This story, about a poll measuring attitudes towards public education in Delaware, offers some interesting info on perceptions about the No Child Left Intact Behind legislation. But I'm linking to it mainly because of this remarkable and incomprehensible passage:
The poll found broad support for full-day kindergarten for all children, which is available in only a few Delaware school districts. But the consensus broke down when it came to paying for all-day, with some saying they wanted "government" funding, others saying the "public or taxpayers" should fund it.
I have no idea what to make of this. We can only assume that the pollsters, from the Delaware Education Research and Development Center at the University of Delaware, asked survey respondents something like:
"Who should fund full-day kindergarten programs?
A. Government
B. Public or taxpayers"
One wonders why they didn't offer a larger list of options, perhaps:
A. Government
B. Public funds
C. Taxpayers
D. State Budget
In defense of the pollsters, this is Delaware we're talking about. The unique system of corporate fees (formalizing the corruption and kickbacks of a century ago) creates a nontax revenue source for the state that does, to some extent, create a distinction between "government" and "taxpayers or the public." But if that's what they were getting at, they could simply have asked whether all-day kindergarten should be funded by "taxes" or by "corporate fees."
This seems, rather, evidence of a deeper confusion — the kind of nonsense that results from a Norquistian hatred for taxes and "the government." This confusion makes it impossible to understand life in a democracy. It makes it impossible to understand the Constitution, beginning with the first three words — or even just the very first word, "We."
It's the usual practice to use the phrases "government funding" and "public funding" interchangeably. (Ours is, after all, a government of, by and for the people.) By suggesting an opposition between the two, the pollsters seem to mean something different by "the public." Their reference to public funding may actually refer to private funding. Or not. Their confusion confuses me.
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