EDUCATIONAL 'TOOL' FOR OCTOBER

Waiting for Schmuckman

Ding, ding, ding . . . we have a winner!

John Harmer, Tea Party Darling for California’s 11th Congressional District in the upcoming election, doesn’t just want to ‘reform’ public education; he wants to do away with it entirely! He wants to return education to "the way things worked through the first century of American nationhood." You know, when kids had to write on planks of wood with charcoal? Neat!

In 2000, Harmer published a lengthy op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle titled, "Abolish the Public Schools." In that piece, Harmer argues that "government should exit the business of running and funding schools." He contends that would allow for "quantum leaps in educational quality and opportunity" and notes that he's simply pushing for a return to "the way things worked. In Harmer’s mind, this is how it was, back in the day:

Literacy levels among all classes, at least outside the South, matched or exceeded those prevailing now, and . . . public discourse and even tabloid content was pitched at what today would be considered a college-level audience. Schooling then was typically funded by parents or other family members responsible for the student, who paid modest tuition. If they couldn't afford it, trade guilds, benevolent associations, fraternal organizations, churches and charities helped. In this quintessentially American approach, free people acting in a free market found a variety of ways to pay for a variety of schools serving a variety of students, all without central command or control.

Wow! I really hope this lunatic wins!

And I just love the family. Right out of central casting, no?