Imagine you run a daycare. It’s big business, and the state gives you a big bucket of money for each kid you watch. You don’t even watch the kid as much as you should, and sometimes they get exposed to things they shouldn’t, but you still get paid to “watch” them.
Then, one day, some parent says, I’d like my kid to go to some other daycare, but I can’t really afford it. Is there any way I can use some of the money the state takes and gives to the Big daycare to help me do that? The big daycare puffs up its chest and says no frikkin way, but there are other “daycares,” and not everyone fits into the Big Daycare model. Some upstart legislators pass a law that would allow it, and while the Big daycare and its advocates are unhappy, there’s really no reason for this.
The kid they used to “watch” is no longer their responsibility, but they still get most of that big bucket of money. The parent only gets a portion of it under the law, leaving much of it in the hands of the big daycare. In other words, they get a bunch of money to do nothing multiplied by however many kids go somewhere else. This irks them so much that they file lawsuits demanding that the courts end the law so that they get all the money, even if it means they have to “watch” the kids again.
At this point, you would be right to wonder why. How are free money and no kid less of a good deal than having that kid, their nosey parent, and whatever grievances they have?
I’d say it’s not about the money, but that’s not true. Part of the issue is that Big Daycare – in this example – doesn’t want anyone else thriving at their expense, even if they are getting revenue free of any individual upon whom they are “meant” to spend it. Letting even that little bit go creates or supports competition, but competition for what? It’s not the rest of the money, so it has to be the kid. Or, more precisely, to what the child is exposed.
They want the money, but they want the child more.
This is a battle for your children’s minds and the ideological effects of keeping that money away from people who have different ideas about what children see and learn.
Not every parent wants their child to think they were born racist and have no path to repentance (CRT). They oppose access to sexually explicit material either on religious or mental health grounds, knowing young children, unable to understand it, might be disturbed or confused by inappropriate images and mixed messages. Some parents would prefer a more rigorous academic curriculum, especially if their child is being held back by a system obsessed with mainstreaming less capable young minds.
Or it could be as simple as the government schools’ inability to teach kids to read and do math, even to the watered-down testing, no matter how much money they get.
The public education experiment is failing, has failed. It didn’t have to, doesn’t have to continue failing, but that’s the path they are on.
If it weren’t for the government’s almost police-state-like monopoly and that tax-based revenue stream, results be damned, they’d have gone out of business and been replaced years ago by something that works at a fraction of the cost.
But here we are, watching them cry about money for students they don’t have and always demanding more of it.
