Quote:
Originally posted by vsp
Within 24 hours of the original Pledge decision, the Supreme Court decided that my tax dollars can be used to take kids out of public (secular) schools and, er, pay to RE-EDUCATE them in religious institutions. Some humor value will pop up when someone tries to use vouchers to pay for admission to (let's say) a Wiccan, Scientologist or openly atheist school, but it's still a chilling precedent.
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I'm actually okay with this, probably because I live in a city with a horrible school system. My only real concern is the loss of revenue to the school district, and what school districts will do, so as not to hurt the quality of education to the remaining students.
But I see it as giving the parents a chance to give their child an education that they're probably won't get in a school district like Philadelphia, Baltimore, or Washington. I don't know what the numbers are, but I'd say that the majority of private schools are parochial (Catholic or Lutheran, primarily), so I'd say by default, many of these kids will wind up in a Catholic or Lutheran school.
And I don't think that's necessarily so bad. When I was in high school, we had quite a few non-Catholics who were there because of the education. Sure, they had to put up with the religious B.S., but by high school, the indoctrination part tends to wear off and you delve into issues like social justice. So long as the parents are involved (e.g. The child and parents talk about the differences between their own religion/beliefs and those at the school they're attending), I think it could work well.