Letters | The sham of vouchers

JOHN Dougherty's op-ed claim that he is only interested in providing parents with a "choice" of schools, and that's why he wants federal tax money spent on parochial schools in the form of school vouchers, is suspect. He says it's a matter of "social justice," but he is flat out wrong.

If Dougherty were concerned with social justice, he would be looking into why so many parents working multiple jobs still can't earn enough to send their kids to a private or parochial school, if that's what they want. Parents don't lack choice, they lack money. And I notice the private and parochial schools aren't doing anything to make themselves more affordable.

But don't be fooled by the rhetoric; public schools are nowhere near as bad as the nay-sayers make them out to be.

The alleged "failure of public schools" is a manufactured crisis on the part of private and parochial-school partisans and religious-right leaders to discredit public education so they can dip their hands into the federal coffers. Generally, these people want to keep the government out of their business, and they also want their tax burden lessened, but regarding school vouchers, they now want the government to give them money from taxes to support their private religious agendas. Does anyone else see the hypocrisy here?

It's a complete fraud because no amount of money can make a student learn if he doesn't want to.

Here is the kind of "choice" the school-voucher advocates never talk about:

The choice of individual students to do their best and learn no matter what. The choice of parents to actively participate in their children's education by seeing to it they learn to read and complete their homework assignments.

That is the only kind of "choice" that will ever make a difference, and guess what? It doesn't cost a thing!

Michael McGonigle

Philadelphia