3 minutes ago, Clefan14 said:

Great I’m so glad we’re all on the hook for $90k in school vouchers for you. And the teachers of these private schools get paid crumbs, so it probably just goes to the church. 

 

None goes to the Church, but that's exactly the kind of reflexive, unthinking, anti-Christian attitude that dominates secularist spaces in this country.

 

In case you actually care, you have it completely backwards.  Catholic schools don't subsidize the Church; the Church subsidizes its schools (though there are "independent" Catholic schools that are unsubsidized, and the difference generally shows quite strongly in the tuition involved).  Tuition at Catholic schools is substantially cheaper than at secular private schools in large part because of that.  I pay less than $4000 per child per school year for elementary school.

 

For high school, at Hoban, tuition is around $13k.  That's cheap for private high schools, but an EdChoice voucher for $7500 still leaves parental responsibility somewhere around $5500.  And the sticker price is already as low as it is because of support from the Church, as well as from alumni.

Thank you for correcting me, I do appreciate it.

 

I guess we will have to agree to disagree that that taxpayers should have to contribute anything to any religious associated entity. It’s already bad enough that these churches pay no taxes themselves.

 

Regarding the “anti-Christian” attitude, chill. The desantis demographic has turned this country into a bending over backwards to accommodate every Christian wish list item. As someone who grew up in a Christian home, i find this argument and victim playing (with no evidence listed) is unproductive. But in the end I’m on the hook for your kids to learn about your God. Yikes at our society.

Whatever happens, the "good schools" will still be located in the rich parts of town and the "bad schools" will still be in the poor areas because of the personal networking in the area even if the schools are private. Not every parent or kid can spend an hour plus in the car every day.

Edited March 20, 20232 yr by GCrites80s

4 hours ago, Gramarye said:

 

If Christianity is so intertwined with our public schools, then why is the desire for a Christian education among the most common reasons people cite for leaving them for private schools?

 

Christianity has never been less intertwined with our public schools.  If it were actually intertwined with our public schools in any meaningful sense, the school choice movement would be either radically different in composition and/or nonexistent.

 

It's not really that Christianity is deeply intertwined with public schools, though in many districts, it's definitely more than a little already and I would argue any mixing is far too much. The issue is that there are constant attempts to mix the two to the point where there's no longer any pretense of a secularist framework whatsoever, and to generally push a Right-wing alternate version of facts, history, rights and more within public education overall (see Florida and other red states). 

 

Religious affiliation in the US is in a long-term decline. If anything, it's in outright collapse. And that collapse is especially true of Christian denominations, which previously vastly dominated the political and social landscape of America. That's a very scary look for the people who have long held and maintained power and influence in the country. And instead of taking stock on why that's happening (the oppressive and regressive takes on social issues, rights, science, biology, etc. may need a gander), the Christian Right seems to just be doubling down on what's not working because they generally couldn't care less what other people value or believe (see abortion, LGBTQ rights, etc). 

Or in the case of education, I would argue one of the primary reasons that Christian parents pull their kids out of public schools- or homeschool- is specifically to be able to religiously indoctrinate them while they're still young and impressionable without any contradictory viewpoints having any influence, which they would have in public schooling. "School choice" is a red herring for people who just want their kids to live in a conservative echo chamber. 

 

So it's a two-pronged approach for conservatives here. 1- Make public, secular education more religious, but especially more Christian, and 2- Ensure that private schools and other public-education alternatives are more heavily promoted and financed as a more immediate countermeasure. 

Edited March 20, 20232 yr by jonoh81

4 hours ago, Brutus_buckeye said:

In the Catholic high school I went to, we learned the truth about Rosa Parks and that she was a kind old white lady who needed help riding a bus. 

 

In all seriousness. Schools should teach history without a political spin on it. Liberal or conservative, teachers should refrain from interjecting their personal politics into the matter and not push a social agenda that offends many in the community.  That does not mean you have to teach America Awesome all the time and has no flaws. You still teach redlining, you teach Jim Crow and you teach about all the warts that happened throughout history.  It does not mean you teach kids to self flagellate themselves because someone who died almost 175 years before they were born and that has zero relation to them but owned slaves and that these kids carry some type of guilt with them for the sins of some person with whom they never met, never knew and had no relation too.  

 

Ironic considering so many of the current political movements in America are about someone who may have died a few millenia ago and has no direct relation to them. 

 

3 hours ago, Foraker said:

I will not retract it.  I realize that the official church position is "love the sinner, hate the sin" or something similar, but when the teachers tell a kid that the kid is going to hell if they act on their love, that the church will not bless but rather condemn their love, that is damaging to LGBT kids trying to figure out their place in the church, the school, and the community. This is based on events at a Catholic school within the past decade. That is a discussion for another forum other than school funding, however, so I won't continue this discussion here.

 

And let's just be real here... an organization that spent decades covering up thousands of incidents of child abuse and rape has absolutely no business pontificating on what is and isn't best for children.  The sick absurdity of it all. 

Edited March 20, 20232 yr by jonoh81

4 hours ago, Gramarye said:

 

I'm not sure that the Columbus Catholic schools being less prevalent necessarily means that cold-blooded capitalist charter schools in abandoned Best Buys are more so.  And to put it mildly, Columbus isn't exactly known for being Ohio's fire-and-brimstone heartland.

 

 

 

I don't mean to hammer you about this since it may seem that way because I'm quoting you twice. But what if I said to everyone that Appalachia is the most powerful cultural force in Columbus out of all of them? Cultural forces in Columbus are manifold such as Ohio State, the Midwest and its farm culture (which has faded radically here in my lifetime), our wealth of immigrants (many highly educated) from a large number of nations and state government. But with such a large portion of the city's population claiming some Appalachian heritage, Fairfield and Licking (and maybe even Pickaway) Counties excluded from the ARC only due to bordering Franklin, nobody in town noticing Appalachian and even Southern accents when they hear them and the entire South and West Sides being Appalachia Lite I feel Appalachia is on top. Most people don't see the way the nondenominational churches straight out of Greenup have proliferated some parts of town since they are insular and aren't in the areas people need to go to. But they're there and without taking things too far off topic would certainly like to have the money to start their own schools.

3 hours ago, Clefan14 said:

I guess we will have to agree to disagree that that taxpayers should have to contribute anything to any religious associated entity. It’s already bad enough that these churches pay no taxes themselves.

 

Regarding the “anti-Christian” attitude, chill. The desantis demographic has turned this country into a bending over backwards to accommodate every Christian wish list item. As someone who grew up in a Christian home, i find this argument and victim playing (with no evidence listed) is unproductive. But in the end I’m on the hook for your kids to learn about your God. Yikes at our society.

Well, every taxpayer pays for at least one thing that they disapprove of.  If it makes you feel any better, you can conceive of none of your tax money funding school choice and I can conceive of none of mine funding Planned Parenthood, but of course money is ultimately fungible. 

 

But I think it’s a little self- and environmentally unaware to say “chill” about anti-Christian animus considering not just what you wrote but what certain others have written in this very thread (to say nothing about other threads in just the last day).

 

And it’s truly staggering to suggest that Christian, and particularly Catholic, activists are getting all of their wish list items in this country.  The country has never been more secular, never more materialistic, never more hedonistic.  The Church will never achieve even remotely close to everything on its wish list.  Forget the big wedge issues that have resulted in 5-4 Supreme Court decisions in the past decade.  The Catholic Church’s most countercultural position is it’s opposition to contraception (something like 96% of American adults don’t believe it’s wrong and close to 99% have used it, of course including the overwhelming majority of Catholics).  Getting to 51% agreement on that, let alone universal agreement, will take just a little bit more than expanding access to Catholic schools. 

I can guarantee you people were more materialistic in the '80s. Minimalism still dominates and people are way, way less classist as compared to then.

38 minutes ago, GCrites80s said:

I don't mean to hammer you about this since it may seem that way because I'm quoting you twice. But what if I said to everyone that Appalachia is the most powerful cultural force in Columbus out of all of them? Cultural forces in Columbus are manifold such as Ohio State, the Midwest and its farm culture (which has faded radically here in my lifetime), our wealth of immigrants (many highly educated) from a large number of nations and state government. But with such a large portion of the city's population claiming some Appalachian heritage, Fairfield and Licking (and maybe even Pickaway) Counties excluded from the ARC only due to bordering Franklin, nobody in town noticing Appalachian and even Southern accents when they hear them and the entire South and West Sides being Appalachia Lite I feel Appalachia is on top. Most people don't see the way the nondenominational churches straight out of Greenup have proliferated some parts of town since they are insular and aren't in the areas people need to go to. But they're there and without taking things too far off topic would certainly like to have the money to start their own schools.

 

So, I can certainly at least respect the possibility of that being the case, growing up in Kirkersville before we got all fancy and got ourselves a Flying J and actual traffic lights at the OH-158 exit, and the kid next door to me growing up had to split time between there and his stepmom's place in "Grovetucky" (and it was from him that I first heard that phrase).  I wasn't exactly heavily exposed to the Uncool Crescent, as you call it, but Franklin Heights was in our division of the OCC back then (I'd be stunned if that's still the case, given that they opened a new school, Central Crossing, and Watkins hasn't split since I graduated even though that part of SWL is massively more built up now than in the 1990s).

 

The real issue, and the more on-topic one, is that I'm not actually sure to what extent you'd expect to see a big uptick in universal EdChoice uptake for that demographic of the Uncool Crescent, as you like to call it, leaving places like South-Western City Schools, let alone places in those outlying counties you mentioned like Newark, Circleville, or Lancaster.  Places like Newark Catholic, (Lancaster) Fisher Catholic, and (Zanesville) Bishop Rosecrans are tiny, and AFAIK there isn't a Catholic HS in all of Pickaway County.  Is the reason for that entirely economic?  Should we really expect that universal EdChoice availability will turn those Division IV schools suddenly into Division I majors?  Or any of their Protestant counterparts that might be around there that I maybe don't know about?  

Culturally there are few Catholics in the areas you mention. The next closest Catholic school is Notre Dame in Portsmouth. Any Protestant but more like nondenominational schools are small but there are a lot of them. Generally they are not major powers in sports.

@Gramaryebut your lord answered your prayers and got rid of planned parenthood in Ohio. So can we now stop subsidizing your kids not wanting to go to schools with the other kids where they live?

 

and the knowing better than the rest of us is a big Lol too @jonoh81captured it.

29 minutes ago, Clefan14 said:

@Gramaryebut your lord answered your prayers and got rid of planned parenthood in Ohio. So can we now stop subsidizing your kids not wanting to go to schools with the other kids where they live?

 

and the knowing better than the rest of us is a big Lol too @jonoh81captured it.

 

So you'd rather he headed out to the suburbs and took all the taxes he pays, not just the school taxes?   Got it.

 

This comment is probably more pro-sprawl in impact than anything I've ever said here.

 

Parents With Options Are Not Going To Send Their Kids To Urban Public Schools.     There's entirely too much toxicity there.  Hell, as we're finding out it even spreads to some of the outer ring suburban ones.

Edited March 21, 20232 yr by E Rocc

3 hours ago, Clefan14 said:

@Gramaryebut your lord answered your prayers and got rid of planned parenthood in Ohio. So can we now stop subsidizing your kids not wanting to go to schools with the other kids where they live?

 

and the knowing better than the rest of us is a big Lol too @jonoh81captured it.

 

Planned Parenthood operates 17 locations in Ohio, but that's getting OT.

 

As for subsidizing my kids not wanting to go to schools with the other kids where they live: They do go to a school with other kids where they live, in case you missed the point above that very few kids at their school come from outside of Akron Public.  It's very much a neighborhood school, not a destination school, though I acknowledge that there are other private high schools that fall more into the latter category.  Moreover, if I really wanted to keep more neighborhood kids out, I'd oppose this measure, since its effect will be to let more kids from the neighborhood come to my kids' school (and other Catholic schools in the Akron area), not fewer, and I welcome that.  I would love nothing more than to have their school have to double capacity, or more.  If I could give every kid in the neighborhood the benefit of the same education my children are receiving, I would.  The real question is why you're so set on denying it to them.  You can't possibly think that with just a little extra money, Akron Public would offer an education just as good.

 

Also, my tax dollars heavily subsidize the public schools.  I understand that I get the benefit of those children being educated, at least to the extent an Akron Public Schools education qualifies.  But it works the other way, too.  The city and state benefit from the education my children receive, too, and therefore we can make the exact same case for state support: it's an investment in the workforce and families of the future, too.  You seem to think that public schools provide a public benefit but private schools only provide a private one; that's not the case.  From the 30,000' perspective of the public interest, it's better to think of them as a single system ("common" schools, in the language of the Ohio Constitution) even if they compete on the ground, just as public schools compete with each other for the more economically mobile.  Both forms of school are building the workers and families of the future of the Republic.  One just does a better job of it, and yet that's the one you want to not subsidize.

 

@E Rocc is correct about the pro-sprawl incentives inherent in the anti-choice position, though of course there are some of us who are sufficiently committed urbanists that we'd stay in the city for the urban amenities even if we had to pay full freight to escape the public school system.  Maybe we'd even be among them.  But it certainly makes it easier paying those extra many thousands to the city every year knowing that we're likely to get a lot of it back when my kids start high school.  (Though I do need to put an asterisk over that: APS actually does operate some quality high school programs, ones that offer the "self-segregation" benefits discussed upthread without forcing exit from the district, e.g., Akron Early College HS and the IB program at Firestone.)

10 hours ago, GCrites80s said:

I can guarantee you people were more materialistic in the '80s. Minimalism still dominates and people are way, way less classist as compared to then.

 

Status symbols have shifted from impractical/unnecessary objects/clothes to impractical/unnecessary ideas.  

 

 

14 hours ago, jonoh81 said:

"School choice" is a red herring for people who just want their kids to live in a conservative echo chamber. 

 

 

No.  People want their kids in an environment where the adults are in charge.  They want their kids socializing with kids who are part of families who also put education ahead of everything else.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

7 minutes ago, Lazarus said:

 

No.  People want their kids in an environment where the adults are in charge.  They want their kids socializing with kids who are part of families who also put education ahead of everything else.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How are those things not true of public schools? So the parents of public school children don't care about their education? 

Edited March 21, 20232 yr by jonoh81

3 hours ago, E Rocc said:

 

So you'd rather he headed out to the suburbs and took all the taxes he pays, not just the school taxes?   Got it.

 

This comment is probably more pro-sprawl in impact than anything I've ever said here.

 

Parents With Options Are Not Going To Send Their Kids To Urban Public Schools.     There's entirely too much toxicity there.  Hell, as we're finding out it even spreads to some of the outer ring suburban ones.

 

What "toxicity" are you referring to, specifically?

8 minutes ago, jonoh81 said:

 

How are those things not true of public schools? 

 

 

Because they're objectively not true. 

 

Delete Walnut Hills and almost nobody with a high school diploma from Cincinnati Public Schools can read, write, and do simple math:

https://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/ohio/districts/cincinnati-public-schools-100231

 

THEY HAVE A HS DIPLOMA BUT CAN'T READ, WRITE, OR DO MATH. 

 

 

2 minutes ago, jonoh81 said:

How are those things not true of public schools? 

 

2 minutes ago, jonoh81 said:

 

What "toxicity" are you referring to, specifically?

 

Tell us you don't know what's going on in the public schools without telling us you don't know what's going on in the public schools.

 

I could almost go further and say tell us you don't have kids without telling us you don't have kids.

 

Just one recent example, from barely 2 months ago:

 

'All of us are frustrated': What people are saying about violence in Akron schools

 

https://www.beaconjournal.com/story/news/local/2023/01/27/community-reacts-to-disturbing-report-on-akron-schools-violence/69835930007/

 

On school tours, including a trip this month to East Community Learning Center with the head of the teachers union, new Akron School Board President Derrick Hall said he could "feel a sense of urgency to address student behavior."

 

"There are some schools that are pretty tame. When you walk through, you're like, 'OK, this is an environment where kids can learn,'" said Hall. "But I've been in some schools where there is trash on the floor. There are clouds of vape smoke emanating from the bathrooms and corners of the hallway. The smell of weed, marijuana. And kids roaming the halls during periods when they're supposed to be in class.

 

"And I've talked to teachers who are traumatized," he said.

 

Hall spoke with the Beacon Journal after we published an analysis of 240 police reports and thousands of student disciplinary records covering the first half of this school year.

 

================

 

Derrick Hall is a Democrat (almost certainly wouldn't be APS board president otherwise), but a thoughtful one, even though he'd probably be on the other side from me on school choice expansion.

 

That ABJ story on the police incidents at APS is here, incidentally (link was also in the link above):

 

We examined 240 police reports on incidents at Akron Public Schools. Here's what we found

 

https://www.beaconjournal.com/story/news/education/2023/01/19/what-240-police-reports-say-about-education-in-akron-public-schools/69815677007/

 

The severity of some incidents was disturbing.

 

Students and staff hospitalized. Some schools with three or more fights on a single day. Brawls big enough to be considered riots under Ohio law. And allegations of sexual assault, abuse at home and community issues that spill onto school property, requiring the attention of embedded and responding officers.

 

The police reports detailed some of the worst incidents. But for every fight documented by police, there are 10 recorded by the school district, which provided years of student discipline data that paint a broader picture of the frequency and severity of violent acts by students.

 

================

 

The barely-averted APS teachers' strike in January was only secondarily about pay and benefits.  It was primarily about exactly what @Lazarus noted: The adults were not in charge, and the result is/was that teachers were not safe in their own classrooms.

 

Offering as many students as possible an escape from that environment is a moral imperative.

11 hours ago, Gramarye said:

Well, every taxpayer pays for at least one thing that they disapprove of.  If it makes you feel any better, you can conceive of none of your tax money funding school choice and I can conceive of none of mine funding Planned Parenthood, but of course money is ultimately fungible. 

 

But I think it’s a little self- and environmentally unaware to say “chill” about anti-Christian animus considering not just what you wrote but what certain others have written in this very thread (to say nothing about other threads in just the last day).

 

And it’s truly staggering to suggest that Christian, and particularly Catholic, activists are getting all of their wish list items in this country.  The country has never been more secular, never more materialistic, never more hedonistic.  The Church will never achieve even remotely close to everything on its wish list.  Forget the big wedge issues that have resulted in 5-4 Supreme Court decisions in the past decade.  The Catholic Church’s most countercultural position is it’s opposition to contraception (something like 96% of American adults don’t believe it’s wrong and close to 99% have used it, of course including the overwhelming majority of Catholics).  Getting to 51% agreement on that, let alone universal agreement, will take just a little bit more than expanding access to Catholic schools. 

 

I know you are referring to me in the so-called "anti-Christian animus", so let me just clear something up. I'm not so much anti-Christian or anti-religion as I am anti religion having influence over people who want nothing to do with your religion. You all took away abortion rights even though most people support them to some degree. You all are attacking trans and gay people because biology contradicts your beliefs. You try to enforce outdated and factually wrong concepts of sex and gender. An increasing number of religious people are now promoting anti-vaccine rhetoric, threatening the lives of everyone. Books are being banned because of your belief systems. Etc. Etc. So I'm not anti-Christian, I just want you all to mind your own business and stop forcing your moral hangups on anyone but yourselves. That includes public education and the current attempts to siphon away money from it so private schools can teach kids the earth is only 6000 years old. 

 

You say the Church will never accomplish any of its goals, despite the fact that it already has on several fronts against the wishes of the American public. And saying as much, you basically admit that the Church wants to create some kind of theocratic system that runs contrary to the foundings of the nation, personal rights and to popular public opinion. You are also essentially admitting that the purpose of those schools is to grow a population that will push those positions long-term, not necessarily to provide a more comprehensive education. 

14 minutes ago, Lazarus said:

 

 

Because they're objectively not true. 

 

Delete Walnut Hills and almost nobody with a high school diploma from Cincinnati Public Schools can read, write, and do simple math:

https://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/ohio/districts/cincinnati-public-schools-100231

 

THEY HAVE A HS DIPLOMA BUT CAN'T READ, WRITE, OR DO MATH. 

 

 

 

You're attepting to create a correlation you're not proving, though. There could be, and definitely are, lots of reasons those schools could exist the way they do that has nothing to do with what you're claiming. 

1 hour ago, Gramarye said:

Planned Parenthood operates 17 locations in Ohio, but that's getting OT.

For those who don't know, most of that Planned Parenthood funding from the government is Medicaid -- you know, healthcare for low-income Americans.  The overwhelming majority of Planned Parenthood's work includes screening for and treating sexually transmitted diseases and infections, as well as providing contraception. Abortion is not provided at every Planned Parenthood location, and is only something like 3% of their expenditures. 

 

Another argument for universal health insurance -- you'd eliminate the need for Medicaid and presumably everyone could go to a doctor not employed by a low-income-population-serving nonprofit like Planned Parenthood.

 

Many public schools in urban areas are bringing medical care to their students who wouldn't otherwise have access or would need to miss a whole day of school to get it. Kids from low-income families often have psychological or food security issues as well, and public schools have taken on these additional responsibilities to meet those needs because hungry, stressed, and sick kids miss school or can't focus on learning.  In other words, to keep kids in school and healthy enough to study, schools with students from low-income populations need funding.  It's not just a need for smaller class sizes. 

13 minutes ago, Gramarye said:

Offering as many students as possible an escape from that environment is a moral imperative.

 

The students are the environment though, aren't they?  And how does EdChoice change that?  Do you want out-of-control-disruptive students in your kids' school? 

 

Would a private school even give them a chance?  Would a private school offer counseling or hire police to patrol the hallways?  Or would a private school just say "three strikes - you're out"?  (Or in the case of my son's high school, one strike and you're out -- the graduating class was a small fraction of the incoming freshman class).

 

Then what?  Have you solved the problem of that public school's environment?  Have you turned around the kids who were a problem?

44 minutes ago, jonoh81 said:

That includes public education and the current attempts to siphon away money from it so private schools can teach kids the earth is only 6000 years old.  

 

An excellent bracketing to your previous post in which you revealed that you know nothing of what is currently going on in public schools; now we see that you also don't know what's being taught in private schools.

 

Do you really think this is what Catholic schools are teaching?  Or anything but the tiniest fringe Evangelical splinter schools, honestly?

 

One of the core recruiting demographics for our school are the doctors at Cleveland Clinic Akron General, Akron Children's, and Summa City.  Because of the requirements of their jobs (when you're on call and gotta move, you gotta move), many of them choose to live in the city, and obviously they make the kind of incomes that let them afford good houses and private schools.  Do you really think they're keen to raise young-earth-creationist anti-vaxxers?

 

The classist critique of private schools at least has some teeth: Most of the high-income professionals who send their kids to my kids school want to raise children who are also high-income professionals.  (Successful capitalist investors with multiple lucrative streams of passive income would also be an acceptable outcome.)  The goal here is to open up that path for children who aren't already scions of privilege.

  

23 minutes ago, Foraker said:

The students are the environment though, aren't they?  And how does EdChoice change that?  Do you want out-of-control-disruptive students in your kids' school? 

 

Would a private school even give them a chance?  Would a private school offer counseling or hire police to patrol the hallways?  Or would a private school just say "three strikes - you're out"?  (Or in the case of my son's high school, one strike and you're out -- the graduating class was a small fraction of the incoming freshman class).

 

Then what?  Have you solved the problem of that public school's environment?  Have you turned around the kids who were a problem?

 

So now we're getting into a real, substantive discussion of the structural advantages involved (with any private school, secular or religious), and that's something I think you and I have discussed on another thread, or maybe even earlier on this thread in an earlier round of activity here (I know this lay dormant for a while before this latest bill was introduced).

 

The students are certainly part of the environment, but they are not all of it.  And, more importantly, the students who are an active threat to the environment are still not a majority--and even if they were, they aren't all of the students who are stuck in the public schools with the problem ones.  Some variant of the Pareto Principle operates here: the majority of the problems come from a small portion of the students.

 

But absolutely yes, one of the major structural differences between public and private schools under the current regime is the misguided egalitarianism of the public school system, which (a) prioritizes graduation rates over the strength of the degree, and (b) places such a high value on maintaining attendance because of concerns about the even worse outcomes for dropouts that it undervalues the cost of keeping the disruptive kids mixed in with those who might have a much better learning environment.  Public schools are extremely reluctant to embrace the concept of addition by deletion.  It would be much preferable to have a 50% graduation rate with students who can capably read at a 12th-grade level than an 80% graduation rate with students who can only read at a 7th-grade level.  And a large part of the reason that public schools struggle is that teachers are reduced to nannies and proto-cops.

 

I would be entirely in favor of restructuring public school ratings and incentives to align with private school ones, making both expulsions and flunking out easier.  But to turn a phrase that you used upthread: I realize that I've lost that argument.  Public schools will continue to give too many chances to too much deadweight, for minimal gains for the lost causes involved and negative gains for the others around them that are denied attention and opportunities they deserve because of the amount of time and resources occupied by the deadweight.

 

Is the problem really that private schools can have a three-strikes (or one-strike) law, or that public schools can't (or perhaps won't)?  Consider the reasons for the APS teachers' strike when you answer.

32 minutes ago, jonoh81 said:

 

You're attepting to create a correlation you're not proving, though. There could be, and definitely are, lots of reasons those schools could exist the way they do that has nothing to do with what you're claiming. 

 

$15,000 per student per year X 12 years and they can't read, write, or do math.  

 

 

Modern life has proven some things that people 25-35 years ago (including myself) didn't really expect from a world where "everyone goes to college" as we saw from 1998-2008. 1. Not everyone went to college 2. Your high school personal network often ends up being far, far more influential and important to your career and personal life than your post-secondary ones. Why? People from college scatter afterward yet most of your high school network is still right down the road like they always were. They've been in town grinding away and networking in your absence while you were off meeting people from North Dakota and Vietnam. Literally only 4 of my friends from college live in Columbus (that number was one when I moved back to town in 2009). One friend from grad school lives here out of the two graduate programs I completed from different schools (and he wasn't even in my program; we were both on the radio station). Facebook really hammers the point home for you since everybody from high school wants to be friends but people from college are much more picky. And for me grad school was during the MySpace/Facebook switchover where a lot of people got lost.

24 minutes ago, Gramarye said:

 

the misguided egalitarianism of the public school system, which (a) prioritizes graduation rates over the strength of the degree

 

Witness the high graduation rate of public school students who can't read, write, or do simple math.  

 

 

 

 

10 minutes ago, GCrites80s said:

Modern life has proven some things that people 25-35 years ago (including myself) didn't really expect from a world where "everyone goes to college" as we saw from 1998-2008. 1. Not everyone went to college 2. Your high school personal network often ends up being far, far more influential and important to your career and personal life than your post-secondary ones. Why? People from college scatter afterward yet most of your high school network is still right down the road like they always were. They've been in town grinding away and networking in your absence while you were off meeting people from North Dakota and Vietnam. Literally only 4 of my friends from college live in Columbus (that number was one when I moved back to town in 2009). One friend from grad school lives here out of the two graduate programs I completed from different schools (and he wasn't even in my program; we were both on the radio station). Facebook really hammers the point home for you since everybody from high school wants to be friends but people from college are much more picky. And for me grad school was during the MySpace/Facebook switchover where a lot of people got lost.

 

I mean, I think this mostly holds true if you end up back in your hometown after college, right?  It sounds like you did, while the rest of your college friends scattered.  If you'd scattered far from your hometown like they did, the fact that your HS network mostly stayed put wouldn't be as significant.

 

Also, FWIW, most of my HS friends scattered as well, because they went to college, and then they scattered just like your college friends did.  Though I guess it's fair to note that a couple of them just moved back to the Columbus area post-pandemic.  But still, more of what I'd call my core HS group remain scattered to the four winds.

My high school county has a very low college graduation rate. 18%. And it's no surprise that people scattered when college was in Portsmouth. There wasn't a set pathway out of Portsmouth to my surprise since historically the set pathway was Columbus for over 100 years.

Edited March 22, 20232 yr by GCrites80s

18 hours ago, Gramarye said:

 

I thought I remembered that but then I also thought that might have been a temporary thing and I was worried about speaking out of turn (there's EdChoice and EdChoice Expansion, the latter of which is means-tested and I'm not sure if that's subject to a sunset).

 

I'm aware that the basic EdChoice scholarship is available to all residents of failing public school systems, regardless of need, and while I don't take advantage of that at the moment (my kids' current school declines EdChoice), that would change for high school because Hoban and SVSM both accept EdChoice (I think Walsh does a well but that one's not really in the running).  That's actually one of the reasons we haven't looked at moving to the 'burbs, even though there are townships not too far away with no municipal income tax, as opposed to Akron's 2.75%.  Three kids times $7500/yr times four years is $90,000 in education benefits if we stay put.  Still not enough to offset the amount we'll pay in city income tax by staying put for the next 15 years but definitely takes a good bite out of it.

The most common voucher is the Edchoice. I know there are a lot of Catholic schools in the city limits and inner ring suburbs that rely heavily upon them. The high schools typically take them but they only offset tuition, whereas many of the elementary schools cover the full cost. We do not qualify because the district I live in rates highly, but the school pulls from some areas of town where they qualify. The other key thing is that if your district did receive a failing grade and kids qualified for a voucher but the next year is no longer failing, you still can continue receiving the voucher as long as your child remains in that same school (which is reasonable, you do not want to yank kids in and out of school every year depending on the grade of their school district).

The voucher is only up to $5500 (give or take) so to go to a school like Walsh or Hoban, you are still having to pay about 2/3 out of pocket, but $5500 is still a good benefit if available to you. 

38 minutes ago, GCrites80s said:

My county has a very low college graduation rate. 18%. And it's no surprise that people scattered when college was in Portsmouth. There wasn't a set pathway out of Portsmouth to my surprise since historically the set pathway was Columbus for over 100 years.

 

Cleveland as well, at least during WWII.  My grandpa and numerous other men from that area were up here working in defense jobs.

21 minutes ago, Brutus_buckeye said:

The most common voucher is the Edchoice. I know there are a lot of Catholic schools in the city limits and inner ring suburbs that rely heavily upon them. The high schools typically take them but they only offset tuition, whereas many of the elementary schools cover the full cost. We do not qualify because the district I live in rates highly, but the school pulls from some areas of town where they qualify. The other key thing is that if your district did receive a failing grade and kids qualified for a voucher but the next year is no longer failing, you still can continue receiving the voucher as long as your child remains in that same school (which is reasonable, you do not want to yank kids in and out of school every year depending on the grade of their school district).

The voucher is only up to $5500 (give or take) so to go to a school like Walsh or Hoban, you are still having to pay about 2/3 out of pocket, but $5500 is still a good benefit if available to you. 

 

I'm pretty sure the voucher is $7500 for grades 9-12 now (i.e., for Walsh or Hoban).  It's $5500 K-8.

1 hour ago, jonoh81 said:

You all are attacking trans and gay people because biology contradicts your beliefs. You try to enforce outdated and factually wrong concepts of sex and gender. An increasing number of religious people are now promoting anti-vaccine rhetoric, threatening the lives of everyone. Books are being banned because of your belief systems. Etc. Etc. So I'm not anti-Christian, I just want you all to mind your own business and stop forcing your moral hangups on anyone but yourselves. That includes public education and the current attempts to siphon away money from it so private schools can teach kids the earth is only 6000 years old. 

What is ironic about this, is that all the things you claim that Catholics and Christians are "doing" are fabricated in your mind and the people and media you associate with.  Is it a problem that Catholics are anti-Abortion? You may disagree with their position but it seems like your position is to try and beat that into submission and eliminate any right they have to hold such views and function in society. 

 

Are books really banned?? Books are not being banned. Yes, concerned parents may feel that certain topics are not suitable for their children's education or maybe are better discussed in the home environment instead of the classroom. As far as I am aware, none of the books that the so-called conservative activists complaining about actually banned. You can go on Amazon and get them readily. You can go to many (not all) libraries in town to get the book as well. Yes, your kid may not be able to get the book in their school library, but if it is important for them to read, they can read it. That would not be a book ban, so lets keep things in perspective. 

 

You point to the Catholic Church attacking gay people. Again it is another ignorant statement that shows a lack of understanding about the beliefs. Now, I am not saying the Church does not have a ways to go when it comes to discussing such issues, but it is important to recognize that at no time have they ever disavowed the humanity of the individual and advocated for disrespecting and invalidating the existence of a certain group of people. Yes, they have doctrinal rules that you may or may not agree with, but the principles of dignity and respect of others are universal. So again, this shows a lack of understanding about the catholic schools and the Catholic Church.

 

What is ironic is that you want to take your personal beliefs and use that as the baseline that all others need to conform too. You want to make everyone, whether they see things the same as you or not conform to the standard that you set and believe in no matter what other opinions may exist. So while you tend to claim you are aggrieved by various groups and parties, when given a position of power, you would show no mercy to anyone who would dare think differently.

 

 

1 minute ago, Gramarye said:

 

I'm pretty sure the voucher is $7500 for grades 9-12 now (i.e., for Walsh or Hoban).  It's $5500 K-8.

You're right. My kids are all in the k-8 range so our school is working off the $5500 number. 

2 hours ago, Gramarye said:

 

 

Tell us you don't know what's going on in the public schools without telling us you don't know what's going on in the public schools.

 

I could almost go further and say tell us you don't have kids without telling us you don't have kids.

 

Just one recent example, from barely 2 months ago:

 

'All of us are frustrated': What people are saying about violence in Akron schools

 

https://www.beaconjournal.com/story/news/local/2023/01/27/community-reacts-to-disturbing-report-on-akron-schools-violence/69835930007/

 

On school tours, including a trip this month to East Community Learning Center with the head of the teachers union, new Akron School Board President Derrick Hall said he could "feel a sense of urgency to address student behavior."

 

"There are some schools that are pretty tame. When you walk through, you're like, 'OK, this is an environment where kids can learn,'" said Hall. "But I've been in some schools where there is trash on the floor. There are clouds of vape smoke emanating from the bathrooms and corners of the hallway. The smell of weed, marijuana. And kids roaming the halls during periods when they're supposed to be in class.

 

"And I've talked to teachers who are traumatized," he said.

 

Hall spoke with the Beacon Journal after we published an analysis of 240 police reports and thousands of student disciplinary records covering the first half of this school year.

 

================

 

Derrick Hall is a Democrat (almost certainly wouldn't be APS board president otherwise), but a thoughtful one, even though he'd probably be on the other side from me on school choice expansion.

 

That ABJ story on the police incidents at APS is here, incidentally (link was also in the link above):

 

We examined 240 police reports on incidents at Akron Public Schools. Here's what we found

 

https://www.beaconjournal.com/story/news/education/2023/01/19/what-240-police-reports-say-about-education-in-akron-public-schools/69815677007/

 

The severity of some incidents was disturbing.

 

Students and staff hospitalized. Some schools with three or more fights on a single day. Brawls big enough to be considered riots under Ohio law. And allegations of sexual assault, abuse at home and community issues that spill onto school property, requiring the attention of embedded and responding officers.

 

The police reports detailed some of the worst incidents. But for every fight documented by police, there are 10 recorded by the school district, which provided years of student discipline data that paint a broader picture of the frequency and severity of violent acts by students.

 

================

 

The barely-averted APS teachers' strike in January was only secondarily about pay and benefits.  It was primarily about exactly what @Lazarus noted: The adults were not in charge, and the result is/was that teachers were not safe in their own classrooms.

 

Offering as many students as possible an escape from that environment is a moral imperative.

 

I'm literally a teacher, and many of my friends work in Columbus City Schools, but yeah, other than that, totally not familiar with public education. 

And having or not having kids is not by itself an indication someone knows anything about public education or what goes on in schools, either. You have parents out there who truly believed schools were letting kids crap in litter boxes because they were identifying as cats, so you really can't play that card as if it guarantees knowledge. 

 

I'm not sure what the article is supposed to prove, either. There are good and bad public schools just as there are good and bad private/charter schools, and that is literally stated in the article. The problems urban schools face are not inherent to public education itself, but rather the conditions they are often subjected to through things like poor funding distribution and a lack of investment in urban communities that exacerbate things like poverty, crime and behavioral issues. And let's be honest, that lack of investment is the result of conservative policies. It's very easy to have good private schools when they get to handpick their student bodies or when they all come from rather homogenous demographics and higher income groups. It's just another form of segregation. 

1 hour ago, Gramarye said:

 

An excellent bracketing to your previous post in which you revealed that you know nothing of what is currently going on in public schools; now we see that you also don't know what's being taught in private schools.

 

Do you really think this is what Catholic schools are teaching?  Or anything but the tiniest fringe Evangelical splinter schools, honestly?

 

One of the core recruiting demographics for our school are the doctors at Cleveland Clinic Akron General, Akron Children's, and Summa City.  Because of the requirements of their jobs (when you're on call and gotta move, you gotta move), many of them choose to live in the city, and obviously they make the kind of incomes that let them afford good houses and private schools.  Do you really think they're keen to raise young-earth-creationist anti-vaxxers?

 

The classist critique of private schools at least has some teeth: Most of the high-income professionals who send their kids to my kids school want to raise children who are also high-income professionals.  (Successful capitalist investors with multiple lucrative streams of passive income would also be an acceptable outcome.)  The goal here is to open up that path for children who aren't already scions of privilege.

  

 

So now we're getting into a real, substantive discussion of the structural advantages involved (with any private school, secular or religious), and that's something I think you and I have discussed on another thread, or maybe even earlier on this thread in an earlier round of activity here (I know this lay dormant for a while before this latest bill was introduced).

 

The students are certainly part of the environment, but they are not all of it.  And, more importantly, the students who are an active threat to the environment are still not a majority--and even if they were, they aren't all of the students who are stuck in the public schools with the problem ones.  Some variant of the Pareto Principle operates here: the majority of the problems come from a small portion of the students.

 

But absolutely yes, one of the major structural differences between public and private schools under the current regime is the misguided egalitarianism of the public school system, which (a) prioritizes graduation rates over the strength of the degree, and (b) places such a high value on maintaining attendance because of concerns about the even worse outcomes for dropouts that it undervalues the cost of keeping the disruptive kids mixed in with those who might have a much better learning environment.  Public schools are extremely reluctant to embrace the concept of addition by deletion.  It would be much preferable to have a 50% graduation rate with students who can capably read at a 12th-grade level than an 80% graduation rate with students who can only read at a 7th-grade level.  And a large part of the reason that public schools struggle is that teachers are reduced to nannies and proto-cops.

 

I would be entirely in favor of restructuring public school ratings and incentives to align with private school ones, making both expulsions and flunking out easier.  But to turn a phrase that you used upthread: I realize that I've lost that argument.  Public schools will continue to give too many chances to too much deadweight, for minimal gains for the lost causes involved and negative gains for the others around them that are denied attention and opportunities they deserve because of the amount of time and resources occupied by the deadweight.

 

Is the problem really that private schools can have a three-strikes (or one-strike) law, or that public schools can't (or perhaps won't)?  Consider the reasons for the APS teachers' strike when you answer.

 

It's not just the kids I call the "ignorance missionaries" that actively discourage others from academic focus, either.  It's as you say, the overemphasis on egalitarianism.  In my public school, "tracking" began in fourth grade and there was a definite grouping of the higher intelligence/achieving students, especially in math and the sciences.

 

The private school can direct them towards the academic and away from the social, or channel the social as well.  Because Ardyn's Christian school had real problems dealing with her ADHD (by their own admission) once she hit their middle school curriculum, we put her in Nordonia public after the first quarter so she could at least get an IEP if needed.   The culture shock of being dropped in as the sole "new" kid, in 6th grade when being most likely the "prettiest" girl in the grade (with the attendant jealousy and without the advice of a mom who experienced similar) was pretty overwhelming and had a major impact on her academic performance.

6 minutes ago, jonoh81 said:

 

 

. It's very easy to have good private schools when they get to handpick their student bodies or when they all come from rather homogenous demographics and higher income groups. It's just another form of segregation. 

 

Yeah, my daughter's fourth grade class was so homogenous.   Maybe those higher income groups focus on different priorities and maybe that is why they are higher income.

 

 

 

1 hour ago, Gramarye said:

 

An excellent bracketing to your previous post in which you revealed that you know nothing of what is currently going on in public schools; now we see that you also don't know what's being taught in private schools.

 

You seem to believe that all public schools are violent cesspools, so maybe don't point fingers at others when you clearly have some knowledge problems of your own. 

And are you really stating that there are no private, religious-based schools that are teaching that? I never stated I was referring to Catholic schools specifically, you made that erroneous assertion. 

 

1 hour ago, Gramarye said:

 

Do you really think this is what Catholic schools are teaching?  Or anything but the tiniest fringe Evangelical splinter schools, honestly?

 

So then you admit there are schools that are teaching those things. And that was merely an example. The conservative worldview is not exclusive to the young earth claim. 

 

1 hour ago, Gramarye said:

 

One of the core recruiting demographics for our school are the doctors at Cleveland Clinic Akron General, Akron Children's, and Summa City.  Because of the requirements of their jobs (when you're on call and gotta move, you gotta move), many of them choose to live in the city, and obviously they make the kind of incomes that let them afford good houses and private schools.  Do you really think they're keen to raise young-earth-creationist anti-vaxxers?

 

And yet there are doctors, nurses and other medical professionals who are both of those things. We saw it repeatedly during the pandemic, so this is not the point you think it is.  Doctors are not and have never been entirely immune from anti-science positions. 

 

And I'm curious, are you saying Catholics don't believe that God created the world? That would certainly run contrary to my experience living in very Catholic Mexico. 

 

1 hour ago, Gramarye said:

 

The classist critique of private schools at least has some teeth: Most of the high-income professionals who send their kids to my kids school want to raise children who are also high-income professionals.  (Successful capitalist investors with multiple lucrative streams of passive income would also be an acceptable outcome.)  The goal here is to open up that path for children who aren't already scions of privilege.

 

But it's still creating a more segregated system of haves and have nots because we both know that 100% of students will not have access to private schools even within the best of intentions. There are not enough of them, costs are always going to be prohibitive for many, and performance requirements would keep many out automatically. After all, if private schools can't maintain good records, they lose whatever superior education claims they might have. So you are merely advocating for a system in which the kids with the fewest opportunities would be stuck in schools you are actively defunding even more to fund kids with the most opportunities. Public schools matter because they accept everyone and attempt to provide education and opportunity to all. Private schools will never be about that. They're about leaving many behind. 

I'd much rather see money going into improving schools for all- and their communities- than in giving yet more handouts to those who least need them. Because honestly, helping as many people as possible is the moral thing to do, supposedly something Christians are actually called to do, right? Or is that just another thing I am off base on? 

 

2 hours ago, Lazarus said:

 

$15,000 per student per year X 12 years and they can't read, write, or do math.  

 

 

 

$15K in the city vs. $15K in the boonies spends vastly differently and to greatly different effect. If you're only looking at the money spent, and not where it's going, then you're really not interested in knowing why there are outcome differences.

1 hour ago, Lazarus said:

 

Witness the high graduation rate of public school students who can't read, write, or do simple math.  

 

 

 

 

 

It's a really weird position to be pointing out the problems in some public school districts while advocating they be increasingly defunded to provide an already privileged population a segregated education. 

The "brain school" I went to that served me properly was extremely diverse due to Columbus' population of highly-educated well-paid immigrants laser-focused on education. The rural high school I went to was nearly 100% white and focused on a blue-collar monoculture of the skilled trades and automotive (the only reason I'm separating automotive is that it has a lot of sales and management jobs that don't require schooling and certifications). That place had nothing to offer except for people who chose that exact path. So people are idiots if they think going to an all white school is going to be good for their kid. Lack of diversity will make you kid unable to function in the country of the future that will be way less white.

48 minutes ago, jonoh81 said:

you're really not interested in knowing why there are outcome differences.

 

We all know why there are "outcome differences", but some carve out social status by playing pretend.  

49 minutes ago, jonoh81 said:

already privileged population 

 

Right, olympic athletes are just privileged - they didn't train, maintain a strict diet, etc.  

1 hour ago, jonoh81 said:

 

So then you admit there are schools that are teaching those things. And that was merely an example. The conservative worldview is not exclusive to the young earth claim. 

This is quite amusing. You take one extreme example of some small off the deep end group that does not really relate to main stream people, and you try and demagogue an entire unrelated group with such false narrative. For someone who always talks about science and data you seem to rely a lot of misinformation in formulating your beliefs 

1 hour ago, jonoh81 said:

And yet there are doctors, nurses and other medical professionals who are both of those things. We saw it repeatedly during the pandemic, so this is not the point you think it is.  Doctors are not and have never been entirely immune from anti-science positions. 

Essentially, doctors who may not share your set of beliefs are anti-science. A doctor who believes in God is anti-science in your opinion?? That makes a lot of sense.  

 

1 hour ago, jonoh81 said:

 

And I'm curious, are you saying Catholics don't believe that God created the world? That would certainly run contrary to my experience living in very Catholic Mexico. 

I get you are an atheist, good for you. But you seem to look down on those who do not share your viewpoints. Based on your prior writing, you seem to feel that doctors who believe in God are anti-science and should not be held to the same esteem as doctors who share your atheist viewpoints.  This is a pretty dangerous viewpoint. It almost seems as if you had the power to do so, you would castigate any doctor who believes in God out of the medical profession because in your view, that is not science. 

 

 

1 hour ago, jonoh81 said:

It's a really weird position to be pointing out the problems in some public school districts while advocating they be increasingly defunded to provide an already privileged population a segregated education. 

 

And here I thought you were confused about the problems we were trying to point out.  Maybe you understood what those articles were getting at more than you let on.

 

Also, in case you missed it the first time: School choice isn't about getting higher-income families into better schools.  We're already there.  It's about getting other families in as well.  The only thing it affects in my case is potentially whether we move to the burbs to escape the Akron tax burden, particularly since my wife works remotely for a company in Dallas (with no municipal income tax), so she'd completely escape muni income tax if we went out to one of the townships.  That would be inconvenient for me because I rather like urban life (there's a reason I've been on these boards for so long, after all), but it's a much higher-stakes issue for families that don't have my options.

 

1 hour ago, GCrites80s said:

The "brain school" I went to that served me properly was extremely diverse due to Columbus' population of highly-educated well-paid immigrants laser-focused on education. The rural high school I went to was nearly 100% white and focused on a blue-collar monoculture of the skilled trades and automotive (the only reason I'm separating automotive is that it has a lot of sales and management jobs that don't require schooling and certifications). That place had nothing to offer except for people who chose that exact path. So people are idiots if they think going to an all white school is going to be good for their kid. Lack of diversity will make you kid unable to function in the country of the future that will be way less white.

 

Agreed, but again, I'm not 100% sure where you're going with this.  If someone still really wants a blue-collar white monoculture, they don't need a private school for that; there are plenty of public schools in Ohio that still meet that description outside our urban and inner-ring suburban districts.  I agree with you regarding why people shouldn't want that, but if they ignore my advice (a sadly common phenomenon) and want it anyway, that option exists, to put it mildly.

 

  

6 minutes ago, Brutus_buckeye said:

Essentially, doctors who may not share your set of beliefs are anti-science. A doctor who believes in God is anti-science in your opinion?? That makes a lot of sense.  

 

Things got lost in translation here, probably through the forum software's automatic quote-snipping.  He was suggesting that some doctors are young-earth creationists and antivaxxers--which would indeed be anti-science doctors.  The real issue is that there just aren't particularly many of those, not that the few that exist don't merit the label.

1 hour ago, GCrites80s said:

The "brain school" I went to that served me properly was extremely diverse due to Columbus' population of highly-educated well-paid immigrants laser-focused on education. The rural high school I went to was nearly 100% white and focused on a blue-collar monoculture of the skilled trades and automotive (the only reason I'm separating automotive is that it has a lot of sales and management jobs that don't require schooling and certifications). That place had nothing to offer except for people who chose that exact path. So people are idiots if they think going to an all white school is going to be good for their kid. Lack of diversity will make you kid unable to function in the country of the future that will be way less white.

 

I think for many of those people in question, diversity itself is to be considered a negative distraction. Public schools are now to be considered too "woke". 

53 minutes ago, Lazarus said:

 

We all know why there are "outcome differences", but some carve out social status by playing pretend.  

 

I would be interested to know why you think those differences exist, then. 

49 minutes ago, Lazarus said:

 

Right, olympic athletes are just privileged - they didn't train, maintain a strict diet, etc.  

 

I'm not quite sure what this is supposed to mean, though it seems to be implying that private school students deserve the funding more because they worked harder to get there. Is that it? 

33 minutes ago, Brutus_buckeye said:

This is quite amusing. You take one extreme example of some small off the deep end group that does not really relate to main stream people, and you try and demagogue an entire unrelated group with such false narrative. For someone who always talks about science and data you seem to rely a lot of misinformation in formulating your beliefs 

 

Within Christianity, it's not an extreme example, though. Or are you arguing many Christians don't believe in or take Genesis seriously? 

And it's hardly the only example. There are plenty of things people believe in regards to religion that are mainstream, being taught and run completely contrary to established science and evidence. 

 

33 minutes ago, Brutus_buckeye said:

Essentially, doctors who may not share your set of beliefs are anti-science. A doctor who believes in God is anti-science in your opinion?? That makes a lot of sense.  

 

We're not talking about beliefs, though. We're talking about evidence-based reality and some people rejecting it. I didn't make up the science behind vaccine or mask efficacy, and I'm not the one who is rejecting it.

I think a doctor can be religious and value the science behind their specific profession, so no, you're wrong on that supposition. That said, I do think it's kind of a rather blatant contradiction to value science and evidence in one's profession, but not outside of it. Regardless, though, I don't care if a doctor is religious in their personal lives. I do care if their personal beliefs are going to get women killed over refusal to treat, for example. 

 

33 minutes ago, Brutus_buckeye said:

 

I get you are an atheist, good for you. But you seem to look down on those who do not share your viewpoints. Based on your prior writing, you seem to feel that doctors who believe in God are anti-science and should not be held to the same esteem as doctors who share your atheist viewpoints.  This is a pretty dangerous viewpoint. It almost seems as if you had the power to do so, you would castigate any doctor who believes in God out of the medical profession because in your view, that is not science. 

 

 

 

You keep thinking this is about people agreeing with me and it's not. The only thing I look down on is using religion to control the lives of people who do not share that religion. Again, it's not atheists banning books. It's not atheists threatening gay and trans rights. It's not atheists leading the charge against abortion rights. It's not atheists outraged over pronouns or gender identity. Etc. 

 

No, that is not my belief about doctors, and your ridiculous hypotheticals do not in any way apply to my views, as I stated above.

Edited March 21, 20232 yr by jonoh81