Posted on 04/02/2010 1:16:31 PM PDT by BruceDeitrickPrice
I see comments on the Internet, especially on the conservative side, that might be summed up this way: “Public schools are a disaster. They should be shut down. Homeschool your kids, that’s the only way.”
It’s not the specifics that bother me. (Some very smart people have proposed privatizing the public schools.) It’s the idea that you can turn away, or that you can turn inward, and thereby avoid all that unpleasantness over there, on the other side of town.
Homeschooling seems to me a wonderful option, as are private schools, charter schools, etc. Together they can save about 10% of the kids. But what about the other 90% of the kids? They are still being dumbed down, still being indoctrinated. In a few years they will be voting. These ignorant and half-literate people will pick your leaders.
It doesn’t matter whether your kids are being homeschooled or they attend a good private school. All of us have to be concerned about saving the public schools. There’s no escape!
In fact, here’s the irony. It’s the parents not connected to the public schools who can most help the public schools. They know what real education looks like.
--EXCERPT CONTINUES BELOW
(Excerpt) Read more at bizversused.blogspot.com ...
So I really hope that everyone will keep an eye on the public schools. Get involved in the public schools. Meddle in the public schools. Tutor in the public schools. Take an intense look at the candidates for the school board. Write letters to the local paper. Demonstrate and agitate, basically, for genuine education in your nearby public schools.
By saving the public schools, we save ourselves. It’s my big theme these days: we are not going to save this country if we don’t save the public schools.
Would you like some specifics on how to do that? Specifically, get rid of all varieties of Reform Math. Eliminate all non-phonetic reading instruction. Teach basics, facts, foundational knowledge, and content. Teach respect for accuracy, truth, precision, and discipline. It would be very helpful to get rid of Social Studies (read Socialism Studies)...That should almost do it. As a practical matter, I suspect it will be much, much easier to REFORM the public schools than to shut them down. There's a vast infrastructure in place. Why not fill it up with a new spirit? Everyone knows the schools are spending too much money and doing a crummy job. The public wants improvement. The climate is right for the Education Establishment to start thinking about saving its own skin. "Right, reform! That's just what we were thinking about. Honestly! Real education. We're all for it!!!" Could happen.
For sure, in any other human activity, when you have years of failure and waste, there's a universal response. Fire the dumb bunnies at the top. Get people in there who can tell sophistry from Shinola, something the present clueless crew just can't do.
////end of post//
“46: Public Schools Seem To Be Designed To Fail" is here: www.improve-education.org/id72.html
Privatization is the only thing that will work. Government schools will fail.
SEPARATION OF STATE AND SCHOOL!
Up here, the school district decided to shut down the best junior high to convert it to more of their offices.
I’m done with supporting public schools.
Perhaps the best way to support those kids is to push for privatization.
Also I always encouraged to hear of FReepers who work within the system.
the politics of low expectations
Government schools are simply government tyranny.
I also like the idea of nearby churches doing after school tutoring.
They can get some religious and moral instruction, homework help, and some classes from a Christian/conservative position.
I like thinking about Hazlitt/Economics courses, patriotic courses in American and world history. . . creation science of course.
(ducks for cover)
Separation of school and state beep
Public schools are run buy politicians , that’s half the problem. Another BIG problem is that most kids don’t even have 2 parents at home, third major problem is that new teachers for the last 20 years are not very well educated at all and most have been brainwashed in college to be racial sensitive and politically liberal to the max.
You can’t save things run by the government. Governments are only good at war and infrastructure, if it ain’t blowing up enemies or building roads government will do it poorly. Education, medicine, helping the poor, these things just aren’t in government’s wheel house and the results will always be a colossal waste of money and never improve the situation.
The NEA, Teacher’s Unions in general run Education.
the Unions are Far Left
The Teachers, Adms, etc. are products of Left Wing Universities and this going on for the past several generations.
The Text Books are written by Far Left people
with standard Left Wing propaganda.
Unless you do away with the Left Wing Unions, deprogram the teachers, and throw out the textbooks, the Public Schools
will always be Left Wing.
The parents in most cases are no help. They are either
Left wing also or close their eyes and put their fingers in their ears and don’t want to know or hear about Public Schools.
When a parent says, they can’t afford Parochial Schools,
this is disingenuous.
Many can afford a second car, or 4 bedroom homes.
Scale down and get real.
My 2nd cousin in New Jersey had 5 children , she and her husband and the 5 kids lived in a small 2 bedroom house.
They all went to Parochial School and the kids all worked
their way through Rutgers Univ.
When Conservative parents wonder why their kid became a liberal, dumping them in a Public School got them on their
way.
When they are teaching elementary school kids to be sluts and to sign up for Obama’s OFA and Global Warming and High School nurses are just referals for abortion clinics and the actual curiculum has been dumbed dumbed down....
YES, get out of the public schools as far and as fast as you can.
There is no way to "reform" public education when teachers and administrators are controlled by teachers' unions whose primary expenditure is for lobbying for more union control and more taxpayer funding. These communists are holding 90% of the nation's students hostage to extort more funding and power from parents and legislators.
The inevitable result of state controlled education (“government” run education) is that the values and the knowledge that serves the interests of government (the interests of government bureaucrats and the politicians and their apparatchiks, who control government) will be what is taught. And the interests of the people (if those interests be contrary to what “government” wants) will be ignored.
Government schools must be abandoned. There is no possibility of general "improvement.
That said, do all those things . Work to get good people on the school board, etc., even though even the school board can't do a whole lont in the face of the teachers unions, but get your own kids the hell OUT of the system. If you actually care about your own childrens' education, home school them or get them into a Christian Academy or the like.
Yes, and you know what would be real cute? Churches and other groups adopting a school. People adopt highways. Why not schools?
And the thing is, this could be done seriously and for real where educated people assist a school. That would be a big plus. Assuming our educators would accept such a deal...It could also be done as a PR ploy. Here, you really don’t care if the educators huffily reject the offer. That would be the story: our incompetent educators don’t think they need help! Liberal newspapers would stumble all over themselves trying to report this story,
Straw man argument. No one is unaffected by or unaware of what the unionized educrat complex does. Another reform of the curricula is pointless. Each reform ends up making schools worse. There are two and only two ways to fix public schools: Bust the unions; separate school and state. Neither is likely. So the only alternative is an exodus.
Yes, we need to try and save the public schools. They are one of the key battlegrounds in the war of ideas. Lose the schools and in a generation you lose it all. As we are seeing.
But your kids are kids for a very short time. However many years its going to take to reclaim the public schools, they don’t have that long. So, while you do whatever is within your power to change the public schools, you have to act now with your kids and grandkids. Get them out of public school. Get them into a decent private school, or school them yourself. Whatever else you were going to do with your life is pretty much for nought if you lose your kids along the way.
Grandparents, you may have to help.
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.