Posted on 08/11/2008 8:41:29 AM PDT by Turret Gunner A20
For many young'uns around the country this is a momentous day. Sadly, for many of them, it is also a tragic one. Today millions of parents who should know better are going to take the most precious things in their lives, their children, and turn them over to the government to be educated. These parents all know that our government education system in this country is beyond horrible --- but for some reason they operate under the impression that the very school that, by chance, their child is going to attend is the one and only exception. Their child's school is extraordinary!
It's those other schools that are so bad.
Yeah, right.
Today I'm going to take one entire chapter out of my book "Somebody's Gotta Say It" and reprint it here for you to read .. enjoy .. and hopefully heed.
=================================================================
NICE PENCILS!
Now, fork them over . . .
(From "Somebody's Gotta Say It" © 2007 by Neal Boortz, Published by HC Books, and imprint of Harper Collins)
What? I'm picking on government schools again? Don't I have anything better to do with my time?
No, I don't. A day spent slamming the concept of government indoctrination is a day well spent.
I love this country, but I believe it's in deep trouble. I believe we're losing our sense of individuality and our love of liberty. Americans have little idea of the sacrifices that so many made to create this country where we live our lives of plenty.
Most adults have no idea of how essential our system of economic liberty is to the standard of life we enjoy today, and are unaware of how American free enterprise has already lifted much of the world out of poverty, want, and despair.
Furthermore, most Americans don't understand something as basic as the importance of private property rights in maintaining freedom and promoting prosperity.
And for this state of affairs I place the bulk of the blame on our system of government-owned and -operated schools.
I'll go one step further: Many of our government schools today, perhaps even the one to which you have surrendered your child; start in from day one trying to discredit the very concept of property rights. How do they do it? Let's start by defining some terms.
Some of our brethren on the left denounce the idea of property rights by saying human rights are always more important than property rights. It's a clever line, but it's really a kind of misdirection, like a magic trick. Why? Because property rights are human rights.
Think about it this way: Property has no rights. People have the right to property, and that right to property, the fruits of one's labor, is one of the highest human rights.
Chances are it's been quite a few years since you were in grade school. Believe me, much has changed since those days. Back when you were in school, for instance, it was probably okay to play tag during recess. Not so today. Why? Because tag involves (gasp!) touching! And besides, in tag someone is chased, and someone does the chasing. This teaches our precious little children predatory behavior. Now we can't have that, can we?
As if that weren't bad enough, the campaign to abolish private property starts with almost the first moment your child enters school.
Remember those weeks before school started for your brand-new first grader? There you were, you and your proud new student, walking the aisles of the local Wal-Mart, your list of school supplies in hand. Item by item you checked things off your list as you dropped them into the basket: pencils and erasers, notebooks and pencil holders, construction paper and paste. By the time you made it to the cash register, you had a full basket and a happy kid. As soon as you got home, your budding Einstein took the supplies to his room and spread everything out on the bed. This was his stuff, and it was important stuff, too—his very own tools and supplies, the things he'd use to learn and grow. And tomorrow he would be taking them to school. He couldn't have been more proud. On his last night before that magic first day of school, just before he went to bed, your young student would pack all his stuff in his backpack . . . then unpack it . . . then pack it again.
The next morning, it's show time! Off we go, full of apprehension and pride. Your young man is taking another grand step toward adulthood!
What could go wrong at school? Plenty. Remember, it's a government operation staffed by government agents.
As soon as the students are seated, the bell rings, and as fast as you can say the Pledge of Allegiance, the indoctrination begins: Your child is about to be introduced to the wonderful concept of "the common good."
Ready for class? Nope, not yet. There's a small matter that must be attended to first.
The government teacher steps in front of her virtual hostages and promptly delivers the first raw lesson in the power of government: She instructs her students to bring all of their precious new school supplies to the front of the classroom and put them into a huge box.
Wait just a minute here! Why am I putting my stuff into that box? My daddy took me to Wal-Mart and bought that stuff for me! It's mine! You can't take it away from me!
Oh, yeah?
As your child sits in stunned silence, the teacher tells him and his classmates that these supplies now belong to all of the class. What was once private property has been seized and transformed into community property, courtesy of the teacher's demands — demands that amount to a government mandate.
There is no due process. No rule of law. After all, in school the teacher is the law. Your child's supplies are now everybody's supplies, and the teacher has assumed the responsibility of distributing them as needed.
Know this: This whole "dump all of your school supplies into this box" is no mere innocent exercise, no simple whim of a few individual teachers. It's a conscious policy, and it has a purpose that goes beyond simple expediency for the teacher.
Your child, and every other child in that classroom, is being taught that their private property rights end when someone in authority says they end. In this instance, that person in authority is the teacher—a government employee. And even if your child isn't able to understand that it's actually the government who's seizing his property, he certainly does understand that his property is being seized, and converted into everybody's property. Worse yet, he is told, very clearly, that this is a good thing.
And who is there to tell him otherwise?
I've talked about this property confiscation on the air many times. Some parents call in to scold me, convinced that I'm lying, that this doesn't really happen. But for every one who does, plenty others call in to confirm what I'm saying—to report that it happened to their own child! I've even heard from young parents who believed I was making it up . . . right up to the point when their own child returned home from his first day of school.
The most surprising thing to me is that some callers—even some parents whose children have had their school supplies confiscated— actually don't see the problem with the policy. Wake up, folks! The very concept of private property is under attack here, and government is leading the charge.
It is a simple truth that property rights are the very basis of human freedom. We come into this world with nothing but our bodies and our minds. Those are the assets we bring with us to the marketplace. And no society based on economic and social freedom has ever survived the loss of private property rights.
Nobody would seriously argue against the notion that we, as individuals, are the sole owners of our minds and our bodies. We present our physical and mental labor to the free enterprise marketplace and trade it there for wealth, usually in the form of money. It can be said that we have received that money in exchange for the expenditure of a portion of our very lives.
When we convert that money to other forms of property, that property, too, represents a portion of our lives. That property is every bit as much ours as our very bodies and minds are. To demand that we forfeit that property to the government— even so trifling a piece of property as a schoolboy's notebook—is to demand a degree of involuntary servitude from us all.
I know this may sound a little preachy, but the importance of the basic human right to property, and its role in the preservation of a free society, cannot be overstated. When the government schools we pay for are working to destroy that concept, from the very first day of a child's very first grade, it's our duty to speak up.
Today we see property rights under attack from all quarters—as anyone who's ever confronted the idea of eminent domain knows too well. Government, after all, has an interest in weakening the concept of private property rights. The more Americans can be conditioned to accept the idea that the government has the right to confiscate our property for "the common good," the stronger government becomes and the weaker we as individuals become.
Come on, you say, my kid is only six years old! You don't expect him to realize what's happening and ask the teacher to respect his private property rights, now do you? What is he supposed to do, demand to be compensated for the seizure of his property?
Of course not.
Junior is a long way from understanding those concepts. But don't kid yourself: He certainly does understand, at least on a subconscious level, that his new teacher—someone he knows he is supposed to respect and look up to—thinks that the idea of seizing private property for general use is just fine. After all, the logic goes, there are other people out there who might need some of your stuff. And it's just not right for you to have something other people don't have or can't share in, is it? All you need to do to correct this perceived injustice, according to these teachers, is to let your superiors even things out a bit by taking some stuff from you and giving it to someone else.
Karl Marx had his own words for this concept. "From each according to his ability," he said, "to each according to his need." So what can be done to fix the problem? Well, I'll tell you what I did.
Actually, in my case, I didn't have to wait until my daughter, Laura, got into government school for this collectivist concept to rear its head. We learned this lesson in day care.
One afternoon I picked up Laura at her day care center. As she got into the car, I could see that her eyes were red; there were still traces of tears on her cheeks. What happened? I asked.
"The lady," she said, had taken her candy.
You see, it was the day after Halloween and Laura had taken a bag of goodies to day care, to dip into throughout the day. As soon as the day care supervisor saw her bag, however, she seized it. She told Laura that it just wasn't right for her to have anything that every other child didn't have. If she didn't bring enough to share with everyone, then she couldn't have it at all.
As soon as I heard that, I spun my incredibly hot Ford Pinto around and headed back to the day care center. Once there, I asked for a private meeting with the director. I asked her if she was familiar with the concept of private property. She said yes. Then I asked why it was the day care center's policy to indoctrinate children into the idea that it was not right for them to have property that other children didn't have.
Blank stare.
Then I asked her how she would feel if the bank took her next deposit and distributed it evenly among its other customers, telling her it wasn't nice for her to have money that other people didn't have. She got it.
The next time Laura brought some candy or cookies to day care, the supervisors left her alone.
For nearly all children in America, Day Number One at school— whether it's in an informal day care center or a public kindergarten— is also their first time in an independent social setting. It's their first chance to experience how the world is going to treat them. Until we do something to fix it, however, Lesson Number One your children learn that day may be that their rights exist only as long as the government allows.
And that's just the first week! Wait a little while, and you just might get that call from Teacher with vague, dark hints of a better world for your child if you'll just allow him to go on Ritalin.
From "Somebody's Gotta Say It"
Neal Boortz Remember those weeks before school started for your brand-new first grader? There you were, you and your proud new student, walking the aisles of the local Wal-Mart, your list of school supplies in hand. Item by item you checked things off your list as you dropped them into the basket: pencils and erasers, notebooks and pencil holders, construction paper and paste. By the time you made it to the cash register, you had a full basket and a happy kid.
As soon as you got home, your budding Einstein took the supplies to his room and spread everything out on the bed. This was his stuff, and it was important stuff, too—his very own tools and supplies, the things he'd use to learn and grow. And tomorrow he would be taking them to school. He couldn't have been more proud. On his last night before that magic first day of school, just before he went to bed, your young student would pack all his stuff in his backpack . . . then unpack it . . . then pack it again.
The next morning, it's show time! Off we go, full of apprehension and pride. Your young man is taking another grand step toward adulthood!
What could go wrong at school? Plenty. Remember, it's a government operation staffed by government agents.
As soon as the students are seated, the bell rings, and as fast as you can say the Pledge of Allegiance, the indoctrination begins: Your child is about to be introduced to the wonderful concept of "the common good."
Ready for class? Nope, not yet. There's a small matter that must be attended to first.
The government teacher steps in front of her virtual hostages and promptly delivers the first raw lesson in the power of government: She instructs her students to bring all of their precious new school supplies to the front of the classroom and put them into a huge box.
Wait just a minute here! Why am I putting my stuff into that box? My daddy took me to Wal-Mart and bought that stuff for me! It's mine! You can't take it away from me!
Oh, yeah?
As your child sits in stunned silence, the teacher tells him and his classmates that these supplies now belong to all of the class. What was once private property has been seized and transformed into community property, courtesy of the teacher's demands—demands that amount to a government mandate. There is no due process. No rule of law. After all, in school the teacher is the law. Your child's supplies are now everybody's supplies, and the teacher has assumed the responsibility of distributing them as needed.
Know this: This whole "dump all of your school supplies into this box" is no mere innocent exercise, no simple whim of a few individual teachers. It's a conscious policy, and it has a purpose that goes beyond simple expediency for the teacher.
Your child, and every other child in that classroom, is being taught that their private property rights end when someone in authority says they end. In this instance, that person in authority is the teacher—a government employee. And even if your child isn't able to understand that it's actually the government who's seizing his property, he certainly does understand that his property is being seized, and converted into everybody's property. Worse yet, he is told, very clearly, that this is a good thing.
And who is there to tell him otherwise?
I've talked about this property confiscation on the air many times. Some parents call in to scold me, convinced that I'm lying, that this doesn't really happen. But for every one who does, plenty others call in to confirm what I'm saying—to report that it happened to their own child! I've even heard from young parents who believed I was making it up . . . right up to the point when their own child returned home from his first day of school.
The most surprising thing to me is that some callers—even some parents whose children have had their school supplies confiscated— actually don't see the problem with the policy. Wake up, folks! The very concept of private property is under attack here, and government is leading the charge.
It is a simple truth that property rights are the very basis of human freedom. We come into this world with nothing but our bodies and our minds. Those are the assets we bring with us to the marketplace. And no society based on economic and social freedom has ever survived the loss of private property rights.
Nobody would seriously argue against the notion that we, as individuals, are the sole owners of our minds and our bodies. We present our physical and mental labor to the free enterprise marketplace and trade it there for wealth, usually in the form of money. It can be said that we have received that money in exchange for the expenditure of a portion of our very lives. When we convert that money to other forms of property, that property, too, represents a portion of our lives. That property is every bit as much ours as our very bodies and minds are. To demand that we forfeit that property to the government— even so trifling a piece of property as a schoolboy's notebook—is to demand a degree of involuntary servitude from us all.
I know this may sound a little preachy, but the importance of the basic human right to property, and its role in the preservation of a free society, cannot be overstated. When the government schools we pay for are working to destroy that concept, from the very first day of a child's very first grade, it's our duty to speak up.
Today we see property rights under attack from all quarters—as anyone who's ever confronted the idea of eminent domain knows too well. Government, after all, has an interest in weakening the concept of private property rights. The more Americans can be conditioned to accept the idea that the government has the right to confiscate our property for "the common good," the stronger government becomes and the weaker we as individuals become.
Come on, you say, my kid is only six years old! You don't expect him to realize what's happening and ask the teacher to respect his private property rights, now do you? What is he supposed to do, demand to be compensated for the seizure of his property?
Of course not.
Junior is a long way from understanding those concepts. But don't kid yourself: He certainly does understand, at least on a subconscious level, that his new teacher—someone he knows he is supposed to respect and look up to—thinks that the idea of seizing private property for general use is just fine. After all, the logic goes, there are other people out there who might need some of your stuff. And it's just not right for you to have something other people don't have or can't share in, is it? All you need to do to correct this perceived injustice, according to these teachers, is to let your superiors even things out a bit by taking some stuff from you and giving it to someone else.
Karl Marx had his own words for this concept. "From each according to his ability," he said, "to each according to his need." So what can be done to fix the problem? Well, I'll tell you what I did.
Actually, in my case, I didn't have to wait until my daughter, Laura, got into government school for this collectivist concept to rear its head. We learned this lesson in day care. One afternoon I picked up Laura at her day care center. As she got into the car, I could see that her eyes were red; there were still traces of tears on her cheeks.
What happened? I asked.
"The lady," she said, had taken her candy.
You see, it was the day after Halloween and Laura had taken a bag of goodies to day care, to dip into throughout the day. As soon as the day care supervisor saw her bag, however, she seized it. She told Laura that it just wasn't right for her to have anything that every other child didn't have. If she didn't bring enough to share with everyone, then she couldn't have it at all.
As soon as I heard that, I spun my incredibly hot Ford Pinto around and headed back to the day care center. Once there, I asked for a private meeting with the director. I asked her if she was familiar with the concept of private property. She said yes. Then I asked why it was the day care center's policy to indoctrinate children into the idea that it was not right for them to have property that other children didn't have.
Blank stare.
Then I asked her how she would feel if the bank took her next deposit and distributed it evenly among its other customers, telling her it wasn't nice for her to have money that other people didn't have. She got it.
The next time Laura brought some candy or cookies to day care, the supervisors left her alone.
For nearly all children in America, Day Number One at school— whether it's in an informal day care center or a public kindergarten— is also their first time in an independent social setting. It's their first chance to experience how the world is going to treat them. Until we do something to fix it, however, Lesson Number One your children learn that day may be that their rights exist only as long as the government allows.
And that's just the first week! Wait a little while, and you just might get that call from Teacher with vague, dark hints of a better world for your child if you'll just allow him to go on Ritalin.
From "Somebody's Gotta Say It"
Neal Boortz
© 2007
guess we can get a blue one and ‘pretend’ it’s green huh? Nahhhh
:)
**yup**
:)
I don’t know why that teacher was so anal. hah.
When we attended our one and only parent/teacher conference with that teacher, she complained that our daughter was reading too much. We agreed that it was not good for daughter to read while the teacher was lecturing. But daughter was so bored, she would read ahead in the text, and then she would read whatever book she had checked out from the library. The teacher was so upset by this excessive reading because it reminded her of her aunt who had lived with her family when she was growing up. The aunt was around the same age, and she read books all the time. She was very much like our oldest daughter. The aunt grew up to be a physician despite her never paying attention in classes, being disorganized, and always having her nose in a book. I guess she was projecting her jealousy for her aunt onto our daughter.
**laughs out loud**
“In this forum, those who do not go lock step into the ‘home schooling good, public school bad’ mantra will generally avoid posting so as to not be attacked. It’s not that they expect attack as they would someone with a weapon, but they do know that the group will disagree and may turn on them with derision. I will admit even I avoid some threads because I just don’t have the energy to deal with tyrants and their sycophants.”
Well, as you might notice from my site handle, I was at one time a Democrat posting on this forum. Although I’m no longer an active member of Nancy Pelosi’s party, I’ve suffered the slings and arrows, such as they are, at FR. I’ve also been on other conservative websites that are more aggressively moderated than FR.
The truth be told, I prefer the more freewheeling atmosphere at FR. The ideas are fresher and more to the point. And I don’t have to wade through the fluff. Yeah, I might run into a jerk or two, but they’re easily ignored.
You bring up the topic of tyranny. As someone who has been over-exposed to the concept of “political correctness”, let me assure you that having to be overly gentle towards those who are perpetually offended by facts and different opinions than those they hold dear is an insidious tyranny in and of itself.
My neighbor’s two children started school in Atlanta yesterday. Their supplies were NOT confiscated.
I have a surprise for you. Ready?
This is not a debate class in a public school. But, I will say this -- I lerned from one of my teachers, many years ago )in a public school -- back when they weeren't run by a bunch of union thugs) that if you wanted proof -- one way or the other -- of a contested subject, "... don't be too lazy to look it up." Any further questions?
I would have been more surprised if you had actually produced sourced evidence to back up your claim.
I rethought my response just now, and I realize that this has devolved to the point where I am being rude to you. It’s obvious that we aren’t going to agree. I apologize for my rude tone. I get upset because I grew up with two public school teachers who worked their tails off and cared intensely about the kids they taught.
Well, don't be. I have no intention of doing hours of research to prove something I heard or readabout, maybe years ago, to someone who wasn't paying attention at the timeand/or missed it. I am not in the free research business.
And, fuirthermore, I don't care whether people believe me or not. I do not lie to make a point -- never have and never will. And I don't care who does or does not believe that, either.
But don't let tht lead you to automatically shut out much relevant information that comes out on the subject of how people of their kind are losing the battle against inefficiency, politics, and even somketimes outright thuggery in the public school systems. Although this on a higher school level than this thread's original subject -- there is little doubt that the basics of the kind of junk mentioned in this article from Townhall.Com are introduced and praised in most of the public schools today.
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/news-forum/index
It isn't all about stealing kids' pencils and ersers -- that is just the tip of the iceberg.
Keep you eyes open -- it's interesting and maddening.
dmired - admired
And, unfortunately, good teachers have very little to say about the matter -- regardless of how hard they work to set things right.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2060723/posts
Are you a veteran?
I’ve worked in public schools for years and have never seen or heard of any teacher confiscate a student’s school supplies.
I personally purchase a pencil box, pencils, erasers, homework folders, crayons and whiteboard markers for each of my students out of my own funds. I provide 2 new pencils each month. If they need more they bring their own from home.
My only rule is no pencil sharpening during class. If their pencil breaks, they may use a loaner and sharpen at recess.
And with budget cuts, my school didn’t provide much this year. I got a stack of spiral notebooks, and composition books. That’s it! Everything else is out of pocket. I’ve become a huge fan of the local Dollar store.
Yep. Why?
Thanks for your service.
This is not happening in all schools. My friends’ children have not had this done to them.
That’s a great story. I did that cigar box thing back in the 60’s but forgot all about it until you mentioned it. I also recall that I loved that little experiment. Do you do this in a science class or what class?
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