nice try.

That’s the best pocket description of libertarianism I’ve ever read. Hope you don’t mind if I steal it.

That’s the best pocket description of libertarianism I’ve ever read.
Hope you don’t mind if I steal it.

I think Harry is way too optimistic about the effect of publicly funded religious schools in the USA.

Rather than decreasing the market for extremism, I think it would increase it, particularly if the subsidy was all of the private school tuition.

Currently the cost barrier has prevented a primarily lower middle class right-wing identity from coalescing.

Turn full-scale public money loose on the USA and welcome to Sucks to Your Asmar High.

Harry (and Thumper’s mother) may be right that you don’t put yourself up by putting other people down and it may be that only those without easy access to autonomy turn harmfully other-directed, but history provides so many examples of people thinking that autonomy is zero-sum and that you only have it if you are lording it over somebody else who doesn’t.

Right now religion is just the beer of the masses, more public money would truly make it the opium, which is one scary pipe dream.

But Stevens spent a lifetime domesticating then husbanding irrationalism, turning religious desire to secular wonder. He spent a lifetime because he had to work at it, fighting the temptation to simply believe. And he enjoyed himself.

The terror of the irrational is silly. Repression, and that’s all it is, just feeds the flame. Accept its existence and tends to fade. That’s the painful lesson of the 20th century.

Moralizing dogmatic reformers, puritanical technocrats, and efficiency enthusiasts can all kiss my fucking ass.
And as always: Libertarians should all be lined up and shot.
But I’m not going to listen to a lecture on rationality made by someone who uses ‘Rilke’ as a tag.

Public schools do not teach a particular religion as part of their curriculum, but they can have voluntary religion lessons and may often cover non-Christian religions if there are enough students of that faith to make it worthwhile.

Private schools are funded by the government on a per student basis, ostensibly because the parents are saving the government money by not sending their kids to a public school. Though there is precious little evidence that this money is passed on to the parents through lower school fees (which are typically around k$15 per year). Around 1/3 of students in Melbourne go to some kind of private school.

Most private schools have some kind of religious affiliation though for most religion plays very littel role in school life. There are plenty of Jewish and Muslim schools, and there is continual public debate (and recent disquiet)about what is taught in these schools. But the fact that the government has financial leverage on these schools allows them to inspect and limit the curriculum. There is plenty of stuff that must be in the curriculum and plenty of stuff that must be out.

1) Pretend relgious doctrine is science
2) Demand it be taugtht as science
3) When objection is raised, demand “teach the controversy” (they want to replace sience with their relgious doctrine, so that’s by their definition, a controversy).
4) If lose, claim censorship and, in terms of punditry-bait, “civic disenfranchisement”.

To wit

“Second, I would rather have the freedom to participate in a robust debate about the content of our children’s education than to see courts dictate a position, even if I agree with it. For instance, when a judge rules that the teaching of intelligent design is unconstitutional, we cannot seriously discuss the issue. Likewise, if a court were to rule that public schools may not produce Godspell, we would have less scope to debate that play.”

The courts have similarly “dictated” that disease comes from germs, not God’s punishment for sins, that weather is a phenomena of physics, not God’s wrath, and people die when their bodies wear out, not when God takes them. We don’t “seriously discuss” these issues in science class. They can – and should – be seriously discussed in social studies, and he is free to write about them to his heart’s content. Blurring this distinction as he does, is very inflammatory, and should not be accepted.

You should perhaps refuse to read him because you’re not up to it. Stevens is regarded as one of the most thoughtful and philosophical of poets. Amusingly, one of the things he says is that it would be nice to replace religion with poetry.

“The sea-clouds whitened far below the calm
And moved, as blooms move, in the swimming green
And in its watery radiance, while the hue

Of heaven in an antique reflection rolled
Round those flotillas. And sometimes the sea
Poured brilliant iris on the glistening blue.”

I’d much rather my kids be taught in school how to apprehend and describe the beauty of the world than be spoon-fed the doctines of Jesus pre-chewed to remove all the gristle.

But you’e right arguing with you is boring.

Could we make all government-sponsored mindless recitations unconstitutional, please.

Religious schools offer churches a mechanism for keeping people attached to a religious community despite their unwillingness to actually be religious. From the perspective of my evangelical upbringing, this seems like a bad thing, but it seems to provide some real value for people here in Europe.

I’m not against state support for religious education, subject to some provisos: 1 – State recognized diplomas should meet state curriculum standards, and it is entirely appropriate for the state to require the teaching of things that might not entirely agree with the convictions of the school’s operators. If the state pays, the state gets to say what has to be learned. 2 – If the state pays, the school cannot be picky about who gets to attend. Religious schools cannot demand their students participate in religious acts or require them to be members of a particular faith in order to be admitted. It can organize religious acts, and students attending religious institutions can’t complain because there’s religion in their schools., but it can’t compel acts of religious affiliation. 3 – Schools – religious or otherwise – that receive state funding cannot reject a student simply because they fail to meet some academic standard. It’s too easy for a private school to appear to produce better outcomes by intake selection. If you want to get state money, you have to accept the same responsibilities as state schools.

The first two provisos are already generally requirements in the US for religious post-secondary schools. In order for your students to receive grants and loans from the state, you may not practice religious discrimination in your admissions or retention policies. The evangelical religious college I went to organized religious services and required attendance; however about a third of the students were not Protestant. Students were expected to be respectful, but did not have to perform any act suggesting agreement or alignment with the school’s declared faith.

If this works in post-secondary institutions, I don’t see why it would have to be different for elementary and secondary ones.

Policy disputes don’t take place in a political and historical vacuum. It isn’t a matter of deciding whether prayer in the school is a big deal in the abstract—it obviously isn’t—but of recognizing that the separation of church and state is currently under serious attack. In that context, I don’t think it is a good idea to assume that the slope isn’t slippery.