Why do many conservatives rant against public schools, when school boards...

[Fivefourll112pounds]

...are elected? If they hate their local schools, shouldn't they blame themselves?


95% of all conservative responses are based on these arguments

1 Self announce a victory
2 Go Personal
3 Insult the questioner
4 Invent new facts
5 Falsify views of Liberals
6 Build and knock down strawman
7 Go off topic and rant
8 Jump the fence; pretend your argument is suddenly theirs
You can a elect a school board that disagrees with the teacher's union. It is the job of the teacher's union to fight for teachers. If the general public choose not to vote in school board elections, that is their own fault.

 

[jakeb1]

Don't forget, the teachers unions are at odds with OUR elected school board. When teachers fight and strike, they are fighting us, the ones paying their paycheck.

 

[GunnyT]

Who Votes? You want statistics? Latest Dept of Labor stats: 30% of the U.S. work force is directly or indirectly employed by city, county, state, or federal governments (including school teachers). Another 15% are on government welfare programs of some sort. Do the math, as long as these people (mostly Progressive Liberals) vote, it’s like two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. To vote, a simple test: Are you receiving compensation for labor from other than a government source? (If so, go to the head of the voter line).

 

[KOOLESTPENGUININTOWN]

You are entirely too rational.

Conservatives generally have a running battle against all logic, knowledge and information, and are distrustful of education, anyway. Many would like to "privatize" all schools. The crackpot reactionaries--and that's who you're really talking about!--are primarily ignorant, uneducated, vicious psychopaths, who HATE education, knowledge of all kinds, anything sensible or rational, and ESPECIALLY loathe science. Many of them want to shut down anything remotely like real education, and replace it with a cross between concentration camps and Sunday schools, the better to orient the small, servile minds they cherish.

A lot of that is based upon the sort of misguided, distorted fake religion spewed by mercenary, predatory, profiteering businessmen like Pat Robertson and the late Oral Roberts, who call themselves "clergymen" but who are in fact pure promoters, in the most vulgar "show business" and "flim flam man" sense.

The ultra-right hates unions, and wants to outlaw all of them. Some of the scummier neo-Nazi types, such as the Koch brothers, ultimately would like to see the typical wages of the American working public reduced to about 1910 levels, and their taxes reduced to less than zero, such that the government, or what remains of it, would actually pay them just for being rich.

This is the warped scenario which underpins the entire "anti public school" movement.

What it really amounts to is book burning, in the old fashioned, right wing Nazi sense, without having to actually light the public fire.

The idea overall is to tighten up the control the oligarchic ultra-wealthy already exercise over the entire country.

What it would really do, of course, is launch a new dark age, and guarantee that the United States would cease entirely to exist within two generations, that place usurped by those wise enough to understand that neither technologies nor countries can advance without the best educations available.

Our K-12 schools have been behind Europe and Asia for over sixty years. Exchange students here to our high schools lose an entire academic year, which they must repeat when they go home. In some countries, a year here costs them two; the thinking is, being exposed to the kind of disinformation and lies they here in the more conservative venues is such that it actually contaminates the reservoir of overall knowledge. It's startling so few U.S. citizens are aware of a syllable of these facts, all well documented and long since proven.

 

[Spocktrhpt]

the teachers' unions dominate the public schools by using this unfair mechanism --

first they organize and collect dues and then use some of the dues money to campaign for and financial back candidates for school board. Then the school board has final approval over the contract with the teachers' union -- as well as choice of which administrators to hire [or, more pointedly, to NOT hire].

in may communities, because the teachers' unions have the greatest vested interest and therefore the most volunteer hours and dollars, they virtually control the school board. unorganized people ["parents"] have a poorer chance -- esp. when those who have no children in the schools are also allowed to vote if they choose [although many choose to ignore school board elections -- which strengthens the power of the teachers' unions].