How bad must the public school system be if an atheist is willing to bequeath $22.5 million so that kids can afford to attend Catholic schools? Here's the story:
Philanthropist and retired hedge-fund manager Robert W. Wilson said he is giving $22.5 million to the Archdiocese of New York to fund a scholarship program for needy inner-city students attending Roman Catholic schools.
Wilson, 80, said in a phone interview today that although he is an atheist, he has no problem donating money to a fund linked to Catholic schools.
``Let's face it, without the Roman Catholic Church, there would be no Western civilization,'' Wilson said. ``Shunning religious organizations would be abhorrent. Keep in mind, I'm helping to pay tuition. The money isn't going directly to the schools.''
My opinion is that the future of public schools in America is bleak. As Denyse O'Leary says, public schools used to be the protestant alternative to Catholic schools and they inculcated protestant virtues and discipline into students. In the last fifty years, however, they have almost completely abandoned this role and in many places they are little more than holding-pens. There's very little discipline, very little, if any, moral instruction, and precious little education taking place, at least among the lower academic half of the school population.
Unless the trajectory of the public schools is miraculously reversed parents in the years ahead will increasingly turn to private schools for their children's education, leaving public schools to devolve into day care for the poor and dysfunctional.
If liberals think there's an unjust disparity between rich and poor today, wait until they see what it'll be like after a couple of generations from now. In twenty to forty years almost the only people who will be getting an education will be the children of families who have the means to send them to private schools, and the irony will be that since almost all the problems besetting public schools are due to liberal innovation and policies, beginning in the late sixties, the radical divide between socio-economic classes will be one of their own making.
RLC