Promote quality education — slash funding

The "experts" seem to have overestimated the tax revenues our greedy Nevada bureaucrats will get their mitts on this year by about a billion bucks.

I submit three modest suggestions:

1) Dig up a couple of Nevada state budgets from 1958 and 1908. Not much need to examine the actual dollar amounts under the various headings, since the 2008 dollar is worth about 2 to 3 cents in 1908 dollars. (But the inflation rate is only 2.2 percent; I heard it from a government "expert" so I know it's true.)

Instead, just compare the headings with this year's proposed budget -- the names of the state departments, divisions, offices and programs. Cross out any headings from the 2008 budget that did not appear in the 1958 budget. After all, Nevada was a relatively happy and prosperous place in 1958, wasn't it? Do you remember anyone back in 1958 squawking that Nevada "didn't have enough government"?

Zero out the budgets of all the departments, divisions, offices, and programs you've just crossed out. Close them. Auction off their buildings and equipment.

Now take 10 percent of the money you just saved and allocate it to the office of the state attorney general, with instructions to use it to pro-actively sue the federal government in the U.S. Supreme Court under the 10th Amendment, demanding that the federal government be barred from using any means whatever to buffalo us into restoring any of that unnecessary and harmful spending -- or (failing that) that the court at least order the federals to pay the ful costs of any restored programs.

If that doesn't get spending back within current cash flow, repeat the process, using the 1908 budget.

For the record, once again, I don't believe the government schools can be "reformed," since they're producing a dumbed down peasant class trained to jeer in unison, eagerly ridiculing the objections of the still-awake remnant ("citing the words of dead white slave owners!") as the G-men systematically strip away our liberties "for our own protection" -- precisely as these schools were designed to.

America will steadily lose its leadership in one domain after another till the government schools are abandoned and we go back to the system of allowing parents to provide for their own children's education which prevailed pretty much through the Civil War.

(Yes, slaves were an unfortunate exception. I have a firm position on slavery. I'm against it. Those who favor a personal income tax and mandatory government schooling may want to keep in mind that they're actually endorsing forms of slavery and involuntary servitude.)

But if the governor is really looking for some big savings, here are two more solutions he could try, answering those who argue that mere "across-the-board" cuts show a lack of "vision" and "leadership":

2) If you harbor and give aid and comfort to a culprit who any reasonable person would suspect of being a lawbreaker, you're an "accessory after the fact." No one is authorized to use our tax money to commit this crime, and any court ordering anyone to commit this crime must be defied. Start demanding proof of legal residency for all children enrolling in Nevada's government schools. This single step could reduce schooling costs by 20 percent or more. Those who seek to help these children should be encouraged to endow scholarships for them at private schools ... in their home countries.

3) After children in Nevada's government schools complete the second grade, test them on the basic academics needed to do third grade work. Also test to see if they're qualified to move on to fourth or fifth grade.

Promote those who pass. Allow those who have mastered higher-level material to skip ahead as much as two grades. Those who fail must be held back to repeat the second grade. Warn their parents that if they can't master the material after two years, they'll be expelled: "You've used up your chance at a free, tax-funded education; good luck elsewhere."

Repeat at the end of each year.

After the eighth grade, any child whose test results (on real academic subjects, not Politically Correct gibberish) show reasonable potential to complete a college prep course may advance to high school. Those whose test scores fall into a "maybe" range get to choose for themselves. Those whose grades and scores say "no way" get diverted into a two-year vocational course designed to help them choose and qualify as apprentices in any of a number of respectable trades.

A small percentage of children, determining that they can earn their freedom in as little as six years, will apply themselves, pass their high school graduation exams at 12 or 13, and receive their diplomas. The taxpayers will have saved 50 percent of the cost of their schooling, and the kids -- still bright and eager -- will not have been bogged down in a stultifying morass, marking time as teachers fruitlessly cajole the sluggards to stop goofing around.

The size of Nevada's high school classes would likely be reduced by half, at a vast financial savings, meantime setting college preparatory students free to once again advance academically at a rate comparable to the rest of the developed world.

Far from being a radical proposal, this would match educational practice in most of this country before 1950 -- and in most of the developed world, to this day.

Who will squawk loudest at this modest proposal? The very educrats who complain about not being able to focus on their academic lessons under the current madhouse regime.

Why, "holding kids back" would devastate their precious "self-esteem," while allowing kids to "skip ahead" would devastate all the educrats' carefully crafted schemes of "socialization"!

Funny. Given how quickly "socialization" always trumps rapid academic progress, you have to wonder why the teachers' union isn't called the "Nevada State Socialization Association"; why the biennial tax allocation for schools isn't called the "Socialization Funding Bill"; why Gov. Gibbons doesn't proudly proclaim himself "The Socialization Governor."

Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Review-Journal and author of the novel "The Black Arrow." See www.vinsuprynowicz.com/.