How Children REALLY React To Control

"abacus" wrote in message
om...
Banty wrote in message
...
In article , Nathan A. Barclay
says...


I hope you write your book. You're quite the poster child for the
anti-democratic undercurrents and motivations of the movement for
vouchers.
The desire to segregate in public life. The desire to convert the
religion of
others.

I really think your wrong about his motivations and judging him
according to your memories and your own stereotypes. Personally,
while I'm not thrilled with the idea of segregation in public life,
I'm not so certain it's the evil you think it is either. My
recollection is that Malcolm X was a big proponent of segregation.
There have also been some very successful schools set up specifically
for black male adolescents, so it's not just white supremacists. It's
just that they give the concept a bad reputation. If, indeed,
everybody involved prefers to be segregated, I'm not so sure the
government is justified in preventing it.

To be crystal clear about it, I strongly oppose deliberate racial separation
or segregation. However, I also recognize that there are religious, social,
cultural, and economic factors that correlate with race and that can quite
legitimately influence people's preferences. That may change over time (and
I very definitely hope it does with economic factors). But as long as there
are differences in what families need and want that correlate with race,
trying to demand a perfect racial balance while ignoring those differences
is tyrannical.

If this sounds a bit like arguments segregationists have used in the past,
all I can do is ask people to judge my words, not their stereotypes that
they associate with the words, and give me the benefit of the doubt in
believing that I am sincere. We will never reach Martin Luther King Jr.'s
dream of judging people by the content of their character instead of by the
color of their skin as long as we demand that people sublimate their
religious, social, cultural, and economic desires to an expectation that
every organization have the "right" racial balance.

And I might add that in principle, if small groups of black people or white
people or people of some other race (Native Americans, for example?) want to
go off and segregate themselves, I'm not convinced that there is a strong
enough public interest to justify interfering with that desire. The reason
segregation was so terrible was largely a matter of scale: it did not
involve a small group going off to "do its own thing" without really
interfering with others, but rather was on such a huge scale that it shut
black people out of society's mainstream. Racism, especially on a
subliminal level, is still too strong for us to let down our guard against
it. But I can dream of a day - probably not in my lifetime, unfortunately -
when the best way to deal with racism might be to let the handful of kooks
who want to practice it go off and do their own thing and stay out of
everyone else's way.

And while Mr. Barclay may desire to spread the word of his religion
to those willing to listen, I don't get the impression he is out to force
others to listen. I suspect he just thinks that parents who want
their child educated in an environment supportive of their religion
(i.e. start the day with a prayer, bible verses posted on the wall,
celebrate religious holidays, etc.) should not be forced to choose
between either not doing so or having to pay the price of foregoing
all tax-support for their child's education. At least, that's my
opinion.

Exactly.

"Banty" wrote in message
...
In article , abacus
says...

I really think your wrong about his motivations and judging him
according to your memories and your own stereotypes.

I'm judging him by his posts.

No, you're judging me by more than just my posts. You're judging me by
similarities you perceive between what I write and things you've heard from
segregationists. You've admitted as much yourself. That is, in fact,
stereotyping.

One of the more lasting legacies of destruction left by segregationists is a
poisoning of the envornment that causes some people, apparently including
yourself, to automatically assume that people who use certain types of
arguments are really segregationists in disguise. That seriously undermines
our ability as a society to have rational, intelligent, discussions
regarding racial matters.

And while Mr. Barclay may desire to spread the word of his religion to
those willing to listen, I don't get the impression he is out to force
others to listen.

No, just to give them a hobson's choice between a purported failed public
school, and his prosyltizing school.

Not just those two. As many options as people are willing to make
available, with families free to choose. (And I want a voucher amount that
is high enough to help promote a relatively wide range of options.) Of
course you're also forgetting that you would be just as free to donate to
kinds of schools you like as I would to kinds I like.

And I'm certainly not inclined to write off the public schools as not worth
trying to improve. I'm all for the public schools' making the level of
quality private schools have to reach to draw students away from them as
high as they can make it.

"Circe" wrote in message
news:HxCEc.9586$Qj6.1647@fed1read05...
Nathan A. Barclay wrote:
As long as the separation is voluntary on both sides, there is no
possible threat to freedom.

How can my separation from you be voluntary on my side if *you* are the
one choosing it? How can the government provide fiscal support your
separation from me because *you* want it while I don't without that
separation being, by definition, involuntary on my part?

Are you honestly concerned that you'll want to send your children to
religious schools where they won't be allowed to attend, or is your desire
really to force other people to send their children to the type of school
you favor so their childen and yours will be together on YOUR terms?

"Banty" wrote in message
...

And, very significantly, when it comes to something resource-intensive
like
education, it often seems the one that's not so voluntary seems to be the
one with much greater resources.

If the voucher amount is 80% of what government schools receive for
educating the same students (and my 80% figure is actually higher than what
most voucher advocates aim for), private donations would have to make up the
other 20% before the private schools could have even equal resources much
less greater resources.

Also note that with the same pattern donations, the same basic phenomenon
would exist if government were not involved at all. In fact, it would very
likely be stronger because voluntary donations would be the only money
available to help the poor instead of just being a relatively small
supplement to tax dollars. Thus, it is not a case of me wanting to use
government power to create an advantage, but rather a case of you wanting to
use government power to eliminate an opportunity.

"Circe" wrote in message
news:eCCEc.9613$Qj6.825@fed1read05...

It isn't analogous at all, though. The Constitution doesn't prohibit the
government from putting a bus stop closer to your house; it *does*
prohibit the government from providing religious instruction.

The Constitution does prohibit government from earmarking money specifically
for religious education. It does not, however, prohibit government from
earmarking money for education and leaving the choice of whether religious
content will be included in that education up to the individual. That
distinction has been in place for decades with regard to financial aid for
college students, and the Cleveland voucher case applied the same
distinction at the K-12 level.

On Tue, 29 Jun 2004 21:51:51 -0500, "Nathan A. Barclay"
wrote:

And don't most wealthy white families already send their children to
different schools from where most of the poor minority children attend even
within the current public school system?

In many cases, yes. In the case of some good public schools, no,
because the programs are so good that the wealthy white families
have chosen to keep their children in these schools even though there
are many minority and poor children attending with them.


--
Dorothy

There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..

The Outer Limits

"R. Steve Walz" wrote in message
...

Nobody said his house, how about to his church up a two mile private
road on his property!? This is how far they want us to go out of our
way to pay them back their taxes. Asinine.

On the contrary, the route we want is actually less expensive to government
than if all children attended government schools. What you want is
analogous to deliberately routing the bus system in a way specifically
designed to keep it from getting "too close" to churches.

Nathan A. Barclay wrote:

"toto" wrote in message
...

Frankly, the problem is that teaching Creationism as science is
a crock and will close off entrance into biology as the cutting edge
of that science is more and more involved with evolution.

How much effort has been made to develop biology curricula that (1) do a
good job teaching about things like genetics, mutations, and natural
selection without trying to tie them in to the idea that life as we know it
evolved through those processes,
---------------
None, because that's as stupid an idea as trying to create a new
chemistry without atomic theory.


and (2) look at similarities between
organisms without trying to explain them through common ancestry? And what,
if any, parts of "the cutting edge" of biology would such a curriculum not
adequately prepare children for?
-------------------
You don't grasp genetics, natural selection, and mutation at all if
you don't see they mean EVOLUTION. The very details that so-called
"creation science"(a non-science) thinks are indicative of "problems"
in evolutionary theory proves they aren't even aware that these things
like punctuated equilibrium, and the Cambian explosion due to the
random invention of sex, and special drift forming new species in a
niche space have ALL been FULLY reproduced now in genetic programming
simulations, and that as such, evolution is a PROVEN theory, in fact,
one of the MOST proven of ALL theories in Science which explain things
BOTH remote either in time or space, AND local. And it has even been
used to create new adapted microbial life forms which are used in
industry as cellular factories for enzymes and proteins, and forms a
body of tools to manipulate viruses that have enabled creation of the
entire spectrum of new anti-viral medications.
Steve

On Wed, 30 Jun 2004 08:34:38 -0500, "Donna Metler"
wrote:

And the costs for starting up a school are immense. Which is why charter
schools generally require corporate or charitable start-up money. Only
fairly rich organizations can do it. IE-big, established churches.

Well, not exactly, depending on how small a school you start, but the
amount to *keep* a school running is immense and such schools are
often operating on the donations of the founder or others.

For example, take Westside Prep founded by Marva Collins. It's a
very successful school, but it wouldn't have survived without it's
founders willingness to put her lecture money into the school and
it was finally rescued by Prince with large donations of funds.

http://www.startribune.com/viewers/s...hp?story=40693


--
Dorothy

There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..

The Outer Limits

"Circe" wrote in message news:eCCEc.9613$Qj6.825@fed1read05...
abacus wrote:
Banty wrote in message
...
One goes to a public school to get an education. Just like one
rides a pubic
bus to get transportation. One is not required to avail oneself
of the public education, just as one can buy oneself a car and
never never let a Different
Kind of Person inside it if one wishes. But not on the public
dime.

The problem, at least as I see it and continuing with your analogy
here, would be like a sizeable (but minority) group of people
complaining that the bus doesn't provide transportation to where
they want to go. They then wish to either have the public transportation
system - which they help fund through their tax dollars - either
accomodate their needs by adding their destination to the route or
providing vouchers to help defray the costs of their going where
they need to go. That wouldn't seem an unreasonable request to
me. Since insisting that public schools provide religion in their child's
education would be unconstitutional (analogous to adding that
destination to the bus route), the voucher solution seems more
appropriate for the school system.

It isn't analogous at all, though.

Ma'am, it wasn't my analogy originally, but rather Ms. Banty's. It's
been used many times before with arguments about vouchers. How
applicable it is is rather hotly debated at times.

The Constitution doesn't prohibit the
government from putting a bus stop closer to your house; it *does* prohibit
the government from providing religious instruction. And whether that
religious instruction is given in a public school or a private one is
immaterial or whether it is done at the behest of or against the will of the
recipient is irrelevant--the government cannot and should not pay for
religious education.

Ma'am, I won't argue that the government should not pay for religious
education. I agree with you on that point. But denying equal funding
for education simply because the education is done in a religious
setting strikes me as the equivalent of refusing to run put a bus stop
in front of a church just because people go there to attend religious
services. Where people go and why they go there is not a matter of
governmental concern, government's only concern should be whether or
not there are sufficient people who want to go there to a bus stop.