When did the Republicans become the anti-education party?

Is it just me?

Or does it seem like when the Republicans elected in 2010 promising to cut government spending, the first spending they went after was for education?

Republicans have been saying that they want to abolish the Department of Education since the Reagan era.

School vouchers sound great, until you ask what happens to the students who are left behind at failing public schools because their parents can't afford private school, even with a voucher. Wouldn't the real effect of vouchers be to take money away from public schools that are already in trouble and give it to private schools?

I've heard several conservatives here on Political Forum talk about the conservative values of hard work and education. So what's going on here? And I mean that as a serious question - I'm confused as to where this apparent anti-education streak is coming from.

 

Since education in this country has gotten progressive worse since it was federalized why would you want to continue a Department of Education. What good has it ever done?

Why does it seem the Democrats are more concerned with their teacher union voters and contributions than the education of our children?

 

Bluesguy, don't you mean "progressively worse"?

 

education isn't the job of the federal government. needless to say, the federal government is not educating anyone, but they sure waste a lot of money doing whatever the hell it is they do.

 

no, the government saw to his education..

 

How do you figure? Look at the US illiteracy rate:

1870 20.0%
1880 17.0%
1890 13.3%
1900 10.7%
1910 7.7%
1920 6.0%
1930 4.3%
1940 2.9%
1947 2.7%
1950 3.2%
1952 2.5%
1959 2.2%
1969 1.0%
1979 0.6%

http://nces.ed.gov/naal/lit_history.asp

It seems to me that the problems with the educational system started when certain people decided they shouldn't have to pay taxes, consequences be d*'ed

Why not? Isn't an educated citizenry essential to a democratic society? Jefferson himself said,

"I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power."

In any case, the budget slashing and voucher programs I mentioned are largely happening at the state level at the moment. And I'd still like to know why the Republican party seems to be consistently acting to undermine public education.

 

a play on words

 

its pretty simple, the constitution enumerates powers for the federal government.

 

OK so what happened after the Department of Education was created and why do you credit all those years to a department that did not exist?

Here from a 2008 report

"The NAAL (National Assessment of Adult Literacy) administered tests which revealed that an estimated 14% of US residents would have extreme difficulty with reading and written comprehension. These people can legally be defined as illiterate. This could lead to numerous problems for these people now and in the future. When looking to apply for a job, there are forms that have to be filled out. Adults with literacy issues are unable to fill out these forms which decrease their chances of getting a job and raises unemployment issues."
http://www.caliteracy.org/rates/

Seems the federalization took us back to the 1800's.

Do you realize how small a percentage the Federal government pays towards education?

OK, so what? I believe state and local officials did a good job of it as your numbers show.

I'd like to know why the left continues to want to undermine the education of or children in order to support the teachers unions and their demands.

And still waiting for you to show how the federalization of education has improved it.

 

Including the elastic clause. The constitution does not anywhere make comprehensive enumerations of anything - the founders knew full well it would be foolish for them to try to address every possible eventuality, which is why they wrote the Constitution as a pretty bare bones framework, with the details left to be worked out later. Which would be blazingly obvious if you actually bothered to read the thing.

And you're still avoiding the question - why does the Republican party seem to be acting to undermine public education at all levels of government?

 

Enumeration is a well established concept in common law. An elastic clause would make the rest of the constitution pointless. There is no elastic clause, there is an enumeration.

also, opposing government "education" does not make one anti-education.

 

Let me guess, you learned that in a public school. And yes it does make comprehensive enumerations.

 

Education is not a federal government responsibility. Since the Department of Education was started in 1979, student achievement has been flat. In other words, the DOE is not doing anything to aid education, hence it's just a waste of money. That is why Republicans are against it.

Vouchers is a different issue.

 

Irrelevant, as the Department of Education wasn't in place until 1979. All of the above happened in spite of their not being a federal department of education.

Education is not a federal responsibility, it's a state responsibility.

 

Not really. They are just trying to make public education more efficient. There's a lot of waste in education, and it's not being pointed out.

 

If the federal government pays such a small percentage toward education, how can the "federalization" be responsible? In any case, how does this have anything to do with the deep cuts being made on the state and local levels? The only thing I mentioned in the OP that directly relates to the federal government is the bit about Republicans wanting to abolish the ED. I'm talking about Republicans apparently trying to undermine public education at all levels.

You're comparing a modern measure of functional illiteracy with an historical measurement of absolute illiteracy. Apples and oranges.

The ED and its predecessors have existed since at least the mid 19th century. It was only made cabinet level in 1979, not created out of nothing.

And how did this anti-union stuff get brought in to the discussion?

 

Never have. You're confused with the Democracts Support Unions and not Students postion.

 

The government education system was not established to reduce illiteracy and I challenge you to find any evidence that it was. Literacy was dropping before government took over education, so there's no reason to believe that it would not have dropped at the same rate, if not faster, without government involvement. I also note that you don't make any mention of the low functional literacy rate. Many kids and adults can read, but they retain little, if any, information from it. That means government schools are failing to do more than just teach them how to scan words on a page without deriving any value from it. Were parent's procuring education for their children, they wouldn't allow that to happen but would change providers. As it stands, they have no choice and not only do you prefer it that way, but you get angry that when they don't want to throw more money into the cesspool.

You complain about Republicans, but you advocates of government control of education have absolutely no clue about the history of it.

 

Well conservatives tend to build themselves into a bubble. Many of them (in fact many Americans in general are like this, but Republicans especially) deny evolution and global warming. Right now the most up to date science we have says that we evolved from the first single-celled amoeba and that humans are causing the globe to warm. But for some reason, Republicans decide they don't want to believe it. There's a big strain of anti-intellectualism right now. I just hope it doesn't last.

As for what they decide to cut, when they put their actions where their mouth is you can see where their true priorities are. They want to cut cancer research, home heating assistance, education, etc. But at the same time talking out of their other side of their mouth say they don't want to raise taxes on Warren Buffet. And then in a weird ironic way they complain 50% of Americans DON'T PAY ENOUGH in taxes, when most of the time they are running around yelling about the tax burden being too high for everyone. There is no way any intellectual honest person can support the current actions of the modern day GOP.

I don't feel like when I am voting I have two real choices. There are Democrats, who half-way stand up for gay rights, the environment, education, and the like. Then there are Republicans, who want to gut the EPA, are largely homophobic, and deny the latest science when it contradicts their holy book or what bigoted voters believe.

However, both parties are war-mongers and cave in to special interests. Democrats just do it slightly less. I think of it like this. Democrats are in bed with big oil and Wall-Street once a week, whereas Republicans are in bed with them every chance they get.

 

Well, if education is bad why not to reform to improve it. Instead on making elitist the education? Education can be improved, and public education is the best way to have better education.

For example in Spain the public services are better than the private, in both, education and healthcare. The people from the public education usually learn more than the people of a private school, where the money is more important than the qualifications of the student.

 

sigh

A1S8C18:

"The Congress shall have Power - To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer there of."

So I guess that means you think the constitution is pointless? Why do you bother talking about it then?

Private, for profit schools cater to the children of the wealthy. That's pretty much by definition - there simply is not profit to be made educating the children of people who can't afford tuition. How can you build a society of individual opportunity and achievement if something as basic as education is only available to the children of the wealthy?

No, I learned that from actually reading the darn thing.

DOE = Department of Energy. ED = Education Department, sometimes written as DoED

And again, I'm talking about about what Republicans have been doing on education in general, not just the ED.

You make a system more efficient by instituting reforms to address the waste and seeing how much money you save, not by slashing the budget up front. The only way to get any sort of realistic idea of how much money you can save through efficiency is to get down into the nitty gritty of it and start tightening nuts and bolts. And the amount of money saved is pretty much never as much as you want to think. That's not what Republicans are doing. They're just indiscriminately swinging the budget ax.

 

It is just one of the responsible parties and it does so as it always does, takes money from state and local resources and then doles it back out with it's controlling condidtions

What deep cuts? We spend more per child now that in the history of the country.

Yes you said they want to abolish the FEDERAL department of education and then you posted numbers which support that.

ROFL I am comparing them just as you tried to do not knowing you were undermining your own position.

Go read your history again.

It refutes your contention that Republicans are anti-education. It is the Democrats caring more about unions than education that have caused the quality of education to fall.

 

Did you miss the bolded parts?

Don't you think any school should cater to it's students?

 

sigh. check the bold. sorry dude, but enumeration is iron clad. take any intro law class and you will understand.

 

It happened when the American left abandoned the ideal of educational excellence in order to turn the public schools into a jobs program for leftist adults. Any questions?