One of my concerns with both the exodus of religious conservatives from schools and the fight for vouchers is the impact this trend will have on public schools.
First, public school will become a place for those with no options. The better off, more motivated and anti-secular parents will resist funding schools they do not support or intend to use.
What is worse, we will end up with many students graduating from alternative schools that leave out important information - civil rights, important lessons of history, facts about the natural world - resulting in the formation of minds hostile to a secular democracy, cultural pluralism and scientific literacy.
Rather than teaching common values and a shared view of how the world works, we may end up with balkanized groups of students, each with their own distorted view of the world, and each with a parochial view of the world that makes it difficult or impossible to understand people different from themselves, let alone get along with them.
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Mr. Myers, I believe that you strongly overestimate the trend that you see. While the movement towards school vouchers is a concerning one, I do not believe that it can come close to the destructive effect that you suppose.
I believe that the number of people who will use these vouchers (especially as the current college generation starts to have children) will be relatviely small. While the percentage of students at all public universities who define themselves as religious is around 80%, this includes not just Christianity, but all religions. The percentage of students is high, but it is lower than the percentage of their mothers who claim religious affiliation. A trend is also evident there. (Numbers from a religion 140 powerpoint presentation)
Above that, the number of students who define themselves as religious but do not believe in the seven day creation story and other conservative religious ideas is probably huge. I have yet to meet more than about 10 students (including in the religious groups i've joined) who believe in a seven day creation. These students obviously aren't going to send their children to conservative religious schools that teach these ideas if there is a viable public school nearby.
Another problem with the idea of everyone sending their children to conservative religious schools on vouchers is that there are many other, non-religious options to which students can be sent. In Kansas City, there are few. This may be attributed to the good public school system in the area. In cities such as Washington DC or New York, there are plenty of secular private schools to which a parent can send their child. Even then, not all religious schools are going to teach all of the conservative religious views.
The students who do end up coming from those conservative religious schools (or home schools) are likely to go to non-religious universities. Many will have a hard time adjusting; just talk to people who have graduated recently from kansas city christian. I know the some of home schoolers who lived next to me have been seen many times drunk at parties out in Lawrence and have shed much of the conservative, sheltered viewpoints with which they grew up.
The idea that public school vouchers will absolutely ruin the school system (and secular democracy) is, to me, not much more than a paranoid pipe dream. There certainly are dangers to the public school system, but this is mainly limited to the weaker public school districts who may (in the end) benefit from fewer students. A smaller student:teacher ratio is a known benefit to schools. The stronger school districts where the parents already have enough money to send their children to private schools but don't are in little danger.
I really don't know too much about the subject in general, but i think your view presented here is a little bit pesimistic and more than a bit dystopian. It is a good thing to think that this may happen. It is a good thing that people out there are warning against it, but i feel that the possibility of this is so small that time can be much better spent contemplating other areas.
I think that vouchers are an attempt to fund religious education with public money. The Southern Baptists have vote to recommend that parents pull their children out of public school. Vouchers will make it possible to start more private religious schools to serve those who currently home school.
It is not only religious folks who have trouble with public school, and it is also reasonable to think that public money to fund private school will also foster the development of academies and other approaches for gifted students, and private equivalents of magnet schools. This will happen because the money will be there, and there is already a demand to provide educational advantage for gifted and upwardly mobile students, and alternatives for at-risk students of the concerned and activist parents. The advantages of these schools will be that they can cherry pick from the best students, and exclude discipline problems, special education needs, ect.
I agree that vouchers by themselves will not wreck the public school system - but they may well be a tipping point that will make it less likely that public schools will be as good as they ought to be. I als think it is very possible that many religious, gifted and college-bound students will exist the system, leaving public schools with a much more difficult task.
On the other hand, it may be that a serious challenge might cause them to improve.
One more thought - I agree that the number of folks who leave public school for science-denying alternatives would be small, but as we've seen in other countries, they can form a radical minority that can have a disproportionate impact.
One reason why I am sending my two elementary school age girls to a private school is the filth and violence allowed in the public schools, added and abetted by the ACLU types.
Sorry about your own particular religous/science agenda Mr. Myers, but I am not going to sacrifice those two young ladies to it.
If you don't like my attitude, too damn bad.
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