Posted on 12/29/2010 5:50:30 AM PST by IbJensen
As an advocate of full educational freedom, I am occasionally asked what America would be like if compulsory school attendance laws were done away with and the government got out of the education business.
My answer is that we'd probably become the best-educated nation in the world. Why? Because when parents are in charge of their own children’s education, they will seek the best they can get, and in this age of high technology and endless resources, the very best is available to anyone who wants to look for it.
Let's face it. The public schools use the most boring textbooks to teach bored kids what they really don't care to know. In fact, most public schools don't even teach kids to read properly. They use teaching methods that create reading disability. Now, if you were in charge of teaching your own children to read, would you use a teaching method that produced reading disability? Of course not. You'd seek out a program that produced learning success. Such programs do exist, despite the fact that many public schools refuse to use them.
My own reading program, Alpha-Phonics, was created to permit parents to teach their own children to read at home in the proper phonetic manner, thus avoiding the harm the government schools cause. Thousands of parents, as independent home educators, have taught their children to read with this program very successfully.
We tend to forget that the parents of the Founding Fathers were not compelled to send their children to King George's public schools, which happily didn’t exist. There was total educational freedom in the colonies, and that is why it was possible to get the finest education available — either at home or at an academy owned by an individual whose job it was to provide the best education possible.
Indeed, it was well understood what was meant by education. First, it required a grounding in the Bible, and learning the languages in which the Holy Scripture and theological literature was written: Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. It meant developing the intellectual faculties, the ability to read and to use language. It was understood that the mastery of language, which is the basic tool of thought, was the key to intellectual development.
In today's public schools, children's brains are stultified by the use of teaching methods resembling a non-surgical prefrontal lobotomy. Bright, intelligent children are deliberately made stupid by teaching methods calculated to do just that. We know that children are by nature intelligent because they start learning their own language practically from birth. By the time they are ready to attend school, they have mastered a vocabulary in the thousands of words. And they have done all of this by themselves, by listening and imitating the people around them, without the help of certified government teachers or schools.
All children, except the very seriously handicapped, are born with an innate language faculty. All children, therefore, are dynamos of language learning. The Bible tells us why. God gave us the power of speech: because He wanted to communicate with those He had created. In fact, the primary function of language was to permit man to know God. In other words, knowledge of God was the first step in Adam's education. The second function of language was to enable Adam to know the world. The Bible says in Genesis 2:19: “And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every fowl of the air, and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.”
In other words, God made Adam into an observer of the natural world around him, a scientist, and a lexicographer — an expander of language, and a maker of dictionaries. Then God gave Adam Eve. The Bible says in Genesis 1:28: "And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth."
So now language was to be used to know others and explore, discover, cultivate, conserve, and conquer. And finally, Adam was to use language to know himself, for language is the tool of thought, and we use language with our own inner dialogue in the solitude of our being.
Since we know what God made man into, the purpose of education should be to make a man into what God intended him to be: lexicographer, scientist, explorer, inventor, conqueror, farmer, conservationist, and also husband, father, head of his family, and educator to his children.
True educators, steeped in Biblical knowledge, have always known that the development of language and its uses was the initial purpose of education. In Deuteronomy we learn the religious and social functions of education: to know God, and to pass on to future generations that knowledge, that love, that admonition. Language is that means of cultural and religious transmission.
The Bible, passed from generation to generation, is a testament to the everlasting value of the written Word of God. An education system that denies this overwhelming truth cannot be accepted by a God-fearing people.
We read in the Gospel of John, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Thus, the Word is the key to everything of importance in our lives. But compulsory school attendance has destroyed that foundational knowledge and appreciation. You cannot even mention the Word of God in a government school. If we had educational freedom, the Word of God could once more become central to the lives of the American people.
There is no doubt that we would become the best educated people on earth, because we would know what education is and choose the best means to achieve it. We would acknowledge our dependence on God for ultimate wisdom. We would cultivate the minds of our children so that this God-given world of incredible beauty, variety, and mystery would be open to their curiosity and interest.
The public schools of today deprive children of their right to be what God made them to be. That is their sin. Charlotte Iserbyt, in her magnum opus, The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America, proves through exhaustive documentation that secular educators are using animal training techniques developed by behavioral scientists to turn American children into mindless robots who respond reflexively to stimuli imposed by godless educators. The children are being conditioned to respond through reinforcement as predicted by their trainers. As trained animals, they cannot take dominion over anything.
Education is not the same as training. Animals can be trained. They cannot be educated.
The present system of education reduces man to animal status so that he is denied the knowledge that he was made in God's image. When human beings, especially children, are trained like animals, they are being denied what is truly human about them: their ability to use their minds independently of any trainer. It is criminal to deprive children of their human qualities and capabilities. But that is what is being done in the name of School-to-Work, Outcome Based Education, and other such programs.
Our schools now teach children death education, suicide education, sex education, and drug education. Charlotte Iserbyt has observed that anything that is taught with the word "education" attached to it is not really education. You don't call reading, “reading education.” You don't call arithmetic, “arithmetic education.” You don't call spelling, “spelling education.” In other words, what they are really teaching is death, suicide, sex, and drugs. By adding the word education to these subjects, the educators fool parents into thinking that what the schools are doing is not subversive of their children's health and well-being, but something beneficial. But we know that it is not.
How much longer will Americans permit their children to be robbed of their most precious human values? Homeschoolers no longer permit it. Although they represent a small percentage of families in America, their numbers are growing. Little by little, the word is getting out. Thank God for that!
Contemporary figures like Marilyn Monroe are given more exposure in many of the textbooks than George Washington. However, these textbooks don't expound on the theory as to how Monroe died and who did the killing.
Our schools are official atheist institutions. Why a country that inherently mistrusts government allows it to unconstitutionally run the public school system boggles the mind. Everything the schools were established to teach, i.e., religious and moral values, patriotism and love of country (Americanism), and the basic courses to use the knowledge imparted throughout one's life, no longer apply. Now it's all about music, sex and football which won't get one very far.
bttt
If you cut all public funding for schools tomorrow, students who want to be educated along with their parents help, will find a way.
If you increased public school funding a thousand-fold tomorrow, students who don’t want an education, still won’t get one.
Unless you're planning a career as a historian, learning any language other than your own decently is way the hell too much work for anybody to want to be learning DEAD ones.
I wish I could truly believe this assertion, but I have my doubts.
School is more than a place to get an education, it's what you do. It's the place where you put the kids, out of your way. It's expected; it's done for you.
If parents have to do the research to find the "best" school (by whatever criteria), will they do it? Or will they go along with the neighbor's choice (who went along with their neighbor's choice) because it's easy?
Like I said, I wish I could believe that everybody would search for themselves, but I have a hard time believing it.
Unfortunately over 40 % of the parents are certifiable nitwits who couldn’t find Canada on a world map.
The author falsely assumes that many parents care about thier kids. This is demonstrably false.
You can look at any minority school you like - try to find a parent who bothers to attend PTA, bothers to help their child do homework, can be bothered to care if their precious little baby even attends classes.
Look at the drop-out rates of minority children. Here's a hint. If a parent cares, if a parent is involved in the SLIGHTEST - dropping out of school is simply never an option.
I submit that we would, within a single generation - have 3rd world illiteracy, and the parasites would have an ever greater stranglehold upon the achievers. Why? Because now the parasites won't be able to read/write and this will be yet another example of 'The man holding the (insert race of choice) down'.
If you increased public school funding a thousand-fold tomorrow, students who don’t want an education, still won’t get one.
That was very well said, umgud; and, very true.
The pitiful truth of this situation is that America DID indeed have the perfect school system. Think back to the 1920’s, 30’s, 40’s, 50’s, to the OLDE DAYES. No educators, just teachers. No theories, just learning. No “building of self esteem”, just STUDY or else. Some students picked for an accelerated, more intensive course of studies. Some given an easier, less intense course, all geared to actual abilities.
How many of today’s brightest could pass a 1948 high school final exam. School then had 1 teacher per classroom, 25 or 30 students, one principal, a janitor and the students learned. Without computers, they used their brains. No calculators..just brains. No spell check..brains again. Students could fill in the names of our states on blank maps (fifth grade). Then fill in “most” of the countries names on a blank map of the world (sixth grade).
A WORLD CLASS EDUCATION SYSTEM? Is that your wish. Go back 50 or more years..we had it and screwed it up royally.
ping
OUTSTANDING essay. Thanks for posting.
I find that having studied both Hebrew and Latin helps me greatly with English, and having a clear understanding of the roots of words and their underlying meaning.
And it wasn't that hard. I'm not a historian.
/johnny
Unfortunately over 40 % of the parents are certifiable nitwits who couldn’t find Canada on a world map.
Without advancing kids for social reasons, the cream will rise to the top.
I otta write a book about what(and/or who) killed one-room country schools in the Mid-West. Anyone what to bet that the filthy hands of educrats are all over this one?!
Public Education = Child Abuse
If you want to cripple your child intellectually and warp them emotionally, send them to a public school.
With the e-books / digital media, Internet and telecommuting, you could significantly cut the cost of education (the number of schools and classes would not need to be occupied daily by the same number of students) and therefore, the cost and the gas spent for student transportation (by parents or busing) could make the case for “environmentally friendly” schools, as well as freeing and saving the time for parents preparing and/or dropping children off at schools before going to work... There is potential for tremendously “green” cost and time savings...
Add to that the individual pace of studies instead of going to the “slowest common denominator” in the class...
Also, even if states and/or cities accept / demand that the “government” (the taxpayers) should pay for the primary education, it doesn’t mean that the government has to run the education system - vouchers would be much better and much cheaper and more competitive way of financing primary education. Just like because government issues food stamps doesn’t mean it should run grocery stores.
Fund kids, not schools.
When I was in middle school, somebody gave me a book called "Word Clues". It was all about the roots of English words, concentrating on Greek and Latin, but including Arabic, Hebrew, and others.
Learning the roots helped me to understand and use the language on a whole new level.
Funny story: I had an emergency trip to the hospital about that time (2 week stay). Afterwards, we were at the doctor's office and he was telling my mother what the problem had been. He used the term "hypertensive encephalopathy", and I remember repeating it after him. Of course, knowing the root words, I figured out what he was saying at once.
The funny part is remembering the look that I got from my mother at the time. (Well, the doc, too.)
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