept of God is too small.
I work in a public school and I see God in school every day. I see Him the eyes of my students. I see Him in the compassion and empathy teachers show their students. I see God in the actions of self-sacrificing individuals working for the greater good of their students. Schools aren't perfect. But neither are churches and neither are Christians. Simply saying The Lord's Prayer at the beginning of the school day in a classroom is not going to change the hearts and minds of students. Living the Lord's Prayer with real action, borne of love might actually change the world.
I have dedicated my career to public schools. I believe everyone deserves a free quality education, not just a select few. I believe everyone deserves a shot, not just a few white kids. Everyone deserves to have the chance to learn regardless of their race, ethnicity, income level and citizenship status.
You want to make America great? Start with our supporting our schools.
Amen.
