Something Didn't Sit Right
Government Run Education Has Always Been This Way
Those of us of a certain age think that government-run education is pretty messed up these days. It’s the teacher’s unions for sure but it is also the federal bureaucracy that oversees the entire apparatus.
I went to public schools. My father was a public school teacher. He had a PhD in Education. Virtually almost all of my parents’ friend network were teachers and coaches. I was pals with all their kids. I am familiar with public school education.
Public schools have never been perfect, but as with most things run by the government they have gotten significantly worse over time. Prior to my generation, math and science scores were higher. Many in my generation were taught “new math”. Math is a hard topic and educational researchers were trying new ways of teaching it to try and improve the public’s understanding of math.
It didn’t work.
This blog isn’t about math. It’s about over reach.
When I was a little kid, teachers also taught us to write. We learned cursive at school. My teacher would teach us a couple of letters a day and we would practice them. She explicitly told us not to work ahead.
It was springtime in Chicago. I turned on the Cubs game when I got home from school. The Cubs were playing the Phillies. The Phillies had a cursive P on their hat. After the game, I took some chalk and drew on deck circles on our driveway with cursive letters in them. Naturally, I drew the “P”.
I cannot remember how my teacher found out about that. I might have mentioned it or told someone who told the teacher. But, she was really angry with me. She admonished me for working ahead and made a very strong point that no one should be working ahead. The class must work together.
The point is, when a kid does something at home, the teacher has no business interfering unless it’s something like violent child abuse where the physical health of the child is in danger. It’s not up to a teacher to tell a kid about homosexuality, transgenderism, or anything else.
As with everything our government does these days, it’s too much. The bureaucracy is way too big and the government support network is far too large. It is not time to take a gardening tool and carefully prune it. It’s time to take an ax and chop it down, run it through a chipper and dispose of it forever.
I don’t think establishment Republicans understand that.
Government is massive at almost every level. I think about what our Founding Fathers would say if they heard that people are being taxed at almost 50% of their income when looking at federal and state (and in some cases local) income taxes in the modern era. Then we have the privilege of paying an additional 10% or so in sales taxes for almost everything we buy. Then, throw in confiscatory property taxes in blue states like Illinois. It's insane, when you stand back and look at both what we pay and what we get in return.
Does anyone have any courage to cut costs these days? In the 80's and before, I remember government people getting the lowest cost items, along with severe restraints on budgets. It largely kept the government in line. Now, it feels like a free-for-all -- like there is no cost too high to bear, simply because we have this crazy Keynesian mindset that more spending is somehow an investment that returns even more.
In Illinois I notice that every "head" politician, from Mayor of Chicago to Secretary of State to the Cook County president has a security detail and several SUV's to chauffeur them around full time. I once watched Jesse White, the long-running Illinois Secretary of State (yes, we're talking about drivers licenses and business registrations) show up in an SUV train of 4 cars, filled with staff, security and himself. We pay for all of this and allow it.
This happens at every level of government. We need to take it away, but will anyone do it?
Does anyone else have stories like this where they've witnessed government largesse in action?
There are a lot of things establishment Republicans don't understand. Much of our public sector has turned hostile to the people it exists to serve. So, much of it has to be fundamentally reformed or replaced. Nothing wrong with that. It is right there in the Declaration, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of the public good, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it. Government schools were always a mixed bag. They are now net negative. Major change is overdue. Americans used to be willing and able to make major changes in their institutions, their economy, their technology. We need to get our mojo back in this regard.