8/08/2012

In Brief: Bobby Jindal Gives School Money to Self-Proclaimed Prophet:
So, last week, the Rude Pundit wrote about Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal's scheme to make church-related schools richer. It's a voucher program, by gum. And it means that any meth trailer with desks can call itself a school, and, if it can convince meth-addicted parents to sent their kids there, it can get state money per student. It's a conservative edumacation miracle.

And, it seems, one of the places that over $350,000 of Louisiana residents' tax and lottery dollars is going is the Light City Christian Academy in New Orleans. It's run by Leonard Lucas, Jr. On the webpage for the adult education school he also leads, he is "Apostle Leonard Lucas, Jr., who walks in the fullness of his calling and wears the mantle of an Apostle and Prophet." That would be his "School of the Prophets." Students there must "yield" to his teachings.

Yes, education in Louisiana is fucked beyond fucked. There's Delhi Charter School, which is finally getting sued for its seven year-old policy of forcing female students to take pregnancy tests and then making pregnant students receive schooling at home. There's the insanity that's being taught at the many evangelical schools that have received state money. So your child can learn such useful information as "But instead of this world unification ushering in an age of prosperity and peace, as most globalists believe it will, it will be a time of unimaginable human suffering as recorded in God's Word. The Anti-christ will tightly regulate who may buy and sell."

It wasn't ever a great education system, but the Rude Pundit and all of his friends went to public schools in Louisiana, and they're professors and lawyers and writers and more. In other words, it didn't damage us. And he had some fine, fine teachers (and some shitty ones, as we all did, everywhere).

A couple of weeks ago, Mitt Romney praised Jindal's edumacation policies; he has said they are models for the rest of the nation. When the Rude Pundit was home in Louisiana, he mentioned that he thought that Jindal would be Romney's vice-president nominee. "Romney can have him," said a Republican relative, who had voted twice for Jindal. "He's ruining this state."

Note: One other follow-up to something the Rude Pundit wrote about last week. He discussed Rep. Jeff Landry and his opposition to the University of Louisiana creating a minor in LGBT studies. ULL's dean of the College of Liberal Arts noted that it cost no money to add the program, as the classes in it already existed. As rude reader Shane B. pointed out, Landry's response was truly, classically ignorant and insulting (and available only in the print edition of the local paper): "It's just like some intelligentsia or some academia to believe that no resources were used to put this together." At this point, Louisiana deserves such a man representing it.