I must have missed the meeting where it was decided that it was OK for parents to allow their children to grow up without an education because they let them skip school. I don't know which of the Majority Report crew might have teachers in their family or be familiar with the real schools for most of us, public schools, but my family members who teach in public schools can tell them, year after year, of parents who let their kids never go to school or to skip most of it.
I am old enough so that people on the left figured that an education WAS A RIGHT FOR THE CHILD. I seem to remember a long and hard struggle, going back well into the 19th century for equal access to school for all children as a basic right. I SEEM TO RECALL THIS OBSCURE SUPREME COURT CASE CALLED BROWN v. BOARD OF EDUCATION. As I recall in the slamming of Hillary Clinton because she wouldn't call for free college, it was howled, almost certainty by the people at Majority Report, certainly their fan base, that "education is a right, not a privilege" or some such construction. If they believe it is for college, it is even more so for elementary through high school.
Kamala Harris isn't "my candidate" I don't have one of those yet. I'm inclined to think it would be better if she stayed in the Senate for a while THOUGH SHE IS ALREADY FAR, FAR MORE QUALIFIED THAN BARACK OBAMA WAS WHEN HE RAN FOR PRESIDENT. But this video is just plain stupid and wrong on so many levels. One of those is, I think, the kind of condescension for poor people that is rampant on the college-credentialed, white collar kids left*, that thinks things they would never figure were OK for children in their own families is OK for poor, especially minority people.
I would like to know what the opinion of those who Sam Seder,Michael Brooks et al. imagine are the victims of Kamala Harris's crack-down on parents who allow their kids to grow up in ignorance was and is. What most of the people who live in the impoverished communities for which such truancy is a huge problem think of it.
It's my observation that not infrequently what affluent lefties imagine as a terrible wrong done to poor people can, sometimes, be seen BY THEM as a helping hand**. The mother they were horrified to hear told her children that if they skipped school Kamala Harris was going to put her in jail might have welcomed the help in convincing her children that not getting an education was going to hurt them, as, in fact, not getting an education does hurt children. I don't know how many people they know who were allowed to skip school and who grew up to pay for it, in their generation and, through them, their children, but I've seen lots of families like that, here in the whitest state in the union. TRUANCY IS A CRIME AGAINST THE POOR, ESPECIALLY AGAINST POOR CHILDREN. To point out how wrong-headed this segment of Majority Report was, would it be OK with Sam and Michael and Jamie if parents refused to allow their children to go to school, convincing them that they didn't want to? Why is it OK with them if the kid is the one who makes that choice to blight their future. Kids are immature and almost always, frequently stupid. That's one of the reasons we require them to be in school.
No, I might not end up supporting Harris in 2020 but it won't be because she did that in 2010.
* Seder, whose mother, Mari, is an artist and whose father, J. Robert, is a prominent Worcester attorney, considered becoming a lawyer. But, to the dismay of his dad, he dropped out of Boston University Law School to pursue a career in comedy.
I wonder if Sam would be OK with his kids being chronically truant, would he be OK with that FOR THEM?
I don't have time to try to find out the family and financial backgrounds of the rest of the Majority Report crew but I doubt they're a product of the underclass.
** I was just telling someone the other day about the TV round table I heard from Boston in which the issue of legalizing prostitution was brought up and the White, Boston liberalish, affluent members of the panel were shocked when a couple of the Black members of the panel said they opposed legalization of prostitution. One of the participants pointed out that, unlike the affluent White liberalish types, she knew people who had fallen into prostitution and been harmed by it. The underclass so often doesn't see these things the same way as the affluent who have only theoretical knowledge of those things in real life and who don't have family members who are likely to be the victims of the "rights" and "civil liberties" they favor from the Olympus that affluence and whiteness AND EDUCATION produces.
Update: I should mention that bringing up Bill Clinton's disgusting use of an execution warrant during his 1992 campaign against Kamala Harris is especially disgusting as she, as a prosecutor, refused to seek the death penalty in a high profile killing of a police officer, something which she could and can expect to pay a political price for. Bringing that up against her was about as cheap a shot as I've seen on the left. From the comments it would seem that the always truth challenged Greens and Bernie or Busters are laying for Kamala Harris, providing them with ammunition to use against someone who might be the only thing between us and four more years of Trump is entirely irresponsible.
There is an issue of common good here. Oregon is suffering a measles outbreak ("epidemic" is probably the right word, as measles was all but eliminated until the "anti-vax" idiocy reared its empty head) because parents are allowed to make decisions for their children that become decisions for us all. (Measles can linger in the air for up to 2 hours; it is the most contagious disease known, and can be fatal in infants too young to vaccinate.) Herd immunity matters; and the analogy to education should be plain. And Harris is right in her remarks: as a prosecuting attorney, her only power is to prosecute crimes; but joining that power with the schools power to educate, is not such a bad end.
ReplyDeleteLet me give a brief example: Texas set up a funding system in 1949 that provided 75% of education funding from the state, 25% from local independent school districts. Today, 68% comes from the districts, 32% from the state. Further, many districts have to provide some of their tax revenue to the state, which is used for the general fund, not for education alone. The situation is so bad some districts will be bankrupt before the legislature meets again in two years. And who in Texas knows about this? Most taxpayers don't, and still think the state gives the schools most of the money they spend, and don't realize how much is given, not to their schools, but to the General Fund. This finally became slightly more public when the largest school district in the state had to start giving up money. If that district goes bankrupt, it may finally have the effect of getting the attention of voters, because the state keeps telling them the state is not raising taxes. They don't want you to notice the taxes you are paying locally, are being used for state funding.
Harris was using the power she had to try to solve a problem. Was that an unsavory solution? Then I'd say the problem is in California state law, not in Harris' use of that law to achieve a good end. Compulsory education itself is coercive, if you choose to look at it that way. The deeper problem is not Harris threatening to jail parents; it's parents who don't give a shit about education. Harris' effort is not, granted, the ideal solution; but doing nothing is better? Not giving a shit because the only tool you have is "icky" is better?
Please.
Not too interested in a campaign that says "I'm not TRUMP!", which is what I hear in that clip Seder plays of Harris campaigning. I'm a bit worried that's going to be the campaign message of too many Democrats. It's 2016 redux at that point.