Posted on 11/05/2010 10:03:31 AM PDT by Qbert
If you are not aware of this, you should be, before you vote. I taught in SM Schools and support funding for a strong public education system. I demonstrated my belief by attending SM Schools as did both of my children.
Amanda Grosserode does not understand the importance of our public schools and has demonstrated that lack of understanding by withdrawing her own children from public schools in favor of home schooling.
Are you on the right site?
My children, however, are being indoctrinated with the 10 Commandments, and pray at the start and end of every school day, every club meeting, every band or sports practice. Nothing liberal about it.
That said, do you think I'd have a problem with parents sending their kids to a liberal school on their own dime? I'm not in favor of thought control. If you are, I'd blame your public school experience.
Also proves what most of us knew about education majors in general, bottom of the academic pool, lowest SAT/ACT scores of any major.
I am aware of that. Fortunately, I wasn't an education major.
But more to the point, are you really advocating a government-run secondary education system over a free-market solution?
Again, are you on the right site?
They are particularly nasty too. Cruelty is considered to be normal in public high schools.
You are calling me vicious and you are asking me, “What personal insults?” Really? Unbelievable!
It is amazing how quickly government school defenders descend to personal insult.
So?...Maybe I can help you. Rather than calling me vicious you could explain the following:
** How can a school be simultaneously both God-centered and godless? How could either worldview be religiously neutral in content or consequences. ( You have not addressed this except for ordering me, in the imperative voice, to “dial it down”.)
** How can we as a nation defend teaching our children to think godlessly?
** How, as a nation, can we defend teaching children to be comfortable with socialism? Government schooling is a socialist funded service. The very definition of socialism is that funds are collected from one’s neighbor by threat of armed police action. ( Real bullets in those guns on the hip.)
** Godless and socialist government schools are compulsory for all those who can not find or fund an alternative. Is this not true? Is is not true that “compulsory” means the threat of police force?
**Is it inappropriate to use the words “jizya” and ransom? I certainly don't think so. Unless a parent ransoms their child from the government godless and socialist schooling there will be police action if the parent refuses.
** Am I wrong that government is running a price-fixed cartel monopoly that discourages business from running private alternatives? ( In my county there are NO private alternatives except for homeschooling.)
Ok... You claim to have done OK in government schooling. Since you claim to have done OK under this non-stop godlessness and socialist funded “schooling”, does your unique personal opinion justify subjecting other people's children to a godless and socialist curriculum ( under police threat) or forcing other citizens ( under police threat) to pay for the establishment of government godlessness and helping other people's children to be comfortable with socialism?
Rather than address the issues I have posted, you have personally insulted me by stating that I am somehow too dialed up, never buy anything, and never leave the house. And...You have called me “vicious”.
They're soooooo much smarter than the unwashed, you see./s
You are a walking straw man argument and validation of those who do not respect educators.
It is one thing to ask honest questions (which you aren’t) it is another to insert your assumptions into my mouth (which you are), while confusing apples and oranges.
Free market solutions are the answer.
Do you have a model for education without government which means without taxes that doesn’t rely on each family trying to educate their kids themselves? I’m sure you know people that have no business homeschooling.
Hm?....These parents can go into McDonalds too and order anything they want. Gee! Imagine that. Anything! No strings attached and no limits.
I trust the free market to feed me. I trust the free market to give parents what they want for their kids. I trust the parents more than I do the government.... Even Marxist/communist parents! ( I refuse to use the word “liberal”. All liberals are really Marxists/communists. )
Pinging Trailpark Badass as courtesy.
*I’m not a public school defender. Never said I was. Just said that all of them aren’t bad and people calling other people monsters (wait, is that insulting someone else? I believe it is), are wrong in doing so.
*Ok, explain.
*I never said that Public Schools are God Centered. Therefore I do not care what you do with your kids. If you feel that your public school pushes Godlessness on your kids. Then by all means. Get them out. My public school did not push that on me. In fact, many teachers were Christians and I was able to form meaningful relationships with them. Of course, the majority of Public Schools are not God Centered, with even some pushing the Anti-God movement. I’ll I’m saying is that they aren’t all like that.
It’s no different than Cable TV. In no way shape or form is that “God Centered”, but yet real Christians watch it. They find good things on TV that are appropriate. Just like you can find good schools and good teachers in Public schools. Most of its junk (public schools and TV) but there are a few good things. That’s all I’m saying.
*Our nation will teach kids Godlessness no matter if there is a public school or not. My personal opinion is that the buck stops with the parents. If they don’t instill respect and a Godly character then it doesn’t matter if your homeschooled, public school, or private school. You’re done.
* I never said I was for forcing kids go to public school. Not my argument. You must be talking to someone else.
*I never said I was for forcing kids go to public school. Not my argument. You must be talking to someone else.
* I never said I was for forcing kids go to public school. Not my argument. You must be talking to someone else.
* I never said I was for forcing kids go to public school. Not my argument. You must be talking to someone else.
*I did go to public school, and I am FINE. Not OK, FINE. You don’t listen to a word I’m saying. You hear what you want to hear. You can’t stand that someone did alright going through Public school. Well, I’m sorry to let you down, but a lot of people made it through public school. They actually are doing very well right now too. I never ever stated I was for forcing kids to go to public school (DO YOU READ THIS?). I also never said I’m for parents, who are homeschooling or sending their kid to Private schools, being forced to pay taxes to their public school (DO YOU READ THIS?) I’m sorry that you are around schools that must absolutely be horrible. Luckily I am not. God has provided a Public education path that had many Christian teachers and leaders along the way. The same way he has provided Christian Teachers and Leaders throughout the public school system.
I’ve addressed the issues you’ve posted. Multiple times I had to shake my head. I mean seriously. I can only say, so many times, that I’m not for the Public school system. It’s broken. I only was saying that every single public school is not the horror show you make it out to be and that SOME kids that go to these schools come out alright.
My mistake was reading that you were upset about liberal indoctrination and thinking you were upset with liberal indoctrination.
Public schools shouldn’t be an indoctrination for Liberal or Conservative causes, shouldn’t be a substitute for church or synagogue, and shouldn’t be where one goes to get drugs.
I’ve seen plenty of your rants about what you don’t like, so now I’d like to see your comprehensive solution.
No, why should I? That's what markets are for.
I know what I want for MY children, and there is a non-government market solution for me.
If we allowed markets to work, there would be solutions for most people, and the government wouldn't have ready-made propaganda factories.
So you are pretty much all gripe and no solution.
Figures. Got it.
They have a meme and no solutions. I admire the way you stay on track, it messes them up.
LOL, I gave you the solution: freedom.
Apparently you don't like it because it doesn't satisfy your desire to create a top-down, centralized utopia.
And as long as I'm made to pay for it, you bet I'm gonna gripe.
BTW, I'm not an educator. I'd never be able to afford my children's education on that kind of salary.
Again, apparently you are.
Government schools can NOT be religiously neutral in content or consequences because it is **impossible** to have a religiously neutral education. For this reason conservatives should move toward closing down government schooling completely and move toward a completely private system of universal schooling.
No matter what a government school does it can not be religiously neutral. At the moment they are godless.
All education of the very young **is** indoctrination. Why? Answer: Because the young complete lack any reference for judgment.
Therefore....It is parents who should privately decide, with the cooperation of teachers and principals, in a private setting, upon the content of their child's education. It is a freedom of conscience abomination to have these matters decided upon by the voting mob in the form of school boards and imposed upon resisting and resentful parents by threat of police action.
Next....ALL government schools in this nation are ( at the moment) godless. Simply by attending children learn to think godlessly. This is a complete abomination and violates freedom of conscience since government is **establishing** the godless religion of secularism. Yet...To attempt to introduce religion would mean favoring one form of religious thought over another. It would be favoring a God-centered worldview and would violate the freedom of conscience of those with a godless worldview.
It is IMPOSSIBLE for the government to resolve this conundrum. The **only** solution is to work toward getting government completely out of the education business.
My suggestion is to move toward tax credits. Anyone should be able to direct their education dollars to the **private** scholarship fund of their choice, or be encouraged to fund the education of a child of their choice. Gradually we should move toward having parents assume more and more of the cost of educating their own child.
But...Let's suppose that all government education were to shut down tomorrow. What would happen?
Answer: There would be chaos for a few weeks to months, but resourceful Americans would get it figured out. The same children who are getting an education today would get one tomorrow. The same children who are failing today would fail tomorrow. Why? The reason is that little to no learning happens in school. The vast majority of what a child learns is due to the influences of his parents and his own efforts. The government school is merely sending home a curriculum for the parents and child to follow in the home.
If you know of a well educated child, his parents, and the child himself, are doing **everything** that our family did as homeschoolers. There is little to no difference between their habits and those of my family. In essence, well educated children are **homeschooled** even if they attend their crappy government assigned school.
If you have links to scientific research that distinctly separates exactly what a child learns in school from what he learns at home or outside of school, please, please, please provide these links. I suspect that these careful controlled studies have never been done. It is merely assumed that children learn something in school. I would like to see the proof.
Yes, there are parents who shouldn't homeschool, and the truth is those few who shouldn't be homeschooling aren't. They don't like their kids and are more than willing to dump them on the taxpayer. Since, it has been my observation that all well educated children are homeschooled ( even if they attend school) these kids from troubled homes aren't getting an education in school either. They are instead causing trouble for the others, and learning very bad moral and ethical lessons in their government school.
Even these educationally neglected children would be better off at home. They aren't getting an education in school or at home but at least they wouldn't be subject to, or subject others to, moral depravity.
Again...Children who attend today's government schools ( **ALL** of them) are being taught to think godlessly. At their very best, when modern government schooling opened in the mid-1800s to early 1900s, government schooling offered up a generic and lukewarm Protestantism. Well!...We know what Christ does with the lukewarm. He spits them out of his mouth!
Since the inception of modern, Prussian-modeled, government schools children have learned to be comfortable with government compulsion, government price-fixed cartels, and taking money from their neighbor to pay for a service their parents want for tuition-free.
Within one to three generations of government schooling, my great grandparents, grandparents, and parents supported and voted for the following.
** the IRS
** the federal reserve
** the direct election of Senators
** Teddy Roosevelt and the usurpation of huge tracts of state land ( without compensation) for federal parks and monuments
** Woodrow Wilson and his failed “one world” League of Nations
** feminism
** unions
** Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal
** Johnson and his Great Society
** the abolishment of the gold standard
( Just to name a few outrages)
Obama and his Marxist minions were not an accident. Our socialist, compulsory, and godless government schools made him inevitable.
If conservatives wish to save this nation they **must** give up the idea that government owned and run, socialist, and godless schools can be reformed. If we did reform them they would be God-centered, not socialist funded, and not government owned and run. In other words they would be private schools.
Conservatives, if they wish to save our nation, must work to see that every child in this nation has access to a private conservative school that upholds the Constitution and teaches the specific Judeo Christian beliefs of the child's family.
With today's technology it is completely possible to provide every child in this nation with a very inexpensive but excellent conservative education. We should think in terms of one room schools in the homes of trusted neighbors, small tutoring centers, homeschool cooperatives, and adding elementary education to existing day care, etc. We should abandon the very expensive brick and mortar institutionalized education that is common today.
And...Every dime that would not be spent on government owned and run, socialist, and godless education should be returned to the taxpayer.
Much babble and extremely general posturing but nothing there to give a vision of what your replacement for public schools should be.
Who pays and how?
What facilities, what staff, what extracurricular activities?
( justice pinged as a courtesy)
OK...These are very valid questions.
Facilities:
Please note that I have repeatedly stated that we should **begin** the process of moving toward complete privatization. In fact, we already have by way of vouchers, tax credits, charters, common homeschooling, and early admission to college by homeschoolers.
Who pays and how:
We already have some form or combination of vouchers, charters, and tax credits in nearly all states. We should begin the process there. The infrastructure for this already exists. We should gradually begin to expand this by allowing taxpayers a direct, dollar for dollar, rebate on their property and state taxes if they sponsor any individual child's education, or donate to a private voucher educational foundation that issues private vouchers. Laws already exist to monitor and prosecute fraud for other charities. These same laws would apply to this form of charity as well.
Some states already have experience with tax credits. I don't see any headlines about abuse of this system. I favor tax credits over charters and vouchers because it allows direct control by the person donating to his chosen **private** educational voucher foundation. We already have existing civil rights laws and these should apply to these private education voucher foundation in the same way that they **now** apply to any charity.
Wherever vouchers, tax credits, and charters have opened long, long, long waiting lists have formed. It is heart breaking to watch the children and parents waiting in long lines and listening hopefully for their child's lottery number. Stossel did a wonderful report on the phenomena. Personally, the movie “Waiting for Superman” is already on our family's netflicks list.
Legislatures can meet this pent up demand for private choices, balance their budgets, and lower the number of state employee pensions by gradually increasing the numbers of vouchers, tax credits, and charters.
As we have some experience with the privatization of education, we should gradually expect parents to take over more of their own child's educational expenses. It is amazing to me that parents who now put their child in day care suddenly can't afford to pay for, or contribute to, their own child's education when that child turns 5. As you drive down the road please note the **new** cars being driven. Please note the Mc Mansions on the hill. All of these parents are fully capable of paying for their own children. We should **gradually** expect them to do so.
Private school expenses in my state average about $3,000. My daughter will be sending her children to private school ( her oldest is 4). The tuition for their town's local private school is exactly $3,000, and they welcome children with dyslexia and other educational disabilities.
There are however children who are severely disabled. They are blind, very crippled, deaf, or profoundly retarded. Most of the educational expense for many of these children is **NOT** at all due to their teaching expenses. It is due to their nursing needs while in school and this is really a **medical** expense.
I suggest that all children be offered ( privately or through the government) a health insurance policy that insures against catastrophic educational disability and would cover the **medical** and **nursing** needs these children need in an educational setting. It would cover translators and signers, hearing aides, health care workers to assist with feeding and sanitary needs, wheelchairs, special glasses, seeing eye dogs, special computers, R.N.s to supervise medicine, Help with feeding, etc.
Any child should be allowed to take the GED, or similar private exam, at any age and then be fully eligible for all private and government scholarship aide and admission to college like any other student. Homeschoolers have PROVEN without a doubt that children can and **DO** thrive in college at young ages. Two of my homeschooled children earned B.S. degrees in mathematics by the age of **18**. They are NOT unusual. The next time you see a headline about a Westinghouse science winner, please remember that this child could and **should** already be finished an undergraduate degree and be in graduate school.
It appalling to me that so many very bright children are languishing in stupid high school programs when they could already be working on graduate degrees.
Having the programs that allow very bright children to progress into formal college and graduate school setting would be a **tremendous** saving to the taxpayer and be of great great benefit to the child, if the parents feel this is best educational path for their child. Again we have **tons** of experience with this from homeschoolers.
By the way....Every year our state legislature has a bill before it that would allow any child of any age to take the GED. Every year the teachers unions lobby like crazy to see that it is defeated.
Finally, homeschoolers have proven that it is completely and **commonly** possible to educate children on **literally** pennies a day. REALLY! With today's technology and free Internet sources the cost of giving a child an outstanding education is even **far** less than it cost to homeschool my children ( who are now adults).
We could and should be able to give children an outstanding education through today's technology on literally pennies a day on curriculum **if** we would abandon the idea that all children must be educated in prison-like, Prussian military modeled, brick and mortar buildings.
Facilities:
Tax credits, vouchers, and charters will help build the infrastructure needed to eventually move to a completely private system. As it is now, there are NO private choices open to parents ( such as in my county). The government is running a price-fixed cartel and is giving its product away for free. What rational business person is going to compete against a cartel like that?
We already see that in states with vouchers, charters, and tax credits that private business people will and do open highly successful privately owned and managed schools. This is how we build the infrastructure needed for complete privatization.
In Los Angeles the teachers of one government high school voted to become a Red Dot charter school. All teachers should be allowed to vote whether or not their government school becomes an independent charter school.
In my state homeschoolers are flat out forbidden to educate any other child except their own. This needs to stop. If a parent respects a trusted homeschooling family that they know, then that parent has the fundamental human right to have that homeschooling mom and dad educate their child, if the homeschooling family agrees to accept their child into their family circle.
Again...Regarding facilities,....With privatization I predict we will see abandonment of the brick and mortar, prison-like schools. We will, see education settings that our Founding Fathers enjoyed. There will be one room schools in the homes of neighbors, private tutoring centers, small schools in the local Lions Clubs, and churches. Homeschooling families in taking in one or two of the children of friends and neighbors...etc.
When our Founding Fathers urged universal education, what they had in mind was likely the education they enjoyed. They would be appalled and horrified if they could see how we mistreat children in our modern prison-like government schools.
Extracurricular:
Another way to help privatize the system is to move all sports, theater, arts, dance, cheer leading, banner waving teams, and special interest clubs (etc.) to the county departments of recreation. Please remember that the former government schools would still have excellent county facilities for training but that training would now be a county recreation responsibility.
Next, the health, safety, and fire requirements for those parents choosing one room schools, or other homeschooling families, for their children should be similar to those for our existing day care. If a home or day care center is safe enough for for infant, pre-school, before school, and after-school child care, it is safe enough for one-room schooling.
Existing day care facilities should be permitted to become charter, voucher, or tax credit schools. They could begin by adding kindergarten, and first, second, and third grade. These facilities already exist and they are already providing before and after school care. Why not allow the day care facility to hire a teacher(s), allow the child to remain at the day care facility, and continue their schooling there? It would be so much less disruptive to the child to remain in the care and supervision of their trusted day care providers.
Staff:
States already have voucher, tax credit, and charter schools. Unlike government schooling, we don't have daily stories about neglect or abuse occurring in these schools. We don't see daily stories about abusive day care centers ( except for the notorious cases where the government prosecutors **invented** crimes to promote their political careers). The standards of safety for hiring of staff should continue to be the same for those that we have for existing day care, voucher, tax credit, charter schools, and private schools.
We have had centuries long experience with existing private schooling. If parents are, today, capable of choosing a private schools with teachers they deem professionally qualified, then they should be fully capable of choosing a voucher, tax credits, or charter schools along with their staff. The requirements for teachers should be no more onerous than that which currently exists for private schools today and has existed for a few centuries in the U.S.
Who pays and how:
The Department of Education on the federal level should be completely and utterly abolished! All responsibility for supervision of K-12 education ( and college level education) should be returned to the states.
At first the taxpayer would fund the tax credits, vouchers, and charters. Gradually we would expect parents to take on more responsibility of paying for their own child's education. If they can afford and expensive new car or a house with more than 2,000 feet, they **CAN** afford to contribute significantly to their child's education.
In an ideal world, all education would be privately funded with charities paying for the poorest. Is it possible to meet this libertarian ideal? Probably not. But...We could make significant steps in this direction.
We spend **more** on K-12 education alone ( federal, state, and local) than we do on the military. Really we do! These costs are crushing our economy and business and property taxes going to fund our prison-like government schools are pushing industry off shore. Tremendous amounts of capital are utterly unavailable because it is being sucked up a greedy educational-industrial complex. Worse, though, is that our children are confined to prison-like structures that have all the social pathology found in real prisons.
( Not proof read. I have an eye exam scheduled and I am in a hurry.)
Oh I'd bet she does understand what progressives deem the "importance of our public schools", indoctrnation centers.
IMO nothing can improve with the simple 'ban government schools' mantra that failes to include Specific soultions. I cannot comment more fully at the moment, but this caught my eye:
The Department of Education on the federal level should be completely and utterly abolished! All responsibility for supervision of K-12 education ( and college level education) should be returned to the states.
When I hear people talk about privatising schools and getting government out of schools, then I infer that they mean state level since the feds do not actually 'do' anything except play politics.
Getting government out and going private means no taxpayer burden for education since many peopl oppose paying for something they don't use such as schools.
So without taxes, how does funding work? Or do you need taxes and therefore some level of government involvement?
Interesting, how so?
And why would you broadcast your intentions?
I agree that they are one of the greatest threats to our nation and posterity, but since I have a large family, I believe I have to focus on my own and get as far away from the Titanic as I can.
One of the first things is educating **conservatives** that godless, socialist, compulsory, and government owned and run schools can NOT NOT NOT be reformed. If our nation's children attend these despicable institutions of socialism they learn to think godlessly, learn to be comfortable with taking money from their neighbor for a socialist service their parents want for tuition-free, learn to be comfortable with government compulsion and being treated like a government prisoner, and government ownership and management of their very lives.
Few conservatives realize that it started the very first day that modern government indoctrination ( oops! "schooling") came into existence in the mid-1800s to early 1900s. Why on earth are conservatives surprised that our nation has been in a socialist down hill slide since the 1910s? Why are they surprised that it has been a continual political fight against socialism since then?
It is **amazing** to me how few conservatives understand this. Gee! If an educational setting is God-centered, not socialist funded, not compulsory, and not government owned...well?..Isn't that the very definition of **private**?
Sometimes I read posts from conservatives that state that if only the Department of Education were abolished...or...If we could go back the 60s, 50s, or some magical era...or if we could abolish teachers unions,...or elect better school boards,..or bring back a sprinkle of prayer in the morning, than somehow godless, socialist-funded, compulsory, prison-like, and government owned schools would be reformed.
Few conservatives understand that socialist-funded, compulsory government schooling was corrupt from the very first day!
And why would you broadcast your intentions?
How is it possible to educate fellow conservatives on the absolute utter and compelling need to abolish government schooling without broadcasting my desire to utterly close down this corrupt institution?
I agree that they are one of the greatest threats to our nation and posterity, but since I have a large family, I believe I have to focus on my own and get as far away from the Titanic as I can.
Thank goodness! You "get" it! You are absolutely doing the right thing to keep your children away from the government school cesspool.
If you could join me, as you have the energy and time, in helping to educate conservatives on the seriousness of the problem, and help them see that government schooling can not be reformed, I would appreciate it and be very grateful.
Personally, I don't believe that abolishing government schooling will get much traction unless conservatives understand that godlessness, socialism, compulsion, prison-like, and government owned and managed schooling must be abolished. No amount of tinkering can fix it.
Finally....Ideas are the most powerful things in the universe. That we exist at all began as a glimmer of thought in the mind of God.
It is my hope that wealthy, and well-connected, conservatives will have the glimmer of the idea that we CAN CAN CAN **inexpensively** get our nation's children into private and conservative educational settings. Educational foundations should be set up to award grants to conservative teachers who would open one room schools in their homes, or community organizations. With today's excellent and inexpensive technology we could offer every child in this nation an excellent ( possibly even tuition-free) conservative education.
There are enough conservatives in this nation, that if they understood the seriousness and danger to our nation of government schooling, could ( if they wanted) SHUT DOWN this cesspools of godlessness, socialism, and downright Marxism.
The first step begins with educating conservatives.
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