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Lawyers say that when the law is on your side, pound the law; when the facts are on your side, pound the facts; but when neither is on your side, pound the table. In education the rule seems to be that when neither the law nor the facts are on your side, pound your opponent.

Criticism of the public schools or teachers unions, however soundly based, is attacked as "bashing" but rarely do critics resort to the personal abuse to which they are subjected.

Arkansas Gov. Mick Huckabee has written that those who disagree with the National Education Association (NEA) have been termed "congenital reactionaries," "dangerous witch hunters," "wayward dogma peddlers," and "vitriolic race haters."

Former NEA President Keith Geiger has said school choice advocates are "voucher pushers." Executive Director Don Cameron has termed the idea "corrupt," "wrong-headed," and "un-American."

One Pennsylvania state representative suggested the Catholic Church supports vouchers so it can get money to pay off pedophilia lawsuits. Another said vouchers would permit the KKK to use tax dollars to fund "Hate High."

Columnist Molly Ivins described voucher supporters as "fruitcakes unlimited, flat-earthers, creationists..." North Carolina Gov. Jim Hunt said vouchers are like "leeches." Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA) said "Republicans in Congress should stop acting like plantation masters," when school choice was proposed for the District of Columbia. He has it backward. Plantation masters decide for others, his view of government's role. Those who favor vouchers respect the public's ability to make their own decisions.

Former U.S. Secretary of Education Richard Riley said vouchers would result in "balkanizing" public education and could threaten American democracy. David Berliner, Dean of Education at Arizona State University said vouchers could resemble "ethnic cleansing" in Kosovo. Some public school superintendents in Bucks County, also used this slur. Like Sen. Kennedy, using words to mean only what he wants them to mean, a Pennsylvania school superintendent said permitting people to choose a school for their children would create a "Hitlerian regime."

His idea of democracy is apparently to give the public no options.

Who are some of these terrible people to whom such labels are applied?

The late Hubert Humphrey? As long ago as 1968 he favored giving parents a tax credit so they could send their children to private schools.

The late Sen. Patrick Daniel Moynihan (D-NY)? He favored school choice "long before it was either conservative or liberal," and said, "if it prevails only as a conservative cause, it will have been a great failure of American liberalism..."

Colin Powell? Interviewed by the NEA, he forthrightly said "I support using vouchers and seeing where it takes us..." Is he one of the "congenital reactionaries," "dangerous witch hunters," or "vitriolic race haters"?

Cleveland's former Mayor, Michael R. White, where Ohio instituted a school choice program a decade ago? He said "We've got to stop having a knee-jerk opposition to school vouchers..."

Wisconsin state Rep. Annette "Polly" Williams, who sponsored the state school choice plan in Milwaukee which now serves 8,000 students? A liberal Democrat, she twice was state chairman of the Jesse Jackson for President campaign. Is she a racist? A plantation master?

A national survey of 2,732 teachers found 53% believing "schools would be better if students could attend the school of their choice." Opinion surveys consistently find that a majority of Blacks, Hispanics, and low-income Americans favor vouchers.

If these are "fruit-cakes," "voucher vultures," "racists," "communists," or members of the "radical right," public schools are in real trouble. One might ask where were these dangerous people educated?

The only hope for success of defenders of the status quo in schooling is to face the issues and improve the system. Of course, this assumes that reforming the present system is possible.

Among other evidence, it was the late Al Shanker, president of the American Federation of Teachers, who said, "It is time to admit that public education...more resembles a communist economy than our own market economy"

The communist system proved incapable of reforming itself. It had to be replaced.

Could Shanker possibly have had that in mind for public education?

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"It might well be recalled that the state's obligations in education are to individual children and youth; these obligations are not to a school system or to educational institutions." Virgil C. Blum, "Freedom of Choice in Education, NY: The Macmillan Co., 1958