Sunday, September 02, 2007

PCE Campaign Phrasebook

With the onslaught of Parents for Choice In Education's literature and media buys, here's your handy pocket guide to understanding what they're really saying. For a fun game, say "ding" each time you encounter one of these phrases:

Bureaucrat = An elected public official or staff member under his or her direction who disagrees with PCE.

Innovating Pioneer = An elected public official or staff member under his or her direction who agrees with PCE.

Union = A group of underpaid teachers who apparently wield mind-bending control over students, parents and legislators.

Union Thug = Anyone who belongs to a union who is intelligent and thus a threat.

Liberal = A catch-all term to characterize anyone or anything for which PCE doesn’t like.

Socialist, Communist, Fascist = See Liberal.

Moderate Republican = A Republican who disagrees with PCE and therefore must be removed from office.

Monopoly = Meaningless but effective scare-word describing the fact that public education is indeed run by the public.

Educrat = A principal, superintendant, school board member, or staff member who disagrees with PCE.

Silver Bullet = what Patrick Byrne says he would like to use to shoot the teacher’s union.

Strategic Campaigning = Lying to suit your agenda.

Privatization of Public Education = The ideology embraced by the free-market think-tanks that bankroll voucher initiatives. Extremely unpopular, which is why it’s not in the talking points.

Activist Judges = Ironic phrase describing the conservative Utah Supreme Court after they issued a smack-down on PCE’s attempt to invalidate the petition drive.

School Choice = Manufactured catch-phrase intended to legitimize vouchers by lumping them in with more popular, accountable academic programs (such as charters, magnets, and open enrollment).

Anti-Choice = Someone who supports public schools, private schools, homeschooling, charters, magnets, open enrollment, special-focus schools, and perhaps even vouchers, but who disagrees with the flawed, unaccountable, swiss-cheese voucher bill passed under duress.

Enemy of School Choice = Someone who opposes vouchers.

Government Schools = Public Schools (but it sounds worse when you say “Government Schools”)

Government = The people (but it sounds worse when you say “Government”)

Impartial Analysis on Referendum #1 = Dangerous document produced by the state which proves that vouchers will cost far more than they will save and are at risk for being held unconstitutional.

Liberal Entitlement Program = Any program which grows the size of government—except for vouchers.

6 comments:

Jeremy said...

Your link to the "Impartial Analysis" paper is mucked up a bit. Just letting you know.

Awesome post.

Unknown said...

The links are now fixed - thanks for the heads up!

Anonymous said...

This great!
The perfect soundbite vocabulary of voucher conservatives.

Curtis said...

Great Post.

My only recommended change would be to replace the phrase "say 'ding'" with "take a shot." I know I often need a drink after hearing PCE spew its propaganda.

For those of you that choose not to drink hard stuff, I recommend a Diet Coke - caffeine free of course :)!

Rob said...

Craig, will you consider adding their new catch phrase, "anti-Choice" along with the correct definition?

Anonymous said...

I have two more:

Libertarian terms for a bake sale


Proactive Market Forces:

a) A libertarian approach to funding education

b) use a bake sale to raise funds that the state should be providing



Within:

Schools shouldn’t rely on the state for additional funding – they should look within themselves to find it.

Definition: Want new school books – hold a bake