Posted on 03/18/2013 7:31:24 AM PDT by NOBO2012
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle”
In the preceding “Know Thy Enemy” series - Prologue, I Education, II Media and III Celebrity Culture - I’ve identified three sources which have exposed America to a very dangerous disease. The systemic cause is a virus that manifests itself as a malignant form of socialism characterized by increasing central government control and progressively insistent demands for “social justice.” It’s accompanied by irrational thinking and a loss of will to exert either individual liberty or personal responsibility. As noted, exposure to the education system, media and the celebrity culture makes one vulnerable, especially the young.
Since we now know what ails us, and we know how it’s contracted, it’s time to clean up each contamination site and start the healing.
Today we’ll deal with the education system. A brief recap of the situation at this contamination site: we have a hardcore leftist agenda that has been incorporated and deeply embedded into the national education canon, curricula, texts and teachers training programs. The degree to which this indoctrination program is slanted in favor of the postmodern values of relativism, socialism and social justice and against the traditional Western Enlightenment values of individualism, objective truth, reason, logic and capitalism is stunning. With teachers unions entrenched like a bad nail fungus and completely onboard with the social justice (nee anti-America) agenda, how do we unwind this Gordian knot?
It’s important to recognize, from the beginning, that the knot as currently constructed cannot be unraveled. Like the original, it needs to be sliced wide open in order to release its power. But unless you are aware of some sword-wielding Alexander the Great character hiding in the wings, I suggest death by a thousand paper cuts. We all need to grab the nearest sharp instrument and start hacking away at it. Here we can learn from the enemy: we need to deploy an army of Davids. That’s how the Left implemented their agenda, that’s how we can reverse it. We however, don’t have an organized army of foot soldiers, and need to build one.
We begin our assault as our founders always intended, at the local level. Yes, ultimately we need to defund and dissolve the $72 billion/year waste factory that is the Federal Department of Education. But that’s only one head of the Hydra, there are thousands more, all of which are attached to a local school board. The local boards are where our power resides to actually force educational change. Generally the board is commissioned by a school district to:
- Set overall educational goals
- Develop a strategic plan to accomplish the goals
- Hire and oversee the superintendent
- Approve the school district budget
- Create policy for schools in the district
If the board doesn’t function as a rubber stamp – and many do - they have enormous power. They can approve or disapprove curriculum, textbooks, expenditures – and this means teachers’ contracts. Teachers’ unions negotiate with their local school district; usually the superintendent and the school board.
This is why taking control of the school board is paramount in slicing through the knot. And it isn’t that difficult to seize control at this level. If you can organize a committed group of local, conservative, education “activists” you can win; you can hold the power seat. How do you think the Left got control in the first place? Organize, agitate, campaign, and deliver.
Remember, the world is filled with sheeple, thanks in part to the education system you are trying to change. So if you outwork your opponents – who will initially assume they have the upper hand – you can win.
The benefit and simplicity of striking at the local school board level is that success can have a pretty immediate impact on the education program in your schools. Also, it is doable. So few voters pay attention to school board elections that with little funding and a lot of grass roots effort an organized group could form an alliance representing your core educational principles and run on a coalition platform. Such a united slate of school board candidates – with enough door-to-door ground support - could readily challenge and beat incumbent members who are either ineffective or opposed to the reforms you are championing. Remember, you don’t need to win the hearts and minds of everyone, you just need to persuade more people to get out and vote for you than your opponents do.
I’m not a natural organizer, but I’ve been around enough to know that the world is filled with people who are. You probably know at least a dozen. Enlist them, forcefully if need be. For the win. For the future. (Obama’s already used the WTF slogan, so be sure to choose something different.)
If you win, you can significantly improve the distorted curriculum and teaching bias in just one year by requiring that your school board approve not just the district’s goals and strategic plan but also the specific curriculum, text books and lesson plans being used in your schools.
Once seated, your new school board consortium will need constant encouragement to hang tough. Pressure from teachers, parents, unions will be brought to bear to get you to compromise “for the sake of the children,” particularly when it comes to contract negotiations. The inconvenience and disruption of a teachers strike will heap pressure of the board. Don’t cave. You know what’s right; there is no virtue in “resolving” differences if the underlying problems remain unsolved.
Aside from the socialist/social justice indoctrination program, the teachers union is the other elephant in the classroom. Many local school boards are out-lawyered by the teachers’ union’s (NEA or AFT) paid staff when it comes to the bargaining table. That means the school board has to lawyer-up too; by training themselves (web-based resources are available), ensuring adequate funding for legal contract negotiation support (school districts find a way to fund everything else, insist on more money here: you’re dealing with pros) and seek pro-bono assistance from local labor attorneys who can educate and prepare the Board to deal with not only the union’s lawyers, but to manage your own counsels as well so they are not the ones calling the shots. As the President likes to tell us, you need to ensure that you are all on a level playing field:
The NEA employs a corps of directors called UniServ. These directors assist local teachers unions with collective bargaining (supplying negotiation experience that often vastly outstrips the resources of a local school district) and serve as conduits for the union’s political messages
Once you have seized control of your school district, take your political skills to both the local and state levels to initiate even larger changes. Specifically, (snip)
You can’t “take back” the gummint schools.
You never “owned” them in the first place.
The so-called “public schools” are the Bus Ministry of the State Church of Secular Humanism.
The “public school”, including the “charter school”, is BY FAR, the largest, most expensive, most subversive, and most destructive entitlement program in the country.
The “public school” is better understood as the “government school collective”.
It is silly to imagine that you can fix the public schools, because the very concept itself is collectivist.
It is hypocritical to submit your children to an authority with whom you fundamentally disagree. Children do not trust hypocrites, so this will undermine your own authority, let alone influence, with your children.
Any child that comes out of the government school collective with their moral compass and common sense intact does so in spite of the government school indoctrination, not because of it.
To understand the content and compass of modern education, see ...
http://www.scribd.com/doc/54400125/Change-Agents-in-the-Schools-Barbara-Morris-1979
If you want to win the culture war, have lots of children (see my tagline) and homeschool them or form your own school cooperative with your church or synagogue and like-minded friends and relatives.
Nobody loves your children more than you do.
Nobody can teach your children better than you can.
Nobody knows your children better than you do.
Your children would love nothing better than to be taught by you, if you start doing so before they are corrupted by the government school collective.
If you have children, make whatever sacrifices you must to get them out of the public schools.
DO NOT FEED THE BEAST!
Especially not with your own children.
And DO NOT TAKE GOVERNMENT “EDUCATION” MONEY!
He that pays the piper calls the tune, and that’s especially true for any government entitlement program.
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.