Author: VD

Walter Cronkite writes: “In the interests of your campaign and your party’s desire to unseat George W. Bush, you have some explaining to do. When the National Journal said your Senate record makes you one of the most liberal members of the Senate, you called that ‘a laughable characterization’ and ‘the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen in my life.’ Wow! Liberals, who make up a substantial portion of the Democratic Party and a significant portion of the independent vote, are entitled to ask, ‘What gives?’ “It isn’t just the National Journal that has branded you as a liberal. So has the liberal lobbying group Americans for Democratic Action. … What are you ashamed of?”

Walter, you senile old drag queen, Senator Kerry is ashamed of the fact that his leftist views, even prettied up with the description liberal, will keep him out of office. This is hardly rocket science. While I admire straightforward liberals like Walter Mondale and Paul Wellstone, who have at least part of the courage of their convictions, there’s a reason that they couldn’t get elected anywhere outside of the People’s Republic of Minnesota.

It’s interesting to see how the shoe is starting to appear on the other foot these days. For years, homeschooling parents were the ones on the defensive. Public school parents had absolutely no problem making very judgmental statements about homeschoolers, usually having something to do with the ridiculous notion of socialization, as if there’s anything normal about an environment consisting solely of people of your own age, a social environment that no one will ever see again outside of school. Apparently these amateur socialization experts have never seen the Glory Days phenomenon, just to give one example.

But now that it’s becoming increasingly obvious that homeschooling is better from academic, socialization, intellectual development and religious freedom points of view, it’s the parents who send their kids to public schools when they don’t have to that feel under assault. To them I say: deal with it. Like Space Bunny, I’ve heard far too many women say that they can’t wait until their kids are off to school so that they can have more time for themselves. Their rhapsodies of praise to the paradise that is the local school, in most cases, is nothing more than ex post facto rationalization of their desires. That’s their right, of course, not only to feel that way but also to make the decision to sentence their children to school so that they can have more time for shopping and Starbucks. Just don’t tell me that they love their children as much as those who accept a lower standard of living and sacrifice their free time in order to give their children the best education possible. Logic dictates otherwise.

Unlike the government and many public school advocates, I believe every parent has the right to educated their children as they see fit even if that means sentencing the children to twelve years of intellectual mutilation. What they don’t have, however, is the right to expect me to cheer or otherwise salute a foolish and self-centered choice.

The White Buffalo comments: I don’t want you to send your kids to PS, I want you all to stop telling me what to do with my kids.

WB, I don’t think I’ve ever told you what to do with your kids. Nor do I doubt your affection or willingness to shoulder your paternal responsibility for them. The way I see it, there are four kinds of parents who send their children to public school.

1. The stupid – this covers most parents, who have no idea what public education is nor has the notion of any other educational option ever entered their minds.

2. The stuck – those who have no choice. I have nothing but sympathy for them.

3. The selfish – those who value their free time more than their children’s education. These are the people I was condemning in today’s column. If it wasn’t appropriately and perfectly nuanced in your opinion, then, well, tough. What do you expect from a freaking poem?

4. The strange – those, like WB, who seriously believe they are performing some form of vicarious mission work through their children. I disagree, of course, and I neither condemn nor understand them. Perhaps there is a genuine calling of this sort. It’s just not one I hear.

I quite liked Space Bunny’s point: I fully support anyones right to do what they will with their own children. Too bad the government doesn’t feel the same. And speaking of which, MM writes: Just read your column entitled “The Yellow Bus.” Thank you for putting into print the feelings of many parents. I have a kindergarten-age child in public school now, and am pulling him out at the end of the school year. Our school district and the DA’s office have threatened my wife and I with one year in county jail and removing our child from our custody, citing excused medical absences as justification. To top it off, their aggressive actions break a contract agreement signed by the school and myself.

Never trust the bureacracy. Never. I did mention the bit about packing all the educationists off to Cuba, didn’t I?

RC writes: Your poem assails all public schools alike (denigrating them as “government schools”). I must inform you that there many excellent public schools, to which we can attest because we managed our kids through them successfully (and no, not only marginally). In fact, our children scored much higher on their ACTs/SATs than did their local private/parochial schools friends (who paid through the nose for the questionable “bragging rights”). All we hear is lamenting, ridicule, insults, and harassment from columnists and other media personnel toward public schools. We never hear of a plan to help–only to tear down.

Am I not making myself sufficiently clear? I do not wish the public schools to be “fixed”, anymore than I wish to “fix” Sudanese slavery. I would like to do to the public school system what Rome did to Carthage. If these champions of public schooling understood the purpose behind public schooling, which is not to teach, but to indoctrinate and cripple, they would understand why my contempt for it is based on both experience and theory. The purpose of education is not what you think it is, moreover, it has not been since Dewey and his sponsors. If you do not know who William Torrey Harris was, then you will almost surely not understand my position or why he would say: “Ninety-nine out of a hundred are automata, careful to walk in the prescribed paths, careful to follow the prescribed custom. This is not an accident but the result of substantial education, which, scientifically defined, is the subsumption of the individual.”

We will not help society one bit by such poems or by otherwise throwing “stones” at public schools from the comfort of our pristine homes or private prep schools. This will only demonstrate that we are arrogant and elitists who are happy to criticize from afar as we push for measures to further diminish and divide. We have met many with this mindset. We are not impressed.

“We” are obviously confusing me for someone who gives an airborne rodent’s posterior. And yet, RC is right with regards to one thing. We shouldn’t throw stones at public schools. Society would be much better off if we simply burned them all to the ground. You can’t fix what is working as designed.

JJ writes: I have written you before, Vox, and for the most part, I have agreed with your ideas. This time, I do not. For what it’s worth, I strongly disagree with the idea that home-schoolers love their children more than parents who send their kids to educational institutions, and I furthermore disagree that these institutions only propagandize children. This piece disparages parents who send their children to public schools, and it disparages the work of school teachers to educate children.

No, really? Let’s see. Who loves their children more? Those who spend the time and effort to personally educate their children and make the financial sacrifice this often entails, or those who happily park them for eight hours a day so they can drive new SUVs and live in newly refinanced homes? I argue that the former do, although as I have always admitted that it is not possible for everyone to homeschool, my criticism is clearly not applicable to all public school parents. Furthermore, I not only disparage the work of school teachers, I cheerfully disparage the school teachers themselves. There are always individual exceptions, but they are, on average, the least capable college students, the least intelligent college graduates, and taken in the collective, subscribe to a union that is one of the most socially destructive institutions outside of the federal government today. I have zero respect for public school teachers, and yes, I can make a very damning prose case for it.

For the record, I send my daughter to public school. I plan on sending my son there next year. The school has a solid track record for educational results, and I have met with the teachers, administration, and student’s parents to assess the situation.

Yeah, I pretty much assumed something like that before I got to this point. If you’re that hands-on and concerned, I imagine that you’ll be pulling them out soon enough.

All around this is the fact that my wife and I are constantly working with her after school and on weekends to improve her knowledge, her skills, and her critical and creative thinking…. Home schoolers do not love their children more than we love ours, Vox. I feel insulted by the insinuation. They just have a different opinion on schools.

That’s great, seriously. Although if your children do graduate from public school I expect that you’ll think she did fine in public school, though her success will largely be because you half-homeschooled her anyhow. I don’t doubt that most parents of public school children love their kids. However, I know that very few of them have given the matter any serious thought at all, but instead simply do whatever everyone else is doing. Since you appear to be of the opinion that I’m not a totally clueless fool, you might consider why I have no trouble declaring outright – not insinuating – that it is cruel to sentence a child to school, an act which indicates, at best, parental ignorance.

You see, we definitely have a different opinion on schools. Mine is informed as to the true purpose of the classroom, yours is not. I highly recommend you have a look at John Gatto’s work, The Underground History of American Education.

Penicilloid asks: Vox, were you homeschooled?

Nope. I’m a half-and-halfer. Half public school, half private school. Bored out of my skull in both. I spent most of fourth and fifth grade sitting in the library reading, since the teachers saw no point in having me in the class. At university, I did much better with the three independent studies I did than with the classes that I seldom bothered attending unless they interested me.

A US Army colonel writes: Thank you for your commentary on our dismal public education system. We have three small children, the oldest in kindergarten this year.He arrived at Kindergarten already reading simple books. Now, two-thirds of the way thru the year, he is still sitting through the teacher holding up signs with “THE” or “CAT” on them. Needless to say, he is BORED, BORED, BORED…. Consequently, he is sentenced to more of the same all next year in first grade. As soon as I leave the military, we will move to new location where our children can attend private, religious-oriented elementary school. That is our FIRST priority in choice of location when we relocate after the military.

Or better yet, consider homeschooling. I understand it’s not possible for everyone, but I do believe that it’s desirable for everyone.

Peter King writes: Did the NFL not read Owens’ contract? Did the NFL not understand that it could certainly be up for debate that Owens didn’t have to live with a new date to void contracts because he signed his deal with San Francisco before the new date to void was put into effect? I, and almost every other media person covering this story, should take a great lesson from this….

I wish the media would learn to stop listening to what purported authorities tell it and actually look at things for themselves from time to time. Perhaps they’d stop believing not only the NFL, but the IRS as well, every time the organization insists that the law says what it does not, in fact, say. Like the NFL, the IRS believes that it’s internally developed rules are synonymous with the law. Such is the arrogance of power.

From The New York Post: Rita Haley, president of the New York City chapter of the National Organization for Women, said the promiscuity aspect of the play doesn’t bother her as much as the title. “This guy has the right to have any kind of a play that he wants. What I do find offensive is that he is playing off the name of the ‘Vagina Monologues,’ which has a lot to do with women’s freedom and sexuality, but also has a lot to do with sexual abuse, which really isn’t that funny. So the play on the name is not very funny at all, and in fact is offensive.”

Actually, Rita, the fact that it offends you is precisely where the humor is rooted.

JM comments: Congratulation on this week’s article! What a blast! I don’t know which newspapers carry you, but wherever they are you can be sure that armies of scissors will be marching.

I thought the homeschooling crowd might like it. And after all, it’s better to show your child how to be creative than tell them to do it. I’ve started to enjoy poetry a little more as I’ve gotten older – not a lot – and I’ll still read the prose renditions of the Iliad over the poetic ones, but I rather like Spenser and Byron.

In addition to that incident with the White Buffalo, Big Chilly and the little Lizard Girl, I did commit one other poetic crime in college. I submitted a short, but profoundly offensive poem that was not entirely bad in a modernist sense, and it was accepted for publication in the university’s yearly poetry journal. Half the volunteer staff quit over it in protest, which amused me to no end.