Re: Will Jews be Forced to Accept Christ in Public Schools?

[nospam-seesignature@ceddec.com]

On Sat, 15 Nov 1997, ? the Platypus {aka David Formosa} wrote:

> On Fri, 14 Nov 1997, Tim May wrote:
> 
> > At 9:40 PM -0700 11/14/97, ? the Platypus {aka David Formosa} wrote:
> > 
> > >The system of democratic voteing assumes an educated voteing population
> > >because of this free scular education is a basic right that
> > >should be prodided by the state.
> > 
> > The"system" asssumes no such thing,
> 
> So an informed electorate is not neccery for democarsy to work?  Creating
> such an electorate has been one of the fundermentle elerments in most
> education policies of westion democries.

The problem is that current government (what everyone usually calls
"public") schools are creating a disinformed electorate.  Most high school
and college students think "From each according to his ability, to each
according to his needs" is in the Constitution.  For the last 30 years,
our free education has degraded to "you get what you pay for".

When we had a public/non-governmental school system (with businessmen
parents on school boards and teachers who viewed their duties as a
vocation instead of just another career) children came out of high school
knowing how to read and write (and diagram sentences), and do mathematics,
and usually several useful arts.  Now they have high self esteem in their
ignorance.

So while education is fundamental to freedom, no where does it say that
government should be the main or only provider of education.  Most other
countries are different since they don't have the same type of church and
state problems (the Church ran the education system for centuries in
some), so simply have subsidized what was there.  In the US, the
Government ensures that no part of religion - including morality and
virtue - can be part of education, so things like diligence in doing
homework are foreign to the system as much as not stabbing your
classmates.  Since it would be judgmental to teach them not to shoot or
stab people, we place metal detectors in schools.

There is also one enlightment era concept implicit in "informed
electorate" I disagree with, and is clear at this point in history.  Many
people would argue that Reason = Virtue, i.e. that all evil comes from
ignorance of some consequence of an act.  Currently, even if I prove that
something won't work because of economic laws, and even show that every
time in the past something bad happened, the answer is usually that we are
smarter (reason), or have better intentions (virtue) this time around. 
Reason is used to rationalize vice (Because of global warming...), and
Virtue is used to rationalize tyranny (gun bans - nice people have no use
for them - for an obvious example).  Reason without virtue only creates
greater evils, and virtue without reason causes more unintentional harm
than intentional good.

Both are necessary for the electorate in a democracy, and our supreme
court says we cannot teach virtue in public school, and the educators have
stopped teaching reason.  So the basic right you argue for is to be
viceous and ignorant via government schooling.  Such an electorate will
remain neither free nor democratic for long.