School Vouchers = Eating Babies?

Great Debates
1

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The New York Times said:
"Senator Gregg’s measure would permit 10 school districts in 3 states to funnel federal dollars to low-income students in failing public schools. That money ? a total of $50 million for next year ? could be used to help pay for private school tuition. The children would be selected through a lottery and discrimination would be prohibited.

Mr. Gregg called it a modest proposal."

Is this guy aware of what he just said?

Swift’s "A Modest Proposal is an infamous essay about the poor Irish feeding their excess babies to the rich for food thus easing their poverty, the food shortage, and overcrowding. It is believed to be satire. By calling his bill a modest proposal, he has equated it in at least a few minds with eating poor children. hmm.

2

Well, to my liberal eye, school vouchers are a modest proposal. I doubt, however, that Sen. Gregg, being a Republican from New Hampshire, has the same mindset as I.

3

This one will probably do better in Great Debates. Off you go!

4

According to the recent NAEP exams, 60% [IIRC] of Black 4th graders in the US are illiterate or nearly so.

Maybe this joke is not so funny.

5

This was not intended to be a debat on School Vouchers. There are plenty of threads on that already. This was meant to be a thread pointing out how a stupid congress critter equated a cause he supported with cannibalism. However since the moderator saw fit to make it into a debate, So Be It.

How do school vouchers compare to the original modest proposal?

6

They don’t.

7

Y’know, maybe he meant “A Modest Proposal” to mean, y’know… a proposal… that’s modest…

Wouldn’t it be a crazy world if words meant what they mean?

:smiley:

8

I concur with SPOOFE - and to back this up I note that “modest proposal” is NOT capitalized in the quote.

A humorous observation, lee, but I think that you’re reading a wee bit too much into it.

But maybe schools should serve babies for lunch in their cafeteria, thus neatly encapsulating both versions.

pan

9

Additionally, ten bucks says that, in the history of communication, Swift’s was NOT the “original modest proposal”.

10

Nah - I reckon that involved something to do with an apple, IIRC.

pan

11

A Google search for “modest proposal” turns up 229,000 hits. Only about 2/3 of these deal with Swift’s A Modest Proposal. The other “Modest Proposals” deal with totally unrelated subjects, including, but not limited to:
computer programming, political science, Congressional control of the media, the history of obsolete communications media, Apple Computer, and the China spy plane crisis.

I think you’re reading too much into it, Lee. :wink:

12

I’m suddenly curious Ducky. If there are 229 thousand links, how on earth did you ascertain that about 2/3 of them were Swift-related? Did you sample from the 1st, 6th, 11th etc. google pages or something?

pan

13

Kabbes:

It would be pretty simple.

First search term: “‘modest proposal’”
Results: 229,000

Second search term: “‘modest proposal’ NOT swift”
Results 76,333

I don’t if that’s how DDG did it, but I do searches like this all the time.

14

On reading SPOOFE’s speculation that Swift’s was NOT the “original modest proposal”, kabbes wrote:

Oh no! Now this thread is going to turn into a creation-vs.-evolution debate! HIT THE DIRT!! :eek:

15

Tracer…

As long as it doesn’t become another Gun Debate or a Mac vs. PC debate, it’s all hunky-dory with me.

16

Well, a Macintosh is a kind of an apple…

17

And I, for one, think that the history of apple-abuse makes the issue of bow-and-arrow control one of the most important issues of the day.

18

Does this stat really apply to what Sen. Gregg proposed, though? The miniority population of NH is a mere 8% of the state, and this is all minorities of all ages. I don’t think that school vouchers would make an impact in my state on those figures either way.

19

And Lee, A Modest Proposal is just not ‘believed to be satire.’ That is like saying that The Onion is believed to be satire. There is no uncertainty about this whatsoever. Some teachers fail to make that clear.

20

Actually, Manda Jo, I said believed because there is some disagreement in the scholarly community regarding that very fact. Very interesting reading.