Why do Leftists oppose School Choice?
(Work in progress)
Here's Quora writer Dennis Pratt's answer to the Quora question Why are schools politically liberal?:
"A Different Master For The Schools
Imagine that the NRA had the political power to “school” our children.
- The NRA opened NRA schools in every town.
- The NRA compelled our children to attend their NRA schools.
- The NRA forced taxpayers to pay for them.
- The NRA created the curriculum for teacher colleges.
- The NRA decided the requirements for teachers to graduate.
- The NRA selected which teachers went where.
- The NRA decided promotions and raises.
- The NRA decided the curriculum for our children.
- The NRA decided what should be in the texts.
- The NRA required students to pledge allegiance to the NRA every morning.
- The NRA posted pictures of past NRA presidents in every classroom.
- The NRA gave days off to celebrate NRA holidays.
- The NRA regularly had NRA speakers at the school.
- The schools tracked NRA news.
- Every student took heavy doses of NRA Civics.
- Every student learned about the important role that the NRA plays in protecting our freedoms.
- The students memorized the cities in each state where the NRA had its state headquarters.
- Human history was taught through the scope? of guns
- Essay questions often ended with,
“Describe how guns could solve this problem.”
What Result Would We Expect?
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Would we be surprised to find all schools generally pro-guns? Would we be surprised to find graduates of their schools with major gun purchases and with lots of practice firing? Would we be surprised to hear the next generation talk to us passionately about the importance of guns in our life?
Whose pictures would an NRA school display for revering?
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So When Government Does This Today,
What Should We Expect?
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When schools are owned and run by the government, on government property, paid for by the government, staffed by government workers, overseen by government, and we have no say in whether our child or our money goes to them, we should not be surprised that they rationalize government control over our lives."
We expect that religious schools will indoctrinate their religion.
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Government is just another religion. Yet we act confused when we see government schools producing wave upon wave of pro-government drones. It’s almost like our brains had been programmed not to see a connection. (I wonder when that might have happened.….)
That government schools teach allegiance to the government was no surprise in Sparta, where young boys were taken from their parents and raised in Spartan schools to be fully indoctrinated as warriors for the Spartan state. It was not a surprise when Prussia reinstituted government schooling on the Spartan model, because Prussia was tired of losing wars and wanted to instill blind obedience to the Prussian state. (Just a few decades after the introduction of Spartan schooling into Prussia, tens of millions of young men were willing to become obedient cannon fodder for their Fatherland, enabling the carnage of both WWI and WWII.)
And it was this Spartan-Prussian model that Horace Mann consciously brought over to America to impose on our children:
I get the most sad when I hear people saying that we need government schools to “teach our children about freedom”. There cannot be two concepts further apart. And yet, somehow people schooled in government schools parrot it back.
I wonder how that happened?"
Here's a comment that he made:
The same mechanism would be used to make schools politically conservative. I think I was talking only about the mechanism, and not how liberals, in many instances, won control of the mechanism.
I’ll have to take your comment under advisement. The mechanism of government-imposed, government-run indoctrination camps is available to any authoritarian. Look at the conservative method that Sparta and Prussia used it — to create drone armies happy to die for their leader.
Perhaps it is that in the US, liberals are much more authoritarian than conservatives. I was actually playing around with some political grids, and the old school fundamentalists are much less powerful today. However, there are places (e.g, in the south) where the same mechanism is actively used by the local fundamental conservatives for the analogous outcome. There the question would have to be, “Why are schools politically conservative?”
I had a revelation one trip around the South. I came upon group after group of liberals who were so angry that their schools were politically fundamentalist conservative. I thought that I had an in-road to talk about freedom of choice in schooling — allowing lots of alternatives and parents choosing the best school for their child and their family (always based on their values.) Of course, this would allow these liberal minorities to have a choice for their child which matches their values.
However, and this was the eye-opener for me, the liberals rejected freedom of choice. Instead, they were bound and determined to capture the indoctrination mechanism themselves in order to “save” the children from the values of the children’s parents.
Just so you know, I had a similar result in conservative minority communities who were upset by overwhelming liberal schools!! They seemed to be less interested in “a thousand lights” than they were in making sure all the lights were red, or blue, or whichever color they wanted everyone else to be.
The mechanism is effective, and that’s why we have these great battles over who should control the school experience of my child and of your child. My solution is to allow many different types of schools such that no sub community feels oppressed, but I fear that many people want to oppress. Government run schools are the perfect mechanism. :("
And another comment:
"I find it amazing, Barbara, that the people who are supposed to be teaching our children how to take their place in (what is a business) world, cannot solve the problem faced by every single company, (and by every one of their teeny tiny competitors battling the big monopolists). The only solution that they can come up with is using threats of violence to get their money — artificially keeping out alternatives and forcing parents to pay even when they don’t want the service?
Let’s be glad that a few of the graduates of those schools were able to figure out what seems to be such an intractable problem for government bureaucrats!
If they can’t figure out such a common invariable cost problem, how can we ever expect them to solve the demand problem of serving customers so much better that they don’t want to escape?"
Schooling and Indoctrination:
"Libertarians are quite concerned with government’s intrusion into the raising of our children.
Authoritarians see our rulers as being kind, helpful, and concerned for our children’s welfare
Libertarians see instead indoctrination, separation from the family and its values, submission to state authority, bullying, monopolization, crushing children into one-size-fits-few schooling, and inculcation into anti-wealth creation and pro-wealth confiscation.
A libertarian society would allow any entrepreneur to open up any type of school. It would allow families to select whichever schools they preferred for their individual child. Fees would be negotiated between parents, schools, and, if needed, voluntary charities and private financing. There would be a far greater diversity of schooling approaches that better matched the diversity of children.
Rulers would be kept as far away from our children as possible."
As if all of that wasn't enough, here are some articles from left-leaning media sources which agree that school is prison (this is before even mentioning the school-to-prison pipeline):
How to Break Free of Our 19th-Century Factory-Model Education System
Teaching Totalitarianism in the Public Schools - Huffington Post
A warning to U.S. about ‘educational authoritarianism’ — from a Chinese scholar - Washington Post
School is a prison — and damaging our kids - Salon.com
School Is a Prison — And Damaging Our Kids - Alternet
Why Many Inner City Schools Function Like Prisons - Huffington Post
When School Is An Emotional Prison - Huffington Post
When High School Students Are Treated Like Prisoners - Rolling Stone
When School Feels Like Prison
Why Public Schools Don’t Teach Critical Thinking — Part 1 - Huffington Post
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Psychology Today:
Schools Are Good for Showing Off, Not for Learning
“Why Don’t Students Like School?” Well, Duhhhh…
And for good measure;
How US Public Schools Have Come to Increasingly Resemble Prisons Instead of Learning Centers - The Free Thought Project
As for the issue of private schools, here are some articles on the topic:
I hate the idea of private schools, but still send my kids to one - Telegraph
Public school supporter Matt Damon admits he sends his kids to PRIVATE schools because they are more 'progressive' - Daily Mail Online
Public teachers send their kids to private schools (various sources)
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America’s Education System Is So Bad, Even Leftists Are Homeschooling Their Kids
John Dewey and the Progressive Case for Homeschooling
Census: Homeschooling Skyrocketed In 2020, As Much As 700 Percent
While I’m not totally against unions, teacher’s unions are the same as any other special interest group. They look out for the interests of their members before they look out for the interests of society as a whole. The reason why teacher’s unions oppose school choice would be much like prison guard’s unions opposing policies that would lower incarceration rates because such policies would cost the union’s member’s jobs reguardless of rather or not such policies benefits the rest of society.
A real-world example of what I’m talking about would be the the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, which advocates increasing the funding to prisons and prison staff instead of funding programs that may reduce recidivism by released inmates, & the CCPOA unsurprisingly supports laws that would increase the incarceration rate that benefit the members of the unions with keeping their budgets and unionized government careers, but may not necessarily benefit the public.
Crowded Prisons, Unions, and CA Three Strikes: Why We Can't Just Build More Cages
Overcrowded: The Messy Politics of CA's Prison Crisis