MY POSITION ON SCHOOL VOUCHERS

There is no perfect school system. Government-run school systems vs. privately-run school systems is not the question. The question is: what school system is best for our children, society and the country? To answer that question, we must first determine what our product is to be.

Do we want our children to be very good producers of products or services that benefit the country? Then the product we produce is a productive engineer, mathematician, doctor, nurse, teacher, baker, mechanic and so forth.

Do we want our children to be very honest citizens who follow God's laws? Then the product we produce is a citizen who is honest and follows God's laws. What are God's laws? To a Jew it is following the Torah, to a Muslim it is following the Koran, to a Christian it is following the New Testament, to a Taoist it is following the teachings of Lao-Tze, and so on. Our school system will consist of schools that produce followers of the associated religions.

Do we want our children to be a combination of the above? If so, how do we accomplish that without infringing on the First Amendment, that is, in a school that teaches the arts and sciences AND religion, must it teach all religions, or a selected religion, in which case, it is exclusionary.

If we do not teach any religion (school systems without any moral values, since morality is inherently based on some religious belief in a divine order of things), then we give to our children what I call "a sterilized education". That is what I believe our children are receiving today in our public schools, knowledge that strips the beautiful Divineness out of learning. A tree came into being from an acorn. But where did the acorn come from? Another tree! How far back do you go before this infinite nonsensical regression stops? Ask your priest, minister or rabbi! How nice! Passing the buck in our educational system for which we pay BIG TIME, and all we get is an education the children can learn by simply observing nature. So water is equal to two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. That is knowledge of how water comes into being. But where does hydrogen and oxygen come from? Same thing, ask your priest, minister or rabbi? Sterilized knowledge.

When are we going to face reality? What is wrong with our educational system in this country? When are we going to learn that nothing satisfies the mind and soul except the truth. Half of the truth is no truth at all, in fact, it is dangerous because it gives the students a false sense of security, in which they THINK they are very knowledgeable.

We don't provide our students with a moral or divine compass to guide them as to the responsibility for properly using the knowledge they acquired. Nitrous oxide (laughing gas) has many useful purposes, but a student died at MIT from using it for a non-useful purpose. Alcohol can be useful during dinner or for sociable purposes at parties, but at MIT a student died from overdosing on alcohol. Al Franken in his book "Why Me?", begins Chapter Four with "While my freshman and sophomore years were about drugs . . .", that remark embodies what is the general atmosphere concerning drugs among college students at Harvard. Drugs such as cocaine and LSD, have permanent impacts on the brain, causing paranoia, schizophrenia, and clinical depression and suicide. Al Franken makes a big issue of his experiences with antiSemitic behavior, but fails to give due respect to those who fought and died so nobly in World War II to free those Jews in Europe who suffered during the Nazi regime. I don't blame Al Franken or the Jews in this country, but we have a Holocaust memorial, but to those Americans who spilled their blood on the beaches of Normandy, Anzio and throughout Europe and the Pacific, all we have are history books.

What has all this to do with vouchers and alternative schools? The most highly rated technical institution in the world (MIT) is producing students who are acting irresponsibly with the knowledge they have been given. These examples are only what is made known to the public due to the notoriety of these cases. Many cases of this type of irresponsibility go unnoticed, so the degree of irresponsibility is hidden. Which makes me wonder how a President of M.I.T., after a recent visit to China, speaking at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I. in 1976 thereabouts, could say that "there is more morality in China than there is in the United States"? You don't have to be a genius to know that imposed morality is greater in China than anywhere else in the world, but imposed morality is NOT true morality, it is straightjacket morality. So much for what private institutions produce vs. public institutions. This is a perfect example of why vouchers are no guarantee that we will have a better educational system just because it allows access to private and alternative schools. Yet, we must be cautious in allowing a monopoly to exist in which the quality of education is left to the mercy of the monopolists.

It would seem that a voucher system would take sorely needed funds away from public schools that have inadequate funding to begin with. Minority school children may not be able to use their vouchers in private schools in which the costs are prohibitive, and therefore, vouchers to them would be of no consequence. There must be some solution, that I admit does not exist today to solve this problem of double taxation imposed upon those parents who seek to educate their children in non-public schools or to have them home-schooled. Yet justice demands that we come up with a solution, or that we alter the situation to satisfy what justice demands. Our children, both rich and poor, deserve better, else we will slowly but surely effect the decline of the American Empire as we know it.

EVOLUTION VS. INTELLIGENT DESIGN

The theory of evolution is not primarily concerned with man's evolving from apes or whatever, but that various species developed over time through the interaction of natural phenomena. Hybrid plants and animals were formed, for example, long after the birth of planet earth. These hybrid plants and animals were the result of their evolving from the combining of different species. I see nothing earth shaking about that, and in fact, would not hesitate to say that in that sense, evolution is not a theory but a fact. I don't see evolutionists claiming that these hybrid plants and animals were created out of nothing. They are still confronted with the fact that only God can create something out of nothing, and hybrids need those "somethings" for their theory to hold water, no matter how far back they wish to go.

Those of us who believe in a supernatural being, rather than shattering our faith, evolution simply accentuates our faith. Why is that? Because it reinforces our belief that only The Most Brilliant Being could conceive of mechanisms in which living organisms mutate and propagate, not only their own species, but species not yet in existence. Can anyone show that these mechanisms occurred by chance? The odds are so heavy against it, that to even consider the likelihood that chance had anything to do with these mechanisms, would be like saying, that all the oceans in the world, could by chance, be contained in a shot glass. What, therefore, is so exciting about creating a hybrid from a horse and a fish so that it can gallop and swim, or creating a hybrid from a chicken and a cow that produces both eggs and milk? There is nothing exciting about the capability of producing these hybrids, because they are produced from things already in existence. The excitement lies in the capability of producing things out of nothing. Matter cannot create itself. It needs a Creator.

If by intelligent design it is meant that an intelligent being is responsible for all things created, once again, what are the odds that all creation happened by chance? What are the odds that chance created human beings with five senses? What are the odds that chance causes various species of flowers to awaken at the same time each spring even though they are miles and miles apart? Is it by chance that bees all over the world know how to build a bee hive? It is more than ridiculous to assume that by chance no two human beings have the same set of fingerprints.

Does abiogenesis scare me? Of course not! It accentuates my faith in God. It causes me to wonder how brilliant is the mind of God, to have the patience to wait thousands upon thousands of years, or even trillions and trillions of years, just so that you and I could be a part of His family. It doesn't bother me if it occurred through evolution, abiogenesis, or whatever. I'm glad I was born.

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