The bipartisan coalition determined to privatize American public education has a large tent indeed. It includes ALEC, President Obama, Secretary Duncan, Governor Bobby Jindal, former Governor Jeb Bush, Governor Scott Walker, and many more.
Not to be missed is Betsy DeVos, who founded the American Federation for Children and advocates tirelessly for vouchers. In 2012, AFS honored Scott Walker and Michelle Rhee. Here is an interview with Betsy DeVos.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Unlike those deformers who are only in it for the money, DeVoss and her allies are Christian fundamentalists with a radical agenda: the ending of the separation of Church and State in this country. Hey, what’s the Constitution of the United States when you’ve got billions that your hubby has scammed with his third-rate Amway products (not to mention all the direct marketing, pyramid schemes that have long been a subculture of Amway) and a brother who heads Blackwater (which keeps changing its name to protect the guilty)?
So Betsy doesn’t need $$. She just wants to Christianize the country’s public school system by any means necessary. Be afraid. Be VERY afraid. And take her seriously, because she’s not just fooling around.
http://www.talk2action.org/story/2011/4/20/232844/831
http://www.talk2action.org/story/2011/4/24/22559/1547
https://www.au.org/church-state/march-2013-church-state/people-events/au-counters-pro-voucher-propaganda-during-school
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1126279/posts
Yuck. Sorry for the inelegant language, but there are just way too many points to critique. Can’t take the time. Too busy getting ready to teach another year at one of those failing public schools she refers to.
I just keep wondering why–if these folks are so interested in providing kids with the best education $$$$$ can buy–Ms. DeVos and her ilk do not advocate that everyone pay their taxes, that they do not advocate for a reallocation of education $ so all school districts have the same kinds of resources their private schools and wealthier school districts across the country have, that they themselves would rather volunteer their time, rather than pursuing an education that shows them how children really learn and succeed. Ah, but I digress…this is really about wealth acquisition and amassing, political maneuvering to protect said wealth, and giving the impression of being do-gooders…
Isn’t everyone’s aim to increase their (his/her) wealth? Are public school teachers not interested in the best pay and benefits they can get? Aren’t they looking out for No. 1, just like everyone else? The squealing we hear is teachers losing their step raises, their advanced degree raises, the medical benefits, their defined-benefit pensions. They have a “right” to a living wage, to bargain for benefits and pensions and working conditions, in the sense only of “they ought to have it.” That doesn’t mean they are going to get it. Yes, the TFA scabs are taking their jobs. But the competing meme of “choice” is nearly inextinguishsable. With one young parent I know, the only question is WHICH charter will she apply to? Not “public” vs. “charter.”
And it was the “riff-raff” experience that moved her. She didn’t want her kid (black) influenced by the undesirables (also black) in her “public” school. With upwardly aspiring parents, the argument that the public schools have to take everyone cuts no ice. Anti-social behaviour is anti-social behaviour, and better KIPP regimentation even, than being pulled back into the sewer of the underclass.
Everything everyone here says would help really WOULD help, elimination of excessive testing, small class sizes, experienced teachers, more more more money for support services, but until city public schools really DO improve, the propaganda war has been won by the charterizers, and voucherizers, and privatizers.
Some here say that there was no choice between Romney and Obama with respect to education programs. Maybe so, but there was a huge choice between them on their interest in economic growth, which would automatically have benefitted public schools by increased tax revenue. Now, of course, as Obamacare moves toward implementation, the main effect so far has been for employers to cut full-time workers to whom they would have to provide health benefits back to part time workers for whom no health benefits are required. No, it’s not right. But it is what is happening. So many of you need to reevaluate your support for President Obama and for the Democrat party. Do you have the courage for that?
This retired music teacher does not support our current president’s education policy, nor have I ever supported “race to the bottom.” I and my colleagues constantly fought for our students–required services for students with IEPs and 504s and advocated for students who the district denied and took services from as soon as they entered kindergarten. We fought for recess, physical education, testing that was fair and developmentally appropriate, sane daytime scheduling for our students and their parents (those who worked 2-3 jobs starting long before their children’s school day start),called CPS, went to court for and with students whose parents had been murdered, worked with school counselors, social workers, administration, nurse, cafeteria manager, and entire staff when students needed food, glasses, clothes, medication. Many of us brought in clothes–especially winter coats, ski pants, boots–that our children and grandchildren had outgrown. And many of us bought new underwear, sweatpants and shirts, hats, mittens, gloves, scarves, and ice packs for our school nurse and Care Committee to distribute as needed. At the end of the school year or end of the month, we put money into a fund to provide lunches for kids who couldn’t afford them. Yes, students might have been eligible for free or reduced meals, but if parents hadn’t filled out the required paperwork there was no lunch or breakfast to be had. And just in case you think there is some sort of slush fund, school cafeteria budgets in NYS are NOT a part of a district’s budget. School cafeterias must operate independently of any district funds. And government surplus food is a thing of the past, just in case that was going to be your next reply… I’m not even going to get into the school supplies, snacks, classroom libraries that teachers purchase out of their own pocket. I even bought classroom instruments for my music room–the kind for which young children long, and the kind which help their fine and gross motor development… I and my colleagues witnessed the rise of unemployment, poverty, stress on our young families, and the impact on students. So if you are concerned about teachers’ squeals, maybe you need to visit and volunteer regularly–two to three times a week for an entire school year–in the classrooms where most of America’s children learn. Rudeness warning here!! Put your $$$$$ and your time where your mouth is.
Great response Harlan, it’s wake-up calls like this that help those of us on the front lines to sharpen our arguments and focus our attention on the battles that really matter. But the “propaganda war,” as you call it, hasn’t been won yet by the other side. And there is mounting evidence that black AND white parents who don’t want their kids to mix with “the undesirables (also black) in her “public” school” are changing their tune when they realize how much less fulfilling charter schools can be.
Your race baiting aside, the conservative trope that Romney would have somehow increased the tax base because he’s the Republican only underscores the questionable knowledge base from which you draw the rest of your argument. Check the facts on this and you’ll see that the American economy has grown more rapidly under Democratic administrations than it has under Republican ones.
Also, the provisions in the Affordable Care Act that will effect businesses with over 50 employees (those with fewer employees get exempted) doesn’t kick in until 2014 so, where is your evidence that it has led to job losses in 2013? Especially since job growth has continued unabated for all but a few months since Obama took office in 2009.
The point here is that when parents have information and their eyes are opened to what happens once a public school system is drained of it’s resources so that unproven charter and voucher programs can insinuate themselves into their districts, their positions change dramatically and they become more vehement in their support for public schools. Not unlike citizens who read and watch multiple sources of news before deciding which position to take on important issues of the day.
Wrong, wrong, and wrong on the facts. Dream on. And meanwhile sharpen away. You still have a dull knife.
It’s all about them. These nitwits actually believe they are better than everybody else, and that is why they are filthy rich.
They aren’t: They just know how to game the system with their lawyers, their accountants, their lobbyists, and their corrupt little politicians.
“In passing, we might say that success is a hideous thing. Its false similarity to merit deceives men. To the masses, success has almost the same appearance as supremacy. Success, that pretender to talent, has a dupe – history. Juvenal and Tacitus only reject it. In our day, an almost official philosophy has entered into its service, wears its livery and waits in its antechamber.” Success: that is the theory. Prosperity supposed capacity. Win in the lottery and you are an able man. The victor is venerated. To be born with the caul is everything. Have luck alone and you will have the rest; be happy and you will be thought great….Gilt is gold.”
–Victor Hugo, Les Miserables
Unlike those deformers who are only in it for the money, DeVoss and her allies are Christian fundamentalists with a radical agenda: the ending of the separation of Church and State in this country. Hey, what’s the Constitution of the United States when you’ve got billions that your hubby has scammed with his third-rate Amway products (not to mention all the direct marketing, pyramid schemes that have long been a subculture of Amway) and a brother who heads Blackwater (which keeps changing its name to protect the guilty)?
So Betsy doesn’t need $$. She just wants to Christianize the country’s public school system by any means necessary. Be afraid. Be VERY afraid. And take her seriously, because she’s not just fooling around.
http://www.talk2action.org/story/2011/4/20/232844/831
Thanks for this. The most important point to make politucally, I think, is what reformers leave out: public schools.
She designates all public schools as failing and then goes on to list the schools refomers support: charters, private schools and online schools.
If we can get through to public school parents that hiring a reformer means public schools that children currently attend will be abandoned, they won’t hire reformers.
It has the added benefit of being true, if not in the abstract theories they prefer but in practice.
What has school reform done for public schools? That’s the question they have to answer, because they weren’t hired to replace public schools they were hired to improve them.
If the goal was to replace the public school.system with a privatized system, they should have to sell THAT.
Take a closer look at Betsy’s theological background — Calvin College. One of the things happening today, in real time, is that man of the so-called “fundamentalists” who shared here original training are not in favor of her anti-Christian work. Read closely the stuff the philanthropy people published. All these critters — including De Vos in her current incarnation — are actually heretics. The “fundies” (people who support and are educated at Calvin College) are not interested in undermining public schools, but in supporting their own denominational schools. And their originator, John Calvin, was a far cry from the Ayn Rand nonsense that De Vos and her people are now implementing. Anyone who had bothered to read “The Wealth of Nations,” rather than the Ayn Rand soft core pornographic novels, knows that the major theorists of Protestantism saw a clear divide between the secular and the sacred. Smith’s ideology depended upon Scotch Presbyterianism, a system of values that warned capitalists not to go overboard.
And in John Calvin’s Geneva, people who acted like De Vos and her ilk were executed, and not pleasantly. For heresy.
I know our current fight is not completely theoretical. But if we ignore the pseudo-philosopies underpinning all these people, we are missing a lot And the history is as important as current events.
In the interview, she talks about replacing teachers unions as a political power. Reformers had to convince Democrats they could abandon public school and still get elected. They did that by hiring an army of reform lobbyists.
But the idea behind that is really extraordinarily arrogant. It assumes that the wealthy donors who replaced teachers unions are ethically and morally BETTER than teachers, that unlike teachers, THEY are working “for children”
Obviously, that’s not true, but that has to be their argument, because even if one opposed unions, why would replacing one set of lobbyists with another be appealing?
Are lobbyists for wealthy reformers somehow just BETTER human beings?
David Sirota knows better. This should be shared with all who don’t. Education “Reform” with David Sirota
Even more shocking–Milton Friedman. If you have read Naomi Klein’s “Shock Doctrine”, you know the devious agenda these people follow.
Diane,
What a brutal way to wake up. . . a holier-than-thou interview of Mrs. DeVos. Thanks just the same for linking to it; we need to know who we’re up against, and I say that as a public school teacher who works in Mrs. Devos’s backyard. It’s no picnic.
The other part that’s interesting to me is how completely “liberal” school reformers have been co-opted by the hard Right.
There is nothing “liberal” remaining about this “movement”.
What possible distinction can liberals rely on at this point? They’ve signed on to all of it.
She recognizes this, which is why she switches into “bipartisan” mode and announces it’s no longer “political”
Of course it’s no longer political, if you’re hard Right! They’ve gotten 100% of their policy enacted! Now it’s time to join hands and all support hard Right education policy.
It’s remarkable.
The question for me is, did liberal reformers get played by conservatives, or were they aware this was happening but the vast amounts of money and power on the “reform” Right were just too tempting to pass up?
Not to mention all the “reform” jobs dangled in front of them, of course.
I admit to not being able to stomach this interview after a couple paragraphs…Haven’t had my coffee yet.
But I wanted to say that I think this “bipartisan” stuff is just nonsense, because we really have just ONE party today.
The Democratic party is nothing like what it used to be decades ago.
The leadership has not consisted of liberals and progressives since Clinton, who declared himself a “New Democrat” and “centrist,” when the party purposely turned right in order to capture the swing GOP vote. Obama is a New Democrat, too, and those people are virtually the same as old mainstream Republicans, before the addition of the Tea Party.
So, regardless of the periodic lip service paid to the middle class by Democrats, BOTH parties made hard right turns long ago and, except for the fringes, they are on the same page more often than not –and especially regarding education, corporate elites and the privatization of public services. And, while there are those with some fanatic conservative beliefs, all of it is much more about $$$$$ and power than ideology.
It is important to distinguish the party base from the ostensible party “leadership”.
I don’t really know if there is anything left of the moderately responsible Milliken Republicans that we use to know here in Michigan 50 years ago — maybe they’re all hiding out in Traverse City or parts further north — but as far as the Dems go I know from the Snyder recall movement that the base has basically got its heart in the same place it always had. The problem is that the Party Pharaohs & Pharisees have basically deserted the base.
Yes, I specified the party leadership when I wrote, “The leadership has not consisted of liberals and progressives since Clinton”
FYI, The then Senator Obama attended the Park Ave founding meeting of “Democrats” for Ed Reform (DFER) hosted by John Walton’s bff Whitney Tilson. BO went on to appt Duncan to DOE. No coincidence.
Blackwater In-Law DeVos Outlines “Stealth” Plot Against Public Education
It’s very telling when you place the strategy of focusing on individual states in context. DeVos probably knew very well then that this stealth strategy was how ALEC had been working –long before the rest of the nation learned about ALEC last year.
Infiltrating the Democratic party was another stealth strategy. See: Glen Ford: Corporate Assault on Public Education
Strategy for Privatizing Public Schools Spelled Out by Dick DeVos in 2002 Heritage Foundation Speech
We come to that juncture between Mercantile/Mercenary Ideology and Pseudo-Christian Soldierism that Max Weber analyzed so brilliantly at the outset of the last century.
I keep some links for periodic review on this page under the heading Moneytheism..
DeVos = Amway
Another person who has WAY too much money and too much time on her hands.
Time to return this country back to 90-percent tax rates so that would encourage the rich to reinvest back into the economy.
I was wondering if it was the “Amway DeVos.” Thirty years ago, “Dick” DeVos used to go by the first name of “Rich.” He was one of two founders of Amway, a product-peddling ponzi. For him, or his wife, to have ANY say in education is f**king ludicrous.
Same guy.
Yes, it is the Amway fortune bankrolling vouchers
And don’t forget WHY deVos wants vouchers, Diane: gotta get Christ Jesus back into the schools, but this time unapologetically, intrepidly, and with no holds barred.
Michigan Populist has several articles on the DeVos Family and their unrelenting efforts to push vouchers no matter what the voters say.
See especially this one —
• http://www.michiganpopulist.org/?p=40
Let me try that again …
Snyder’s Plan for Public Schools Defies Voters Wishes
She considers Louisiana a success?!!
Facts never get in the way of ideology.
The DeVos family is a powerful force behind school vouchers and privately-managed charter schools and corporate-style education “reform.” They also finance the far-right Family Research Council, and Focus on Family as well as various white supremacist groups in their home state of Michigan. Betsy DeVos is sister to the founder (Erik Prince) of Blackwater (now Xe Corp.) the private security firm that has become one of the largest supplier of mercenary soldiers in the world. As a member of ALEC, she provided millions to anti-immigration groups in Arizona. and to the failed campaign to prevent the recall of racist pol Russell Pearce. The DeVoses are also patrons of Wisconsin’s Tea Party Gov. Walker and put millions into his campaign against the state’s teacher unions.
So, now it’s racist to support two parent nuclear families? I challenge you to provide a list of the white supremacist groups to which she has contributed. Next you’ll call her a disciple of the devil and assert she does black magic in a cave. Talk about witch hunts.
Harlan, I don’t care whether her agenda is racist or not. There are many undeniable things wrong with it that you can’t dismiss so glibly.
That’s hard to do, Harlan. As you know, 501c’s aren’t required to disclose donors, so they get to hide under a cloak of anonymity. With the increase in white supremacy groups going mainstream, including in Michigan, it’s a pretty safe bet that a DeVos can be tied to donating to one of these extreme groups.
Then tie her, oh maker of the racist claim. If we DON’T KNOW, because of legal protections to donor lists, then you should not make the claim. I once called Diane a “red diaper” baby but I never met her parents. I should not have. She called me on it. You may ‘believe’ what you say, but if you can’t show it, moderate your claims. Is Barack Obama the first Muslim President of the United States? Anyone can make a claim. I haven’t always set a good example, but do I have to just accept your word for it because of your general hostility to . . . well I have no idea what you are hostile too. We used to say ‘loose lips sink ships.’
I personally have no objection to your pillorying any public figure in any place. It’s your opinion. You are entitled to it. But shouldn’t you flag it as, “This is my personal belief although I have absolutely no evidence to back it up.”
What “white supremacy” groups have gone mainstream in Michigan? You state it as if it were a fact. It MAY be a fact. I am rather naive, granted. That there are skinhead white supremacist groups out there I have heard and in part have seen in a rather dramatic confrontation in my town some decades ago when three stupid looking loser fat boys carried shields with lightning bolts on them on to the city hall steps, and the police had to keep the radicals who came out from Detroit behind a chain link fence from rushing them, killing them, and eating them raw (which is what we really wanted to do). They haven’t come back. But “main stream”? Give me a break.
Are charter schools “white supremacist”? Are the existence of suburbs racist? I know the Justice Department thinks so.
Is CCSS racist and “white supremacist”?
Is it “white supremacist” and “racist” for a white person to just go about his business in the scramble of life?
Is it “white supremacist and “racist” to believe the same intellectual standards should apply to everyone in the country?
Is it it “racist” to teach Algebra I in 8th grade? (I personally think it’s STUPID, but I don’t think it’s racist.)
I suspect, however, you would answer yes to all those questions.
Correct me if I am wrong.
Harlan, I’ve asked you to address the substantive points in Diane’s post, in links I and others provided outlining Betsy Devos’ religious agenda in spite of the US Constitution, and to drop the red herring here of “racism,” which, frankly, you seem to be the only person obsessed about. You managed to take a post that made a lot of points and reduced it to a ridiculous extrapolation about witch hunts.
If only dealing with the Devos family and its political agenda were so trivially simple.
So are you here to deflect the conversation away from the undeniable issues that Devos and her group raise by the open agenda they espouse, or do you want to talk turkey? If the former, I think you’re acting the troll.
OK. So let’s talk about the religion issue.
Is the real question whether public money (taxes) can be legally distributed to schools sponsored by religious denominations?
Or is it, as you seem to imply, a movement to impose Reform Christianity in all public schools?
The former MIGHT be constitutional, while the latter clearly is not, because it would be an establishment of a specific religion.
You and your sources, which I am working through, are clearly entitled to oppose her on the constitutionality of taxes going religious schools, but to call her “racist” in an attempt to discredit the person for the sake of the issue rather than to directly argue the idea is not legitimate.
You were doing fine, Harlan, until you dragged your favorite red herring right back to front and center. Did *I* accuse anyone of racism? Did Diane? Did the sources she or I cited? This is not about racism per se. Racism MAY be a factor. For all I know, the deVos family is a favorite of the NAACP or card-carrying members of the Ku Klux Klan. It’s a side issue. When Dick DeVos ran for governor of Michigan and was crushed by Jennifer Granholm (the lesser of two evils, to my mind) I can’t recall Betsy or Dick’s alleged racism or lack thereof being raised by anyone, though perhaps it was. If so, I seriously doubt it was a major factor, and the reality in Michigan is that the western, northern, and thumb (very northeastern) sections of the state are conservative, mostly white, and not exactly enamored of Detroit. So it’s quite hard to imagine that racist attitudes were central or even marginal in that election. When I read about what Betsy deVos has been up to, several years ago, I don’t think it was allegations of racism that caught my attention (or slipped by it), but quite simply her agenda for education and clear intentions to find a way to get her particular flavor of religion ensconced in ALL schools (perhaps not non-Christian parochial ones, however: I think she’ll let Orthodox Jews and Muslims find their paths to hell without her intervention, though I might be wrong about her goals in that regard).
Can we once and for all drop the “racism” issue on this thread, then? Or, as you find yourself unable to reasonably defend the main thrust of her educational agenda, will you feel obliged to keep bringing up this non-issue?
I tried to post this earlier today, several times and for some reason could not:
Harlan, I’ve already called you on this once. You’re making a mountain out of a red herring (to purposely mix my metaphors). The charges of racism being leveled at Betsy (and/or Mr. deVos are not a serious point and are best marginally relevant to the article that started this discussion or the many that I and others posted links to here.
What makes Betsy deVos dangerous is her religious agenda that directly conflicts with the separation clause and a long history of keeping religion as such out of public education in this country. You have anything to say about that that either counters those claims or deepens our understanding of the issues? If not (and my money is on your not having anything to contribute of substance in that regard), you’re just spinning your wheels here to no end.
My suggestion to others: don’t feed the troll. He wants to make this about “racism” because it’s not really on-point and he can distract the conversation from the central issues.
I ask him to put up or shut up on the actual points of the post.
Betsy DeVos appears to be advocating something called “vouchers for all.” Other versions are tax credits for school fees at private and/or religious schools, or “education accounts” directed by the parents so that the state is not directly paying private or religious schools. I suspect we differ on this issue because we do not share any common ground on it. I don’t see vouchers for all as constituting an establishment of religion in any way. Everyone still has freedom of conscience. There’s no religious test for working for the government. There’s no religious test even for attending a voucher supported religious school. Such schools do mostly secular education. The way it was gotten around in my city in my youth was that every school kid had wednesday afternoon off to attend or not attend religious instruction. The Jewish boys in my grade went to Hebrew School to prepare for their bar mitzvahs. I went downtown on the bus to my Congregational church for something, which I now have forgotten. The Catholic kids went to their parish church. In that city we had 71 different religious denominations. No one thought anything about it. It was not an establishment of a religion by government authority.
I see vouchers as a natural extension of the constitutional protection of the free exercise of religion. No one is compelling anyone to profess a specific religion. This is not Saudi Arabia.
The language “separation of church and state” is not in the constitution. It is a shibolleth created by opponents of tax money being subtracted from the public schools and used to educate students in charter or private schools.
Actually the position YOU are taking is really a war against religion in general. No one is forcing you to believe anything. All we ask is that you agree to parents being able to select a school they think is best for their kid. You want to replace the authority of the parent and to say no student shall be exposed to anything religious during their schooling.
What purpose in your agenda does that serve? You are fear mongering when there is nothing to fear. No one is forcing YOU or your children to believe any specific dogmatic or even ethical precept.
You’re a funny man, Harlan. I went to public school in northern NJ from ’55 to ’68. Catholic kids went to Catholic schools or to the public schools, but either way, their religious education was available to them, free of charge as far as I know, on the weekend. Jewish kids went to yeshivas or to public school, but either way, religious instruction was available to them, free of charge as far as I know, on the weekend. And so on. Not a lot of Protestant kids in those days in that area went to private religious schools, though some went to rather exclusive secular prep schools, a path I never heard of until one of my best friends was forced upon it by his parents starting in 7th grade and I lost him as a major part of my life. I imagine that, had this been England, the flavor of such places would have been quite clearly Anglican, however.
At any rate, you have to be kidding about what’s at issue here. Betsy Devos is free to send her kids wherever she likes (and I’m sure it’s somewhere safe from the influence of any ideas about the world that someone like Pat Robertson would disapprove of). She gets to pay for that if she wants it to be the entire extent of her kids’ education. Otherwise, she picks a public school and has to keep religion to herself. And THAT is part of what gripes her. She wants every child in public school to have a Christian education, to be protected from any secular ideas, to have creationist/intelligent design science books ONLY, and math textbooks that won’t teach or mention anything modern like set theory (because some nut job fundamentalists she’s in league with believe that infinity and all the rest of modern mathematics is against the teachings of the Bible. I’m not making that up!). To be clear: she wants the same kind of narrow-minded, knuckle-dragging idiocy that kids whose parents are of a certain religious mindset are restricted to given to EVERY SINGLE AMERICAN CHILD. Period. That’s the goal, Harlan. And I will fight that with everything I’ve got.
Will I fight against her constitutional right to have such a moronic education given to kids whose parents are willing to subject them to it in private parochial schools? Of course not. Will I fight against the existence or practice of deVos’s offensive brand of Christianity? Not as long as it doesn’t go beyond belief and talk. When it becomes social activism, when it threatens to undermine the constitution and laws, yes, I will fight it. As should anyone who understands why there must never be religion taught AS religion (as doctrine) in our public schools.
Now, I will shock you here. I am in favor of the teaching of aspects of the Bible and the holy books of other major world religions in public schools. In 7-12 literature classes. I had a solid education in such things and as a future student of English at the graduate level, it served me well. I often knew a good deal more about religious references in literature and movies than did some of my religious fellow-students. (Sometimes the scholarly atheist kid does that sort of thing, to the dismay of the observant kids). But this is the literature of the Bible, etc., we’re talking about, without a basic knowledge of it’s pretty difficult to study philosophy and art with any sense of what’s going on. I was frustrated in 1999 when I couldn’t teach a class or even a unit on the literature of the Bible (though the reasons were probably different from what you might assume).
That’s a world of difference from what Betsy deVos & friends are about. They wouldn’t have liked my proposed class, either. Because it’s not knowledge, but doctrine they want kids to be limited to.
Your defending her agenda as harmless is either remarkably dense or remarkably dishonest. I see no third possibility. Sorry.
You don’t answer the question. What is your evidence she wants to impose Dutch Reform religion on you or your kids? I’ll continue to work through your links.
J. H. Underhill
I don’t think Ms. deVos is quite THAT narrow. If she were, she couldn’t get support from Catholics or Protestants who don’t belong to her sect of Protestantism. That would be a losing strategy and that’s pointed out in the first part of the article I linked to by Rachel Tabachnick: http://www.talk2action.org/story/2011/4/20/232844/831
I suggest you read that and the second part (link in the first part). I’m not going to waste my time reproducing what’s in there. You may choose to read it or not. You may choose to believe what’s there or not. But to suggest that Betsy deVos is, for example, just trying to promote democratic choice and help poor people is something few educated people are likely to believe.
Don’t get me wrong, Harlan: I understand that you don’t WANT to believe it, but that’s your issue, not mine. I’ve been following her story long enough to trust her about as far as I can throw the Eiffel Tower.
Thanks for the reinforcement on the links. I’ll read them.
I realize we are all busy and you don’t have time to lay out for my private benefit what is in the links. Nevertheless, I do point out, that as soon as I challenged you, you began slipping sideways. That doesn’t increase my confidence that you actually know more about the whole thing than your own biases and prejudices.
If you had actually thought the matter through from first principles, I think you would have been able to respond in defense of your claims in a few short coherent sentences.
I bet even YOU don’t believe your own troll prose. Do York homework or can it.
Is that your teacher voice, Ducky wucky?
Is that your “I’ve got nothing” voice? Sad.
“your”
Part of the point is that the people of Michigan have spoken, at least twice now, refusing to allow voucher programs for private and religious schools. The DeVos family, among other things, are perennial supporters of attempts to remove this inconvenient bit of our state constitution (put in place by referendum in the early 1970s). And, as others have said, this has at least as much to do with their religious conviction as with economic ideology.
The family has, however, been at the forefront of funding efforts to remove restrictions on charter schools and other indirect ways of accomplishing the same goals. They are very powerful in Michigan GOP circles, and have used their resources to punish legislators who do not march to their tune. The battle in Michigan over so-called education “reform” is very much shaped by the efforts of the DeVos family and their wealthy allies.
Indeed, sjnorton, that’s exactly at the heart of the problem. Of course, the people of Michigan also rejected Dick when he ran for governor. Maybe Betsy’s next.