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Vouchers in FL Going Mostly to Religious Schools
It’s bad enough to have vouchers available to disabled and low-income students, but for vouchers to be allowed for religious schools is beyond the pale for the far Left. Their mission, of course, is to characterize the religious schools in the worst possible ways, since the majority of voucher funding so far has been allocated for religious school attendees.
Parents of the students going to Islamic schools have chosen to send their children to “an Islamic environment” free of the “evils of modern society”; boys and girls who are attending an Orthodox Jewish school are enrolled in separate classrooms and boys and girls will not be mixing at summer camp; and a Baptist school publishes a “biblical stance on homosexuality, marriage and sexual identity” in its handbook, which would exclude LGBTQ students. (I’m correcting this statement, because the original article didn’t say they would be excluded; it said “a policy that indicates LGBTQ students and staff are not welcome.”–thanks, Mark Camp.)
Sounds good to me.
So what does this bill involve?
This month, the Florida Legislature began pushing a bill (HB 1) aimed at making most of Florida’s 2.8 million public school students eligible for vouchers that would, in effect, defund traditional public schools for a patchwork of alternatives — private, religious, or home schools — that lack state oversight for teacher certification, academic and testing requirements, and other accountability standards traditional public schools face.
Keep in mind that the bill hasn’t even been passed yet, so some of these concerns will be worked out in the details. Also, testing requirements have been included, but specific testing agencies have not been identified yet. But there’s no point in the Left wasting the opportunity to condemn any of these efforts.
Of course, this work to expand the school vouchers system supposedly demonstrates the Republican hatred of the public schools, when in fact Republicans are trying to provide viable options for parents who realize the public schools are failing miserably to educate their children. In addition, the children are being exposed to progressive ideology, including CRT (disguised in a vague vocabulary), transgenderism, systemic racism, and the other accouterments of the woke agenda.
What are the other protests against the voucher programs?
Here is one argument:
‘If you want to religiously educate your child, that’s good and wonderful. Do it the old-fashioned way — pay for it yourself,’ said Rabbi Merrill Shapiro, who lives in Flagler County. He is a past president of the board of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which opposes Florida’s voucher programs.
Under Florida’s voucher programs, Shapiro said, he and other taxpayers end up ‘funding religious education that is anathema to us.’
As many people know, this belief is a distortion of the intent of church and state separation, which was meant to prevent a state religion, not to keep religion out of the schools. Also, low-income children may not be able to afford tuition without vouchers.
Some of the protests are pretty typical of those who are trying to protect the public schools and unions:
Rev. James T. Golden, pastor of an African Methodist Episcopal Church in Port Tampa and a former Manatee County School Board member, said the state should spend its resources improving public schools, not paying tuition for children to attend private schools. He said public schools will have fewer resources as the scholarship programs grow.
‘I think that this is a part of a strategy by one of the political parties in the state of Florida to literally destroy quality public education in Florida,’ he said.
I think the unions and teachers have done a pretty good job of destroying the public school system all on their own. Efforts that might actually help to improve the public schools will most certainly be discounted or ignored by them.
And of course, there are those who fear that the public schools will lose funding as private schools’ funding grows.
Perhaps the public schools should have thought of that long ago.
To review the bill now in process, you can go here.
Published in Education
I think I understand where you’re coming from, Max. Today I believe it’s Chicago that has a teachers’ strike making outrageous demands. But of course, it’s all about the kids.
The restriction should go beyond grade school. Until the high school is in the top 10% of academic performance, its teachers should should concentrate on core academic subjects.
Religious schools have a good track record in comparison with public education. So, I guess, do Montessori schools, and so will new schools that spring up that perform better than public schools.
Public school people are well aware that competition and state law will mean that over time their best teachers will leave while their worst students will be even more resentful and contemptuous, and they will spiral downward even faster than they already are.
So one can see why they are so desperate to prevent that flight.
I suppose some might send them and demand the schools change their kids. Which probably scares the powers that be even more.
btw, this guy is a Rabbi, so I don’t think he would chose the word ‘anathema’ without considerable thought.
Do Jews consider Christian teachings to be anathema as such? Wrong, surely – as all religions consider themselves truly correct and all others ‘less correct’ (wrong on specifics). But anathema is a very particular kind of wrong.
I’d like to start firing teachers for any discussions not specific to the curriculum. It’s not like their students are getting through the material or acing tests.
I didn’t realize that the definition of anathema was so complex. I looked it up; this is the definition that came closest to my understanding
: someone or something intensely disliked or loathed —usually used as a predicate nominative… this notion was anathema to most of his countrymen.—Stephen Jay Gould
I think he was trying to say that religion is “anathema” to maintaining a separation of church and state. As I said in the OP, he’s wrong about the meaning of “separation.” And I would say that Jews that I know don’t believe Christian teachings are anathema to Judaism; they are just different. I hope that makes sense.
I suspect the rabbi was making a veiled reference to Islam rather than Christianity, although I don’t know how much of a difference that really makes. Generally speaking, no matter how tolerant a religion might be, I would imagine that its adherents would prefer to avoid actively funding teaching other religions.
I don’t remember teachers ever talking about their personal lives or beliefs. I assumed that the women we addressed as “Mrs.” were married. That’s about as personal as it got. Although I was very fortunate to have personable teachers.
That’s a fascinating point, BXO. I expect that in religious schools, most of them would limit their teachings to their particular religions.
When I was in high school – and remember, they had only just invented education then – at a certain point of the day all the Mormon kids would go down the block for an off-campus religion instruction class. This was Arizona and it seems to me a pretty reasonable way to handle the state/church divide; have the religious organization in question pay for the specifically religious teaching. This would also allow them to pick their teacher and craft their curriculum.
I use it more casually than that myself, but he’s in the profession so I assume he doesn’t bandy such words.