Anyone with a dictionary knows that “dumb liberal” is an oxymoron. But, sadly, it seems that “fiscally-irresponsible conservative” is not an oxymoron any more.

I have found more grammatical mistakes per word in your comment than in Marc’s post you are so niggardly critiquing. He was making an important point that was not tarnished by the typos he made, and I am sure that he could have improved his wording drastically if he would’ve had the time.

What are you trying to say exactly, that increased spending on K-12 education decreases lingual aptitude? Personally, I am a big fan of secular private schools and new ideas in home-schooling, but those alternatives are not accessible to a large fraction of the population. I believe that by increasing funding and introducing new ideas, the Liberal Democrats have substantially improved the quality of education in America.

The Clinton Administration reduced class sizes, improved teacher competence and accountability, expanded access to technology in public schools, and made college more accessible. The Bush Administration came up with a catchy slogan (”No Child Left Behind”), and then proceeded to slash the education budget, reverse much of the progress made during the 1990s, turn accountability into a game all schools learned to play by fudging the numbers, and bring the level of corruption among the bureaucracy in America’s public schools to a new low.

While we are on the subject of partisan impact on education: America’s much-disputed literacy rate claim of 97.0% is ranked as about 70th in the world, behind most European nations, with the most liberal Scandinavian nations being at 100% (see Phrasebase.com). Upon crunching some numbers you can get at Census.gov, you will also discover that the most liberal states (by 2000 election results) are also the highest in terms of average post-secondary education level. And, according to my personal observation, a conservative is much more likely to reference the act of sexual intercourse to punctuate a measure of stupidity, most likely in absence of ability to use more descriptive terms.

Or, in words you would understand: shut yo jizz hole u retard, or I’ll shuv de Reagan’s corpse so far up yo ass the whole Bush fam’ll jump in afta it!

Which brings us to the intended topic of this comments section: Reaganomics, the increasing national debt. The point that in spite of the fact that a typical American works from January to May just to pay the tax bill, our government isn’t just broke, it is seven trillion dollars in debt, and the borrow-and-bomb frenzy continues! Fire away.

~~Alex~~

The question you’re asking is a matter of perception, not fact.

It is true that 50 years ago the educational priorities were different: less Science, more Humanities, narrower approach to History and Literature, etc. That has changed, and the classical subjects like Latin are no longer considered a necessity for the characteristic education of every single person. Schools of the past were more oriented toward discipline and memorization rather than making students think. Sure, we can look at the exam papers from many decades ago and be astonished that most adults today don’t have answers to any of those questions in their memory (even though we can easily look them up on the Internet). But that doesn’t mean the overall quality of education was higher. The nature of education will continue to change in the future, with Business / Financial topics, Psychology, and Sociology to be introduced much earlier than before, Mathematics to become less abstract and more relevant to other subjects, and subjects like History to grow more interested in analysis rather than memorization of names and dates. The quality of education should be measured by how well it prepares the students for the realities of their life.

When you are talking about the schools of 50 years ago, you are probably biased to talking about the schools where the rich / middle class white boys went, because the gap between the “good” schools and the “bad” schools at that time was drastic, and no one talked about the bad schools. The “good” schools are still there today, but the average and worst-case-scenario schools are now much better. (Find statistics on nces.ed.gov.) It is also the case that a lot more people are going to college today than in the past. Fifty years ago, only the best of those “rich white boys” were likely to go, but now any C student from the projects can get a financial aid loan / grant and get into a community college. This has resulted into a wider range of college qualities: the most demanding colleges from 50 years ago have become no less demanding, but new colleges and technical schools of lower standards were added. This is a good thing, because the education level of the average person (not just that of the average rich white boy) has gone up considerably. It is true that some specific demographics still have a long way to catch up, but in 1-2 generations that won’t be as apparent any more.

The education spending is just a tiny fraction of what the Pentagon spends every year, and I believe K-12 education is a much better investment for our future. Increased funding will provide smaller class sizes, better teachers, better education equipment, more special and after school programs, and more research into applications of new technologies (ex. high school students having a parent-approved option of taking classes online 2-3 days a week). What alternatives are you proposing exactly, a nun with a big ruler in every classroom?

(Marc, I regret that this comments section has gone this far off-topic.)

~~Alex~~

Schools are not better today. They teach a lot more about a lot less, and not a whole lot about any one thing. And school systems just ask for more money to run the little prison camps, while the parents are happy to have a drop off center available to them. And instead of teaching math and science, which produces engineers. We teach psychology and sociology, which produces liberals who think that more government spending more money is the answer to the problem.

I agree with willsmachine. What i don’t understand is that most conservatives are afraid of free thought. Free thought is how the human race has evolved into what we are today. by limiting education and teaching only a certain way of thinking, our kids will grow up to be lemmings. That is how governments and religions entrap people. When Americans let the government make decisions for them, which is what we have today, the government will then step in, teach what it wants and control the people. after all, if conservatives are so against free thinking and funding public schools, which is, by the way, a “s0cial1st” idea, then why not write to all your congressmen and woman and inform them to get rid of public education all together, remove women and colored folk from working or voting… yeah, who needs free thinking.