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I’m taking a break from writing lesson plans for the upcoming week. I’d agree with the above writer about the indoctrination, but I have to add some comments from someone inside the trenches.

First, if possible, homeschool your kids. I realize that sounds self-destructive coming from a public school teacher. The facts are, however, that one-on-one learning between a parent and a child will practically always be superior to the 25-to-1 ratio in my classroom, no matter how well I teach. I’ve seen one failed homeschooling family, and dozens of successful ones. Yes, that’s anecdote, but I think I can safely generalize it to the larger population.

Second, while there are many problems with indoctrination, there are a lot more conservative teachers out there than you may realize, and we’re busy undermining the leftist establishment one child at a time. My colleague down the hall has his kids read “Pilgrim’s Progress” and “Animal Farm.” My kids are reading Solzhenitsyn. I have tenure, too. Try to fire me for teaching my students that John Locke posited the idea that natural rights emerge from God.

There’s also a problem with indoctrination that is easy to predict from its failure throughout the world. In the Soviet system, students quickly became cynical and disinterested when they discovered that all they had to do for an A was to include Marxist dialectic in any paper they wrote. The same is happening in my school. Most kids find race-based propaganda to be humorous (thanks to “South Park”), feminism to be on par with fairy tales, and Obama to be corrupt, foolish, and useless. The most popular meme circulating among my students last fall was the Obamaphone lady.

What happens in my classes, ever year, is that students routinely forget much of their learning in the summer, and we have to reteach it in the fall. I’d like to have schools year-round. Of course, I’d also like to have privatization, or at least vouchers, but that probably won’t happen during my lifetime. Someday, though. In any case, my point is that learning has to be consistent to be effective, and American schools don’t provide that consistently.

It’s a mess, though. Got to get back to work. Be well.

I was a stay-at-home mom for 10 years; however, I have been in the teaching profession since 1981. Longer school terms are not required for “mo-better” learning. Intact families who discipline their children at home and teach them responsibility and respect for themselves and others is the “missing ingredient”.

Second, while there are many problems with indoctrination, there are a lot more conservative teachers out there than you may realize, and we’re busy undermining the leftist establishment one child at a time. My colleague down the hall has his kids read “Pilgrim’s Progress” and “Animal Farm.” My kids are reading Solzhenitsyn. I have tenure, too. Try to fire me for teaching my students that John Locke posited the idea that natural rights emerge from God.

Yeah, you got to do it from within and take baby steps. BTW, I had a teacher, my German teacher, who showed us slides he took when he took his class over to Germany in 1979. The trip included an excursion into East Germany. He said the people were quiet and many of them were aloof if not all out afraid. He said the setup in the restaraunts there were like machine precision as well as when they crossed from West to East, it seemed like the weather changed from sunny to cloudy. I first had him in 1982 as a sophomore in high school and he gave us a great speech on how the Communists and progressives would destroy us from within and if we were not careful and vigilant, we will start to rot and crumble. I kept in contact with him until his death in 1993 from kidney cancer, he was in his early 50's, at that time, the early 1990's, we seemed optimistic with the fall of the USSR but I think and know he'd be horrified at where we are at now but still I wish he was here just to hear his take on things.

I asked in 1983 just after KAL-007 was shot down by the USSR about where if "the US became the USSR and the USSR became the US." Still I don't think Russia is 100% there but in all essence and fairness, it seems they "get it" more than we do now so it seems like I might see the results of my thought experiment question that was tossed out just for "craps & giggles" so long ago. 1979 to 1983 don't seem that long ago to me. If I close my eyes and/or lay in bed at night and think and imagine hard enough, I see myself back then. When I look back now at all the events I've seen and what is going on now, it does seem like a different world then and somehow I've or we have fallen into some crack in space/time to a sick, weird and retarded Bizzaro world.

Also, it is like being in space frozen and coming back to a different world. If it was up to me, I'd just stay in space but I know I'd have to come down at some point when the food and repair parts run out and when my power runs down as the reactor fuel is used up, the batteries getting old and the solar panels decay. B-P