Political Hermeneutics

Why I am a Republican

Perhaps this will explain why a woman raised in a lefty family in California is now Republican.  For what its worth ...

I grew up in Palo Alto/Los Altos Hills in the 1960s and attended public school well into the 1970s.  A few memories.

I remember four school trips to the tertiary sewage plant where we watched poop and paper swirl around in giant vats as an environmentalist droned about saving the planet.  This was science.

I remember pulling tires out of the bay for a biology class.

I remember grabbing oil-covered birds and wiping them clean for health class.  Perhaps, though, this was during the Sunday School program at the Presbyterian Church that my parents inexplicably attended for one, odd year.  I can’t recall.

I remember catching my French teacher boinking the boy’s coach in the woods behind the school, my lesbian gym teacher watching us undress with dilated pupils, my social studies teacher arrested during the protests, my math teacher standing on her desk, foaming at the corners of her mouth and (inadvertently?) revealing her underpants during a diatribe against Nixon.

 I remember drugs in every third, or so, locker and smoky parties sanctioned by the school that made my throat raw for days. 

 I remember volunteering at the front office and looking at the charts of students that were in an accessible file drawer.  They had asked me to file a couple charts.  IQs and standardized test information were written on the front on each chart. Apparently this personal information wasn't considered worthy of keeping in a back office.

I remember neighborhood “wife swaps” with disgust.  We would meet under a designated tree to discuss where our moms and dads were bedding that night.   Of course, they were back home in the wee hours, pretending to us that nothing happened.

I remember the gut-wrenching fear that overtook us when we learned that one of our parents was driving toward Reno.  That meant divorce.  Or skiing.  We were never sure.

I remember “New English.”  I had never heard of a spelling test until I visited relatives in New York.   I learned grammar in college when I learned ancient Greek as a language.  I never learned grammar in school.

I remember watching twenty, or so, Eager Allan Poe movies during English class segment on poetry.  I never read his works.

I remember “New Math.”   As a tenth-grader we finally moved back east and I discovered that my math knowledge was years behind that of my peers.   But I was great at sets and subsets, intersections and unions.  I couldn’t identify, though, a negative number or reduce a fraction … with a 4.0 GPA.

I remember playing Yahtzee every day during sixth grade instead of doing math. Yahtzee was a math game, you see, and considered important for learning math skills.

In grade school, I remember feeling very pressured, by my teachers and some peers, to wear MIA bracelets, peace symbols and other such attire.  I told them that I didn’t like to wear “stuff” that got in the way during kickball.  For some time, this line worked.

I remember watching My Three Sons and Father Knows Best and pining for a family like the ones on television.  They didn’t have a hippy-dippy, psychiatrist mother and nerdy, blinkered physicist father.  Television parents had a neat home with linear furniture – my family had modern, curvilinear furniture.   As an adult, I still associate heavy, sunken brown couches with happy families.  Television parents had sons that knew when they were doing wrong and eventually got caught.  Television families were so cool.  My family was more like Bewitched! 

Just so you know, I was saved from this background by reading.  Books saved me.  I read incessantly.  And covertly. I read everything from junk to classics.  Eventually,  after MUCH struggle and many tears, I earned an Ivy League doctorate.  I have always voted Republican.  I’ve been married once.  Home school the kids. 

 The furniture is quite modern, though.  And curvilinear.

Arizona's Educational Unfairness

Today I registered my child to be homeschooled.  After driving from the Carefree area to a government office on Central and Indian School, the government worker handled my request efficiently and quickly.  Nice.  

I didn't know that my child had to be registered, in fact, I first heard about registering my child at a coffee meeting a few days ago, when another woman casually mentioned that registering her child in Arizona was so much easier than in California.  My ears perked, "...registering?"

I've had my children in public schools (my daughter graduated from an AZ public school), charter schools, private schools and home schools.  Different educational settings fit my children's needs at different points of their lives.  Right now, my youngest needs to be challenged more than what our local public, charter or private schools can offer him.  Specifically, my little guy is brilliant in math and computer which is why he's about to take computer courses at SCCC, even though he is of middle-school age.  He'll do well.

It is simply a travesty that our state government does not support ALL children in all educational environments but rather only some children in some educational environments.  True fairness dictates that all children, irrespective of the sort of schooling that fits him or her best, should have our governmental support.  Fairness dictates that children be treated equally.  

It is unfair that the government gives public school children almost double the per-student funding as charter school pupils, and NOTHING to private and home schooled kids.  Nada.  Zilch.  It is unfair that the government singles out for support only the children that fit in their preferred educational settings.  It is unfair that my child has to take classes at my expense because my government doesn't care for his future.

Doesn't Arizona have an interest in ALL of its children, not merely the ones who happen to fit into charter and public schools?

I asked the woman at the government office how many children are homeschooled in Arizona.  She said she didn't know.  Of course this was untrue, for she knew, but didn't want to talk about it.  I wonder why?  While I was waiting, her receptionist, on the phone, rattled off the "fact" that there are 10,250 registered homeschooled children in Maricopa county.  I quickly jotted down that number.

Back to the coffee conversation with local women, for a moment.  Surprisingly, all of the women at this meeting were either considering or already homeschooling.  Cave Creek schools, though they work well for some, aren't working for their kids.  These parents need other options and are looking at tutoring and homeschooling to meet their kid's needs.  (This isn't a criticism of CC schools which serve some kids very well.  It is merely the observation that other kids are not served well in CC schools and need to be educated elsewhere.)

Interestingly, not one of the women currently homeschooling had registered their children, except the woman from statist California.  They either didn't know about it, or didn't feel they needed to raise attention to the fact that their child was homeschooled.  

Later, I spoke with a young family who belonged to a large homeschool group who told me there were more than 1700 families, not individual children, on their email list.  Only about a third are registered, she said.  I had a confirmation of this fact at a neighbor's house, today.  She, too, homeschools.  She's from California and have registered.  And her children, who have special needs, have been ignored by Scottsdale School district.  She finally gave up in disgust.  But she also told me that most homeschooled families in Arizona do not bother to register their children.  Interesting, huh?

We can probably assume, then, that there are 25,000 to 30,000 kids who are homeschooled in Maricopa county, not 10,000 as the receptionist said.  And this may understate the actual numbers by half.  If, in 2000, the public school enrollment was about 500,000, then one in 20 kids in Maricopa county have been deemed too unimportant to fund with tax dollars. The government wants these kids to fit into their schools.  But they don't.  And won't. So rather than supporting the sort of educational experiences that best fits the child, they're writing off these children as insignificant and unworthy of tax support.

This is wrong.  Morally wrong.  

We need to do something about it.

Email me.