Utahs Republic

Someone just sent me a link to this sad but hilarious news report. A school in Seattle banned children from using Legos because “[the students’ behavior began to mirror] a class based capitalist society—a society that we teachers believe to be unjust and oppressive.” They re-instituted playing with Legos after they put new rules into place. When they displayed the 3rd new rule I busted out laughing.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnZy5TIGyjo[/youtube]

[Guest article by Doug Cannon of Lindon, Utah. Doug is on the school board at Timpanogos Academy and has been involved in education issues for over a decade.]

The simplest answer is: No, you do not have a right to an education. Before getting deeper into that question, it is important to discuss the definition of “a right.”

Natural rights are also sometimes called negative rights, or unalienable rights (God-given rights). These rights are things that a human has already, and no other human has given it to them. Free speech is a natural right. You already had it, and I did not need to give it to you. You can talk all you want and say whatever you please. I don’t have to listen to you, but I cannot stop you from speaking without using force.

Realize, that exercising your own natural rights will not always be without consequences. Your right to speak freely does not mean you can threaten the life of another, or speak lies about someone in public without suffering consequences. That is a different topic.

Positive rights are rights given to you from another person, business, government, society, or some entity outside of yourself. A better word to use instead of “right” or “positive right” is the word privilege. They are real rights or privileges, but you must depend on that outside entity to provide it to you. It will always cost money to provide you with a positive right, and if it doesn’t directly use money, it will cost time or resources provided by that outside entity. We live in a society in Utah where our government provides a (somewhat) free education. As a Utahn, I can receive an education, but it comes with stipulations. A government must agree to give it to me, and pay for it by taxing its citizens. If I am too old for high school, I cannot attend high school. Therefore, it is a privilege, or a positive right.

A good test to decide whether a right is a natural right or a positive right is to put yourself on a deserted island and then ask yourself if you still have that right. If I were with my friend on a deserted island, perhaps he will say to me, “I have a right to an education!” and I will say, “Fine, go get one.” If he says to me, “But it is my right! Give me an education!” How did he get that right? If he does not have a right to an education when alone on an island, or if it would cost me time or money to give it to him, then he does not have that right when living in a society.

If that same friend on a deserted island says to me, “I have a right to speak my mind”, then I might reply, “No kidding. I can’t get you to quit talking about your free education.” Without using force, I cannot stop my friend from exercising his right to free speech. He can talk all he wants. I did not give him that right, nor did any government. The right of free speech is a natural right. Same with his right to life, right to choose a religion, right to make choices, right to perform his own labors, right to protect his own property, and so forth. Those are all natural rights, and no person or any government gave them to him.

The reason why so many people believe that education is a right is because our society voted long ago to give education to people and to pay for it with tax dollars. This brings us back to that Thomas Paine quote, “a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom.” Thus, we have so long enjoyed free public education that if you or I try to tell people they do not have a right to it, they will raise the “formidable outcry in defense of custom.” This means that in Utah we can claim that education is a positive right, it was given to us by the government, and it is paid for by taxes. But, in the purest definition of the word “right”, education is clearly a privilege granted by an outside source, and not a right.

Yesterday afternoon’s Senate Education Appropriations Committee meeting had a bit of an edge to it. The USOE has been asked to reduce their budget 7 to 10 percent. About 36 minutes into the audio, the State Superintendent Larry Shumway came to the stand and this was the exchange he had with Senator Buttars, chair of the appropriations committee. You can listen to it above.

Senator Buttars: Yes Superintendent

Shumway: Good morning

Buttars: Good morning

Shumway: Um well, just facetiously, Senator Buttars, I thought maybe just you and I could go set up a little bake sale and we could come up with the cash.

Buttars: That would be a hell of a bake sale.

Shumway: Well actually I had received an email suggesting that if we could just put you in an oven and sell parts that that would raise it all.

Buttars: I appreciate your humor and I will return the compliment.

Shumway: (laughing) Probably true.

Buttars: Senator Madsen, Madsen, wait wait, Madsen, yes…

Madsen: You can get away with comments like that, he can’t.

Shumway: Oh, really, I didn’t mean it in any offense, I hope everyone knows that.

Madsen: He never does either.

Buttars: A little humor’s ok, (Shumway: just a little) even though it’s below the belt

If you want to listen to the whole session follow this link and listen to the audio from 1/27.

https://le.utah.gov/asp/interim/Commit.asp?Year=2011&Com=APPPED

To the Alpine School District Board,

I know we periodically find ourselves at odds but I am very pleased to find us on the same side in the issue of the Vineyard Urban Redevelopment Agency. I understand that in the recent vote, your position was outvoted by others who would financially benefit by the arrangement. I also understand that taxpayers within the school district will be on the hook for a couple hundred million dollars over the next 35 years. This is the classic case of democratic majority rule where 2 wolves and a sheep vote on what to have for dinner. The rest of the committee appears to benefit by saddling the rest of the district taxpayers with their development. I was quite surprised to hear that the representative from the state office of education didn’t vote with the school district. That seems quite odd and opens up questions into how they arrived at their position.

Short of a successful legal challenge, there may not be a lot that can be done to prevent this injustice. However, I would like to suggest something for your consideration.

Vineyard voted to pass their hundreds of millions of dollars of development costs and developer tax breaks on to the school district taxpayers’ while we continue to pay for their children to be educated. It seems appropriate to return the favor and publicly announce that at your next board meeting you will be discussing the possibility of splitting Vineyard off as a separate school district. This doesn’t have to be a serious consideration, just a warning shot across the bow that help Vineyard realize they’re affecting the lives of many citizens outside their town. Taxation without proportional representation has a downside when others choose to dissociate themselves from them.

The County may have *some* limited responsibility to clean up the site but giving massive tax breaks to the developer after that is entirely inappropriate.

Taxpayers aren’t going to be excited about cleaning up Vineyard, giving massive tax breaks to a developer, and paying for a brand new bond in ASD.  Thank you for standing for fiscal responsibility and not taking important future revenue from the ASD.

Sincerely,

Oak Norton, Utah’s Republic

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Special thanks to Wendy Hart’s excellent writeup on her blog. Please read it here:

https://wendy4asd.blogspot.com/2011/01/why-your-property-taxes-are-going-up.html

Kudos to Representative Mike Morley for running this bill which will codify the need to “thoroughly” teach students from our founding documents and include the concept of the United States Republic. I am pleased to endorse this legislation and encourage you to contact your representatives and ask them to support HB 220 the “Civics Education Amendments” bill. You can read the text here.

A year ago I delivered our petition to the Utah State Board of Education. They said they would review the 8th and 11th grade standards to ensure a proper treatment of the concept of a republic but they have taken no action since that time. You can read their letter here:

https://www.utahsrepublic.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/USOE-response-to-petition.pdf

Anyone think the economy has gone past the point of no return? What can be done? I think this creative idea is a great solution to help at least partially insulate Utah from the pressures that are going to come upon the nation. The Utah Sound Money legislation has been filed but doesn’t have an announced sponsor yet.

Here is a 30 second trailer for the longer video below which is about 11 minutes. After watching the video, please contact your legislators and ask them to pass the Utah Sound Money Act. You can read the draft legislation here.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8jOrL1npMI[/youtube]

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W308bqz3lK4[/youtube]

A few years ago, Brett Moulding, the state director of curriculum invited me into his office to chat with me. He started off with, “Oak, you’re very involved in your children’s education. How do we get more parents involved like you are?” I replied, “Easy, just implement Investigations math statewide.” However, I think there is a better way than ticking off tens of thousands of families. :)

It seems like these days everyone likes to use the phrase “local control of schools,” especially those who find it a convenient war cry against any state legislator trying to inject their voice into the education system. Does anyone truly think we really have local control of schools? What would local control even look like?  We’ve come a long ways from Little House on the Prairie, but who should be setting policy and curriculum at the local schools? Parents? Teachers? The district? The state office of education? Legislators? Children? :) I would like to propose an idea for consideration (thanks to Jed Norwood for his assistance in pulling these numbers together).

This chart shows the population of Utah over the last 60 years. We have quadrupled in size from about 700,000 citizens to about 2.8 million. Yet over that span of time we have only increased the number of school districts from 40 to 41, and that 1 has caused a lot of controversy.

This graph is basically a duplicate of the first but the Utah population is divided by the number of school districts to calculate the average number of citizens within a school district.

Just for sake of comparison, lets look at the predominant religion in this state. The LDS church over this same 60 year period has grown from just over 1 million members to almost 14 million. Instead of amassing power in the 180 stakes that existed back then, they divided it out to over 2,800 stakes.

Look at the effect. Instead of a rising population per stake, the number of members per stake actually decreased somewhat significantly over that time span. This decentralizing of power allowed the members of the church to have better local control, local representation where members can communicate with their leaders easier, and the church still maintains economies of scale by having stakes associated with each other.

What would Utah look like if the education system followed the LDS church’s program of splitting its power to maintain local leaders and close contact with its members? Interestingly, about the same number of students per district compared to members in an LDS stake.

	Current System	What if Scenario
Utah School Districts	40	116
Residents/District	67,412	23,827
School Board Members	205	580
Students/District	13,228	4,561
LDS Members/Stake		4,825

Obviously changing anything involves pros and cons and figuring out the details of such a transition. For some smaller districts, they might not even be affected because they may only have 1 high school. Big districts like Alpine, Jordan, Davis, Granite, could see themselves broken into 8-10 districts, dramatically reducing the size of the district, and bringing local control back to the people.

Pros

Cons/questions

• The big one deals with the tax base and figuring out how to split it. Initially splitting the districts, they could just share the pool of the same district money on a per student basis. After that there could be a plan worked out for a conversion to where parents with children in school pay for their education like they used to, and other citizens without children in school stop paying in property tax to cover the education of other people’s children. This will also greatly incentivize parents at local schools to make sure their children are getting the best education because those parents will be writing the checks themselves.
• With that last point, some people are shouting for joy and others are screaming “what about the poor kids?” Those families who haven’t the money to attend school could rely on generous people in the community to donate to aid in the education of the children. If you don’t think this will happen, then you have no hope in the charity of others. I believe good people will step up and donate rather than pay a tax that takes money from them. Disagree? Look at the LDS church’s Perpetual Education Fund which has been very well funded by generous people all over the world. Surely we can believe there are generous people in our communities that will step up and help educate children. Giving comes from the heart and when it’s done this way it benefits the giver and the receiver is grateful instead of our current system where the “giver” hates paying taxes and the “receiver” believes it’s an entitlement.
• How do you then set up a new high school somewhere and have it pull some of the population from surrounding area middle and elementary schools? This could be done similar to the way a charter school is set up. It would also help make sure the parents were ensuring administrators were held accountable for the costs of that development because it’s coming out of their pockets.
• “What about economies of scale,” I hear everyone screaming. The LDS church has plenty of economies of scale because it has agreements with large companies to provide for its wards and stakes. The Utah state office of education could do the same thing. I also do not think charter and private schools suffer much in decreased purchasing power.

There are certainly more pros and cons and I invite you to list them in the comments. These were just the primary items on my mind while writing this article.

Legislative input?

Now for the really sticky issue. I have had a few people ask me over the last week that if this is a good idea (and they have said it was), then what about the legislature stepping into things that affect local schools? This is not a clear cut issue.Yes I favor local schools as outlined above. However, right now many are currently under the control of individuals who I question their common sense and/or associations. District implementations of programs by fiat like Investigations math has destroyed thousands of lives. Even after we got the state office of education to review the program and remove it from their approved curriculum list along with Connected math, ASD has continued to fully use both of these harmful programs. This requires the intervention of the legislature to set programs into place using common sense and get the curriculum scales balanced before they hand control over to the parents to have true local control. At least that’s my opinion.

King for a Day

If I had to say how I think things should play out it would be as follows:

1. Immediately implement partisan school board elections at the state level and temporarily at the district level
2. Keep state board terms at 4 years since they cover twice the geographic area that state senators cover, but reduce district board member terms to 2 years since they have areas more comparable to state representatives.
3. Legislature appoints citizens review boards for strong academic curriculum and standards to remove garbage programs like Investigations, Connected, and Interactive math for which there are no studies to support them
4. Shatter the districts into fragments as described above
5. Turn over control of curriculum to the locally elected boards and make parents accountable for their children’s education
6. Leave district school board elections partisan, but have local schools have non-partisan races since you should be familiar enough with people in your area that you can have that be non-partisan.
7. Allow schools to compete for students and their money based on performance. Allow teachers to teach more students if they can handle it and the students want in that class because of the superior job that teacher is doing. Those teachers get paid more.
8. Those that have children in the schools and actually pay to have their children schooled there are the only ones that vote on board members for the school and district.

Incidentally, this would be closer to what Jefferson envisioned as a way to correct problems that arise when you don’t have local republican government.

“The article… nearest my heart is the division of counties into wards. These will be pure and elementary republics, the sum of which taken together composes the State, and will make of the whole a true democracy as to the business of the wards, which is that of nearest and daily concern. The affairs of the larger sections, of counties, of States, and of the Union, not admitting personal transactions by the people, will be delegated to agents elected by themselves; and representation will thus be substituted where personal action becomes impracticable. Yet even over these representative organs, should they become corrupt and perverted, the division into wards constituting the people, in their wards, a regularly organized power, enables them by that organization to crush, regularly and peaceably, the usurpations of their unfaithful agents, and rescues them from the dreadful necessity of doing it insurrectionally. In this way we shall be as republican as a large society can be, and secure the continuance of purity in our government by the salutary, peaceable, and regular control of the people.” –Thomas Jefferson, The Jefferson Cyclopedia, Pg. 213

For those saying “how can Oak use a quote that contains the word democracy!?!?” please visit this page of quotes on Republics and Democracies which was one of the first posts on this site.

Weigh in and let me have it below! :)

Doug Wright was talking about socialism in schools yesterday quoting from the Fox News piece of the Eagle Forum conference I spoke at last Saturday. The Fox News piece only took a couple of sound bytes from the hour long presentation and Doug has extrapolated that short bit of coverage into assuming we think that our school boards are filled with communists (which we have never said). I was able to call in and discuss a little of this with him but time didn’t allow me to connect all the dots I would have liked to.

To clarify, we have never said there is a communist or socialist conspiracy in our local school systems. What we did at the conference (and I will post the video here as soon as I have it) was lay out the case for what has been happening at the national level where there is a clear case to be made that the DOE is deliberately dumbing us down, and give some examples of national educators who have been involved. We shared some personal examples as well such as how damaging constructivist programs like Investigations math has been to students. Progressive educators like John Dewey and John Goodlad are humanists who have stated they have an agenda to push moral relativism into education which was directly tied into an interview by Yuri Bezmenov (a KGB defector) who talked about how they bring down countries by making them immoral. “The Naked Communist” was quoted from where it lists 45 goals of the communists, among which are 5 that deal with education and softening it up so the population loses the technology and economics battles.

Regardless, I’m glad I was able to call in and at least speak with Doug for a few minutes about this.

In fiscal year 2011 for the state of Utah’s budget, 50% of revenues will come from state income taxes and 49.7% of expenditures by the state will go toward the education system (UT Budget Report). Billions of dollars are spent on the education of our children and yet there are those in the public who shout that education is non-partisan. Nothing with that much money at stake is non-partisan. Powerful players vie for control of those dollars. Hundreds of companies provide “vital” services to our various school districts. They in turn scream for more money because of the “tremendous good” they can do with it. However, how do we know those funds are being spent wisely to get the most bang for our buck? Where is the accountability? It’s a never ending cycle where the schools ask for money and then bites the legislative hand that feeds them. We tolerate this as the public because we’ve become accustomed, or dare I say “enculturated” into believing that “good people” run our schools and so they can do no wrong. The people who run our schools may very well be “good people” but that doesn’t mean they have the education of our children as their top priority. One look at Alpine School District’s love affair with Investigations math and the removal of the times tables and long division will clearly illustrate the lack of common sense amongst “educators” and get you questioning what their real agenda is.

One solution to this problem is to have partisan school board elections. The 15 state school board members control half the budget of Utah and individually have territory which is double the size of a state senator. There is no way they can get a message out to voters to inform them of where they stand on issues. In local school districts we have similar issues. Large areas of territory are covered in some of the mega districts like Alpine, Davis, Granite, Jordan, etc… Those school board candidates are never closely examined by voters because it’s hard to get the message out to so many people on such limited funds. It’s also an advantage to the incumbent who may rely on some name recognition to carry him/her through a close race. Partisan school board elections would mean a much smaller number of delegates elected in OUR OWN NEIGHBORHOODS would examine those candidates up close and make a decision to shrink the list of candidates down to size.

I would like to hear from you about what you think are good reasons for and against partisan school board elections. I’ve put a couple lists below. Please comment on this topic below and add any items you can think of to either list. In the future I may update the list according to some of the comments. Thank you for your help.

If your comment is not related to this topic, I will remove your comment. This should remain an easy list for the public to scan down and see the pros and cons of partisan school board elections.

Reasons against (or things some will claim):

1. Education isn’t partisan so elections shouldn’t be
2. We’re in the most conservative state/district and now you want to control education with partisanship?
3. Party money may influence elections
4. Members will be more influenced by their party politics than their constituents

Responses/Reasons for:

1. Everything involving money is partisan
2. You think the NEA and UEA aren’t partisan?
3. If you think schools are already conservative what are you afraid of having partisan elections? Nothing would change.
4. The state history standards have a number of very liberal statements like calling health care a right and calling the constitution a “living document.” These are extremely liberal positions.
5. Nobody studies the candidates for school board in elections because they are non-partisan. Making them partisan means hundreds of delegates will examine candidates closely and see who would do the best job from their party. This raises the quality of candidates making them go through a close examination within their political party.
6. Having to sell yourself to delegates instead of to the public prior to a primary is much less expensive. This saves candidates time and money and allows more individuals to attempt to run for office without needing deep cash pockets right from the start.
7. Control over spending large amounts of money is principle based. Partisan control helps put board members in that have a known ideology.
8. We opted for representational government because “we the people” can’t examine every issue and vote on it with a good working knowledge of the issue. We elect delegates who volunteer to take the time to closely examine candidates and ensure they will represent us well. That’s how a republic functions.
9. Texas did this, got a conservative majority on the state school board, and for the first time in decades created history standards that teach both sides of the story.
10. State School Board Districts (15) are twice as big as State Senate Districts (29), and State School Board candidates never have the resources to even send one mailer to all the voters in their area. Voters who do not hear about a state school board member cannot make an informed vote. Nonpartisan elections are intended for small local races (like City Council) where you can presumably meet the candidate, and thus do not need a party affiliation.  But the 15 members of the State School Board in 2012 will likely have approximately 200,000 residents in their district!  There is no way they can meet with more than 20,000, under any circumstances.  In other words, party affiliation is absolutely necessary in any election on such a big scale.
11. The education budget of Utah is the largest single category of expenditures. Money is always partisan. Power flocks to money. Hiding behind the non-partisan curtain does not allow constituents to know where candidates stand on any issue. Members of the state school board support democratic bills over republican bills by a 2:1 margin according to a former state school board member. This does not represent the makeup of the state electorate.
12. Saying we don’t want political parties to influence school board elections guarantees that special interest groups will have greater say.
13. The vetting process of running through a convention race helps weed out unqualified candidates, but does so in a grassroots fashion.
14. Putting a party line affiliation next to a candidates name helps inform voters that may be unaware of where non-affiliated candidates stand on issues.

Case in point: These images show one candidates’ campaign material touting her as a conservative but there are many who would question her “conservative” credentials. Yet she gets away with saying this because there is no party affiliation and there are no delegates vetting the candidates. This will now start a trend of candidates quickly claiming the conservative “crown” and an unknowing public may believe whichever candidate can get that message out first. This is a disturbing trend that will only confuse and misinform voters. The delegate system works to help closely examine candidates prior to the public being bombarded with a variety of deceptive messages.

Think your child is insulated from progressive education just because you’re at a charter school? Think again. Read this letter I recently received from a parent.

My son was indoctrinated in Marxist philosophy in his eighth grade English class at his Utah County charter school.

I was delighted when the class was assigned to read the George Orwell classic, Animal Farm, which exposes the evils of Stalinist communism. One day a piece of paper from my son’s backpack caught my eye with the words, “Utopia Project”. Utopia. Communist buzzword. In this group project, based on their reading of Animal Farm, the students were to construct a system of government on an island (social constructivism). The project took a totally objective approach to governmental systems, as though all types of governments are valid and open to consideration. The teacher emphasized the need to be open minded about various types of governments. Based on what my son told me, there was apparently no distinction between governments of tyranny and governments of freedom; worse, there was no instruction or research on governments at all.

The project was filled with leading questions suggesting some of the most radical limits on individual liberty, limits found in communist nations such as:

• Would the government provide equal housing?
• Would the government assign individuals to their jobs?
• Would the government put a limit on the number of children a couple can have?
• Are people “entitled” to entertainment, which could then be provided for free?
• Would the government distribute food in equal “rations”?
• Would people live not as family units, but be housed in government, non-family, group housing?

The students could only be directed toward devising a communist government because the only questions and possibilities involved the ones listed here. These are anathema to liberty-loving Americans and constitutional government as established by our founding fathers. They should not be suggested, even in the form of questions, to 14-year-olds in an English class who have been given no background in civics and history, and have no business setting up a fantasy government. Our founders extensively studied the Greeks, Romans, English law, native American tribal law and other cultures to come up with our constitutional government, which has outshined and outperformed every government known to man. Why even suggest replacing our divinely-established system with communist practices?

Animal Farm is celebrated for its anti-Stalinist revolutionary theme. In true “social constructivist pedagogy” the book was twisted into a piece of propaganda to get the children to have open minds about anti-family, Marxist practices. I was very disturbed that following this project, my son said he now feels it is acceptable and even desirable for the government to place a limit on the number of children that couples can have!

When we objected to the teacher she gave us pat answers and denied that she was trying to imply to the students that there may be a better way to do things than we do here in America. Then just what was she trying to do? Our concerns seemed to go right over her head. She was evasive when I asked her the source of the project. When we contacted the principal, he was very responsive and took swift, strident action to make sure the teacher understood why the project was in error and to make sure she would revise it. This teacher had graduated from the BYU School of Education the previous year.

Obviously, a lot of children in this area are going to say “no” to #3 and “live as families” to #6, but to put the other questions to young children who have no background in issues of tyranny and freedom is crossing the line into indoctrination. Talk with your children about the books they are reading in school. Many of them aren’t allowed to bring their books home. One reason is teachers want to ensure the books are in class the next day, but it’s also to prevent parents from seeing what the children are being taught (or not taught in the case of fuzzy math).