Posted on 01/04/2009 12:27:20 AM PST by rabscuttle385
We have to make our voice heard in the colleges and universities, we have to teach the teachers. Too many wealthy conservatives give their money to feel good organizations that attack everything we stand for. I’ve seen this first hand where a wealthy Republican endowed a chair at a university, only to have them fill it with a socialist.
To avoid that kind of situation, you identify a conservative professors and endow a chair for them, making them bulletproof for the remainder of their careers. And there are conservative profs out there in the humanities, I know quite a few.
Moreover, donating money to political causes and candidates is a temporary fix. Think about the return the conservative movement gets for its buck when a legislator is elected, especially in the era of the Rino, versus funding a professorship or providing scholarships for conservative scholars, which garauntees the truth will be told in at least one classroom for the next 30 years. We have to win the battle in the university classroom before we can win at the ballot box. So long as professors teach our teachers that statism is good, the teachers are going to pass it on to our kids.
Seems like a real good argument for locally controlled public schools and private schools. Local control really began to deteriorate when the school districts began participating in the federal student lunch program. Local schools are now addicted to that easy money, and in return they sometimes have to bow to federal will. What seemed to be a nice idea of providing free lunches for poor kids became the bait the federal government used to force school districts to offer sex education, aides awareness education, and a host of other nonsensical programs.
There are good teachers in the public school system, but they are often overwhelmed by the demands of administrators that feel compelled to follow the latest federal dictates. I have spoken to many who do feel that they are becoming nothing but societies baby sitters.
Yes, it is extremely important that conservative values be taught in the home. So many children, however, have such a terrible example in their parents that they have almost no chance in life. Teachers can only do so much to help those kids that come from horrible circumstances.
There definitely are teachers who believe it is their job to indoctrinate the nations youth, but I don’t believe they can do any better of a job at doing that than they do at teaching history and math. Even the liberal teacher is going to have to deal with students who don’t listen, don’t care, and don’t respect them.
I often deal with good students that have been taught a load of liberal crap in high school, and some just don’t believe you at first when you explain the virtues of conservatism. This is one reason why I believe parents should insist that their high school children get a job. I have seen several pro-government, liberal leaning kids turned around when he/she received that first paycheck and pay stub. Suddenly, the tyranny of taxation and the power of government becomes very real to those kids. But when it comes to overcoming the damage done by cultural rot I am not sure what we as a society are going to do.
Yes. How well the home schooled student does in college, however, depends entirely on the student's curriculum and the dedication of the student's parents. I teach college writing, and home schooled students are as widely varied in their abilities and aptitudes as those who were not home schooled. Home schooled does not necessarily mean better schooled. Parents have to make sure that teaching their children academics is a full-time job and that their children have to be disciplined enough to sit down and complete assignments on a timely basis. I've had excellent home schooled students, and I've had terrible home schooled students. The good ones never miss a class. The inferior ones rarely show up and later wonder why writing and logic are even required--this happens when they don't pass.
My only concern about home schooling is that some parents don't realize that they have to take it very seriously. You don't just purchase a curriculum and go off half cocked, learning with the kids. That might work for grade school, but if you want your kids to get a real education beyond that, people with documented knowledge of math, science, English, etc. should be teaching your kids in those areas. The home schooled kids who excel have had that advantage.
“You probably okay unless you’re also white and male. If you’re a white male, well...I feel for you, man.”
Yup. I’m white, and I’m male. I am screwed.
What do you mean by “documented knowledge of math, science, English”?
My mother was a high school graduate. She managed all my education up to age 15 and most of it for the following year until I graduated. She managed to educate me enough that I could take calculus classes, even though she hadn’t gotten past algebra two, I was able to take college chemistry easily, and my writing courses in college were always easy A’s.
Am I inherently more able to educate my children because I have a master’s degree in computer science? I don’t think so. Nor should homeschooling be a formal, eight hours a day of education from on high. Really good homeschoolers know better.
Our schools?
Those cesspools of liberalism, political correctness, and immorality may be your schools. They are not mine or mu kids. I may be forced to subsidize their inferiority, the same way I have to subsidize welfare queens and drug addicts, but that does not make them mine. My children are more important to me than that.
And you still miss the point. Atlas Shrugged.
They are not getting worse because people are fleeing, you have cause and effect backwards. People are fleeing BECAUSE they are getting worse.
And they need to get dramatically worse. They need to collapse under their own weight.
You still have not answered my question either, which really will end the discussion. Do you remember the central disagreement between Dagny and Rearden on one side and John Gault on the other? What was Dagny’s position on what Gault was trying to do? What did she eventually do? If you did not read the book I’ll tell you.
You are absolutely right. Infiltration as a strategy works when the infiltrators are a destructive force, and the prevailing system is sane and stable. For example, many flower children and radicals of the 1960's consciously decided to infiltrate our school systems (See the book "Teaching As A Subversive Activity" or witness Bill ayers career trajectory). This effort was obviously successful.
It doesn't work the other way around. You can't infiltrate a system that is basically ruled by institutionalized chaos and illogical thoughtforms. Castro's Cuba is not going to be rehabilitated from within, but one can always get on an inner tube and head north...
Get your kids out of the government schools by any means necessary. They deserve better and are not equipped to be foot soldiers in a war where the enemy disperses the anthrax of Marxism daily.
Putting your children in public schools, when you have any option otherwise is simply child abuse, period. Public schools are to education, what public housing is to housing, yet everyone smiles and waves as they ship their children off to be dumbed down and indoctrinated.
Don we now
our flame resistant apparel,
fa la la, la la la, la la la...
(I’m with you. Many who claim that they HAVE to have both parents working need to examine how much, after all expenses, it’s COSTING to have the mother work.)
Good point. The public school teachers and defenders love to downplay the differences between public and private schools. For example, in our area the newspaper repeatedly "forgets" to include the standardized test score results for the private schools in the area when they publish the public school results. This is because the private schools always top the list.
When I had my child in public school, I was somewhat defensive and believed the lie that I was somehow preparing my daughter for the "real world" by keeping her in the public school. In reality we were too afraid of the tuition bill, and I was working full-time so we didn't think we could home-school. My other reasons were just justifications for what I thought was an impossible situation monetarily. Now that we have made the switch to private, I would never go back. We just had to bite the bullet and take on the cost. The benefits outweigh the costs several times over.
In my opinion, you "prepare" your children for the real world, ie, worldly values,
BY sheltering them and giving them a good grounding in moral truths and discernment of the BS that they'll be facing.
I agree. Children don't have the tools to counteract the dominant profane culture in the public schools and just end up becoming a part of it.
The American Public School System is essentially at war with American children, whose parents, by and large, have no idea as to what is happening, being products of that same system themselves.
The system will collapse only when the kids make it unworkable.
Speed the day!
Bingo. That's exactly what's happening.
I’ll be perfectly honest, I got a copy of Atlas shrugged and jusae could not get through it.
They’re our schools because we can not separate ourselves from them...we pay for them, we reap the results in more ways than one.
Additionally, I think of the Christian principle of sharing the Word with everyone, or simply being a witness by how we live, etc., imagine all the kids who would get no examples or expereince with Christianity outside of the home, because clearly they don’t get it inside their home...
but tell me, I doubt I ever finish Atlas shrugs...it seems to go on and on forever!
I was homeschooled. The year I took the PSATs/SATs, the local school district had three “letter of commendation” students based on PSAT scores. They got written up glowingly in the local newspaper, the whole nine yards - only I had scored even higher, making National Merit Semifinalist (missed getting a scholarship because of paperwork stuff).
The district knew that, since I had tested through them and they got all the scores back. But my name wasn’t passed along to the paper. And when it came time to take the SATs, they “forgot” to notify me (one of the three letter of commendation students was a girl at my church, and she took the time to call me and find out if I knew when the SAT was.) Still managed a great score.
The school districts hate it when homeschoolers show that parents can do it better. You would think they would like the proof that smaller class size works, since that is another thing they are always whining about. But even they must realize that smaller class size alone is not enough.
Nope, they must protect the “children must be Educated by Professional Educators” lie at all costs. That is what their whole system is based on.
I have a master’s degree in computer science. If I chose, I could teach 19 year olds at a community college anywhere in this country with that credential. But am I qualified to teach 18 year olds at the local public high school the same thing? Depends on state laws... but in most of the states I’ve lived, that wouldn’t fly.
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