An unpublished commenter has chided me. "The right to an education isn't a real right," they claim, leading into a basic explanation of the difference between positive rights (requiring some action on the part of others) and negative rights (requiring only that others refrain from interfering).
It's all stuff no one who was awake and paying attention over the last 30-odd years could have possibly missed, especially if they inclined to libertarian or even conservative views. It's also not the point. Free public schools exist; our taxes fund them. Speaking as a childless homeowner (Indiana school funding comes from property taxes), I would just as soon live in a world with fewer ignorant children left with plenty of idle time to get up to trouble and I'll pay money to get it. Like it or not, free universal public education through Grade 12 is how it works.
If Billy, who was born here but whose parents came from elsewhere and Ramon, who was born here and whose ancestors came here before the Civil War, one of them on the Mayflower, both get a free education, but Billy's big sister Daphne, who was born in the old country before Mumsie and Daddy sneaked across the Canadian frontier, does not, that's pretty plainly bullshit -- especially when Vladimir and Valerie, children of legal immigrants, one born in Undershirtistan and the other here, both attend the same public schools, free for nothing.
One of the biggest problems with this exclusion is it amounts to punishment of a child for the offenses of their parents -- while Billy and Daphne's parents are presumably still some sort of scofflaws,* little Daphne had no choice in the matter. In Indiana, this is known as "corruption of the blood," and our state Constitution specifically forbids it. You can lecture me about it all day, but it's still there, in black and white. It's got antecedents that go right back to the Old Testament, for that matter.
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* Or possibly not; there are a number of paths, now and in the past, that might let 'em stay here under various sorts of residency. And just how a law barring children of "illegals" from public education might apply to those situations is unknown and untested. It's nice that attorneys have a chance to earn a living finding this stuff out, but we don't owe them the opportunity.
Update
3 months ago
3 comments:
Heading for a state of Idiocracy.
All children should have access to education
One can also mention that removing rights to punish an unpopular minority is also removing the rights of the majority. The same rights protect both. Those who would ask for leave to punish the former inevitably turn & harm the latter.
It's a well-trodden track that demagogues who wish to become tyrants follow.
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