Arizona Bully of 2011 Nominee: The Editorial Board of the Arizona Republic

I don’t live my life looking through rose colored glasses.  I understand that the world is not black and white but many shades of grey.  I also expect my local newspaper to understand and reflect that reality on its editorial pages.  Sadly, the Arizona Republic and specifically its Editorial Board does not.  The Editorial Board sees everything around it in conservative black and white.  In 2011, the Editorial Board has ranted against organized labor, the “Occupy” movement and the Tucson Unified School District’s Mexican American Studies program, to name a few.

And it is not just that the Editorial Board takes a strong conservative stance on a wide range of issues it’s the way that they do it.  Take for example the lead paragraphs from today’s editorial:

“The activist-educators of the Tucson Unified School District's Mexican American Studies program never were especially good at teaching academically credible history.

Or civics. Or, really, anything that wasn't infused with a thick overlay of leftist political indoctrination as its primary message to students. They taught propagandized math to middle-schoolers, for heaven's sake.

But they have been very good at one thing: waging vicious war on anyone who dared criticize their program. When it came to silencing and marginalizing critics, the MAS activists of TUSD have proved masterful.”

One day the Editorial Board will start seeing the world in the shades of grey that it truly is, but until then, it can rest in the knowledge that is an Arizona Bully of 2011 Nominee!

The War On Public Education

There is a many fronted war being waged on public education here in the United States.  The war is being raged by social conservatives on school boards, in city councils and state legislatures across the nation.  The war is also being waged by those are thinking of being the 2012 Republican presidential nominee.

Why is this war on public education being waged?  I believe it is because social conservatives prefer that only the privileged few should be allowed an education.  I also believe that they see public education as a danger to their warped ideology.  That is why the Texas Board of Education approved a complete rewrite of their textbooks that deemphasize or eliminate historical figures and movements that aren’t “conservative” enough in their blinded eyes.

That is why Kansas became the laughing stock of the world when its state school board made the concept of creationism take precedence over evolution in their science classes.  That is why Congressman Ron Paul, Congresswoman Michelle Bachman and the former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza, Herman Cain, all spoke out against public education at a convention for those show support home schooling.

That is why the Arizona State Legislature is gutting funding to public schools and to the state’s universities and community colleges while giving tax cuts to corporations.  That is why Arizona allows individuals and corporations to receive tax credits for “donating” to “scholarship funds” that benefit only private and parochial schools.  That is why Arizona State Attorney General Tom Horne and State Superintendent of Schools John Huppenthal are targeting the Tucson Unified School District over their ethnic studies classes.

Social conservatives don’t want the public to be educated, unless they can afford it.  They don’t want the public to be educated unless they are to be indoctrinated into believing in social conservative ideals.  They also know that an uneducated workforce means lower wages for the vast majority of Americans while the privileged few reap the bounty.

There used to be a time when public education was cherished in this nation.  Those days are gone and the war wages on.  A war with many battlefronts and with no possibility of truce.  No, this war must be won and it must be won by those who believe in a strong public education system.  The social conservatives cannot be allowed to win this war for should they win, this nation will become the theocratic fascist nation we all should fear.