Posted on 12/27/2012 8:59:03 AM PST by wintertime
This video was made before the Sandy Hook killings. I expect that the prison-like conditions will grow worse.
Question: What do children learn when they attend prison-like indoctrination centers similar to those seen in this video? When children are in many ways treated like prisoners, and know that armed police and courts stand ready at all times to enforce the incarceration, what are they learning?
Answer: They risk learning to be comfortable prisoners of the state, comfortable with state compulsion, and they risk learning to be comfortable with the continuous threat of armed police and court action ever in the background of their lives. Their only crime was to born and for this they are incarcerated. They risk learning that the people who they should trust have abandoned them.
Question: How could anyone defend doing this to children? How can anyone deny what the outcome of having a nation of citizens comfortable with imprisonment will be for our continuing freedom?
Answer: I have no answer.
Question: Why would conservatives cooperate with this evil?
Answer: I have no answer.
Universal, police and court compelled government schooling is a very recent phenomena in human history. Our nation's Founding Fathers and 150,000 years of our human ancestors, would be appalled at the way we treat children. If they could speak from the dust they would warn of the evil it is doing to children and the evil consequences it will have for our continuing freedom.
(Excerpt) Read more at youtube.com ...
Well....You are right, in a way.
The children I was referring to were difficult for all involved, parents, teachers, principals. Some was due to poor parenting practices, other reasons were because of educational malpractice on the part of the school, and nearly all the kids had varying degrees of ADD and ADHD.
The school staff strongly suggested that homeschooling might be the better option, and given that the child was most truant anyway, the parent took the path of least resistance. The feeling among the parents was that the schooling staff were glad to be rid of these kids.
Among fellow homeschoolers, we called these kids, “push-outs”, and we found it irritating the the were found among the county's “homeschooling” statistic. These kids weren't being homeschooled. They were a mess and their parents were, too.
**None** of these kids went to church. If the parent couldn’t get them out of bed to go to school, they were unlikely to motivate the child to go to church.
Re: Getting fired
Yep! There was some of that, too.
Re: Not wanting other children around these kids
Yep! That was the case. These kids didn’t show up at church meeting or activities. Even though mighty efforts were made by **mature adults** to reach out to these kids in fellowship, I never knew any that responded. Some went on to serve prison terms and, again. fellowship was maintained by those mature members of the congregation who were solid in their faith.
Seriously, you really think this is an excuse. This is bad parenting pure and simple. A child doesn't want to get out of bed and the parent is helpless. This is a joke. A couple of days of re stacking the woodpile, or sleeping on the floor would straighten that attitude out right quick. A friend of mines stepson tried to pull that crap once. He grabbed the kids ear and made sure the rest of the body followed. End of problem.
I respectfully request that you not ping me or send private mail to me. Please feel free to comment as you like on my posts or threads, even using my name, but, please, no contact.
Politely and respectfully,
wintertime
Have you ever had a parent call you and ask you to call their child in the morning to wake them up from school? I’ve had parents with kids as young as 10 years old tell me they couldn’t do anything with their kids and they were close to giving up — AT 10!
Like you said, a few days of doing work - real work - would be good for them. Of course, the parents can’t drag them out of their comfy basement room complete with ipod, stereo, xbox, big screen TV, video games. Not many 10 year olds would choose differently
I can't say that I have, but I have one student now (9th grader) both parents are out of the picture. He lives with his grandfather (grandparents are divorced). The rand father told me that he can't get him out of bed on Saturday mornings to do chores around the hosue before noon.
Like you said, a few days of doing work - real work - would be good for them. Of course, the parents can’t drag them out of their comfy basement room complete with ipod, stereo, xbox, big screen TV, video games. Not many 10 year olds would choose differently. And that is exactly what this young man has. During his most recent IEP meeting he told us that he frequently stays up till 3-4 in the moring listening to music, playing HALO, etc...
Simple solution take all that stuff away. Of course that requires adults to act like adults.
The hypocrisy is staggering.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
The hypocrisy is staggering. And...What is even more staggering is the refusal to consider or admit that institutional schooling has likely made a less than ideal situation **worse**!
The families that I am referring to, indeed, lacked parenting skills however in every case, there were good family members in these children’s lives, with solidly good living habits, who loved and took and interest in the child.They were often grandparents, aunts, or uncles. These children would have been far better off if they had been able to work in the small family businesses that these responsible family members often owned or were employed in, and mentored by caring adults, who knew how to show up for work every day and live orderly and respectable lives.
Teachers say that they “love” children, but no one is as “invested” in the long term welfare of a child more than his own family ( nuclear and extended, functional or dysfunctional).
It was my anecdotal observation that institutionalized schooling actually made matters worse in two ways. One, and most influential, was the friends made in school, and the other was the push to have these kids diagnosed ADD or ADHD .
Question: If a good fairy were to sweep across the land, wave her magic wand, and close all institutional schools tomorrow, what would happen?
Answer: There would be chaos for about 2 weeks. Within days, same children who are getting an education today, would continue their education. The same kids who aren’t being educated would not be educated.
Why? Because, it is my observation that any real learning a child acquires is outside of the institutional school and is due to the hard work of the parents and other very “invested” family members, the child himself doing home study, and paid and unpaid tutoring.
Answer: There would be chaos for about 2 weeks. Within days, same children who are getting an education today, would continue their education. The same kids who aren’t being educated would not be educated.
Why? Because, it is my observation that any real learning a child acquires is outside of the institutional school and is due to the hard work of the parents and other very “invested” family members, the child himself doing home study, and paid and unpaid tutoring.
Humblegunner guess who is at it again.
Politely and respectfully,
wintertime
I agree.
People who value an education will get one anyway. Those who don’t won’t no matter how many hours per day and how many days per year they are forced to spend in public schools.
Students get an education in spite of public schools, not because of them.
Parental involvement is so critical that the best demonstration of the success/failure of public education is to look at those children whose parents are not involved in their education, and at that point, the abysmal failure of the public education establishment becomes blindingly obvious.
Public school educrat blame shifting duly noted.
I don't think anyone will deny that parents who aren't engaged with their children's education are hurting their children. In fact, when you mention this, you're actually making a large part of wintertime's argument for her.
She has repeatedly said that it is PARENTS who make the difference, usually, in their children's lives. She has said repeatedly that whatever success children enjoy in traditional schools is strongly tied to the schooling that happens in the HOME.
And thus, she concludes (not completely wrongly) that folks might as well just homeschool, since the traditional school isn't the entity actually accomplishing education.
The flip side to that, the point you think you're making (but which is already implied in wintertime's argument), is that poor parents make for poor educational outcomes. Of course!
But a question you're not answering is, well, if poor parenting results in poor outcomes, whether through homeschooling or through traditional schools, and good parenting results in good outcomes, whether through homeschooling or through traditional schools, why do we need outlandishly-expensive, useless, ineffective public schools that burden the average taxpayer tremendously?
I appreciate your taking wintertime's side of the argument. Maybe we CAN all get along. ;-)
That said, I've seen more than one family do a great job homeschooling and then see the local public school undo all the good they accomplish.
My neighbor's oldest son went to our renowned elementary school till about 4th grade. Bright kid, but very physical, very energetic, needed to move around a lot. He could play a mean game of chess (I was chess coach of the homeschool chess club, and for the two years that the family homeschooled, he came to chess club weekly. Among a group of very smart kids, he quickly rose to the top.)
Anyway, by the end of 4th grade, our “high-quality” local elementary school had labeled him learning disabled, intellectually a bit slow, and ADHD. Drugs and all.
This public school thing wasn't working so well. So, mom, who worked out of her house, brought him home for two years. She came to us for advice on homeschooling, and she generally chose a pretty good homeschooling path. She used a reputable “curriculum in a box,” and was diligent. I felt sad for her when she told me of her son's troubles, ending it by saying, “We failed our elementary school.” No, they didn't. The public school failed her bright, sharp, fun-loving son. But she couldn't throw off her life-long indoctrination about public schools and see the thing as it really is.
Anyway, after two years at home, the young fellow went from being roughly a year behind in most subjects to about a year ahead. Except in math, where, by the end of 6th grade, he was doing basic algebra. Well, heck, he's a smart kid, why shouldn't he have been that far advanced?
Well, anyway, problem fixed, mom and dad decided to put him back into public school - middle school, by this point. The school ignored the advances he'd made in two years of homeschooling, and placed him academically according to where he was when he left the school system after 4th grade.
What a travesty.
And this is in the state of Maryland, which year in and year out has highly-ranked public schools, including a No. 1 rank in the last few years, in one of the top county school systems in the state. At schools which are considered models in the county's public school system. Highly-rated schools in a highly-rated county system in one of the top-ranked states in the country.
And they can't figure out how to decently educate a bright, energetic, pleasant, well-behaved but active young man.
Doctors go by the motto of, “First, do no harm.”
Educrats should at least try to live by the same philosophy.
He struggled through middle school and the first year of high school. He got pretty messed up in those three years. They finally sent him off to an expensive boarding school that specialized in fixing kids broken by crappy schools, he graduated high school and went off to college.
The lesson of all this is that poor parenting almost always leads to poor educational outcomes, whether privately-schooled, publicly-schooled or homeschooled. But good parenting nearly always leads to excellent outcomes in homeschooling, usually leads to good outcomes in good private schools, and, well, in public schools, it's a bit of a crapshoot.
I've never personally seen good, diligent homeschoolers fail, but I could tell you multiple stories like this one where good parents saw their kids fail to thrive in even “good” public schools.
Unlike others, I don't say that public schools always fail, or that we should immediately close them all down, or that no one gets educated in them, or that there aren't any public schools that are genuinely good and effective academically. My son goes to college with lots of kids from top-tier public schools, and they're all damned smart and damned successful, academically.
But public schools are generally suboptimal in obtaining a good education. Some kids do very well, perhaps even achieving their potential, more do okay, and unfortunately, a large minority get cheated out of an education. Much of this is due to the quality of parenting, especially when students are successful. Much of it is due to the schools, themselves, especially when students fail.
Nearly all children of poor parents will fail educationally, no matter the school choice. Parents are the first and primary teachers of their children. Parental involvement is the first and most important attribute of a successful educational outcome. But public schools often stymie and hinder good educational outcomes for children even of good, decent and diligent parents.
sitetest
These sound like parents who love and care about their children and are desperate for help.
I am certain that since you are a professional the contempt for these parents that is evident in your post was not reflected in your voice or conversation with them.
I am certain that your professionalism recognized that these were parents who loved their children and were seeking much needed **help**!
I am certain that, as a professional, you knew of all the school services, and private and public agencies, that would help these parents learn more effective parenting skills.
I am certain that since you are a professional that you follow up with the child, the parent, and the counseling agencies to see that these kids and their parents didn't fall through the bureaucratic cracks.
you know nothing about me and your veiled and not so veiled sarcasm is disgusting
Your question is a loaded one, but I will answer it. Just as I have answered a number of times on previous threads. 1) Not every parent is capable of homeschooling, either for financial, physical. or mental limitations. I taught at an inner city school for 2 years. 6 classes 20 weeks semesters roughly 20 students per class. Roughly 480 students in 2 years time. Only 8 of them did not come from single parent homes. Over 60 of them were being raised by Aunts and grandparents. All of them had to work to make ends meet.
2)Special needs children. There is a myth going around that it costs an average of $X to educate a child. The truth is that quite a bit of the cost goes to special needs children (No I am not complaining about Special needs children I am simply stating a fact) Schools are able to meet the needs of these children because we have been able to focus these services into one place. With that comes quite a bit of reporting that has to go to the state and federal agencies.
3) Selfish parents. Let me give you an example I administrate the "Teacher Assistance Team." We meet at the request of either a parent, Guidance counselor, or teacher, for students that are not having sucess in the class room. We had a parent that swore up and down that her child had a mental disability and could not function in a normal class room setting. She was also saying this in front of and directly tot he child. She kept haranguing the principal and his teachers. The Principal asked me to do the two required random observations on the boy. After the second one I met with him in private and told him that I did not note anything that caused me to believe that he was a Special needs student.
Sadly in order to placate this mother we had to send him for for evaluation. Mental, Physical, Social, and a full homes study. This cost just over %5,000. The finding was that the kids was perfectly normal. This money could have been better spent on a child with genuine needs.
One other thing you need to be aware of is that I fully support Homeschooling, Private, Parochial, Charter schools and vouchers. I believe that the competition would do every one good. I am also confident in my teaching abilities. I can say with our bragging that you won't find a batter cabinetry teacher in the entire valley and I am every bit as good a drafting teacher as the other 4 teachers in the valley.
Now I know that it gets the homeschooling extremists frothing at the mouth when I offer to give them a list of students that they can take and use to prove their theories on, but I only do it because it really gets them to show their true colors.
These are your words, not mine. They are there for all to see.
I am certain that your professionalism recognized that these were parents who loved their children and were seeking much needed **help**!
I am certain that, as a professional, you knew of all the school services, and private and public agencies, that would help these parents learn more effective parenting skills.
I am certain that since you are a professional that you follow up with the child, the parent, and the counseling agencies to see that these kids and their parents didn't fall through the bureaucratic cracks.
Wintertime do you realize just how insulting these unprovoked comments are. And this is not the first time you have made these types of comments. Any Public school teacher that crosses your path gets some variation on them.
Free Republic is a news posting and discussion forum this is not discussion. You have complained about others using Alynsky tactics, and that is what you are doing.
Further about a month ago your posts caused another FReeper to advocate violence against Public school officials. Many of his posts ended up being removed by the moderator but you bear responsibility to some degree for his comments.
Finally these videos that you post links to comparing schools to prisons are not edifying to anyone. You don't like public schools that is your choice but to constantly seek to demean the good men and women that work there is just wrong and you should be ashamed of yourself.
Bravo!!!!!!!!!!!
Now be prepared for the onslaught of insults you will incur for daring to speak up in defense of others.
I am not a teacher, I do not have the temperament for it, and thus do place value on and with those who are more capable than I.
When our daughter was approaching 3 (she’s now 14) my husband and I realized it was time for us to move as he refused to allow a child of his to attend any school in the district in which we then lived, as that is where he had attended school and knew just how bad it was. Being the product of Catholic schools, I said no to the area ones around us, as they were just as poor as the public schools. Staying in Delaware was really no longer and option, but we were sort of limited to where we could move because of his work.
The schools in the surrounding areas of Maryland were really no better than what was available in lower Delaware, so we ventured a bit further south. Our very bright, now 9th grader, has thrived in public school in what is one of the 10 poorest counties in Virginia.
Not all schools are equal and we are going to find, if we are at all honest, that all have good points and not so good points. It is not and never will be a black and white issue (and I’m not talking race.)
Happy New Year to you.
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