Tag Archives: education

Vaccination and Quarantine

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Various jurisdictions in a number of States have begun barring unvaccinated students from schools following an outbreak of a contagious disease, particularly measles and chicken pox (so far).

Some school districts in the US are booting unvaccinated students from campuses where infectious-disease cases have been confirmed, as the spread of measles accelerates in some states.

“Quarantining” on the basis of vaccination status (not the classic quarantine, which blocks departure from a specific location, but one that prevents entry into specific locations) is hitting the courts, too.

In Kentucky, 32 cases of chickenpox at Our Lady of the Assumption Church and Academy in Walton resulted in unvaccinated students being removed from school in March for three weeks, the time it would take for symptoms to appear. An 18-year-old unvaccinated student lost a lawsuit challenging the ban on religious beliefs.

The court ruled entirely correctly on that suit.  A family is entirely within its rights to decline vaccination on religious grounds.  However, that right does not extend to exposing others to the outcome of that non-vaccination; that family may not expose others’ children to the disease targeted by the vaccination.

Nor do such families have any right to expose other families’ pocketbooks to the costs of outcomes from non-vaccination.  Families exercising their right to not vaccinate cannot, legitimately, inflict the costs of treatment on other families, whether those other children have been vaccinated or not.

A Recognition

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At last, the racism inherent in affirmative action is starting to be recognized.

Civil rights officials at the US Education Department are requiring the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center medical school to cease factoring race into admissions decisions, putting other institutions of higher education on notice that their continued use of affirmative action policies will draw federal scrutiny.

The rest of the Texas Tech University System has already eliminated the use of racist (and sexist) affirmative action policies in its admissions process.

There’ll continue to be resistance, though, in the “academic” community.  Here’s Peter McDonough, Vice President and General Counsel for the American Council on Education

We do worry that a college or university may interpret a report of a resolution…as saying, “If you take race or ethnicity into account, you can be investigated.”

I certainly hope so.  Neither racism nor the bigotry of ethnicity preference—nor sexism—has any place in American society, much less as a selection criterion for anything.

Next up: completing this evolution by formally and explicitly ridding affirmative action of its inherent sexism.

Then, to saucer and blow this travesty, we need the Supreme Court to stop dithering, recognize that ex-Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s 20 years are long expired, and eliminate all vestiges of the use of race, or sex, or ethnicity, or any other non-merit-related discriminant from affirmative action programs.

Control

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Senator and Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Kamala Harris (D, CA) wants the Federal government to pay a significant fraction of public school teachers’ salaries.

What a terrible idea.

The Federal government paying a significant fraction of public school teachers’ salaries means Federal government control of our public schools. Those schools are in enough trouble; we don’t need the Feds getting in the way, also.

Aside from that, this is just another Progressive-Democratic Party attempt to grab our money, this time to deny it to our heirs.  Again.

Apart from both of those, this is another example of the Progressive-Democratic Party’s contributing to the erosion of our families, illustrated by this claim of Harris’:

Our country’s success is a product of the two groups who raise our children: parents and teachers. We are not paying our teachers their value[.]

Teachers help raise our children? No, that’s the exclusive province of parents; schools are not ex loco parentis child care centers, and teachers must stop being babysitters and do the only thing they’re hired to do: teach.

Wisconsin Progressive-Democrats for Choice

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The newly elected Wisconsin Governor, Progressive-Democrat Tony Evers, has made plain the Party’s definition of “choice.”  Choose to do it our way.

Evers’ current budget proposal

caps voucher enrollment in 2020, entirely phases out the program for special-needs students and blocks the creation of new independent charter schools.

No need for all those charter schools.  Progressive-Democrats want to avoid confusing us with such a plethora of decisions to make; they’ll protect us by deciding for us.

With not too many apologies to a hypothetical Joseph:

My dear fellow, there are in fact only so many choices the mind can contemplate in the course of an evening. …there are simply too many choices, that’s all. Cut a few, and it will be perfect.

A Note on Polling

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In particular, single-question polls embedded in newspaper articles of the sort opinary.com does.  One example is embedded in a Deutsche Welle article on the key players in the Venezuelan people’s struggle with their government.

The poll question asks Do you think Juan Guaido was right to declare himself president?

Unfortunately, there are only two answers offered:

  • No, he has no legitimacy. This is a coup.
  • Yes, Maduro is a dictator. Guaido will save Venezuela.

Leaving aside the question of whether Guaido might save anything, the question and its allowed answers assume that coups must have no legitimacy, ever.  The pollsters should consult the series of English civils wars against tyranny, our Declaration of Independence, and the French Revolution (even if the latter became corrupted and turned out badly).  Sometimes

when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them [mankind] under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

This is surely the case in Venezuela.

Such polls are amusing, but they can’t be serious.