Education: Another Reason Why Catholics Cannot Justify Voting for the Democratic Ticket in 2020

Exhibit “A”:  “The fruitfulness of conjugal love extends to the fruits of the moral, spiritual, and supernatural life that parents hand on to their children by education.  Parents are the principal and first educators of their children. [emphasis added] . . . .  The state has a responsibility for its citizens’ well-being.  In this capacity it is legitimate for it to intervene to orient the demography of the population.  This can be done by means of objective and respectful information, but certainly not by authoritarian, coercive measures.  The state may not legitimately usurp the initiative of spouses, who have the primary responsibility for the procreation and education of their children. [emphasis added]  In this area, it is not authorized to employ means contrary to the moral law.” ¹

Exhibit “B”:  “The educational achievement of white youngsters is nothing to write home about, but that achieved by blacks is nothing less than disgraceful.  Let’s look at a recent example of an educational outcome all too common.  In 2016, in 13 of Baltimore’s 39 high schools, not a single student scored proficient on the state’s mathematics exam…  Baltimore is by no means unique. It’s a small part of the ongoing education disaster for black students across the nation.  Baltimore schools are not underfunded.  Of the nation’s 100 largest school systems, Baltimore schools rank third in spending per pupil…  What’s the NAACP response to educational fraud? At a 2016 meeting, the NAACP’s board of directors ratified a resolution that called for a moratorium on charter schools.” ²

Exhibit “C”:  “It is successful charter schools that are the real threat to the traditional unionized public schools.  No charter school network examined here has been more successful educationally than the Success Academy charter schools in Harlem, Bedford-Stuyvesant, the South Bronx and other low-income minority neighborhoods in New York City—and none has been more often or more bitterly attacked in words and deeds.” ³

Exhibit “D”:  “The point is, if I’m President, Betsy DeVos’ whole notion from charter schools to this are GONE.” ⁴

Exhibit “E”:  “In a bold move for her 2020 bid for the White House, Democratic Senator Kamala Harris of California rolled out a federal education proposal that would ‘invest’ in teacher pay across the country. What the plan lacks in details, it makes up for with broad federal overreach into public school operations at a time when teachers, principals, and parents desperately need less bureaucracy rather than more. News coverage has focused on the incredible cost of the plan at $315 billion and its implications for the presidential ambitions of Harris … An ally of public unions, which invested heavily in Harris in her rise in California politics, her new proposal seeks to bolster her alliance with big labor… ⁵

DISCUSSION

• Catholic parents are not only the “first educators of their children,” but the state educates children at the pleasure of and with the approval of the parents – not the reverse.
• Charter schools tend to produce better results over public schools even when the students are chosen by lottery as in New York City. ⁶ The article also admits that: “Parents have to nominate their children for a spot, and there is presumably some difference between the parents who bother and the parents who don’t, but the charter schools are not able to cherry-pick the best students and thereby pad out their performance numbers.”  (This also shows how a culture of parental involvement assists in their children’s advancement to adulthood.)
• “Education has been and is a way out of poverty, especially for minority students.”⁷
• If a President Biden is successful with eliminating charter schools, public schools will have no competition. Human nature being what It is, public schools will again have no motivation to improve.  They will have a captive clientele!
• Increasing teachers’ salaries would be a good gesture by a President Harris, rather, a Vice President Harris. However, it would not address the root causes of expensive and unnecessary overhead, deteriorating discipline in schools and constant pushing Common Core along with  early age sex education.

CONCLUSION

The Democratic platform contains many aspects which are unacceptable to the Catholic voter who knows what it means to be “Catholic.”  Education is just one of several deal killers.  This party does not recognize the parents’ right to determine how their children are taught.  The resolution of the case, Parker v. Hurley (2008), provides an example of the absurdity which encourages the Democrats to act as they do:

“Joey has a more significant claim, both because he was required to sit through a classroom reading of King and King and because that book affirmatively endorses homosexuality and gay marriage.  It is a fair inference that the reading of King and King was precisely intended to influence the listening children toward tolerance of gay marriage.  That was the point of why that book was chosen and used.  Even assuming there is a continuum along which an intent to influence could become an attempt to indoctrinate, however, this case is firmly on the influence-toward-tolerance end.  There is no evidence of systemic indoctrination.  There is no allegation that Joey was asked to affirm gay marriage.   Requiring a student to read a particular book is generally not coercive of free exercise rights.” ⁸

As economists and socialists such as Thomas Sowell, Walter E. Williams and Shelby Steele stress, the two biggest reasons for minority poverty are: an education system which does not look after the best interests of the Black student ⁹ and a welfare state which discourages personal development and responsibility. ¹⁰

Therefore, why would a practicing Catholic vote for the Democratic Party whose platform takes away one of the two means by which minorities can elevate themselves from poverty?

¹ – Excerpts from paragraphs 1653 and 2372 in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, second edition, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, twenty-fifth printing, November 2013.

² – “Walter Williams: ‘How long will black people accept the educational destruction of black youngsters?’”, https://yellowhammernews.com/walter-williams-long-will-black-people-accept-educational-destruction-black-youngsters/, 2019

³ – “Charter Schools and Their Enemies, by Thomas Sowell, Basic Books, 2020.

⁴ – Quote of Joe Biden’s on MSNBC, 5/27/2020.

⁵ – “Kamala Harris goes too far in her plan to improve public education, by Hermeet Dhillon, https://thehill.com/opinion/education/437613-kamala-harris-goes-too-far-in-her-plan-to-improve-public-education, 4/5/2019.

⁶ – “The Collapsing Case Against Charter Schools,” by Kevin D. Williamson, https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2020/07/27/the-collapsing-case-against-charter-schools/, 7/9/2020.

⁷ – “Education as Pathway Out of Poverty,” by Maria “Cuca” Robledo Montecel, PhD, https://www.idra.org/resource-center/education-as-pathway-out-of-poverty/, January 2013.

⁸ – Parker v. Hurley, United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit, https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-1st-circuit/1387902.html, decided 1/31/2008.

⁹ – “No group in American society has been more betrayed by American education over the past thirty-five years than black American young people.  It is now clear that the primary device for treating their academic weakness has been to grant them a license to academic mediocrity.”  From “Educating Black Students,” by Shelby Steele, a chapter in “Education in the Twenty-First Century, Hoover Institution Press, 2002, chapter can be found at https://media.hoover.org/sites/default/files/documents/0817928928_93.pdf

¹⁰ – “The welfare state has led to remarkably similar trends among the white underclass in England over the same period.

“Just read ‘Life at the Bottom,’ by Theodore Dalrymple, a British physician who worked in a hospital in a white slum neighborhood.

“You cannot take any people, of any color, and exempt them from the requirements of civilization — including work, behavioral standards, personal responsibility and all the other basic things that the clever intelligentsia disdain — without ruinous consequences to them and to society at large.

“Non-judgmental subsidies of counterproductive lifestyles are treating people as if they were livestock, to be fed and tended by others in a welfare state — and yet expecting them to develop as human beings have developed when facing the challenges of life themselves.

“One key fact that keeps getting ignored is that the poverty rate among black married couples has been in single digits every year since 1994. Behavior matters and facts matter, more than the prevailing social visions or political empires built on those visions.” From “Blame the welfare state, not racism, for poor blacks’ problems: Thomas Sowell, https://www.pennlive.com/opinion/2015/05/poor_blacks_looking_for_someon.html, posted 5/17/2015 and updated 1/5/2019.