da problem with the trolls of unktehi

on a generally liberal blog i frequent the following comment was made, and from which a debate ensued, fed by conservative trolls who railed against public education essentially from their fundamental belief in racism, classism, and elitism(can we say Randianism). Here is the comment:

How come Bellevue schools are better than Seattle schools, even though Bellevue spends 20% less per student than Seattle?

I read all one hundred comments that followed, and was just as dismayed with the liberals to the extent that not a single poster thought to challenge the context of the initial question at all. The trolls on the other hand ranted and raved about how white upper class education was the hallmark of good citizenship and that it is simply too bad for anyone else, especially the poor and people of color but that is the way it is. The fact that not one person asked the most obvious of all questions is indicative of something in our society that i find hugely frustrating. People no matter who they are, and trolls in particular, would never think to engage in a discussion of particle physics, cosmological theory, molecular bio-chemistry, ethnopharmacology etc. They recognize that unless they are persons focussed in those fields, they should avoid commenting because they acknowledge their own ignorance. Not true with religion or education. Every single person feels absolutely qualified to discuss religion and education issues ad nauseum; they all are magically transformed into experts. Well the above case demonstrates why this is such a huge problem.

How can one school district be better than another school district? Wouldn't it be useful to ask what is meant by the word/term value laden construct symbol "better?" Just what is better about one district than the other? That not one person asked the question immediately presented the group with a shared agreement that this statement is "true" without any degree of ascertaining its veracity or declaring it to be so. A hundred comments all engaged in bitterness and tirades against one another, while never challenging the premise that started it all. All these education "experts" who must KNOW what they know sufficiently to comment and criticize and evaluate material texts based on their own glaringly uninformed opinions. As someone who is actually a professional educator (retired) w/ a Ph.D. in the philosophy of education i do feel comfortable talking about the question. I feel i have sufficient knowledge and experience w/ regard to all of the possible parameters of it. I know what it says and what it intends to mean and how infered within it is a bigotry and zealousness for a partisan political agenda that reeks of increasing ignorance not knowledge. What aggravates me most is that the liberals got sucked into the discussion in the way they did.

As for the question/comment. Better is certainly too loaded of a term to be addressed by any reasonable person but especially by the experts; who of course would never ask such a question in the first place. Do we compare sizeable schools, do we use standardized tests, do we accept that the formulas for compounding the thousands of variables into a set of misleading but manageable quanitifiable function factors---these are but three of the hundreds of questions that deserve to be asked. Should we compare economic factors since the question asked about economics?? Should we engage in disaggregation of the data streams to sort out the various means, medians, ranges for which some highly inaccurate but marginally acknowledgeable criteria may exist?? See isn't it too nuts..