The more I look at Rudolph Giuliani‘s 12 Commitments to the American People, the more clear it becomes to me that Giuliani doesn’t understand the reality of rural education in America.
One of Giuliani’s 12 Commitments reads, “I will provide access to a quality education to every child in America by giving real school choice to parents.”
What Rudolph Giuliani doesn’t understand is that, for many families, there is no possibility whatsoever of school choice. In big cities and wealthy suburbs, there are many private schools available, but in rural communities, there often are not any private schools around to serve as alternatives to public school.
For other rural communities, there is no realistic private school choice for most residents because the local private school is operated with an extremist cultural agenda that alienates most families in the area. In the rural area of Western Wayne County, New York served by North Rose-Wolcott High School, for example, the only private school available is the Sunnyside Christian Academy, which has a strident religious message that makes many residents uncomfortable. If Giuliani’s choice agenda goes forward, the religious fringe community in the area will benefit, but everyone else will lose out.
When school choice programs take resources away from public schools in order to support private schools that do not provide the kind of education that most community members regard as appropriate, they actually end up reducing the amount of choice available within mainstream schools. Rudy Giuliani just doesn’t understand that, because he’s out of touch with the educational realities of the world outside of Manhattan.
(Source: JoinRudy2008.com)
Clueless is the word I think best decribes Giuliani. (Well, the only word I can probably get away with using on a public forum) He’s not a candidate, he’s an image; a brand; a movie of the week (literally); a t-shirt, at best. People call Obama unsuited for White House responsiblity, but Rudy has shown that he, more than anybody, is just not suitable White House material.
I used to be worried that he’d win, but I’m starting think that there is only so far you can run on people thinking “Terrorism terrorism, 9/11 9/11.” He doesn’t stand a chance.
To be fair, it’s reasonable to think that, if private schools could get public funding, more private schools would be founded started; and some of those would be secular.
Claiming that every parent will get a choice is still unrealistic, though.
Almost all of the private schools I know of are Catholic with the exception of one Moslem school. I have no desire for my tax dollars to go to Catholic schools and provide jobs for stick-wielding nuns and monks that compete with the public sector. The people who are products of those schools come out with a warped sexuality that tells them black patent leather shoes must reflect up, and usually more than a few stories about being intimidated and beaten by the monks and nuns. In the meantime our urban public schools are being shortchanged and cannot get enough funding.
Do I remember correctly that Guiliani is Catholic?
Plus, Iroquois, the Catholic schools can “expel” their problems, where the public schools have to teach everyone. (And the Catholic school teachers routinely make less than the public school teachers for EXACTLY the same reason)
We have enough schools here, magnet schools and such, that with the No Child Left Behind, public schools can indeed expel students. One school right now is making headlines because they have told a bunch of their students they have to go to a different school because the school needs more “good” students to make their NCLB goals.
Oh, and don’t the nuns and monks live under a vow of poverty and have group housing provided so they don’t need real paychecks?