If MAV and his ilk have their way, here is what we might soon see:

"Dear Mr. and Mrs. Soon-to-be-Parent:

"The ultrasound of your baby boy shows a serious congenital defect, known as spina bifida. This is accompanied by another serious defect known as hydrocephalus. If born, your child will not walk independently. He will not be able to control his bladder or bowels. He will have urinary tract infections that could destroy his kidneys. He will suffer from infected pressure sores because he will not receive the nerve signals from his feet that are supposed to tell him his feet are rotting off. He might have severe brain damage from the hydrocephalus, or he might merely be learning-disabled. He will need at least two major surgeries within a few days of birth, and perhaps many more.

"Back in the 1990's, many parents chose the option of therapeutic abortion rather that put themselves and the child through this suffering. You don't have that option anymore. Instead, the Republicans who demand that your baby be allowed to be born will then abandon you afterwards. Because of so-call educational reforms, he will not be allowed to attend regular public school. You can, if you can afford it, pay to send him to a specialized private school, or you can have him institutionalized for the rest of his life in a "special school" where he can stare at the walls and drool. After all, his presence in a regular school might be a detriment to the learning of the other kids who are there to get a real education."

Don't you see the irony here? The right wing claims to respect the sanctity of life, yet here we have a representative of the right wing claiming that these handicapped kids must be educated apart from their 'normal' fellows. I guess it's okay to respect the sanctity of life when a cute little baby is at stake, but not okay to respect the right to education when a drooling, smelly, incontinent kid with cerebral palsy is the topic of discussion.

So, you might say... we should go back to the Good Old Days. One-room schoolhouses a la Little House on the Prairie, with local control by the village trustees and local Board of Education. Cute little girls with pigtails suitable for dropping into inkwells; boys with frogs in their pockets, a stern but loving schoolma'am guiding the little tykes through the three R's.

But what else is in this picture? Corporal punishment, for one. Kids were whacked with rulers and beaten with sticks or straps. Students who failed to learn their lessons were made to wear a dunce cap or made to stand up front as a sign of humiliation. A child might repeat the first grade ad infinitum, never learning to read, until he simply dropped out and went home to work on the farm.

And kids really did walk miles in the snow or rain or heat to get to school. If you happened to live too far away, tough. You had to board with a family in town or just forget it and learn your lessons at home. Kids who were handicapped or retarded or mentally ill? FOrget it; they stayed home or were sent off to "asylums". And the troublemakers? They weren't a problem, because they simply left school and ended up who knows where.