Posted on 06/22/2008 9:46:41 AM PDT by wintertime
Reform Three: Give Parents Real Choice In Education
Mr. Norquist makes the case for reform in a few compelling sentences:
"America in the third millennium runs its public-school system as a cross between the Soviet Union's steel industry - a monopoly - and Socrates chatting with a handful of students under a tree, which is by definition 2,000-year-old technology.
"Ignoring technological change in communications is inexplicably silly. Running something as important as the education of our children through a monopoly bureaucracy that since the 1960s is also subject to labor-union rules is difficult to understand."
Even Albert Shanker, the former president of the American Federation of Teachers, admitted the schools are making no progress because the system resembles the bureaucratic, monopolistic communist economy rather than our free market economy.
More and more informed critics agree that it is about time to introduce the full force of competition and the full force of our miracle-producing market economy to the failing school system. Give parents and children a choice by taking the tax dollars paying for public education, and letting parents go to the schools that best serve their children's needs. This would introduce choice and competition, and even pressure the public school systems to improve.
This movement is now well underway but should be accelerated. There are now 3,000 charter schools, there are two million children now being home-schooled, and 6.5 million in private schools.
This brings violent objections from public school backers. But if they think there system is so good, they should welcome competition. The truth is that opponents of school choice know that the public schools are now too often producing a shoddy product that parents and teachers would run from if given the chance.
The stunning hypocrisy of school choice opponents may be the most forceful advocate for school choice. Take the champion of phony hypocrites, Al Gore, who said, "If I was a parent of a child who went to a inner-city school that was failing, I might be for vouchers [to use at a school of one's choice], too." At the same time, he sent his children to elite private schools. Bill Clinton and John Edwards also demonstrated what Mr. Norquist labeled "stunning hypocrisy." Perhaps that is characteristic of Democratic candidates for the presidency, with one Sen. Obama being another prime example.
And here's Mr. Norquist's clinching argument: "Imagine turning the present government monopoly K-12 system with 3 million teachers and 5.6 million total employees into a competitive educational marketplace with teachers and schools competing to provide the best product at the lowest cost. What if we treated education as seriously as we treat every other industry in America and freed it up to serve consumers and respect providers? We would have the best education system in the world. And we cannot say that today. What are we waiting for, another betrayed generation?"
Sorry! Parents have the option to **ransom** their children from government school police action by paying a **"Freedom of Conscience and Religious Belief Tax"**. This **"Freedom of Conscience and Religious Belief Tax"" is commonly known as extra expenses in school payments in the form of private school tuition and home school expenses. This is on top of the government directed, collected, and mandated school taxes.
Even if parents do ransom their children from the government, they are still under police threat to pay taxes for the official government religious, cultural, and political belief preached by the government priests and priestesses ( aka: teachers) in the government indoctrination temples.
“Even if parents do ransom their children from the government, they are still under police threat to pay taxes for the official government religious, cultural, and political belief preached by the government priests and priestesses ( aka: teachers) in the government indoctrination temples.”
Well put. Thanks for posting.
Sometimes I feel like the child in the story “The Emperor Has No Clothes!”
*”The emperor has no clothes!”: Parents don't “opt-out” of government schools. They **ransom** their children!
*The emperor has no clothes!”: Government employees aren't “teachers”. They are priests and priestesses of the government religion of the godless worldview of atheism!
*The emperor has no clothes!”: No school can be religiously neutral, and government schools preach religion too!
*The emperor has no clothes!”: Government indoctrination centers look like prisons. Children, who have committed no crime, are treated like prisoners and have no more First Amendment Rights than real prisoners do.
.....etc.
It is time to change the language.
Many of these women are are public assistance, or are underemployed, and can't afford the cost of home schooling.
What do you suggest that they do? Here is the break down by race of the illegitimacy crisis we have in this country.
Also you need to keep in mind the USA is the only country in the world that offers public education to ALL its citizens.
Now you can either sit around and whine, or you can get elected to a school board and start making changes.
How about getting a degree in education and starting your own charter school, or see if you can work your way up to an administrative position and make changes from the inside? http://www.catholicculture.org/library/view.cfm?recnum=1446 Childbearing out-of-wedlock and absence of fathers varies greatly between racial/ethnic groups.The highest rate was non-Hispanic Blacks, among whom 69.4 percent of births were out-of-wedlock. American Indians have the second highest rate at 58.7 percent, followed by Hispanics at 40.92 percent. Among non-Hispanic whites, 21.54 percent of births are out of wedlock, and Asians/Pacific islanders have the lowest rate with 15.64 percent of births being out-of-wedlock. http://www.childtrendsdatabank.org/indicators/75UnmarriedBirths.cfm Large racial/ethnic differences exist in the percentage of births to unmarried women, with non-Hispanic white women and Asian or Pacific Islander women being much less likely to have a nonmarital birth. In 2005, 69.5 percent of all births to non-Hispanic black women, 63.3 percent of births of American Indian or Alaskan native woman, and 47.9 percent of births to Hispanic women occurred outside of marriage, compared with 25.4 percent for non-Hispanic white women and 16.2 percent for Asian or Pacific Islander women (preliminary estimates).
Many can't afford the cost or even worse, the OPPORTUNITY COST of home-schooling.
I recently posted this education article. Since those managing the Public Education Ping list do not ping my posts, I am pinging you directly.
If you do not want to be contacted *please** let me know, and I will remove your name.
I surely wouldn’t wish to bother you, but I don’t want you to miss these stories, either. Those managing the Public Education Ping list might fail to notify you due to my being the author of the thread.
I will call this ping list:
“The All Opinions Welcome Government Education Ping List” !
I get a kick out of all this hyperventilating over public schools. My kids went to a public school system that is higher rated than many prepschools. I went to a high school in Chicago that was as good as any prepschool.
Bad parents make bad schools. We moved to our school district because the schools were so good, just like my parents did for me. The free market for good schools already exists. You just have to move to where the good schools are.
Inner city schools will always be horrible, because all of the people who cared about their children moved out at their first chance. Now you have schools consisting og a student population with parents who don’t give a damn.
My state's constitution says that The provision of an adequate public education for the citizens shall be a primary obligation of the State of Georgia.
This means first that the state is required to provide "an adequate" education for all students, but not necessarily "the finest" education possible, although many schools offer extras such as AP courses, and in fact students with good grades can attend community colleges free of charge during their high school years for joint credit.
There are many things in life where "adequate" is free or relatively inexpensive, but models with more features are available. Television comes to mind - one can watch free with rabbit ears, or if you want or need more channels, you can pay to get cable. A basic car can be had relatively cheaply, or one can pay up to hundreds of thousands of dollars for luxury models.
Students in our state get an education provided for them at no charge. If they or there parents prefer other than the basic model, they can pay to "upgrade".
The second point is that since education is a "primary obligation" of my state, it's one of the major things the state government is supposed to do, as agreed on by the citizens who drew up and ratified the state's constitution.
Bingo.....you just can't get that simple concept through to some people.
If I had it to do over again with my kids, I wouldn't change much. We live in a Republican stronghold for Frank Wolf, and the conservative values are reflected in the schools. No where as near as conservative as I would prefer, but probably about right for my Kerry loving neighbors
As I see it, it is the union concept of equal education that is the cause of the failure of public school education. The social and religious issues are tangential.
Before the unions concept of equal education was forced on the local schools, the schools tracked the kids according the goals the kids had for themselves. They had a college prep track, a business track (book keeping and clerical skills), and industrial arts track, and a general track.
By keeping sight of a goal, the teachers were more able to keep kids motivated, and grouping kids with similar interests kept them from being distracted from that goal.
As I have suggested before, we need to do an end around on the teachers’ union and the only way that I can see to do that is to provide a management level of teacher and schools that are open year around.
Can you ping the PS list? (My list is on another comp) This is a pretty good discussion of public schools
This list is for intellectual discussion of articles and issues related to public education (including charter schools) from the preschool to university level. Items more appropriately placed on the “Naughty Teacher” list, “Another reason to Homeschool” list, or of a general public-school-bashing nature will not be pinged.
If you would like to be on or off this list, please freepmail Amelia, Gabz, Shag377, or SoftballMominVa
I think a lot of the problems can be directly traced to the social and cultural upheavals that took place in the United States in the 1960s and thereabouts.
So if things are wrong now (and IMHO they are) where did they go wrong? Where did things get off track? If we can trace the beginnings of the turn, maybe that is the secret in preventing a disaster of turning into a 3rd world, Balkanized country.
The teachers’ union hired Saul Alinsky to do the organizing for them around 1970. That is when the problems started in earnest. No one knows if the social upheaval of the times was responsible or if the socialist, unionist movement was just reaching it’s peak. I tend to think that it was both.
It wasn’t a government fabrication that the communists had infiltrated the anti-war movement. They are still there in full control. Just look at the relaship between the World Workers Party and the anti-Iraq war movement.
I remember the union takeover of my high school (1960-1964). My very best teachers -Mr Palmer (biology) {who was a GI in WWII whose unit was the first to enter one of the concentration camps and felt free to tell us about it) Herr Neumann, my German teacher and several others whose names slip my mind, were pressured to conform and when they did not, were actually subjected to hearings , on trumped up lies , at the school board meetings and summarily drummed out of their positions.
In the meantime, thinly veiled socialists, like Mr Jennings in social studies were celebrated and given the spotlight in combined class lectures. I remember his favorite tactic was to hold up some socialist type book, quote from it, and say something like , "Even a known Conservative" (the socialist author) believes so and so. Whenever he was challenged in the most minor of ways, the standard leftist tactic of name calling, constant talking and ridicule was employed.
I believe public education, as presently run, is the enemy of a free people and purposefully meant to be against traditional America.
Nam Vet
Sex outside of marriage was increasingly condoned, which has led to some of the breakdown of the family we've seen, as have the welfare programs which meant women weren't as dependent on men for support. Equal rights in the job market also contributed to this. Divorce also became easier to obtain, and more children are now growing up without both parents in the home.
Since women had more job opportunities, bright women were less likely to become teachers, since "traditional womens' jobs" paid less and had less status. Also, women were more likely to work, which meant that more children were being raised by daycare and schools instead of their parents (who were sometimes too tired to "parent" when the children got home from school).
In the south, at least, if schools grouped children by ability, minority children were more likely to be in the 'lower' groups, and courts found that this was de facto segregation and discouraged or outlawed the practice. This meant that instead of bright children moving faster and slower children getting extra help, all tended to be taught at the same level.
Parents brought lawsuits about prayer and Bible-reading in the schools, which meant that these practices were outlawed. Parents also brought lawsuits about student discipline, dress codes, and other practices, which has changed the school environment radically.
I could go on & on, but you get the idea....I don't think we can point to any one thing as the problem with the schools, but I think a lot of the problems began with the cultural and societal changes back in the 1960s.
Here’s the mistake you make:
The women are on public assistance because they have an illegitimate child.
Here’s the truth:
They chose to have an illegitimate child so they could get on public assistance.
“Take down the birdfeeder”
and you’ll have fewer birds crapping on your porch and “cursing” you for not feeding them enough.
Exactly right. The best way to improve any product or service is through competition. Any school that is afraid of losing funding to free choice deserves to lose that funding unless and until they improve the content and quality of their teaching to a level where they are the best option, the best use of the tax dollars. Even though I'm a public school teacher, I'm not afraid of losing students (and the funding for teachers) to competitors. If another school is doing a better job than my school, we deserve to lose - because that means the kids who go elsewhere win, which is my top priority and should be a priority at every school.
The far left parents are the ones that brought down the rules. They saw it as a way to break the control of society over the young people. The woman who brought the law suit against Bible reading, did it in a conservative Republican school district, where she had almost no support.
The real "flower power" was on the college campuses, where it was nursed and incubated by the cultist communist professors. College kids rarely have an original thought. The fear of being drafted to serve in Vietnam gave the professors an opening to draw the kids into their nihilist view of America. Modern nihilism best describes what happened to the kids in the late sixties, but it happened to them, not because of them. They had no real power, and what they had died out when McGovern lost.
You don't have to group kids by ability, you group them according to their goals, college prep, business, industrial arts, etc. No one can object in anyway to that type of grouping. The courses are tailored to meet the requirements of the final goal. A college student needs a different type of English course than a clerical worker, a car mechanic, or a computer tech, and most times the kids are grateful for the difference in lesson plans.
Degradation of the culture and social mores has always been part of the communist goals for the US. You should take a look at them, they were once read into the Congressional record.
Communists Goals for America (as listed in the Congressional record)
The real interesting ones start at number 15.
Norquist makes me very nervous with his political Islam connections, but that is one fine list of reforms.
I’ve signed up my firstborn for private kindergarten. My property taxes (mostly going to public schools) would pay most of her tuition.
Now that I see the cost of double billing for educating the same child, now I see why so many who want to use private schools can’t - it’s expensive!
Not only must you ( under threat of police bullets) support the government atheistic temples, (mis-named “schools”), you must also pay extra to ransom your child from the government's iron grip.
I have a name for private school tuition: “Freedom of Conscience Tax”, or “Freedom of Religion Tax”!
A religiously neutral school can not exist. The religion in our government schools is atheistic, godless, materialism. The priests and priestesses go by the name of “Teacher”.
What I should have said in the first paragraph of my post was that we had dress codes and behavioral standards that wouldn’t be found outside of the YFK compound, today. Well, they weren’t that bad, but they measured the length of our skirts and forbid sweaters without a blouse under them and things like that. oh, no teased hair, too.
Marxist/Communist parents needed the help of the courts. They did *not** do this through the democratic process.
The woman who brought the law suit against Bible reading, did it in a conservative Republican school district, where she had almost no support.
Excellent example! Madeline Murray O'Hare had **no** support. She succeeded because of the courts. This is why elections matter...A LOT! Who gets appointed as a judge makes a very big difference in the lives of many people.
What the courts neglected to examine was that a school **without** God is just as religious in content and consequences as a school **with** God. Why?
There are only two ways to teach:
One is with a godless religious worldview, and the other is with a God-centered worldview. BOTH are religious in content, point of view, and in consequences for the children and our nation. There can be no compromise. It is either one ( godless) or the other ( God-centered).
The government school was forced by the courts to choose the godles religious worldview. A god-less religious agenda is no more religiously neutral than a God-centered one.
There is no possible way for the government school to resolve the conundrum. No matter what it does it will be establishing the religious belief of some citizens and trashing the religious belief of others.
The real "flower power" was on the college campuses, where it was nursed and incubated by the cultist communist professors.
The communist indoctrination of youth by "cultist" communist teachers and professors in our government "schools", colleges, and universities has been on-going for some decades now. Thankfully, most young people when they work in the free market soon see the elegant beauty, efficiency, and profound fairness of capitalism. It is for this reason we are not a communist dictatorship today. There are still enough people who work for, and personally own, private businesses. ( Also, we have people like Rush Limbaugh who educate the working public.)
You don't have to group kids by ability, you group them according to their goals, college prep, business, industrial arts, etc. No one can object in anyway to that type of grouping.
Have you ever noticed the many advertisements for summer camps? Have you taken note of their **amazing** variety and offerings? Private summer camps demonstrate how the free market groups children by **interest**!
There are French camps, sports camps of all kinds, theater camps, space camps, girl and boy camps, and camps for children with every imaginable type of disease or disability. There are even camps for children with behavior problems.
There are two reasons for privatizing all education. The first is that the free market would group children by interest.
The second reason for privatizing all education is the fundamental and irresolvable conflict between government schools, the First Amendment, establishment of religious worldview, and freedom of conscience. Government schools are a First Amendment and freedom of conscience nightmare! This conundrum can **NOT** be fixed.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I am amazed!
You are aware that I originated the thread?
LOL!
Funny way to put but true! :)
You forgot two other tactics: Constant red herrings, and strawmen arguments.
Having a conversation with a Liberal/Marxist/Communist is like chasing a roach around the kitchen table!
I believe public education, as presently run, is the enemy of a free people and purposefully meant to be against traditional America.
I absolutely and heartily AGREE!
Marxism/Communism is our nation's **most** serious threat! It isn't Islamofascism. Geeze! Didn't Katrina prove that we can survive a nuclear suit case bomb?
Schools are the Marxist/Communist's **most** important and powerful weapon. Unfortunately they and their Useful Idiots have nearly complete and total control of the schools. Freedom will **not** survive if the Marxist/Communists succeed in indoctrinating the next generation of voters.
By the way, isn't the economic ignorance of the government teachers posting on Free Republic utterly astonishing? Their Marxist slip peaks through even while they claim to be conservatives.
I take it you have never heard about the Supreme court decision called Brown Vs Board of Education. That is where the concept of "Equal education" came from.
I agree with you about tracking and I am in favor of it, to a degree, but lets remember that the responsibility lies with the parents.
Instead of demanding that standards remain high they:
1) Wanted their precious children to "feel good about themselves"
2) Told professional educators that they had no clue what they were talking about with discipline.
3) Pushed for the dumbing down of curriculum.
4) Instead of getting on a school board to maintain standards (Like my father did, They pull their kids out, home school them, and then throw rocks at those of us in the trenches trying to make a difference.
Personally I think Wintertime and her ilk owe all of us an apology, She makes wild claims and does not support them with either evidence or facts.
I also feel that someone needs to tell her straight out that fanatics like her give the real conservatives a bad name.
Great minds really do think alike
They chose to have an illegitimate child so they could get on public assistance.
“Take down the birdfeeder” and you’ll have fewer birds crapping on your porch and “cursing” you for not feeding them enough.
I have seen it go both ways.
I think it started out as a support system, and evolved into a way of life.
I had a foster daughter (Caucasian) that couldn't wait to get on the welfare roll with a little one.
This very refreshing to read from a government school teachers. It shows that you are likely a very capable teacher. ( Your students are lucky to have you.)
However....There is a serious and fundamental flaw with government schools: The can NOT be religiously, culturally, or politically neutral. It is impossible.
By law government schools must teach from a godless point of view. This has religious, cultural, and political consequences just as much as teaching from a God-centered point of view. This conundrum can not be resolved. No matter what the government school does it is **establishing the religious worldview of some and trashing the traditions of others.
Government schools can **not** be brought into compliance with all the provisions of the First Amendment!Government schools are a freedom of conscience and First Amendment abomination!
Maybe she's showing us her true colors. I have my doubts about anyone who would consider putting her children in a Summerhill-type school anyway.
I used the word INVESTIGATE! I did **not** say CONSIDER!
Big difference!
How can I defend a strawman argument of your creation? Attempting to do so would be like chasing a roach around the kitchen table. There would be no end to it. There would strawman and red herrings littered everywhere.
There are already, but you're the one scattering them.
My greater concerns were safety and health than indoctrination.
My greater concerns were safety and health than indoctrination.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Same principle but different reasons.
You had to **ransom** your child from the unsafe and unhealthy government grip.
In your case I would call your private school tuition, combined with your already high government school taxes, a “Freedom for Health and Safety Tax”!
I disagree with your premises.
1. Contrary to what the anti-Christian zealots who have taken over a large part of public discourse claim, there is no requirement that government entities be actively hostile to religion. I am openly pro-religion in the classroom, to the extent that such a position can be taken without interfering with my professional responsibility to use every moment of time to teach math productively, and there is no conflict between that stance and either the First Amendment or my duties as a teacher.
2. To the extent that a few of my students have religious or moral views I will not support, I am entirely comfortable remaining silent on those topics. It is not my place as a teacher to openly challenge the values of parents with whom I disagree, but I can openly support the free exercise of religion. So far, no parent has objected, and I doubt that any will.
Government schools can **not** be brought into compliance with all the provisions of the First Amendment!Government schools are a freedom of conscience and First Amendment abomination!
Why not? (A) There is no established state religion in my country, my state, or my classroom. (B) I do not interfere in any way with the free exercise of religion in my classroom, except to the extent that I control unnecessary noise as a whole. Points A and B comprise my entire obligation under the First Amendment, and I have no difficulty reconciling both. If students wish to pray before a test, as quite a few do silently, I consider that a good thing. If a group wishes to pray aloud without disrupting other students, and they arrange to arrive quickly so that they conclude their prayer well before the start of the class, I again have no reason to interfere and will not do so. I see no abomination, no conflict, and no problem.
I do not teach the Bible to my students during class, just as I would not want another teacher to take that role with my kids. There are far too many perspectives on what the Bible and other religious scriptures are supposed to say and mean for that to be appropriate, not to mention that there is more than enough matherial in the curriculum to fill all of our time.
Mr. Norquist’s sums up well the problem—BUT considering his Islamic ties, what needs to be carefully kept in mind is how any solution he or others might suggest might FURTHER benefit anti-USA education efforts here on our soil, whether or not at our expense.
“Mr. Norquist’s sums up well the problem—BUT........”
Norquist is a master at summing up the problems, but some of his solutions scare me, like the one below from the article. Efficiency and good education forgets it’s goal and it’s heart when you turn it into a ‘business’. That’s why throwing all that money at it doesn’t work. A capitalistic approach isn’t the answer to everything. Capitalism, like republicanism, environmentalism, and a world of other well meaning ‘good things’ can be perverted when pushed to it’s extreme. The more you know of Grover the more you know how extreme he truly is. Remember, Grover sees unbridled illegal immigration as a ‘market based’ economic solution.
Norquist: “What if we treated education as seriously as we treat every other industry in America and freed it up to serve consumers and respect providers? We would have the best education system in the world.”
(wintertime, I am pinging you because I am going to attempt to summarize several assertions that you have made regarding Christian school teachers and public schooling)
RogerD,
Wintertime has repeatedly stated that YOU, as a Christian within the public school system, are a problem.
If, within your classroom, you mention your religion, you’re just attempting to throw a bit of **salt and light*** into your teaching without truly speaking from a God Centered point of view.
She says that makes you ***SNEAKY***
(additionally, you are representing the Christian faith as sneaky and weak, and she says, “who would want to join that religion?”)
She also says that if you were to do the right thing and profess your faith and act on it to the extent that you should (as a Christian) then you would likely get fired.
If you won’t do so, you’re just collecting a paycheck, and that makes you ***GREEDY***
Additionally, if you are not actively and flagrantly protesting anti-Christian practices, (like homosexuality) you are a child abuser.
If you do anything LESS than quit or flamingly protest, (for which you would likely be fired) you are a child abuser.
Now, she did not ever say, “You Mosby, are a child abuser”.
Nope, but she does state that people should start asking Christian teachers WHY HAVEN’T YOU BEEN FIRED? WHY HAVEN’T YOU QUIT?
She has asked for me to point SPECIFICALLY to instances where she has said these things to me ***personally***
I cannot since her statements only point to me **in general**. As in “government school teachers”. Or, “Christian Teachers”. Or, “Conservative Teachers”.
I can, however, give numerous examples of the lists of general conclusions she draws regarding conservative (and especially Christian) PUBLIC educators.
She has said that if I find them to be insulting, she cannot help the way ***I feel***, but she IS NOT engaging in **personal attacks***
At any rate, I just wanted to let you know, that although she states that she respects what ***you*** do in the classroom. Also that ***your students*** are lucky to have you.
However, I fail to understand how ANY OF US (by her conclusions) fall outside of the labels she has created.
Thank you RogerD for your continued efforts within the public school system.
I work in the Seattle area in Special Education.
It is always great to meet another conservative Educaiton Profesionul.
Without worrying about whether these points are Wintertime's, which is not important, I'd like to address them. It would be inappropriate for me to preach a sermon all day, every day in class, and it would be un-Christian to do so. It would also be inappropriate and un-Christian to leave the public schools in the hands of those who for whatever reason are hostile to God's word. My doctor is a Christian, very openly so, but less than 5% of what she says during our appointments has anything to do with God. She's not being sneaky by emphasizing medicine, just professional. I believe it is the same in my classroom.
She also says that if you were to do the right thing and profess your faith and act on it to the extent that you should (as a Christian) then you would likely get fired. If you won’t do so, you’re just collecting a paycheck, and that makes you ***GREEDY***
I don't see a conflict between openly professing my faith and teaching professionally. In fact, there is probably no better way to witness (and I certainly can't think of one) than to expose a hundred students daily to a joyful Christian view of life while teaching them academics well. There is no better way I can think of to teach than to be myself and let my students know enough about me that they will connect with me as a person so that they can see how the math matters in my life and how it might matter in their lives. Teaching as a whole person makes me a better teacher, which is my job, while also making me a better witness for Jesus, which is another fundamental duty.
You hit the nail on the head, and if you consider the flip side it is more apparent.
If you go into any "religious school" They are covering Math, Science, History, etc..... and not just teaching scripture study.
1.) Quadruple the size of the House of Representatives.
We are not fairly represented in Congress today, in fact we are 2/3 less represented than when the House arbitrarily capped their own membership.
2.) Repeal the 17th Amendment, thus returning a voice to the states that they don't have now.
Grover Norquist should stick with what he does best: kissing his Mooselimb friends azzes.
Very interesting idea!
“My doctor is a Christian, very openly so, but less than 5% of what she says during our appointments has anything to do with God. She’s not being sneaky by emphasizing medicine, just professional. I believe it is the same in my classroom.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
GOOD POINT! I don’t think I’ve ever thought about it from that perspective.
In my classroom this year, I worked with students (primarily boys) who have failed class after class. These boys are classified as learning disabled.
Most have really rough home lives.
Many have bounced around from school to school living with whichever friend or relative would take them in.
I always let them know I am a Christian and a conservative.
It is my hope and prayer that I represent the Lord in such a way that they will SEE that our Lord is a ROCK of stability.
The Lord is not GOING ANYWHERE.
When everyone else lets you down, the LORD is here.
I’m sure they think I’m corny.
:-)
But, most of the time, we’re working to fill in their educational gaps.
12 out of 13 of “my boys” were graduated last week. Many needed an extra year to do so.
ALL stuck with it.
No, no, no, equal education applies to each school being equal, not each child within that school having identical classes, following an identical curriculum. That’s the point, the unions have perverted Brown vs. the Board of education to mean equal among unequals. The original goal of the union was to create a public school system which would keep the affluent down, and bring the poor kids up. Aim for mediocrity. It hasn’t changed, but we can change it. We can introduce some of the aspects of private industry to the school systems by creating a management level, which can be held responsible and accountable for the union workers. It would introduce competition into the school system. If the teachers don’t want financial rewards tied to performance, we can reward the school with grants.
Tracking would offer the exact same opportunities within each school. The kids would make their choice. I’d even let them choose the classes, just like in college. You might not get into your first pick, but at least I’d give them a chance at it.
Schools should be open year around. Tech schools should be returned to the high school level and operate year around as well. When I was in high school, the kids were bussed to the tech schools in the middle of the day and brought back to catch their regular bus, with time in the morning for core classes. They don’t do that in WA State. Oh, they should return guidance counselors to the schools. We have only a very small guidance staff, where we live, and in California, at Capistrano Valley high school, there were NO guidance counselors, thousands of kids and no counselors.
Yes, parents must bear some of the responsibility, but back in the sixties before public education went down hill, my parents didn’t have a clue what went on in the schools. They didn’t need to, the school wasn’t perfect but their goal was to give us the best education that we could handle.
We had lectures every year on the key word, RESPECT. I suspect that whoever wrote that rock and roll song had the same lectures. It was respect for our parents, for authority , including teachers and school administrators and most of all, respect for ourselves, and each other, respect that we were expected to demonstrate in the way that we dressed and conducted ourselves. Whatever happened to RESPECT.
Can you document that? I thought the original goal of the union was decent wages and working conditions for teachers.
Tech schools should be returned to the high school level and operate year around as well.
I agree very strongly with that! It used to be that students could graduate high school with a certification which would allow for gainful employment right out the door, plus many students are much more interested in/inclined toward trades than toward academic pursuits -- in fact, historically only a small percentage of students have ever attended college. We need plumbers, electricians, and other tradesmen, and many of these jobs earn a very good living and can't be outsourced.
Additionally, if you are not actively and flagrantly protesting anti-Christian practices, (like homosexuality) you are a child abuser. If you do anything LESS than quit or flamingly protest, (for which you would likely be fired) you are a child abuser.
There is a middle road on homosexuality, one that neither embraces a "diverse and equally valid orientation" as Nancy Pelosi would command, nor condemns the most evil of all sins as Westboro Baptist does. My position is that none of my students should be bullied: at all, anywhere, ever. If they face bullying, I will stop it. If one of my students bullies anyone in my school, I will find out and think less of them forever. It is inappropriate for any government agency, including the public schools, to take an official position either supporting or contradicting a basic religious belief such as that homosexual acts are a violation of God's law [taking either side would be an "establishment of religion"]. I do not have any reason to address the topic of homosexuality during school hours, and my school administration has never asked me to address that issue, but I am willing to discuss the topic with any interested student after the end of the school day.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.