President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

While not all private education is religious, I'm not sure why the idea of a school that includes religious education receiving public funds upsets you so much.

It doesn't violate the constitution.

 

Ok. That does seem like a decent argument.

 

Not quite. There are a few religious colleges I'm sure you believe shouldn't receive federal aid due to codes of conduct and curriculum, but do.

As for subsidizing primary and secondary religious schools, already happens in my state with transportation. Local school district has to bus private-school kids if they live far enough away from the private school.

 

As a cynical political strategy, I suspect there is some hey to be made attacking school choice from the right like that. "Betsy DeVos wants to take money from Podunk High's football team and give it to Mooslim radicalization camps."

But I would be nervous daring the right to start establishing Christianity as the Real American religion and start outlawing others.

 

40-some years ago, when I was in late-elementary/middle school/junior high, there was a ballot issue in my state for direct state aid for parochial schools -- Parochiaid. Needless to say my parents and just about everybody at my Catholic grade school thought it was a great idea. For ME, I thought it was awesome; my parents could take all the money they had been spending on tuition for me and instead spend it on records and vacation trips and all sorts of groovy things.

At the time, probably 75% of the monpublic schools in the state were Catholic schools. There were a few Lutheran and Baptist schools sprinkled in, but the large majority was Catholic. And a huge part of the anti-Parochiaid campaign essentially was, "why should we give away public tax money to run Catholic schools? If Catholics want to send their kids to their own schools that's fine, but let them pay for it."

Well, it got shot out of the water, pretty emphatically. Enough so that the Catholic school hierarchy pretty much gave up on the idea for good.

And after the election was over, in some sort of discussion that I'm sure annoyed most of the teachers and priests, I said, "You know something: they're right. The Constitution provides for separation of church and state."

And then I went on, "you know something else ? If we as Catholics don't get our church schools paid for by tax money, that's fine, that's groovy. We're big boys, big girls, lots of our family parents are doctors, lawyers, yadda yadda, we can pay our own way. But if we don't get our church schools paid for by tax money, neither does Larry Lutheran, Morty the Mormon, Billy Bob Baptist, Muhammad Muslim, Joshua the Jew or Bubba the Buddhist get their schools paid for either. And you know what, I don't really care anyway because our public high school is ranked top-50 in the nation; I probably wouldn't go to the Catholic high school if you paid me." The teachers and priests and parents mostly went a few different shades of green over that. It probably wasn't what they wanted to hear out of a 6th/7th grader.

Which was fine for 20 years or so, pretty much until Right Wing Screech Nation decided they didn't want to send their kids to school with funny looking brown kids any more, so all of a sudden Billy Bob's Baptist Academy is back banging on the door for tax money. They ain't just giving the money to the Catholics any more (in fact, they'd be just as happy not to).

 

Here's the long con explained. (And notice how certain posters here like to play the same game.)

 

I attended Catholic school growing up. No student was required to practice Catholicism. We always had a fair share of non-Catholics, and on the few occasions where a school wide Church/religious ceremony was held, students could opt out of attending.

Our science classes were mainstream.

Your post is ridiculous.

 

Did it ever occur to you, YF, that your school is not the only way every school ever was run?

I went to some private Christian schools where chapel attendance and prayer were very much not optional

 

There are exceptions to the rule, but Catholic schools have a much better reputation for academic rigor and freedom than evangelical schools.

 

And your prize:

 

There are colleges that receive federal financial aid dollars that require chapel attendance. Their funding is safe and constitutional.