NH Children’s Crusade
The attorney who has taken the lead in using the courts to destroy local control over education taxation in New Hampshire by relentlessly pressing the Claremont case (requiring the state to usurp local taxation), has recently talked a weak-kneed local school board into politicizing children in its care by participating in a march on Concord “for education.”
This is what you get when you have a state-controlled centralized school system run out of Concord. You pay homage to the state capital. You pray to the dome and those under it.
The chant was a 2001 version of “Alms for the poor.” Todays Union Leader account says that the children joined in the chant of “Do it right; do it now!”
“Marchers met at the school and joined seventh and eighth graders in an assembly before beginning the eight mile walk to Concord for a second, more overtly political, rally at the State House.”
In Maine during the 1977 referendum battle to repeal the state property tax for education, at least one superintendent (Portland) sent out notices to parents by way of their children just before the vote, to urge them to go to the polls and vote to keep the tax.
As soon as I found out about it, I called the Commissioner of Education to tell him to call off his dogs. (We did repeal the tax on December 5, 1977, but it was not without a great struggle to overcome barriers set up by the education bloc to keep it.)
The religious trappings and spiritual force of what now passes for education has grown through the years, as the public has been steadily excluded by mumbo-jumbo verbiage known only to the previously initiated, complex statutes, rules and regulations. No one feels close to schools any more. The response by many parents has been to switch to private schools and home schooling. Charter schools and school vouchers have also been proposed as a political fix.
When was the last time you remember anyone inviting their childs public school teacher home for supper? That was an annual custom fifty years ago and was an indicator that families were close to their schools.
The sacred theories, the methodology, the trappings, the icons, the we-know-best attitudes of those who uphold the holy grail of modern education, have left the average parents and taxpayers as mere spectators beside the road as the procession of their “betters” passes by..and takes the lions share of the towns tax dollars with them.
As a test, try approaching a local school board sometime with a grievance or a budget challenge and find yourself treated as a heretic who has failed to understand the mighty objectives of The Board. (I watched a local car dealer practically burned at the stake here in my own school district for challenging the local school budget. He was planning to retire to Florida immediately and that was the only reason he dared to do it.)
With a national reputation, Volinsky has become the high priest of the educationists in New Hampshsire. That includes the teachers unions, school boards, their superintendents.and now the students.
When “Father” Volinsky first approached the Allenstown School Committee about sending their children off on a Claremont Crusade to Concord, their common sense told them “no.” But Volinsky prevailed.
Not everyone agreed. The story says that “Hooksett School Board Chairman Peggy Teravainen said politics, like religion, doesnt belong in the schools. We have as a policy that children arent to be used as messengers, she said.”
Children were used in the tragic crusade of 1212 and the cynical Concord Crusade of 2001. Ms. Teravainen fails to realize that education is the state religion. Judge Brock and the Brockettes on the State Supreme Court have, in so many words, ruled it so. Thats why it has no tolerance for the tenet of local control, and why its adherents can be swayed by Volinsky to send other peoples children into its ideological battle. (Keep in mind that more than 70% of all money raised for education goes to teachers salaries and perks. Never forget that school finance is always a teachers crusade.)
The Union Leader reported that at first Allenstown School Board Chairman John Hayward said his initial reaction to Volinskys proposal to involve the children in school finance politics was “no way.”
But in the end, Hayward indicates that hes a true believer and that he and the school board understand the real purpose of education when he concludes, “Our main goal is to solve the problem and get more money for Allenstown.”
He sees the light. Amen.