Post by the Scribe on Feb 2, 2023 13:42:57 GMT
MAGA parents demand school choice and I can’t wait to say goodbye | Opinion
www.yahoo.com/news/maga-parents-demand-school-choice-110000644.html
Pat Bagley, The Salt Lake Tribune/Cagle Cartoons
Dion Lefler
Thu, February 2, 2023 at 4:00 AM MST
One of the major buzzword priorities for Republicans in the ongoing session of the Kansas Legislature is “school choice,” in essence giving parents the equivalent of their children’s base state educational aid to spend on private-school tuition or home schooling.
I couldn’t agree more.
The sooner they’re gone, the better — and the sooner teachers can go back to teaching their students without having to constantly fend off baseless and graceless attacks from the MAGA wing of the political spectrum.
Admittedly, my perspective is a bit jaded on this.
I’ve spent the last three years covering school board meetings and campaigns dominated by various wars over vaccines, face masks, books with LGBTQ characters, drag queens and critical race theory.
I’ve had enough of this tribal tripe and I think most Kansas have as well.
The problem with the people pushing nonsense on the schools is that they’re not content with controlling their own children’s education, which they can do. The big problem is they feel this weird compulsion to also control everybody else’s children’s education, whether the other parents want them to or not.
As far as I’m concerned, the parents and politicians pushing their culture war agendas are better off gone from public schools, and good riddance.
With school choice, they can go sequester their kids in private segregated academies where no one will ever question their prejudices and their beliefs will always be upheld.
At last, parents who so desire will be able to school their children in the “alternative facts” that shape their worldview, like these:
▪ Vaccines don’t prevent diseases, they cause them. If you get COVID-19, it’s easily cured with anti-malaria pills, dewormer and Robitussin.
▪ Surgical masks and bandannas don’t prevent the spread of contagious diseases, but give you carbon dioxide poisoning and mental illness.
▪ Diversity, equity and inclusion in education equals critical race theory, which equals Soviet communism.
▪ Slaves were happy.
▪ “Redskins” is a compliment.
▪ The three greatest presidents were, in order, Donald Trump, Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon.
▪ LGBTQ people don’t exist if there are no books about them in the library. Or if they do exist, they can be “cured” through sufficient physical and psychological torment — administered, of course, with love.
▪ Reading “Heather Has Two Mommies” makes you gay. Having it read to you by a man dressed as a woman makes you double gay.
▪ Kitty litter isn’t used as floor dry when a kid accidentally pees or pukes at school, it’s for the litter boxes used by kids who identify as cats.
▪ Fox News is news.
Of course, this kind of education could be hard on kids when they graduate from the bubble universe and are thrust into a broader society, where most of what they’ve been taught isn’t actually true.
But on the other hand, they could have bright futures as Breitbart correspondents, GOP congresspersons, or Supreme Court justices.
So Kansas Democrats, ditch the opposition to school choice and let the chips fall. We’ll all be better off in the end.
It’s called “addition by subtraction.” That’s not a mathematical concept, it’s a sports one.
Coaches often strengthen their teams by removing problem players, even stars, who selfishly and stubbornly obstruct what everybody else is trying to accomplish.
If it works for the NBA and NFL, there’s no reason it couldn’t work for Kansas schools.
Gov. Laura Kelly is proposing $5,103 per pupil in base state aid for education next year.
If that’s the price of ridding ourselves of the people holding our schools back, well, I know a bargain when I see one.