Posted on 05/14/2010 12:23:51 PM PDT by BruceDeitrickPrice
A mother in Oregon left some provocative comments on an article I posted about dumbing-down. She didn’t like what was going on in her local school; neither did her children apparently. They were evolving ways to deal with this problem. Maybe there are ideas here that others can use.
People seem to assume there are two roads: homeschooling (which isn’t practical for millions of parents); or living with the nonsense (which is killing the country).
This mother’s “third way” was talking to her kids, explaining things, openly sharing her concerns, trying to undo damage as fast as it happens.
These quotations are from one parent. Please add ways you’ve dealt with dumbing-down. ---
“I ask them a lot of questions about what they are learning in school. I ask them what they are being told in history class. I ask them if the teacher has some kind of agenda they are pushing. If one of my kids has been told something weird, I correct it. If I am not sure of the answer, we research it together.”
“I feel like the school takes the very simplest concepts and make them so convoluted that kids can’t get around them sometimes.”
“My daughter was so upset with her homework that she was crying. Once I showed her the simple steps of solving the easy math problems made into a puzzle, she started doing them very quickly and angrily.”
“Both of our kids tell us (mom and dad) that they learn more from us here at home than they do at school. The really sad thing about that is we don’t spend that much time really teaching them. All we are doing is helping them with their homework or debriefing them when they come home brainwashed.”
“My daughter gets frustrated because she has to show her work for the simplest thing that she already knows--like 2 times 5 is 10. Neither one of us can understand why it isn’t enough to simply know the answer. Instead she has to waste her time making 2 groups of 5 little dots or x’s. She is doing all this silly busy work instead of moving on to meatier stuff.”
“I believe this is an insidious way of muddying things up and making a person second-guess their thinking and trick them into believing they are stupid and render them incapable of thinking for themselves.”
“My son can’t believe all the people he comes into contact with at school that simply have no clue, and the way the teachers lie to the students about history and current events is literally breathtaking.”
“I work with them about a lot of things and I either make them read or I read to them a lot. Reading is half the battle and the key to everything in life.”
“I don’t know if this is a dirty trick on my son or a survival thing--you decide. I told him to do whatever he has to do to get through the system and pass. Put down the answers they want to hear and play their game. It hurts, but remember this and it won’t hurt so much: They think they are winning. Let them think they are winning. Think of it as getting over on them as you quietly educate the friends and acquaintances of yours who will listen to reason and are strong enough to think for themselves.”
“Maybe that’s the answer. We infiltrate all their systems and change from within. Use all their own Gramscian planks and Alinsky rules against them to further OUR agenda. Maybe we need to use all their dirty tricks and rules against them and rebuild from within just as they destroy from within.” ---------------------------
[The Education Establishment is always claiming--dishonestly, I think--to teach something called “critical thinking.” But that is precisely what this mother is teaching her kids to do--think critically about their own education. Priceless....The link at top is to the article that prompted these comments: "The Secrets of Dumbing Down Revealed, http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2505833/posts ]
Teach kids to read, and read to them. It takes about 30 hours of tutoring to teach a ready child to read, using Samuel Blumenfeld's Alphaphonics. Or, six+ years to produce a semi-literate book hater using "look say."
John Dewey bemoaned the negative effect that a love of books had on "socialization." His disciple Richard Gray took the concern to heart, and created a tool to prevent that dread event, the basal reader, starring his namesake Dick, plus Jane, plus Spot ...
This video must be watched.....
Math Education: An Inconvenient Truth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tr1qee-bTZI
My second grader’s school district has adopted the “Everyday Mathematics” program shown in this video. It is as bad as the lady is saying, even at the second grade level. My wife and I have a very difficult time helping him with the math homework, because quite frankly this crap is hard to understand. All those old algorithms you grew up with, are not taught. They are replaced by alternative ways of finding the answer, that may work fine for math geeks who are proficient already in the old ways – but tossing away the old tried and true way and replacing it is a mistake in monstrous proportions.
His school district use to be one of the best in the State, but it has moved way down the list. Many other districts are also now teaching this, and it’s because the state wide test is based on this math.
The results are starting to come in, and the kids are failing the state wide exam. So what do they do? Return to the older books that worked? Nope. They lower the bar on the math scores for a given time, having the math scores be a smaller percentage of the total grade.
I wish we could afford a private school, there are some good ones in our area, but its impossible. And as far as home schooling, one of us would have to quit our job, and that is a “no can do” . We do after-school him though with books recommended by fellow Freepers facing the same situation.
CONTROL is the name of their game..
Sam Blumenfeld is a hero.
Phonics work.
I’ve always thought that would be an excellent way to home school if some of the others needed to work find 5 or 6 other people who want to do the same thing and arrage a schedule weekly about who’s day it is to teach anbd rotate the kids home to home.
bump
Yes there are. We own two(one outrigth one mortgaged) and a piece of land to boot all on one income. :)
Limit tv programming consumption.
I see your point: Black man trying to enslave people... kinda like his ancestors. (That fits, too. lol)
Homeschool
Laws vary from state to state but my simplistic answer is, if you and the other adult keep your mouths shut about the arrangement, who cares?
I don’t live in one of them. My husband’s job doesn’t work in small towns—it’s military-related, security stuff. Big city only.
And my children go to an excellent school. I have a dyslexic/dysgraphic son and one who had a severe speech delay. The schools have worked WONDERS on my boys.
If we lived somewhere extremely liberal, would reconsider. But we don’t.
We lowered our living standard to be able to have one employed adult while the other can conduct the bulk (notice I did not say all) of the instruction. It all depends what you consider important.
I've seen too many christian couples, who permitted their precious ones to be educated by the state, come to regret, albeit too late, that choice. (I also work with an engineer who wanted his wife to homeschool their children, but she refused. The kids have had serious issues--arrests, pregnancies, truancy, dropping out, and educational compromise with far reaching professional consequences.) Among the christian families the results have been mixed and in some cases dissasterous as well. But in all cases the character of the children has been compromised.
The main reason it "isn't practical" is that many states only allow children to be homeschooled by their own parents (or a licensed teacher hired by the parents). As a few people on this thread noted, group homeschooling would be a great option for families that can't afford, or just don't want to have one parent completely leave the workforce. One parent could afford to stay home and teach, if she was getting paid a few thousand a year by parents of a few other children she taught along with her own. This would also allow for some grouping of kids by age, ability level, or special needs.
Of course, teachers' unions fight tooth and nail against proposals to allow non-parental, non-licensed teacher homeschooling, and other nanny-staters at the state level enact laws tightly regulating in-home child care in a way that would classify most group homeschoolers as in home child care businesses, and which would in many cases seriously interfere with running a homeschool the way you want to (including a good deal of remodelling of your house, visits by inspectors to make sure you don't have anything accessible to children that hasn't been government-certified as lead-free, fenced yard (even if you're on a remote dirt road), etc.
From time to time, I've perused the HSLDA website and been disturbed to note that this issue doesn't seem to be on their radar screen at all. I'm sure it would easily triple the number of US children who are homeschooled, if all states were pressured into allowing group/non-parental homeschooling with the same minimal restrictions that many already apply to parental homeschooling.
tutoring is illegal? Home piano courses?
The first step is to resign your current role as a government-authorized breeder and take back the responsibility of being a parent.
I agree - they are indoctrination centers. But, if you talk to your kids, expose them to better, more accurate and complete information they have a tendency to listen and want to learn more - not just soak up the stupidity of the schools.
Yep, and yet in several states that do not allow group homeschooling don’t require all teachers to be “certified” teachers in public schools, but require private schools and group centers to meet those requirements. That REALLY PI$$E$ me off!
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