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To: naturalman1975

You’re right about the answers I’m giving. I can only entertain questions as how they relate to the person asking.

The whole beginning of this thread was based upon a school taking upon themselves to teach something other than what they are being paid to do. Their idea of the need for punishment, when by the description, indicates themselves as being judge, jury, and executioner on a topic they may not have the evidence for, is typical the liberal thinking the school systems have adopted for over 50 years. And I get my information from observations, and first hand experience from my mother who was teaching during WWII on a war time credential at 18, through my sister who will be retiring this year and teaches primary education, now in high school.

The real problem here is schools have lied to reach a goal. Example: here in Washington state they school systems shut up about a state plan to stop the money being earmarked for breakfasts. But what the actual bill was was for a predominant larger amount of funds being supplied without the earmarks. So the schools were getting more funds, and they could spend them any way they want. But the libs claimed it was to stop the meals. Bill failed, schools lost out on getting more funds.

The bureaucracy of the schools systems, using pieces like the NEA and local government, are so trying to reshape the education system, they are destroying it. They re so busy trying to teach their “morals” that they are failing in the efforts to teach core topics. According to the US Department of education, in a study done in 2013, there are, roughly, 32 million people out there that can’t read. Fewer than a third of college degree recipients are “proficient” in everyday literacy, U.S. study finds, and the rate has been falling since 2005.

Why don’t they stay in the classroom and out of my home? If they are failing their job this much, I don’t want them taking on mine with almost no knowledge of what they do. And in comparison to mine, their morals suck!

So where does it stop? Or with the info I already gave you, where does it continue? Let me raise my own. They need to stay out of it. It’s not their responsibility and don’t threaten me trying to keep mine.

red


56 posted on 08/21/2016 10:04:19 AM PDT by Redwood71
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To: Redwood71
The whole beginning of this thread was based upon a school taking upon themselves to teach something other than what they are being paid to do.

That's an assumption on your part and I think it's a flawed assumption possibly based on an idea that all schools should be like public schools and only have the same responsibilities that public schools have, and ignoring the fact that parents who choose private schools are doing so even though public schools exist and they could choose those if that's all they wanted for their kids.

I may have an advantage here that because I am a teacher and I am very interested in educational policy that I've looked into this story a bit over the last couple of weeks since I first saw it. I'm not basing my opinion on just what is in this article - I've seen other material. I'm not saying other people should have done that, nor criticising anybody for not doing so, but I've had the time and inclination so I have done it. This particular school, Catholic High School for Boys, is a high achieving school academically, with a particularly stated mission that parents who choose the school know about when they are choosing it. If this was a new policy, I think you'd have more of a point but it has been in place for years and parents choose the school knowing that the school is proactive in this regard. The parents are paying the school to do this. They are not paying for a bog standard education in the three Rs that they could get (or in some cases, unfortunately not get) at a local public school.

Their idea of the need for punishment, when by the description, indicates themselves as being judge, jury, and executioner on a topic they may not have the evidence for, is typical the liberal thinking the school systems have adopted for over 50 years.

Good Lord, no. It's exactly the opposite. This is an affirmation of conservative principles of education, not the neo-liberal ideology that pervades public schooling. The school's mission statement sums it up:

"Catholic High School is a college-preparatory high school in Little Rock, Arkansas, founded in 1930 that strives to challenge boys academically while also teaching the truths of manhood – faith, integrity, and, as Father Tribou often stressed, duty."

I am, to be honest, confused by the position you are taking. You seem to object to the liberal and progressive ideology that pervades so much modern education, but you also seem to assume that the limitations of that ideology should be assumed to apply in all schools. This school has not embraced that ideology. It's maintained older ideals of education, and it's open about them. It tells parents about them - and parents who want that for their son choose to send their sons to this school even though it would be easier and cheaper to simply send them to the local public school. And they do so because they want more than the local public school provides and they want something different from that.

And I get my information from observations, and first hand experience from my mother who was teaching during WWII on a war time credential at 18, through my sister who will be retiring this year and teaches primary education, now in high school.

And that may well give you an insight into education in general but it doesn't mean it has relevance to this specific school or what they are doing.

I'm a teacher now - my second career after over two decades in the military. Now, I don't teach in a 'normal school' myself. I teach in what is regarded as one of the two best Catholic boys' schools in Australia (the other of the two is its brother school in another state). And we do things differently too from what is considered normal. Criticisms that could fairly be applied to the government run school system often have absolutely no validity in my school, because we do things differently. It's not that we are perfect and we can't completely avoid the impact of government policies even when we don't like them, but we do things our own way. I taught in the state system before I took my current role, and it was a very different situation.

So where does it stop? Or with the info I already gave you, where does it continue? Let me raise my own. They need to stay out of it. It’s not their responsibility and don’t threaten me trying to keep mine.

But the parents who have chosen to send their sons to this school have made their own decisions as to how their sons will be raised and they have chosen this school. And you seem to think you are in a position to tell them that their decision is wrong. I do support the right of people to raise their own children as they see fit - but that to me includes the right to choose the school that matches the type of education you want for your child, if you're lucky enough that it's available. And that is what parents who are choosing this school are doing. The school doesn't hide what it's doing - and it's been run this way for decades now. Parents know what they are choosing.

I agree with you about a lot of the problems that infest public schooling policy, practice, and philosophy - but if we let those problems effect how private schools operate, we're just making things worse, not better. A school that doesn't have a liberal ideology at its core shouldn't be prevented from doing what it does, because other schools do.

57 posted on 08/21/2016 2:04:43 PM PDT by naturalman1975 ("America was under attack. Australia was immediately there to help." - John Winston Howard)
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