Right, desires and responsibilities

I've now been around long to have seen certain things morph from a desire or responsibility into a "right."

Case one:

It used to be cool if you could afford a computer and the additional expense of Internet access. Now universal access to the Internet is deemed to be essential. So the federal government, under Internet inventor AlGore's expert leadership, undertook to link the right of Internet access with the "right" to a free education. So Al threw on a pair of overalls, got into the crawl space under every American schoolhouse and wired it for the Internet. Cool! But as soon as Al wasted hundred of millions on that, wireless became the rage; wire became passe and now hundreds of millions more are needed to equip schools with wireless technology which has become a new "right."

Here in IN, Gov Daniels is taking heat for reducing the education budget 2-3%. Now I can find 2-3% savings in my household budget easy enough - chips, beer and soda. Hey, it be uncomfortable for a while. But if it needed to be done, it would be done. Well apparently here in IN, the education budget is so tight and not so much as a dime is wasted that teacher's unions and the IN MSM are after the Gov's head. How dare he cut education.

Well I submit that that we should cut education by 20% and in the process we'd improve test scores. What less money = higher test scores? How do you figure? Easy, every president since LBJ has increased spending on education. As spending has increased, we have seen a steady decline in performance - lower test scores and graduation rates. So if more money = poorer performance, let's try less money.

Money is not the problem. I submit that teacher's unions, sue happy parents with lawyers and state and federal interference with local school boards is the problem.

I'd look into privatizing the entire ball of wax. Every parent would be given a voucher to choose a school. Parents could then choose a school that is right for their kid. 25% of students never finish high school. Maybe vocational training is right for them. Some students lack the skills and/or desire to follow high school with 4 years of college work. Let's teach those students the basic skills our moms and dads learned to be functioning members of society.

These schools can also be adjusted to meet the needs of kids into the arts, or sciences. The one thing that we should have learned by now is that the one size fits all state run federally controlled, throw more and more money at the problem is not the answer. But the geniuses who cannot teach high school math, science, reading and writing want to bestow a new "right" on Americans, access to four years of federally funded college. So students who learned nothing in four years will now be given eight to learn what mom and dad knew when they left elementary school.

Hmm, state run federally controlled - does that sound anything like Dope-a-care? Let's look at health care tomorrow. Is it a right, desire or responsibility?