WITH ALL DUE RESPECT FOR LIBERTARIANS, BUT...

By Juan Montoya

Being, as we are in South Texas, in the bottom rung of just about every socioeconomic indicator related to quality of life issues, it rankles me to see the Brownsville Herald once again rub our noses in the dirt by publishing articles such as Mark Lansbaum's defense of Freedom Newspapers founder R.C. Hoiles and his extremist views on public education.

Most of us believe that the opportunity to get an education somehow levels the playing field for those on the bottom. All questions of affirmative action aside, many of our parents still have a deep abiding faith that if only their offspring get a chance to get an education they will be better off than they were.

Not Lansbaum, or apparently, Freedom Newspapers.

In the Tuesday, Nov. 24, issue of the Brownsville Herald, this editorial writer basically says that public education is a bad thing. That public education has been foisted by the bad old government upon freedom loving individuals without their approval. Further, he says that the government has basically put the gun to the head of those that disagree with public education and forced them to pay (though taxes) for an educational system that shouldn't exist.

Let's look at our situation and where Brownsville Herald publisher R. Daniel Cavazos decided to publish this article.

Education levels are generally low in our area. The 2000 United States Census reported that 33 percent of the area’s adults, 25 years or older, had less than a ninth-grade education compared to 11 percent for the entire United States.

Poverty levels for the region are high. In 2000 some 35 percent of the population lived below the federal poverty level, compared to 12 percent for the United States. Hidalgo County has the highest poverty level in the entire United States, with 40 percent of all residents living below federal poverty level in 2000.

In the Brownsville Independent School District, where almost all students are Latino, the graduation rate is not much over half of students—53 percent. For ELLs, it's 27 percent.

Nearly 30 percent of Texas border residents have incomes below the poverty level, compared to 12 percent nationwide. Unemployment rates in the Valley range from 9-14 percent compared to single-digit levels for the state.

But aside from that, let's look at a couple,of facts that make this stance so hypocritical and, dare I say it, downright cynical.

The Brownsville Herald doesn't think twice about accepting advertising from this "gun-run" system of public education. In fact, its advertising managers seem to say that the more the better. They'll publish anything school lunch menus to school board meeting notices.

There's even a section – filled with district advertising – called Newspapers in Education. They even go into the public schools and promote school newspapers to hook students into reading the Brownsville Herald.

So what's with the purist conservative drivel about doing away with public schools because they intrude into an individual's liberties by taxing him/her for something that government shouldn't do? Perhaps they think that only those that can want – i.e., or can afford – an education should get one?

Ask Timo Hinojosa – one of the first Mexican-American members of the BISD – when children in the public schools would get schoolbooks based on the money their parents could pay. He'll tell you that in some schools in our poorest sections of the city such as Southmost and Las Prietas kids would get only parts of the texts, while in the well-to-do sections they would get the whole book.

Ah, Freedom!

Remember the National Defense Educational Act that pumped money into the public schools after Russia sent the first satellite into space in 1957? As a result, we met Kennedy's goal of putting a man on the moon before the Russkies, and even before our own stated schedule.

And if they're for real, have all Freedom Newspapers employees been required to forgo public education as a requirement of being employed there?

Or, for that matter, isn't Freedom benefiting from hiring people that have been educated by the larger mass as its reporters and editors, never mind its executives?

This type of editorial garbage is not only eccentric and in bad faith against our poor, worn-down population, it is downright cruel. It attacks the only avenue that a poverty-stricken population has to propel itself and its new generation out of this morass.

It's not like the people of South Texas haven't paid their dues. Check the casualty lists in our wars. Check how many federal ports of entry in the region contribute to the national treasury.

Purism may be good. And I'm sure local Libertarians Fred Drew and Ben Neece don't share these views. But in our context, to advocate mass ignorance in defense of individual rights in face of the our current cycle of poverty and misery is dishonest and insincere.