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Remembering My Father, With Gratitude

ByAccountabaloney

My father passed away in February 2020. He was 93 years old. I am spending a good portion of this Thanksgiving Week, organizing countless documents and distributing family heirlooms, so that my 94 year old mother can move into a smaller place. I am grateful for the time I get to spend with her (and my brothers) this week and I love learning more about our family history.

My father was a lifelong educator. After serving in the Navy in WWII, he went to college on the GI Bill and dreamed of becoming a high school basketball coach. He graduated and became a high school math teacher at his alma mater, Centennial High School in Pueblo, Colorado (he also coached football and basketball and drove the team bus to games). He met my mother when she was hired to be a home economics teacher at the same school. Eventually, he became principal of his former high school – the first graduate to ever do so. After my brothers were born, they moved to Eugene, Oregon, where he earned his doctorate with a thesis focused on developing Vocational Education. After I was born, he became vice-principal at a new high school in Newark, California, where he spent the rest of his career, eventually becoming the Assistant Superintendent in charge of curriculum. When he retired in 1984, he was given a “VIP pass,” which allowed him free admission to high school football and basketball gomesfor the rest of his life. His was a life well lived. Here is a quote from the local paper’s article on his retirement:

I wonder what he would think of the current attacks on public education? I am grateful he never lived to see this round.

The rest of this piece was inspired by my own personal troll, James Lindsay. Mr. Lindsay is a communist-hunting, self-proclaimed “based af” consultant to Moms For Liberty. In October, I wrote about his presentation to a group of school board members attending a training session at Morton Blackwell’s Leadership Institute. His presentation explained “The Full Story,” the communist conspiracy which connects public education, Parkland survivor and gun control activist David Hogg and transgender, Tik Tok personality Dylan Mulvaney with a global (communist-driven) plot to destroy America, namely UNESCO’s Sustainable Development Goals. Since I published the piece (read here), he has become a regular commentator on my posts, declaring me to be censoring his remarks if I fail to immediately approve them. I have repeatedly recommended to him that he needs to find a better hobby.

This week, he insisted I respond to his conjecture asking :

  • How I would vote if presented with a bill to abolish vouchers (I am not a legislator)
  • What I believe “fully funding” public schools means, specifically “What would be the per pupil spending amount annually that would constitute ‘fully funded’ and how much would that go up each year? Two unambiguous numbers please.”
  • And whether I believed high performing private schools should continue to receive vouchers after I put the low performing ones out of business.

My response:

“No, Mr. Lindsay, your summation is not accurate.

First of all, I am not now, and never will be, in the position to vote up or down on eliminating the voucher program in Florida.

Fully funding public schools is also a pipe dream in Florida. In a perfect world, public schools should be funded so that teachers make about the median income in their community, food service employees and bus drivers can afford to live in their communities, kids don’t need to pay for after school sports and parents don’t have to pay for basic school supplies. I can’t tell you what that number is but, with Florida’s education funding being 42nd in the country and Florida’s cost of living being 22nd highest, more investment is warranted. At a minimum, public education funding in Florida should keep pace with inflation, something it hasn’t done in 15 years.

Which high quality private schools accept vouchers? In Florida, the most prestigious do not.

The question you should be asking is why doesn’t Florida want to invest in their public school system, which remains overwhelmingly popular despite attacks by you and your friends? Why do people like you advocate the elimination of public schools, the same public schools that fueled the greatest post war economy in the world, creating a country that built the computer and biotech industries and literally landed people on the moon (you aren’t such a conspiracy theorist that you deny that, are you?)? Does Florida have some excellent private schools? Yes. But the majority of those accepting vouchers are sub par, despite years of Florida investing in them at the expense of its public schools.

In my community, like many across the state, our schools were built for our community by the efforts of generations of local citizens. They have pride when their grandchildren graduate from their alma mater.

The current Florida legislature knows that our private school system, as a whole, cannot compete with our public school system. How do I know? Because they refuse to hold them to the same standards or allow transparency or accountability for the public.

Again, I think you need a better hobby than trolling me. This week, I will be expressing my gratitude for the hard working individuals who saw the value of public education and worked to make it the best it could be for their community. My father was one of those people, as was my grandmother. I hope you have something to be similarly grateful for this Thanksgiving Week.”

https://accountabaloney.com/index.php/2023/10/30/prediction-floridas-de-reg-will-not-include-the-policies-designed-to-advance-school-privatization/

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. Be grateful. Share the gratitude. Eat pie.

Oh look, he’s already responded (calling himself “Authoritarian Nightmare”):

“You don’t answer the questions directly because we both already know the answers. You should own what you would actually do with power. You should own that “fully fund” our schools is never a number, always simply hammer to wield power and protect broken systems. Your preening moralizing around direct questions is entirely uninteresting and you should be truly suspect of the intelligence of anyone it fools. As always, everything we say about what others are doing with power is ultimately a mirror to what we actually want to do. Reflect on that truth with gratitude. Happy Thanksgiving!”

He is a delight.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

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112 Comments

  1. Just letting you know that your posts are appreciated. My family is currently on its third generation of public school educators. We know the problems in our schools and the extent to which they are out of our control.

    The consistent feature of the trolls is that they don’t feel the need to present better ideas – just tear down others. If he has a mechanism where EVERY kid can get as highly educated as they wish, let’s hear it. The public schools aren’t there yet either, but at least aspire to that goal.

  3. “ The consistent feature of the trolls is that they don’t feel the need to present better ideas – just tear down others. If he has a mechanism where EVERY kid can get as highly educated as they wish, let’s hear it. The public schools aren’t there yet either, but at least aspire to that goal.”

    The mechanism is school choice, pluralism and direct funding to families. It always has been and that cannot be made any more clear. You just do not want to hear it and choose to define it as something else. Because you are projecting onto others what you really want – power and control.

    Now that that is clear, you are simply left with the truth of these posts and the questions this “advocate” will not answer – what she would ultimately do with the power to change the system to what she “advocates” for. She will not answer the direct questions because the direct questions force her to come face to face with the stark, authoritarian reality of what she would use power to do – the control she would enact directly upon other people against their will – against the choices they are already making now – not on blogs, in real human life.

    And it sounds like you’re in alignment with that desire for power and control. It is really important you all continue to own that. This endless projection is tiresome. You want to pretend to just be blogging and posting fan fiction so you don’t have to own what you would really do. That would force families to make other decisions than they’re already making, and there would be direct harm caused by your use of that power. Own it.

  5. Or should I say… projectors gonna project.

    Happy Holiday Season Mr. Lindsay. Your efforts might be better spent helping your M4L friends with their damage control. Be well.

  6. At least you’ve stopped with the moral preening in the face of abject refusal to answer or even accept the premise ofthe questions and you’ve reduced yourself to a response like that. Aligning.

  8. You don’t answer the questions. You reject their premise because you won’t entertain the hypothetical. The hypothetical is a natural intellectual extension of everything you “advocate” for to a reader reading your own writing critically.. You deflect to something that has nothing to do with what’s being discussed. This is the literal definition of projection.

    This is an awesome opportunity to clean up what has been exposed here as a deep intellectual and possibly moral rot for you when operating too much from ego, smugness, superiority, and disdain for those doing and succeeding in things you disagree with and would do differently. Start with the fact that you think you’ve been arguing with 500k follower Twitter personality and author because they wrote “Lames Jindsey” as their profile name. Continue with why you’re projecting and deflecting over and over in the face of clear language, direct questions, and honest criticism. Why you’re consistently online in your circular firing squad of like minded believers, hurling accusations and insulting labels towards others, then saying you are not doing that when it is clearly pointed out. Is that projection? Is that deflection? What would you want a student to see and be taught about these behaviors?

  9. “Why you’re consistently online in your circular firing squad of like minded believers, hurling accusations and insulting labels towards others, then saying you are not doing that when it is clearly pointed out” I have no idea what you are talking about.

    If you aren’t James Lindsey, who are you. I wasn’t “fooled” by Lames Jindsay… for the first half dozen responses my “secret troll” was using James Lindsey’s email address. If I was “fooled” it was by someone impersonating Conceptual James.

    Have a nice day.

  10. You appear fundamentally incapable of doing anything but projection and deflection when faced with direct questions and critique of your own words and actions. At some level, it is admirable you are not censoring and allowing the reading public to see the depths of your intellectual rot. However, you should not stand in the public arena critiquing and insulting others, nor have any influence over children or, ideally, anyone whatsoever. And until then, those of us who see it will keep demonstrating how bad this rot really is

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