I took a look at the Bill (Senate Bill 795 [2023]) that establishes the Program.
I had questions about the first definition that appeared, in the "Definitions" area!
(And, when I say, "questions," I don't mean that I didn't know what the words meant; I mean that I "saw through" the wording, and envisioned ALL KINDS of problems, litigation, and money that the Commonwealth could be "on the hook" for, because of what "the letter of the law" contains.)
Merely the way the term "Applicant" was defined, in that Bill, seemed, to me, to be some kind of "can of worms" that could occupy the agendas of School Board meetings across the Commonwealth, for six months to a year!
I hadn't even gotten to the actual "language of the law" that defines the Program and says who is supposed to do what, etc.; yet, I saw that the law was "not ready for prime-time".
A law that creates a new budget line-item can't be introduced and referred to committee, on June 15th, when the Budget has to be passed and sent to the Governor in 15 days!
The Legislature convened in January.
I wouldn't object, if the Governor were to veto any budget item related to the funding of the Lifeline Scholarship Program, including administrative expenses, including any supplies or services related to the development of application forms, procedures, regulations, etc.
[NOTE: Obviously, weighing down the Code of Pennsylvania with laws that authorize the creation of Offices, Programs, and State Responsibilities and Obligations that haven't got a prayer of receiving a dollar in funding --both because of the Governor's veto and because of the Governor signing Executive Orders that forbid the Pennsylvania Treasury from disbursing Federal, private-sector, or foreign-origin funds to any Office that might have anything to do with the Lifeline Scholarship Program-- represents a danger to the People of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in the same way that a leaky roof over a high-voltage electrical closet is a danger to the entire structure and its ability to function: "praying that it doesn't rain" didn't help New Orleans, during Hurricane Katrina.
Conflicts between Branches cannot continue, beyond a certain point, or the People will seek new employees, to handle their Government-related affairs.]
FYI: The "Lifeline Scholarship Program" looks like it was introduced in both Houses, in 2021/2022! So, it's not as if the language hasn't been looked-at.
IMO, there's no way that Senate Bill 795 [from FY 2023] should have made it out of the Education Committee with a definition of "applicant" as being a "parent" (rather than "parent or guardian")!
And I'm not even talking about the legal doctrine of "in loco parentis", that might be invoked by a school, to file an application on behalf of a kid who needs to get out and should get out, but whose parents can't or won't file the application, yet who retain parental rights over those kids!
The problems with the Bill (including the fact that it was referred to Committee two weeks before the end of FY2022/2023) are so obvious, that it makes me wonder what, in the world, is happening, there.
I really do urge the incumbent Legislators to take steps pre-emptively in the months BEFORE the Election, to actually have something that they can show, to constituents, so everyone will know that, AS AN INDIVIDUAL, each incumbent Legislator is actually WORKING on whatever that Legislator thinks is "the proper focus" and "the top priority" that the Legislator has.
Because, really, the Law shapes the economic, socio-cultural, and political "environment", in the Commonwealth. If the laws are as leaky as a sieve, that environment won't shelter anybody; and not everybody likes being that guy, in the movie "Forrest Gump", who rode out a hurricane perched on a cross-bar atop the mast in a fishing-boat that was under way, at sea, with the rain and wind lashing him, and the boat in grave danger, the whole time.
That's not fun, for some people.
Even on a farm, a heavy rain is probably no fun. If it rains too hard, you've got to have somebody run down to the washed-out areas and plant new seedlings that you had been growing in pots, in some sheltered spot, if you're going to have a chance of having food enough to "can" and store away, for winter.
The only true solution to the education problem is for PA parents to remove their children from a corrupt system. A system that is not actually broken, but operating as designed from the beginning. Let's bankrupt the school system, force the state to sell its assets to private institutions, kill the school tax on property thus restoring private property ownership and restore parental rights over their children. It's called freedom! You have to want to be free in order to actually be free.
Governing --including "writing legislation"-- is a balancing-act: people have to be allowed as much freedom as possible; but, they can't be allowed to act as if their own rights are the only rights that matter.
Acknowledging "parental rights" is great. Refusing to interfere with parents' exercise of those rights is virtuous and important.
BUT, refusing to contradict a parent who refuses to raise up their kids with the goal of producing solid, skillful, capable, virtuous, considerate, self-supporting, ADULT Citizens of a Republic in which people actively seek to work together and live alongside one another "in neighborly fashion"...
...is "the sacrifice of 'tomorrow' in the [temporary] interest of 'today'".
The practice of funding schools via "ad valorem" [i.e., "based on the market-value"] property taxes has already shown that it doesn't work, because it's easier and quicker, to break a window, than it is, to melt some sand into a pane of glass, and turn that pane of newly-made glass into a window.
How many people does it take, to perpetrate a specific crime upon a member of a certain, specific group of people? One?
If there are 2,000 or 5,000 or 10,000 inhabitants of an area, and one person decides to "make life miserable" for some member or members of an identifiable group, the "climate" changes, for that group.
And that group finds somewhere else to go.
And who's left? That one person. And he laughs, and talks about his exploits, and about the benefit he received, for "winning".
And other people want to "win", and get those same sorts of benefits.
And there's crime. And more people who CAN leave that area DO leave that area.
And property values go down. Because, in general, the only ones who remain in the area are people who don't have the ability (or resources) that would let them leave, carrying anyone and everyone that's important to them, along with them, as they go.
So, the schools suffer. The kids suffer. TOMORROW suffers.
The problem that I see, is that:
1) when some people hear that "Tomorrow will suffer," they respond with, "So what? That's their problem; I won't be around;" while,
2) when other people hear that "Tomorrow will suffer," they think, to themselves, "Tomorrow is that part of myself which will live, when I have died and have become dust; I wish to bestow GOOD things upon tomorrow: health, character, the ability to choose their own burdens, rather than being required to bear anything that I might saddle them with, if I don't pay my own way, today."
What was it that Thomas Jefferson said, about "inflation and deflation" --the rise and fall of prices (or, alternatively, "the rise and fall of the quantity of money that is in circulation, at a given time")-- and the effect that it would have, on the ones "[whose fathers had <bequeathed to> them]" that which I'll call "['the blessings of liberty' that are inherent in the Republic that the Constitution defines]"?
For what purpose did Thomas Jefferson found the University of Virginia as "a bastion of learning"?
Didn't he want there to be a place where the Citizens of the new Republic could go, to learn all that it is needful for Citizens of a free and independent Republic to know, in order that they be capable of maintaining that freedom and that independence, not only of the Republic, but in their own lives, also?
Did he say all that, before the right to vote was extended beyond the ranks of, merely, male owners of real property (before the Election that made Andrew Jackson, of Kentucky, President)?
"refusing to contradict a parent who refuses to raise up their kids with the goal of producing solid, skillful, capable, virtuous, considerate, self-supporting, ADULT Citizens"
Is this really what we are talking about? No. We have an education establishment hell-bent on creating citizens dependent on government. The parents have all the incentive in the world and the love required to bring up their children to be "solid, skillful, capable, virtuous, considerate, self-supporting, ADULT Citizens". The government schools are going to produce virtue? Really?
Some parents have an incentive to do some things; other parents have an incentive to do other things.
Look at the examples of frenzied lobbying that have occurred, right here, in Pennsylvania, that have sought to FORCE a private-sector organization whose obligation is ETERNAL, to "spend more money", just because "today" is "flush with cash".
Look at what happened, when there was money in the State coffers, and that money not only had to be spent; it had to be spent in a way that put the previously-sustainable PSERS retirement system onto a path to bankruptcy --thus, giving members of the Legislature an opportunity (if not "cause" or "reason") to portray public-school teachers as the sorts of creatures who, bellying up to the public money-trough, gorge themselves until their stomachs explode.
The "government schools" that I attended, 1966 - 1978, not only taught me how to read anything from "See Spot Run" to the text of Federal and State legislation, and know exactly what it is, that I am reading; they taught me my heritage!
[And YES, even though I am (mostly) white, it was because of "the government schools", that I --of my own, free will, based on MY OWN criteria-- decided that George Washington Carver was one of the GREATEST AMERICANS OF ALL TIME, right up there with Benjamin Franklin!
Why?
Because HE FIGURED OUT HOW TO KEEP FARM-FIELDS PRODUCTIVE, instead of making them have to "lie fallow", all spring and summer, every couple of years!
Not only did he make sure every farmer in the South knew that peanuts were good for the soil,...
...HE SPREAD THE WORD ABOUT PEANUT-BUTTER, and about a thousand other uses for peanuts, in order to make peanuts a MONEY-MAKER, even for white, former slave-owners!
He was IN THE SOUTH, and living the HELLISH life of a Black man, in the South, where the KKK was riding, at night, and terrorizing people for being "uppity"!...
...and, yet, he SERVED HIS ENTIRE NATION, being of benefit to EVERYBODY, including those same KKK riders!
That kind of NOBILITY OF SPIRIT, combined with scientific and commercial success (for the beneficiaries of his efforts) seemed, to me, the equal of that of ANY of the "Founding Fathers" who had insisted that the USA be a Republic, instead of some "more-of-the-same" KINGDOM!
It was "government schools" that taught me those lessons, IN AN AGE BEFORE "BLACK HISTORY" CLASSES or "Black History Month" was instituted, before I'd ever heard of Kwanzaa, and before Martin Luther King's Birthday was even THOUGHT-OF, by anyone I knew, as a national holiday.
They didn't tell me about George Washington Carver or Frederick Douglass or any other Black American who contributed to the evolution and development of the USA, as part of any kind of "special emphasis" curriculum (because, THERE WAS NONE); they simply taught us about them, just like they taught us about Daniel Boone, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Edison, and Alexander Graham Bell, because they were IMPORTANT, and because what they DID, in their lives, was important in the shaping of this country and of our People.]
It was a "government employee" school-teacher, who told me and all my classmates that the reason we kids were being provided with the EXTREMELY valuable knowledge and skills that were being taught, was, that we were being trained to be able to HANDLE becoming Citizens of the STRONG, free, and independent Republic that our ancestors, including our parents and grandparents, had bequeathed to us and were intending to place entirely into our hands, someday.
It was in "government schools", that I learned that it was (and is) my responsibility, as an American, to LIVE the US Constitution by:
1) recognizing that ALL American Citizens have rights (and, yes, responsibilities) EQUAL TO my own; and that, regardless of their gender or skin-color or national-origin or religion --including not only Judaism and Islam, but ALL religions-- we are, all of us "EQUAL to one another, in the eyes of the Law".
[And YES, that was a different "lesson" from the one that some others, outside of school, suggested that I embrace!]
It was my "government employee" school-teacher, in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC, who said that, being a Citizen, it was my DUTY to uphold, protect, and defend not only "the country", but my neighbors and fellow Americans.
Indeed, it was my "government employee" school teacher, who gave, as ONE example of my own, personal civic duty (and the civic duty of every other American), the following:
"If you are walking down the road or street, and there is a forest-fire burning, outside of town, and a truck pulled up, with a bunch of guys in it, with shovels and axes, who were headed out to fight that fire,...
...if they stopped that truck, and said, "We're going to fight that fire. We need your help. Get in"...
...that it was my duty, to get into that truck and go with them, to fight that fire.
My folks would have told me some or all of that stuff, if the subject had come up. But, my folks didn't have a "lesson plan" for what to teach me, at 3 years old or 5 years old, or at 10, or 16.
They taught me how to behave myself and act like I had some sense, so that I'd be ready to go to school and sit in class and pay attention, outside of my parents' sight, by the time I was 6 years old and it was time to start First Grade.
It was the SCHOOL, that had the "lesson plans"; my folks just taught me stuff that they knew, when it came up, in conversation, the normal interaction of parents, with their children.
It was my dad, who said (probably while we were watching "Perry Mason"), that, in the court-room, when the Bailiff says, "All rise!" we are standing up, not out of respect for the person wearing that robe, but out of respect for THE ROBE.
For the OFFICE of Judge.
For the JOB of Judge, that we are all PRAYING, TO GOD, that the guy who's wearing that robe is good enough and clean enough and HONEST enough, to be able to actually PERFORM that job to the BEST OF THAT PERSON'S ABILITY, or to be able to do his duty, and resign.
Because, just like the OFFICE of Police Officer or Soldier or Congressman or President, the person who is IN that job is "one of us" American Citizens, who is doing a job that the People hired that person to do, for the benefit of the People and the State, city, county, or country.
My dad told me that, before any "government school" told me anything about stuff like that.
But, when the schools DID "get around to it", they confirmed what my dad had said.
I graduated my high-school an American Citizen, one small component of the foundation on which the USA (the "The Leader of the Free World", who had sought to protect the world from tyranny, for a hundred years and more) DEPENDED on, for every ounce of its strength, and for every dollar in its Treasury.
I did NOT, in ANY way, feel like the CHATTEL of an oligarch.
And all I was, was the son of a machinist and a bookkeeper, with "a regular life" [in American terms] in front of me, and the knowledge that there were millions of people, all over the world, who would have given their eye-teeth, if they could have been as fortunate as I was and am, to have been born American.
I'm not saying that "the government schools" produced me or such virtue as I might have shown, in my life.
But, there was rarely, if ever, a time when my birth-parents and my "in loco parentis" parents [the school] were in any kind of disagreement; there was nobody in my family who wanted to undermine or plunder the USA, even though, as West Virginia natives, we knew what the victimization of the People of an area could do, when "company towns" make the blood that had been shed, freeing the slaves, almost irrelevant, when public officials who can be "bought" issue "rulings" that rely upon the IGNORANCE of an uneducated population, to make them "sit down and shut up", when someone with a suit and slicked-back hair says to do so.
YES, by GOD, the "Government schools" CAN and DO teach VIRTUE.
It was in high-school, that I learned what "monopolistic trade practices" are, and WHY it's wrong.
But, yes, they also taught me mechanical drawing, metal-shop, wood-shop, music, and art.
I thank God, most days, that I'm American and the product of the public schools!
Thank you, Mrs. Swann, Mrs. Jescke, Mr. Webber, Mr. Toler., Mrs. Kaplan, and Mrs. CORNELIA ANN DE VILLELA!
Shapiros is just as crooked as all the other Democrats. And also a liar. We need to act now and start taking back our state bit by bit.
I took a look at the Bill (Senate Bill 795 [2023]) that establishes the Program.
I had questions about the first definition that appeared, in the "Definitions" area!
(And, when I say, "questions," I don't mean that I didn't know what the words meant; I mean that I "saw through" the wording, and envisioned ALL KINDS of problems, litigation, and money that the Commonwealth could be "on the hook" for, because of what "the letter of the law" contains.)
Merely the way the term "Applicant" was defined, in that Bill, seemed, to me, to be some kind of "can of worms" that could occupy the agendas of School Board meetings across the Commonwealth, for six months to a year!
I hadn't even gotten to the actual "language of the law" that defines the Program and says who is supposed to do what, etc.; yet, I saw that the law was "not ready for prime-time".
A law that creates a new budget line-item can't be introduced and referred to committee, on June 15th, when the Budget has to be passed and sent to the Governor in 15 days!
The Legislature convened in January.
I wouldn't object, if the Governor were to veto any budget item related to the funding of the Lifeline Scholarship Program, including administrative expenses, including any supplies or services related to the development of application forms, procedures, regulations, etc.
[NOTE: Obviously, weighing down the Code of Pennsylvania with laws that authorize the creation of Offices, Programs, and State Responsibilities and Obligations that haven't got a prayer of receiving a dollar in funding --both because of the Governor's veto and because of the Governor signing Executive Orders that forbid the Pennsylvania Treasury from disbursing Federal, private-sector, or foreign-origin funds to any Office that might have anything to do with the Lifeline Scholarship Program-- represents a danger to the People of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in the same way that a leaky roof over a high-voltage electrical closet is a danger to the entire structure and its ability to function: "praying that it doesn't rain" didn't help New Orleans, during Hurricane Katrina.
Conflicts between Branches cannot continue, beyond a certain point, or the People will seek new employees, to handle their Government-related affairs.]
FYI: The "Lifeline Scholarship Program" looks like it was introduced in both Houses, in 2021/2022! So, it's not as if the language hasn't been looked-at.
IMO, there's no way that Senate Bill 795 [from FY 2023] should have made it out of the Education Committee with a definition of "applicant" as being a "parent" (rather than "parent or guardian")!
And I'm not even talking about the legal doctrine of "in loco parentis", that might be invoked by a school, to file an application on behalf of a kid who needs to get out and should get out, but whose parents can't or won't file the application, yet who retain parental rights over those kids!
The problems with the Bill (including the fact that it was referred to Committee two weeks before the end of FY2022/2023) are so obvious, that it makes me wonder what, in the world, is happening, there.
I really do urge the incumbent Legislators to take steps pre-emptively in the months BEFORE the Election, to actually have something that they can show, to constituents, so everyone will know that, AS AN INDIVIDUAL, each incumbent Legislator is actually WORKING on whatever that Legislator thinks is "the proper focus" and "the top priority" that the Legislator has.
Because, really, the Law shapes the economic, socio-cultural, and political "environment", in the Commonwealth. If the laws are as leaky as a sieve, that environment won't shelter anybody; and not everybody likes being that guy, in the movie "Forrest Gump", who rode out a hurricane perched on a cross-bar atop the mast in a fishing-boat that was under way, at sea, with the rain and wind lashing him, and the boat in grave danger, the whole time.
That's not fun, for some people.
Even on a farm, a heavy rain is probably no fun. If it rains too hard, you've got to have somebody run down to the washed-out areas and plant new seedlings that you had been growing in pots, in some sheltered spot, if you're going to have a chance of having food enough to "can" and store away, for winter.
The only true solution to the education problem is for PA parents to remove their children from a corrupt system. A system that is not actually broken, but operating as designed from the beginning. Let's bankrupt the school system, force the state to sell its assets to private institutions, kill the school tax on property thus restoring private property ownership and restore parental rights over their children. It's called freedom! You have to want to be free in order to actually be free.
Governing --including "writing legislation"-- is a balancing-act: people have to be allowed as much freedom as possible; but, they can't be allowed to act as if their own rights are the only rights that matter.
Acknowledging "parental rights" is great. Refusing to interfere with parents' exercise of those rights is virtuous and important.
BUT, refusing to contradict a parent who refuses to raise up their kids with the goal of producing solid, skillful, capable, virtuous, considerate, self-supporting, ADULT Citizens of a Republic in which people actively seek to work together and live alongside one another "in neighborly fashion"...
...is "the sacrifice of 'tomorrow' in the [temporary] interest of 'today'".
The practice of funding schools via "ad valorem" [i.e., "based on the market-value"] property taxes has already shown that it doesn't work, because it's easier and quicker, to break a window, than it is, to melt some sand into a pane of glass, and turn that pane of newly-made glass into a window.
How many people does it take, to perpetrate a specific crime upon a member of a certain, specific group of people? One?
If there are 2,000 or 5,000 or 10,000 inhabitants of an area, and one person decides to "make life miserable" for some member or members of an identifiable group, the "climate" changes, for that group.
And that group finds somewhere else to go.
And who's left? That one person. And he laughs, and talks about his exploits, and about the benefit he received, for "winning".
And other people want to "win", and get those same sorts of benefits.
And there's crime. And more people who CAN leave that area DO leave that area.
And property values go down. Because, in general, the only ones who remain in the area are people who don't have the ability (or resources) that would let them leave, carrying anyone and everyone that's important to them, along with them, as they go.
So, the schools suffer. The kids suffer. TOMORROW suffers.
The problem that I see, is that:
1) when some people hear that "Tomorrow will suffer," they respond with, "So what? That's their problem; I won't be around;" while,
2) when other people hear that "Tomorrow will suffer," they think, to themselves, "Tomorrow is that part of myself which will live, when I have died and have become dust; I wish to bestow GOOD things upon tomorrow: health, character, the ability to choose their own burdens, rather than being required to bear anything that I might saddle them with, if I don't pay my own way, today."
What was it that Thomas Jefferson said, about "inflation and deflation" --the rise and fall of prices (or, alternatively, "the rise and fall of the quantity of money that is in circulation, at a given time")-- and the effect that it would have, on the ones "[whose fathers had <bequeathed to> them]" that which I'll call "['the blessings of liberty' that are inherent in the Republic that the Constitution defines]"?
For what purpose did Thomas Jefferson found the University of Virginia as "a bastion of learning"?
Didn't he want there to be a place where the Citizens of the new Republic could go, to learn all that it is needful for Citizens of a free and independent Republic to know, in order that they be capable of maintaining that freedom and that independence, not only of the Republic, but in their own lives, also?
Did he say all that, before the right to vote was extended beyond the ranks of, merely, male owners of real property (before the Election that made Andrew Jackson, of Kentucky, President)?
"refusing to contradict a parent who refuses to raise up their kids with the goal of producing solid, skillful, capable, virtuous, considerate, self-supporting, ADULT Citizens"
Is this really what we are talking about? No. We have an education establishment hell-bent on creating citizens dependent on government. The parents have all the incentive in the world and the love required to bring up their children to be "solid, skillful, capable, virtuous, considerate, self-supporting, ADULT Citizens". The government schools are going to produce virtue? Really?
Some parents have an incentive to do some things; other parents have an incentive to do other things.
Look at the examples of frenzied lobbying that have occurred, right here, in Pennsylvania, that have sought to FORCE a private-sector organization whose obligation is ETERNAL, to "spend more money", just because "today" is "flush with cash".
Look at what happened, when there was money in the State coffers, and that money not only had to be spent; it had to be spent in a way that put the previously-sustainable PSERS retirement system onto a path to bankruptcy --thus, giving members of the Legislature an opportunity (if not "cause" or "reason") to portray public-school teachers as the sorts of creatures who, bellying up to the public money-trough, gorge themselves until their stomachs explode.
The "government schools" that I attended, 1966 - 1978, not only taught me how to read anything from "See Spot Run" to the text of Federal and State legislation, and know exactly what it is, that I am reading; they taught me my heritage!
[And YES, even though I am (mostly) white, it was because of "the government schools", that I --of my own, free will, based on MY OWN criteria-- decided that George Washington Carver was one of the GREATEST AMERICANS OF ALL TIME, right up there with Benjamin Franklin!
Why?
Because HE FIGURED OUT HOW TO KEEP FARM-FIELDS PRODUCTIVE, instead of making them have to "lie fallow", all spring and summer, every couple of years!
Not only did he make sure every farmer in the South knew that peanuts were good for the soil,...
...HE SPREAD THE WORD ABOUT PEANUT-BUTTER, and about a thousand other uses for peanuts, in order to make peanuts a MONEY-MAKER, even for white, former slave-owners!
He was IN THE SOUTH, and living the HELLISH life of a Black man, in the South, where the KKK was riding, at night, and terrorizing people for being "uppity"!...
...and, yet, he SERVED HIS ENTIRE NATION, being of benefit to EVERYBODY, including those same KKK riders!
That kind of NOBILITY OF SPIRIT, combined with scientific and commercial success (for the beneficiaries of his efforts) seemed, to me, the equal of that of ANY of the "Founding Fathers" who had insisted that the USA be a Republic, instead of some "more-of-the-same" KINGDOM!
It was "government schools" that taught me those lessons, IN AN AGE BEFORE "BLACK HISTORY" CLASSES or "Black History Month" was instituted, before I'd ever heard of Kwanzaa, and before Martin Luther King's Birthday was even THOUGHT-OF, by anyone I knew, as a national holiday.
They didn't tell me about George Washington Carver or Frederick Douglass or any other Black American who contributed to the evolution and development of the USA, as part of any kind of "special emphasis" curriculum (because, THERE WAS NONE); they simply taught us about them, just like they taught us about Daniel Boone, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Edison, and Alexander Graham Bell, because they were IMPORTANT, and because what they DID, in their lives, was important in the shaping of this country and of our People.]
It was a "government employee" school-teacher, who told me and all my classmates that the reason we kids were being provided with the EXTREMELY valuable knowledge and skills that were being taught, was, that we were being trained to be able to HANDLE becoming Citizens of the STRONG, free, and independent Republic that our ancestors, including our parents and grandparents, had bequeathed to us and were intending to place entirely into our hands, someday.
It was in "government schools", that I learned that it was (and is) my responsibility, as an American, to LIVE the US Constitution by:
1) recognizing that ALL American Citizens have rights (and, yes, responsibilities) EQUAL TO my own; and that, regardless of their gender or skin-color or national-origin or religion --including not only Judaism and Islam, but ALL religions-- we are, all of us "EQUAL to one another, in the eyes of the Law".
[And YES, that was a different "lesson" from the one that some others, outside of school, suggested that I embrace!]
It was my "government employee" school-teacher, in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC, who said that, being a Citizen, it was my DUTY to uphold, protect, and defend not only "the country", but my neighbors and fellow Americans.
Indeed, it was my "government employee" school teacher, who gave, as ONE example of my own, personal civic duty (and the civic duty of every other American), the following:
"If you are walking down the road or street, and there is a forest-fire burning, outside of town, and a truck pulled up, with a bunch of guys in it, with shovels and axes, who were headed out to fight that fire,...
...if they stopped that truck, and said, "We're going to fight that fire. We need your help. Get in"...
...that it was my duty, to get into that truck and go with them, to fight that fire.
My folks would have told me some or all of that stuff, if the subject had come up. But, my folks didn't have a "lesson plan" for what to teach me, at 3 years old or 5 years old, or at 10, or 16.
They taught me how to behave myself and act like I had some sense, so that I'd be ready to go to school and sit in class and pay attention, outside of my parents' sight, by the time I was 6 years old and it was time to start First Grade.
It was the SCHOOL, that had the "lesson plans"; my folks just taught me stuff that they knew, when it came up, in conversation, the normal interaction of parents, with their children.
It was my dad, who said (probably while we were watching "Perry Mason"), that, in the court-room, when the Bailiff says, "All rise!" we are standing up, not out of respect for the person wearing that robe, but out of respect for THE ROBE.
For the OFFICE of Judge.
For the JOB of Judge, that we are all PRAYING, TO GOD, that the guy who's wearing that robe is good enough and clean enough and HONEST enough, to be able to actually PERFORM that job to the BEST OF THAT PERSON'S ABILITY, or to be able to do his duty, and resign.
Because, just like the OFFICE of Police Officer or Soldier or Congressman or President, the person who is IN that job is "one of us" American Citizens, who is doing a job that the People hired that person to do, for the benefit of the People and the State, city, county, or country.
My dad told me that, before any "government school" told me anything about stuff like that.
But, when the schools DID "get around to it", they confirmed what my dad had said.
I graduated my high-school an American Citizen, one small component of the foundation on which the USA (the "The Leader of the Free World", who had sought to protect the world from tyranny, for a hundred years and more) DEPENDED on, for every ounce of its strength, and for every dollar in its Treasury.
I did NOT, in ANY way, feel like the CHATTEL of an oligarch.
And all I was, was the son of a machinist and a bookkeeper, with "a regular life" [in American terms] in front of me, and the knowledge that there were millions of people, all over the world, who would have given their eye-teeth, if they could have been as fortunate as I was and am, to have been born American.
I'm not saying that "the government schools" produced me or such virtue as I might have shown, in my life.
But, there was rarely, if ever, a time when my birth-parents and my "in loco parentis" parents [the school] were in any kind of disagreement; there was nobody in my family who wanted to undermine or plunder the USA, even though, as West Virginia natives, we knew what the victimization of the People of an area could do, when "company towns" make the blood that had been shed, freeing the slaves, almost irrelevant, when public officials who can be "bought" issue "rulings" that rely upon the IGNORANCE of an uneducated population, to make them "sit down and shut up", when someone with a suit and slicked-back hair says to do so.
YES, by GOD, the "Government schools" CAN and DO teach VIRTUE.
It was in high-school, that I learned what "monopolistic trade practices" are, and WHY it's wrong.
But, yes, they also taught me mechanical drawing, metal-shop, wood-shop, music, and art.
I thank God, most days, that I'm American and the product of the public schools!
Thank you, Mrs. Swann, Mrs. Jescke, Mr. Webber, Mr. Toler., Mrs. Kaplan, and Mrs. CORNELIA ANN DE VILLELA!