Posted on 10/23/2007 5:44:28 AM PDT by shrinkermd
When a high school friend told me several years ago that he and his wife were leaving Washington's Mount Pleasant neighborhood for Montgomery County, I snickered and murmured something about white flight. Progressives who traveled regularly to Cuba and Brazil, they wanted better schools for their children. I saw their decision as one more example of liberal hypocrisy.
I was childless then, but I have a 6-year-old now. And I know better. So to all the friends -- most but not all of them white -- whom I've chastised over the years for abandoning the District once their children reached school age:
I'm sorry. You were right. I was wrong.
After nearly 20 years in the city's Takoma neighborhood, the last six in a century-old house that my wife and I thought we'd grow old in, we have forsaken the city for the suburbs.
Given recent optimistic news about the city's schools, this may seem the equivalent of buying high and selling low. And though I don't know new D.C. schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee, what I know of Mayor Adrian Fenty and Deputy Mayor for Education Victor Reinoso (a former neighbor) tells me that real change will come, sooner or later, to D.C. public schools.
The thing is, with a second-grader who has already read the first two Harry Potter books, I can't wait the four or five years it will take to begin to undo decades of neglect and mismanagement of District schools, much less the additional time needed to create programs for the gifted and talented.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Well, of course! Since when does any inividual take precedent over the 'collective'?
. . .Liberals ARE the 'sock-puppets' of the world. And of couse - if not ironically - they are the first to (collectively) scream a sock-puppet alert; whenever evidence of an individualism arises. Their arrogance and it's consequences, is rooted in their blindness to the inferiority of the amoral 'group think' that binds them together.
For sure; a sock-puppet's dream of 'will to power' - their 'collective will to power that is; can only bring genuine nightmares for all of us.
At the heart of all collectivism is the greed to control or own that which you do not earn.
Clearly Bush's fault.
[I Just Couldn’t Sacrifice My Son (To the Washington, DC School System]
Good. Conservatives had better wake up and attack the liberal public school system and best replace it with conservative run schools before anarchy spreads nationwide and the schools mold their young mush minded children into the liberal left social and political system that is murdering America.
So, should the best and most well behaved students be made to suffer so public school teachers are not left with nothing but "hard cases"?
It is not the function of the student to brighten the teacher's day. That may happen from time to time, but it is not the student's job.
If the system is disfuctional, there will be a lot fewer well behaved students and a lot more hard cases. There will always be some disruptive students, of course. But they should not be allowed to drag the whole system down.
I’m not convinced they accept it is their fault why things are the way they are.
He wanted parents to have input and provide oversight for the schools.
Those aren't really liberal attitudes.
He didn't have faith that they just needed the right people in charge of the bureaucracy while suggesting that it was solely the government's duty to educate kids.
He may have been blind to many of the issues until they effected him personally, but we are all guilty of that to some extent.
I don't know anything else about the author than what he wrote in this article, but this article doesn't make him sound like a liberal to me.
My child has learned more about Martin Luther King Jr. in her 3 years in school (one of which was Catholic school where PC also has invaded) than any of the Founding Fathers (actually a unit on MLK every year, while the Founding Fathers have yet to be mentioned). This is not the teachers’ fault it is the curriculum they are mandated to teach.
I had a conference last week where I was thanked for having my child ready for school every day, with homework done and corrected and plenty of sleep. Yikes - that’s my job as a parent. Schools will fail if parents are failing. And when fathers aren’t there or don’t care, children don’t care. When a father shows an interest in education, children do too (I can see this with my kids - when dad introduces science to them it’s magical - when I do it’s just homework!)
To answer your questions, I don’t know. Our family structure has been destroyed. Adults in many cases act like adolescents. Schools have been used by politicians to push their socialist garbage. And children are left to drift. What a world.
That is what is said about every crumbling public school system in every liberal-dominated urban area: shuffle in some new bureaucrat from some other failing urban public school system and magically, things will get better.
And yet nothing ever changes. For liberals, it's never the philosophy that's flawed, it's the implementation.
As this discussion has hit on public education vs. homeschooling, I’m going to go off-topic a bit with this tidbit:
The last thread I read through that brought up reasons to homeschool also brought out a few who felt the need to point out that not everyone can do it. For those who simply don’t believe in themselves, I’ll have to think more about if there is any way to show them that they can learn and teach. For those who still think they just Have to Have two incomes, let me share that most homeschoolers work pretty hard at being frugal and wise. They aren’t just independently wealthy. They have the same kind of real concerns that you have. Here is just one of many many links (and book titles, magazines, newsletters, club names, etc) that I could post that can help you start down a road to doing what needs to be done and managing just fine financially:
http://www.thriftyhomeschooler.blogspot.com/
You just have to be willing to change your mind-set. No one expects you to give up reality and pretend that you won’t have to make some major changes and/or about a million minor changes. But we are totally willing to discuss all of it with you if you want to really look into the possibilities.
Your point is well taken, and there is no easy solution. In fact, without radical societal change, I don’t see a solution at all. A large part of the problem is that schools reflect the society at large, and when you have a huge number of children with no discipline nor respect for education in the home, they are ineducable. This lack of discipline and respect we can lay squarely in the lap of liberals, who have been systematically aiding and abetting the dissolution of the family and its support structures for decades. After all, one cannot remake society in the image of Karl Marx unless one has first destroyed it.
The issue of the sad state of the public schools in general was not what I was commenting on. My goal was to point out the hypocrisy of those who are all for keeping other peoples’ kids on the public school plantation, but not their own.
If his 6 yr. old is already reading at the level of Harry Potter, why doesn't he homeschool him? The child would progress even farther and faster than he would in the tony, suburban, public school. And he would have the joy of taking his son on fantastic field trips within DC, and without having to travel to do so!
Back in the 1950s when Al Gore was in grammar school, the education in the DC Public Schools was probably every bit as good as what kids got in private schools. I'd suspect the reason his old man sent him to St. Albens(?) was because the old racist didn't want his little boy "mixing with darkies" in the public schools.
The worst thing the left ever did in this country was to destroy the public schools.
1. How do you propose for teachers to maintain classroom decorum and discipline when a great many of the students never experience anything similar at home? …You can only send some students to the principal’s office… (As an illustration, I have personally witnessed some of the abysmal, home environments I cite when giving a few young men a lift home following after-school tutoring sessions.)
Answer: Vouchers.
Vouchers would allow parents to find schools that educate their children rather than warehousing them with other students, the "hard cases", who are not there to learn. It would be necessary to permit schools accepting vouchers to not accept selectively and expel students that cause trouble. Some public school system that accepts all students would no doubt be required to educate students that are not acceptable to any other school. Conditions in this school, for the few that go there, would no doubt be sub-standard, but these schools could have programs specifically geared to deal with behavioral problems, which might even improve the lot of these unfortunate students. But, in any case, for the vast majority, the situation would be vastly improved.
2. What are you proposing to counter the lack of male role models in the home? (There is a 30% illegitimacy rate total and nearly a 70% such rate among African-Americans, or blacks, if you prefer.) An unmarried mother cannot teach her children all she should, run a home properly, go to PTA meetings, little league games/recitals (if such exist for her children) and support her family financially all at the same time. (Note: I am not advocating any sort of state intervention here, merely posing a question.)
Answer: Vouchers
The schools can never replace fathers, of course. All they can do is offer an education. A better education will alleviate the problems of single mothers and better equip the children for success. Hopefully, that will aid society in solving the problem of illegitimacy. Vouchers will help provide better education.
3. How do you propose to help public school districts avoid textbooks filled with “propaganda” when the texts are mandated by the state and bought with state funds? (It is not economically feasible for the textbook publishers publish anything but what the largest school systems buy… California, Texas, etc.)
Answer: Vouchers.
If I want to send my kid to a school that will fill their head with PC nonsense, I will send him to a school that specializes in filling children's heads with PC nonsense. However, I suspect the vast majority of parents will opt to send their children to schools that play it straight. If the market is there, somebody will fill it. The cost of publishing is lower than it has ever been, and a lot of schools are already moving away from paper textbooks altogether.
4. How do you propose to keep teachers from being punished for “poor performance” by their students when the students arrive on the first day of class already so deficient in basic academic skills that there is no hope of getting them up to an acceptable standard for assessment tests by the end of the year?
Answer: Vouchers
As long as vouchers can be used at any school, they will allow schools to accept students who are appropriate for their program. The result will be elite schools that cater to elite students, moderate schools that cater to the mass of students, and remedial schools that cater to those requiring remedial education. This is the pattern you see in higher education, which works very well. The problem is that when schools are required to accept all students, regardless of preparation or ability, the lowest performing students wind up defining the program for everybody.
5. How do you compensate for courses designed purely to “cram” as much information into the course for exposing the student to what they might see on standardized tests and leave no time for teaching something as vital to citizenship as “critical thinking?”
Answer: Vouchers.
Parents demand education. Bureaucracies demand test scores. If the parents are the ones calling the shots, the incentive will be to teach the students, not teach to a test.
You may have noticed that all problems seem to have the same answer, from my point of view. How about that?
You should not dismiss the parents as being emotional entities. Most parents would be quite rational in their decision making, if given the opportunity. Unfortunately, in our current system that offers no opportunity for rational choice, emotionalism is all that is left to them.
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