Childish Reality

As the State of Texas projects a major budget shortfall, children continue to flood the Capitol, write editorials, and lobby for their piece of the pie. These children look a little different though; but they have been indoctrinated in Disneyland fantasy to wish upon a star. They also like to keep all of their toys, and choose not to think beyond any immediate stimulus confronting their situation. These children expect a lot and are willing to grab it from an unsuspecting neighbor if necessary, then act as though they didn’t do anything wrong. These children are arrogant enough to call themselves adults; not because of mature thinking, but because they have stopped growing. These children refuse to face reality- the State and country are broke!

And their math skills are lacking. Acting as though education has not gotten its piece of the taxpayer pie is absurd. The per-pupil expenditure between 1995-2007 has risen 29% and is expected to rise another 14% from 2007-2020. These stats are in constant dollars adjusted for inflation. The real story here is that education is in a bubble. The bubble has been driven by a neo-Marxist/ postmodern political philosophy of equity without justice. Governments have been on an education spending spree, but the return has not paid off and the bubble is bursting. Science has determined that there are limits of human cognitive ability and those limits vary. Therefore, defining collective educational objectives; such as, No Child Left Behind, college readiness schemes, or competing internationally for higher test scores only spends limited resources inefficiently because money is “thrown” at achieving these objectives or fixing problems constructed by politicians and special interests to justify this action. Votes get bought. Not everyone is college bound, and they don’t need similar educational resources spent on them, but economics 101 tells us that when something is subsidized, people want more of it. Education is heavily subsidized and the idea that too much of a good thing can be bad doesn’t register with adults who act as children.

Since government policy has led to the exporting of manufacturing jobs, promoting an immigration ponzi scheme to support the government finance ponzi scheme, and because technological advances have led to income disparity; education has become the soma of the masses and people are betting that in its current form it will solve the problems of being an advanced society. Every time a bubble head speaks about budget reform, cuts in education are off the table. We hear that we are investing in our future, we cannot hurt the children, we live in an advanced society and need skills for the future. We, we, we; Hillary’s village mentality is indoctrinated into the culture, but the reality of communalism is forgotten. The bubble is a result of poor leadership and rhetoric that a childish mentality unconditionally accepts. The reasons for the explosion in education spending are multifaceted because it reflects a plethora of special interest groups’ initiatives. These include groups that support special education, gifted and talented, fine arts, health, STEM, ESOL, Title I, etc., etc., etc. Public education policy is a result of politics and resembles a Soviet-era command economy. It is a monopoly that imposes its will on everyone. There are elected and appointed committees, boards, councils, but the Soviets had these window dressings also so that they could call it a people’s process. The Soviets had one party, but America appears to have one childish mentality. This makes it easier to impose dictates on everyone to include what is important to know and how its taught, feeding and medicating students, disciplining students, time spent in school, etc. There is little choice amongst schools, districts, or states and now with the promotion of the Common Core curriculum, the one size fits all will solidify. The only sanity the Soviet’s had within the command system was they understood nature versus nurture and had a flawed economic system which prevented them from borrowing endlessly to support nutureering©; that is, they didn’t believe and couldn’t spend enough money in an attempt to change people’s cognitive natural capacity through nurture. Cinderella didn’t exist in Moscow, nor does it exist in Beijing.

In a free society, parents should be able to choose their children’s educational path, government’s taxation should be limited, and decentralization should be the norm because it allows for innovation. Parents who don’t feel comfortable with choice can always rely on public schools to make choices for them and provide services. I do not advocate abolishing public schools, but I do advocate choices and abhor coercion. Texas on average spends $9,200 per student. Why not offer parents $6,500 vouchers and tie the eligibility to the students passing a state end of course exam? It’s non-coercive, cheaper, good for innovation, decentralized, and has an accountability factor. Think of it as a Pell Grant for K-12 education. I don’t hear people complaining about Pell Grants for college. How would this be bad for students and taxpayers? And if the federal government wanted to promote the aforementioned advantages, it could offer tax credits for parents or those who sponsor a student to make up any tuition differences. Education politicking wouldn’t be eliminated, but it would be significantly reduced, and adults’ childish behavior could more easily be ignored.