Vision Circle

"I support public schools. Even as my children are being homeschooled. But I don't forsee a solution that does not involve a significant degree of private initiative."

Please don't take this the wrong way brah, but haven't you already exhibited EXACTLY the type of private initiative that will incrementally lead to the reforms required? It may be time to begin networking intensively with the blackhomeschooler's association. Back in Wichita, back in the day (early 60's) - some of the Birch Society stalwarts had no love for mainstream school alternatives, either public or private. They resolved to do something about it and the result some 40 years later is a pair of the largest and finest private independant schools in the U.S.. To this very day, these schools teach the malthusian libertarian doctrine which was their original intellectual/philosophical impetus. However, nowadays, the private initiative is maintained by phat alumni endowment as a significant number of the graduates of these schools remain eternally grateful for the benefits they received.

imoho - that's the only way it'll get done. At a certain level, it seems clear that ownership and guardianship go hand in hand.

I thought you were going to say "don't take this the wrong way brah, but aren't you basically wasting your public dollars if you are not only homeschooling your kids but recognizing that the public schools are figuratively bankrupt?"

But yeah. I was actually alluding to my own moves, which may in the long run lead to much more beneficial changes than a voucher program. Do you have more information on those Bircher schools? I was telling my wife yesterday that I've heard of a series of clandestine training schools geared towards Fundamentalists kids with 1400 SAT scores. Duplicating that model might be the move.

I pay my property taxes strictly in order to keep my house off the county auction block. As for schooling, I pay close to $15K/year in tuition for one child in the 5th grade - the other child attends a language immersion charter school.

Here's the root school and here's the little sprout. The little sprout was born of some internecine struggles along the lines depicted by my ace boon WF Buckley here.

I'd recommend you query the local library for a copy of Robert Welch's The Romance of Education to get the gist of how powerfully the Birchers felt about education as the cornerstone of political movement. Also, take a look at the search page on the jbs website. No accident the examples thrown up for query language here.