America's Mortal Sin: Class Bias. A Solution: Parochial Schools.

There shouldn't be tax dollars spent on Catholic or non-public schools. IMO that violates the separation of church and state, which is an important part of this country.

Flynn is right that class bias, or just the myriad injuries of class, are a central defining sin of the U.S., and that race (the original sin of America) often obscures it. But the notion that the way to heal this is to support those parents who want to send their children away from others is foolishness. What that does is "cream" out the students whose parents are most interested in their education (often a class marker, by the way) leaving behind in public education those whose parents don't understand, or don't care, or feel unable for whatever reason to send their children to the private school. The big leveler in America is public education. But of course, white flight from the big urban school districts after integration (there's that pesky race issue again) has undermined the American commitment to public education. And of course, there is the little problem that support of sectarian schools violates the Constitution-- but even if it didn't, it would be bad social policy.

www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5584516

It might also be appropriate to call into question your premise that private schools perform better than public schools.

"Public schools perform favorably with private schools when students' income and socio-economic status are taken into account, according to a new report from the U.S. Education Department. The findings counter a popularly held notion, that private schools outperform public schools."

If, as this study asserts, private schools perform no better than public schools, why should we consider them a solution to the problem you cite?

Pagansister, that transportation scheme would work in a larger community or city. However, there are many areas out here in the Midwest where the nearest town of any size is a good distance away. For my friend, it is around 40 miles one way to the nearest non-public school, and she would be driving through three towns (and their respective public school districts) to make the trip.

For all practical purposes, the voucher is meaningless for this friend. It would be better to hold public schools accountable, hold administrators of these schools accountable, and push the kids and parents to share accountability for the student's success/failure in the school.

Ambassador Flynn,
Your advocacy of vouchers make sense to me. When I lived on the South Side of Chicago, I knew plenty of non-Catholics who wanted to send their kinds to he local Catholic schools but couldn't afford the tuition and thought they were unlikely to get scholarships.

As for 1st amendment concerns, unless anyone thinks the Pell grants and subsidized stafford loans shouldn't pay for students who attend Georgetown, University of San Francisco, Notre Dame, Baylor, Valparaiso, or the hundreds of other religious schools in the country, I don't see why they object to them for younger students. Should Medicare not pay for seniors who go to Catholic or Lutheran hospitals? The first amendment was never intended to mean that government money couldn't be spent on services provided by religious groups.

"tom" says to "zak" : "I sense, however, that your real purpose in pushing for a voucher system, is to get more children out of secular systems, and keep them ignorant of the debate over the inerrancy of the bible and facts about religions other than Catholicism."

"tom," where do you get off saying that? I read the post by "zak" and it is IMPOSSIBLE to have read into his comment your insinuation about his motives. Can you please explain yourself?

DonF.
Yes, the location of your friend and others in the state would certainly make the public school transportation hard if not impossible, especially now with the gas prices.

Our government is dead because it is a dying flame living in the past, when we have nothing left because we have sold it all we will turn to the people who have the real brains and steal from them use them and then toss them in mental hospitals like used husks, aka The Second Great Purge.We feed our intellectual superiors hate and lies and inferiorer positions because of there too curious nature or non mass appeal nature or un willingness to destroy individuality while we run in fear of invisible boogeymen for 10 years and create endless opportunities to destroy our own system from within all the while hiring egotistical elitists who keep there jobs as long as they don't ask questions. We launch campaigns convincing a huge part of our childrens population that they are sick if they can't stay in there seat and as our teachers get worse suprisingly enough our children somehow need more drugs, and the smart kids now don't have good role models are the ones who really suffer because creativity is geniune intelligence anything else is simply egotistical pseudo intellectual copy cat prose and accepted in the job market as a job and is disgusting we need more wisemen and less straight jackets.A college degree is something you can see and hear but you can't prove it is real in the sense of its value it is a hallucination.I could write something I know on a peice of paper and tell you I know it and you could say I don't trust you, but if i stil knew it and there is the internet why should i let a god damned outdated stone age college rob me for it, all college are outdated the internet is extremely underutilized in education and in its home schooling potential.