How the right wing views public education

The ultraconservative party platform adopted last weekend by the takenoprisoner delegates to the Texas Republican Convention is predictably full of the profamily, profree enterprise, proguns, redwhiteandblue rhetoric we have come to expect of such documents. And, of course, it is rounded out with a lot of antitax, antigays, antiimmigrants, antiUnited Nations language as well.

It will go unread by at least 99.99 percent of Texans, and, collectively, it represents the viewpoints of a rapidly shrinking minority. The platform writers, nevertheless, must have had a grand ol’ time venting their spleens at the Grand Old Party’s biennial bash.

The 29page document includes four pages of recommendations for public and higher education, which should be required reading for teachers who still may not understand why the political process is important to them or whether they should even bother to vote.

Here are a few lowlights of the rightwing’s wish list:

# Put more restrictions on local property taxes, repeal the state franchise tax and require a twothirds supermajority for the Legislature to pass any tax increase. In other words, cut spending on an already underfunded public education system.

# A teacher pay raise? Forget it. See above.

# Expand the powers of the State Board of Education over curriculum and textbook content and put the education commissioner and the entire Texas Education Agency under its authority. Some conservatives obviously think history needs even more rewriting.

# Give Intelligent Design and other unnamed “political philosophies” equal billing with evolution in science classrooms.

# Provide “teacher incentives through monetary and recognition awards.” This sounds like an unfunded merit pay plan. Maybe they mean an occasional pat on the head.

# Cut back on bilingual education, just as Texas’ Hispanic population is mushrooming. If a kid can’t speak English after three years, too bad.

# Quit teaching multiculturalism, even as Anglos are becoming a minority in Texas’ public schools.

# Encourage “parental school choice…in public, private or parochial education.” Translation: private school vouchers.

# Oppose mandatory preschool and kindergarten and urge Congress to repeal governmentsponsored early childhood development programs.

# Restrict sex education to abstinence only and give parents veto power over that.

# Promote corporal punishment in the schools.

# Abolish the tenure system for university faculty.

# Don’t issue any school bonds unless at least 25 percent of registered voters participate in the election, meaning there wouldn’t be much school construction for the foreseeable future.