Leaving a mark on some rightie's (Education)

[theriverburns]

I post on a football board that is decidedly right-leaning. Last night they were bellyaching about the Department of Education. Pardon the profanity but I think I left them sputtering with this reply (examples of their remarks in italics):

I don't think education should be a federal issue, so I'm agin' it no matter how much/little it costs.

Totally agree. I was in full support of Gingrich's notion of getting rid of the Department of Education. Speak about a waste of taxpayer money.


And your reasons for these views are.....? Saying you heard it on Limbaugh isn't good enough.

You two really ought to just say, like all good Republican's, that you are decidedly against anything that doesn't provide immediate and tangible short term financial benefit to the top 1%.

Here let me give you guys some info so you will shut the fu** up about education:

1) The USA, like EVERY OTHER FU***NG CIVILIZED NATION ON THE FU***NG PLANET has a national level department of education.

2) Spending on education at the federal level by the USDE only accounts for around 6% of all education spending in the US.

3) The D of E only accounts for around 1.5% of the federal budget.

4) The Cold War stimulated the first comprehensive effort in Federal education legislation--the National Defense Education Act (NDEA) which came in response to the Soviet launch of Sputnik and the Cold War. Created to help ensure that highly trained individuals would be available to help America compete with the Soviet Union in scientific and technical fields.

5) The NDEA included support for loans to college students, the improvement of science, mathematics, and foreign language instruction in elementary and secondary schools, graduate fellowships, foreign language and area studies, and vocational-technical training.

6) A federal level Department of Education insures and insured that certain standards would be met by and for all Americans. Otherwise, you would have had Republican's cheating and sending their kids to school's in Democratic states to take advantage of the higher levels of education without paying for it. Isn't that the Republican way? The Free Lunch?

7) Oh, yeah, and for those of you who blank-stared and slack-jawed incessantly whine about education for real American's, but not trillions in bailouts, subsidies and tax cuts for offshore corporations--f**k you and the lack of objectivity, PATRIOTISM and ability to think for yourself you rode in on.

[bahrbearian]

1. GOOD (theriver) BURN

[HFishbine]

2. Amen, brother. Amen.

One mind at a time!

[Name removed]

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[theriverburns]

4. i can think if hundreds of billions of things

The student loan program? Grants? Research grants? Milli0ons of people have college degrees because of the ED.

The Department of Education (ED) will provide more than $67 billion this year, about 70 percent of all student aid, to help millions of students and families pay for postsecondary education. Over 10 million students apply every year, and more than 9 million get grants or loans from the ED.


The U.S. Department of Education provided $36 billion this year to states and school districts, primarily through formula-based grant programs, to improve elementary and secondary schools and meet the special needs of students.


Sell it somewhere else.

[Name removed]

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[Muddleoftheroad]

5. Good theory

While I agree with many of your points, a few comments:

1) I agree.

3) "Only" 1.5% of the federal budget $47.6 billion. I didn't live long enough in D.C. for that amount to be "only."

4) I wildly agree.

6) Here's where we disagree: "A federal level Department of Education insures and insured that certain standards would be met by and for all Americans." No it doesn't. Sure, it SHOULD. But one look at the urban school districts of the U.S. puts lie to that statement.

[ithacan]

7. rural school districts too

let's not forget that some of the worst poverty is in rural areas, despite TV images of poverty = innercity

[ithacan]

8. but Right-Wingers NEED for people to be uneducated

that's the whole point of their attack on education.

They cannot have people who can actually think!!!

That's why they need to dumb down education and replace it with "creationism" and other such nonsense. Just like the fundies in Pakistan and other places where fundamentalists control "education," the right wingers in this country want ignorance to reign, since it's the ONLY way they can maintain control.