School Vouchers Can Prevent Book Censorship
I am a firm believer in school vouchers for all students. That stance is nothing new for me. I have endorsed the concept for several years. Parents are enabled to choose a school for their child instead of the state doing so. It is everything that our governor has been touting.
If I still had school age children, I would want them to attend a school that was more heavily reliant on original work over textbooks. Literature that would expose them to the classics as well as introduce them to modern nonfiction. Books, both fiction and nonfiction, should include provocative themes. Even themes that were sexual in nature and about racism and antisemitism.
That doesn’t mean a kid in kindergarten should be seeing depictions of sexual acts, but a casual inclusion of Billy’s two mothers wouldn’t bother me. It will prepare the child for the world as it is. Isn’t that what school is all about…preparation for what is encountered in life?
That is my wish as a parent. If it isn’t yours, then a voucher system would allow you to select a different school more aligned to your priorities for their education. In our current system, one parent can have a veto over what books are read which results in depriving all students.
Any one parent should not be able to stop all other parents from providing an education they think is right for their child. That very situation is what we are faced with now in Florida and other states. That is not parental rights…that is censorship. And it is pernicious because it takes away not only the rights of all parents but allows one person to dictate standards to everyone else.
We all have our own prejudices to some degree. My prejudice should not be the deciding factor in what others are allowed to see and do. That is why the path we have gone down has this parental rights argument backward. There is no sustainable way this can be allowed to continue.
The terms fascism, Marxism, libertarianism, communism have become just terms. Their true meanings have been lost to political rhetoric. What we have are politicians involved in political machinations. It is to serve a political purpose and not an educational one.
We live in a digital world. Printed books should be a thing of the past. A librarian can easily load any book that a library has onto a reader. The child’s reader would already be programed with the parent’s instructions to prevent a problem. End of story. The same could be true for textbooks.
That would further parental rights and be an educational solution. It skips politics. That seems like a better outcome instead of allowing one parent to have sway over an entire school district.
