Pages

Monday, September 19, 2022

Scott Jensen and Matt Birk would gut public education. Aug. 30, Minnesota Reformer, upon the Birk-Jensen State Fair Education announcement Jensen said something of interest.

 Jensen is quoted as saying

 “We want to make this all about the kids,” Jensen said at a press conference in the GOP State Fair booth. “This is not about indoctrination … this has got to be basic foundational education.”

Give me a break.  Matt Birk's funded metro area high school. NOT ABOUT INDOCTRINATION? What else would you call it? First, "culture"

All programs and activities at Unity High School are presented in alignment with the Catholic faith for the glory of God. The Unity High School culture is characterized by:

  • Joy that comes from being in relationship with Jesus Christ
  • A hopeful outlook on the world
  • Respect for the human dignity of everyone
  • Teaching and instructing that leverages a sense of wonder
  • Correction that encourages rather than punishes
  • A desire to engage rather than to isolate from the world

Students will be prepared for the next phase of their lives and for life because they will have
 
  • An understanding and appreciation for the beauty and genius of the Catholic faith
  • A heart for service, looking for what they can do for others
  • An ability to have true, authentic relationships based on the good in themselves and others
  • Developed communication skills, creativity, critical thinking, empathy, resilience, and the ability to work within a team

Screen captures: in sequence, sacramental life, icon, patron saints:



click each image to enlarge and read

 Birk and Jensen want everybody's tax money to go to vouchers for this. And to cut funding for pubic education. Less for everybody's schools, plus bleed off part of the lowered total into this kind of non-universal, non-general INDOCTRINATION.

They dissemble.

Yuen: Believe Matt Birk when he shows you who he is

Laura Yuen

Abortion not on the ballot? Gay rights, not on the ballot? Who these two people are, their actual agenda, their character? Not on the ballot? The ballot is nothing but trust - who when you vote you believe will handle job challenges better than the other party's ticket - from what they reveal of themselves, not in scripted politics, but indirectly - don't want to defend a wrong abortion position? Say, abortion is not on the ballot. What kind of dissembling will voters tolerate without saying, enough, I know Walz is not blowing smoke at me. Walz is not perfect. But he has my trust.

Minnesota has had four years, under Walz. We made it through the pandemic with controls in place, rational decision making, no radical anti-vaccination screeds where the entire remainder of the medical profession takes notice and seeks a sounder outlook to be advanced, not an outlook which would have seen Covid more widespread, particularly in dense urban areas of the State where distancing had to be emphasized time and again. Walz delivered something resembling sensible informed best-practices epidemic management. From Walz. Can you imagine Jensen, next pandemic? Let it spread? Or manage it?

And that scripted video. The indoctrination rampant school, the smoke being blown - as if the thing were greatest ever anything since somebody thought, "sliced bread." 

Vote your brain. Vote your gut feeling. Jensen and Birk are trying to sell you something. Are they an answer to anything, or just saying easy things - cut taxes, put less money into public education and get more out? Jensen, runs a rural clinic. Birk? A lifetime in entertainment. The NFL is big time big money entertainment. Birk made a small fortune from it. Their video, in a way, was entertaining.

Is government best, if run by an anti-vax clinician and a retired entertainer?

Every reader has a vote. My vote will be entered early, during early voting, and the advertisements can be as they are down the stretch. Early voting is a blessing. Making voting easier rather than chunking in roadblocks - that too. Steve Simon.

An Attorney General who has litigated and administered vs. a hedge fund office lawyer who talks "tough on crime." Hedge funds are not for me and most readers. You need big bucks to even buy into one. They are not where the peoples' lawyer is found. To me choice is easy. 

PRIVACY. Again, the bedrock principle of Roe was privacy rights, free of others running your life for you, or wanting to, where instead you run your own life and want and treasure that autonomy. You don't really want intermeddlers being schooled at Birk's school to carry on an attack upon your future freedoms and those of your offspring. We have seen this present Roberts Court in action. Biased as it is. It is not for the many, but for the few. Citizens United. Killing Roe.

__________UPDATE_________

From that Minnesota Reformer article, mid-item:

Minnesota’s racial gaps in education — for years among the nation’s worst — continued to increase. Almost 60% of white students were proficient in reading compared to 31% of Black and Hispanic students. 

Jensen said he would turn low-performing schools into “charters, self-governed schools, nonpublic schools or other models for low-performing schools in their respective district.” 

When asked how he would “convert” low-performing schools, Jensen said the logistics would be left to the Department of Education commissioner.

What a fucking big time total cop-out. Gonna do this. Gonna do that. All improved, better, cheaper. How do you do that. Let the people who have been doing their best year in and year out, constrained by budget - then after cutting the budget and installing vouchers, they will fix things. 

The man has no real plan. He has impossible promises and then says - others will find a way. Those others have been finding the best way, for the total base of students being served, and the idea that magic Jensen will lay on hands, or whatever, and all will be cheaper, better, and Made in America!

That's bullshit. That's the same as Trump saying in 2016 that he had a great medical reform plan that would deliver better quality services at lower cost - when he had no plan, not even an idea of a plan, but was allowed to lie without being called out.

Jensen needs to be called out. Birk's tiny, tiny, little tiny experiment based on Catholicism being its own answer - scale that, and, magic? A plan? How implemented? By the Commissioner of Education???? Trust me.

Jensen has no plan except to hope to gut public education via vouchers and then turn loose privateers mucking around with children's minds and their futures.