Virgil Van Camp's 8 Point Plan Too Sav Are Skools

Virgil Van Camp graced the pages of today's Globe-Republican with his 8 point plan to save, and by "save" he means "destroy", public education. His points, in italics, and my comments:

Run our schools a bit more like a military boot camp, with a strict dress code, possibly a required uniform.

The idea of a boot camp is a little over the top, but I'm not opposed to a stricter dress code. I think the most you could hope for is a decline in discipline problems.

No cell phones or iPods.

That seems like common sense to me, as well, at least at the classroom level. I imagine there are already teacher imposed prohibitions against these devices already. Any teachers want to chime in? Anyone? Bueller? I don't think I'd be supportive of a campus-wide ban. If some kid wants to listen to some tunes or chat with someone at lunch it shouldn't be a big deal.

A core curriculum that requires proficiency in the three R's, a knowledge of our history and a thorough grounding in what we used to call civics.

Well, duh. If we aren't teaching those things anymore it's because of staff reductions brought about by budget cuts.

A longer school year with better utilization of expensive plants.

I don't have much of an opinion on the length of the school year, but for the sake of argument I'll support Virgil here, too. Having said that...expensive plants? What?

De-emphasize sports and cheerleading. Turn them into truly extracurricular activities.

You'll get no argument from me on that one.

Reduce the number of school districts by at least 50 percent. There are more than 1,000 in our state. Amarillo has seven within 35 miles of downtown.

From my point of view this isn't necessarily a bad thing, as long as the money freed up is used to hire more teachers. Different communities might not be too happy about giving up control of their schools, though. I doubt this would ever really go anywhere.

Insist that a diploma mean something. Allow the unmotivated to fail. Failure can be a learning experience.

No argument from me, though I think one of a teacher's numerous responsibilities is to try to motivate the kids. That's a tough job and I'm sure most teachers make a good effort at it, but there will be some who just have to learn a lesson the hard way. Man, I'm agreeing with Virgil a lot here...

Allow vouchers to attend private schools. These schools turn out a better product for considerably less money.

Bzzzt. Wrong. There it is. There's the deal breaker. Virgil's 8 point plan to save the schools just became his 1 point plan to ruin them. Public money should be put into public schools. Period. End o' discussion. Vouchers will just lead to racial and religious segregation and, utlimately, the rise of for-profit, corporatized education.