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nwhikerIgnoring for a moment the gun debate. It's pointless, the constitution is a rag written by long dead white men that is going to destroy this country, by subjecting the majority to authoritarian minority rule. Guns are part of this. I'm not going there.
What I want to write about instead is the concept of public good, and how school shootings threaten that, and how I think it's by design.
The right has long wanted to kill off public schools. They're tried to destroy them via testing mandates, lack of funding, low salaries and societal contempt for teachers, glorification of homeschooling, charter schools, and vouchers for private schools. They cannot abide the thought of undeserving children getting something for free. They can't abide the thought of children learning. They are using one of their most loved and effective strategies on public schools, the same one they used on the post office: make it impossible for them to provide a quality product for a decent price by putting roadblocks in their way, complain they have failed, and replace them with a private entity.
Never mind that UPS and FedEx will never deliver to unprofitable rural areas, or private schools educate children in need of 504 plans or IEPs. NEver mind that schools -and the postal service, and libraries- are not there to make profits, they're there because they provide a public service that we can all use and access.
The idea is to destroy something that provides a universal good.
The Federalist, who pushed all last year and the year before to Open! All! The Schools! fuck these Covid precautions is now suggesting homeschooling.
By allowing schools to become, school shooting after school shooting dangerous places, the Rs are hoping that parents with the means opt out, opt to homeschool or go to private. This will put the public schools even further in jeopardy. Again, the goal is to destroy them.
Eventually, we'll be back to an era where the rich are educated, possibly by a mother who homeschools and is popping out babies (no birth control or access to abortion) and cannot have a career outside of the home because of this, possibly via private education, and the poor are left to the hollowed-out shell of the public school system.
They are, as always, playing the long game.
What I want to write about instead is the concept of public good, and how school shootings threaten that, and how I think it's by design.
The right has long wanted to kill off public schools. They're tried to destroy them via testing mandates, lack of funding, low salaries and societal contempt for teachers, glorification of homeschooling, charter schools, and vouchers for private schools. They cannot abide the thought of undeserving children getting something for free. They can't abide the thought of children learning. They are using one of their most loved and effective strategies on public schools, the same one they used on the post office: make it impossible for them to provide a quality product for a decent price by putting roadblocks in their way, complain they have failed, and replace them with a private entity.
Never mind that UPS and FedEx will never deliver to unprofitable rural areas, or private schools educate children in need of 504 plans or IEPs. NEver mind that schools -and the postal service, and libraries- are not there to make profits, they're there because they provide a public service that we can all use and access.
The idea is to destroy something that provides a universal good.
The Federalist, who pushed all last year and the year before to Open! All! The Schools! fuck these Covid precautions is now suggesting homeschooling.
By allowing schools to become, school shooting after school shooting dangerous places, the Rs are hoping that parents with the means opt out, opt to homeschool or go to private. This will put the public schools even further in jeopardy. Again, the goal is to destroy them.
Eventually, we'll be back to an era where the rich are educated, possibly by a mother who homeschools and is popping out babies (no birth control or access to abortion) and cannot have a career outside of the home because of this, possibly via private education, and the poor are left to the hollowed-out shell of the public school system.
They are, as always, playing the long game.
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