April 7 Class Reaction: reverse Robin Hood-ism?

What we talked about in class last Tuesday made me mad--and not just because Dr. Pope was trying to make us do math. What upset me is how SC changed school funding from more stable property taxes to market-vulnerable sales taxes with the veil of "making things more equal" at what was, in retrospect, JUST the WRONG time. Because of our current recession, those sales taxes are not adding up to what SC schools need. Furthermore, Sanford is too accountant-minded about taking stimulus money and risks making SC's bad reputation for education even WORSE. What Sanford isn't looking at here is that South Carolina is NOT his personal bank account, and the budget is not his personal financial file in Microsoft Money. There are larger impacts here than paying for college before you pay off your credit card bill. Maybe on a long-term basis, it would be more financially sound NOT to take the stimulus money if we can't repay debt, but is the sagging state of education in the meantime worth the casualties? What about all of the kids in public school right now who have no other options but an under-kept school with overloaded teachers, under-funded programs, and ancient relic-like textbooks? Is it worth shooting their educational experiences in the foot to make your point, Sanford?

Does it bother anyone else how our country has started to look a lot like a relative aristocracy? Maybe it has ALWAYS been that way and I have just been oblivious to it up until now, but it just seems like all these rich, powerful people are so self-absorbed that they assume they know what's best for everyone and throw their weight around to get what they want. T&C corroborates this phenomenon in a way, highlighting the frequency with which policy-makers fail to see the futility and literal impossibility of the rules they impose upon the educational system. The way the SC "Education Lottery" is constructed is another example of how the rich & powerful manipulate the lower classes. The beneficiaries of the lottery are college students who receive the LIFE scholarship--a merit-based rather than need-based scholarship. Students whose parents make anywhere from $30,000 to $300,000 per year (or more or less, it doesn't matter) can get those scholarships, even when $2,000 is comparatively "chump change" to the higher-earning households whereas the lower-earning household RELY on scholarships to get their students into college--otherwise it's cost-prohibitive. As Dr. Pope said (and I've observed this in my personal life, too), the majority of people who regularly buy lottery tickets tend to be of lower socioeconomic status... the same ones who would be less likely to be able to afford college without scholarships... so they need the lottery to pay for their kids' college education, so it's fair, right? Wrong. They're also less likely to even TRY to go to college. They're less likely to do well enough in school to get that scholarship in the first place. I won't even get into the details on that tangent. The point is, the lower socioeconomic classes are essentially helping fund higher education for the higher socioeconomic classes! How is THAT fair? I guess it is in some way a commentary on the lottery being "gambling," which is demonized by many conservatives, and that those who gamble deserve to have their money re-allocated to more scrupulous characters, or something like that. WOW, does that make me mad. I think it would be a lot more fair for that money to be re-channeled into the public secondary schools, where kids of ANY socio-economic status can go... or channel it into need-based scholarships, instead. As I said, $2,000 has a much smaller impact on a high-earning family than a low-earning family... and that seems like a more fair solution to me.

Additionally, since we see the inequality in property-tax-based models and the instability of the sales-tax-based models, why don't we make a smart move modeled after responsible personal finances and diversify? Let's make a better hybrid method of school funding. Maybe that's naive of me, but I know I, even as someone who plans never to have kids, would rather pay a little more in property taxes to ensure a proper education for today's children than stand firmly by our sales-tax-based system and let a bunch of poorly-educated kids struggle even harder to make it in this world. If only people who actually had more financial means than I do felt the same way, and would recognize their relative privilege in life and stop complaining that Uncle Sam is taking all their yacht vacationing money and giving it to poor kids, this world might be a lot happier.

Ok, I am done ranting... for now :)

~amanda caines~