Posted on 08/15/2002 1:41:41 AM PDT by JohnHuang2
No matter where you go in America, some things remain the same. One is the acute injustice of the "education lobby." State budget woes have brought educrats out in force. In Oregon, they want to borrow against next year's budget to avoid this year's cuts. In Seattle, espresso-cart operators have gone ballistic over a 10-cent-a-cup "latte tax" placed on the fall ballot, with the proceeds, in the millions, going to schools.
The educrats' universal slogan is "do it for the children." Invariably, "it" refers to the transfer of money from the taxpayer's pocketbook to the educrat's bank account.
When I was a boy, education was simple enough. Schools had a principal, sometimes an assistant principal, a secretary, a janitor or two, and teachers. Yes, lots of teachers. We also had playgrounds, buildings and school buses. The buses only transported farm kids to school the rest of us walked in winter and rode our bicycles in spring and fall.
I suppose even back then principals had administrative duties, but in our view their primary responsibility was to inspire good behavior through fear, and it worked splendidly. If you were extraordinarily unlucky, principals also did substitute teaching. The secretary was there to keep the principal in his private office, so the regular office wasn't quite so frightening during non-disciplinary visits. Janitors tidied up and, of course, teachers taught.
It was a simple arrangement, but extraordinarily successful. You could tell at a glance that the entire enterprise was engaged in teaching kids went in ignorant and they came out educated. Teachers were respected in the community. "Do it for the children" wasn't their slogan, it was their life.
Today, the situation is different. Support staff (I call them educrats) are approaching a 1:1 ratio with teachers. Both the product (students rescued from a lifetime of ignorance) and the service (the teaching process) are awful. Kids go in ignorant, they learn political correctness, pseudo-science, hatred of America and sexual perversion before being dumped on the street uneducated. The bill for all this has skyrocketed and every year, it seems, taxpayers are clubbed over the head with the empty slogan, "do it for the children."
This would be disastrous enough, but teachers now aspire to educrat status. This is because the pay is so much better and you don't have to deal with the rude and uneducated kids passed on by a previous teacher who believed that "no child should fail." Life on the outside is rarely so kind, a lesson schools today delay.
If dangling financial incentives in front of teachers to stop teaching were not enough, educrats seem intent on forcing good teachers out of the system entirely. In Olympia, Washington State's capital, you could talk with Richard Robertson, a high-school math teacher forced out after 23 years of teaching. While students and parents flooded the meeting in support of him, school-board members went into "executive session" out of public view to craft the axe ("Students, parents decry teacher's exit," by Alma D. Sharpe, The Olympian, B1, 8/13/02).
So what is the teachers union concerned about in the midst of all this? They are busy fighting a ballot initiative that would mandate gasoline taxes be spent on transportation improvements ("Teachers' unions sue to alter initiatives," by Patrick Condon, The Olympian, A2, 8/13/02).
Public education in America is terminally ill. Educrats are obsessed with money, power and influence. They have forgotten why schools exist. Attempts to measure the level of their failure only serve to increase their bureaucratic fiefdom with funds coming out of the hides of teachers still struggling in the classroom. Educrats are in bed with the most vile and disruptive elements of society in their struggle to grow their bureaucratic empire on the backs of innocent children.
Most of these kids will never recover from their education "experience": They have instead been condemned to a lifetime of poverty, ignorance and vice traits they will unwittingly pass onto their children and their children's children. We will all pay that price ad-infinitum, but educrats will observe the process from the comfort of their state-funded retirements, while they "tisk, tisk" taxpayers for resisting demands for ever-more money to "fix things."
On the contrary, state budget troubles give legislators the only opportunity they may ever have to reverse public education's decline. Pay as you go is a wise choice. Cut the education budget like all the rest, but mandate that all reductions come from bureaucratic, not teaching staff. Taxpayers would win twice: One less report filed means one less bureaucrat required to read the "product." Do it for the children.
If you add professional union administrators to the number of government-funded non-teaching administrators in this state, the number of administrators-to-classroom-teachers may actually exceed 1:1 depending on whose numbers you use, and given that union administrators are paid out of dues that are ultimately billed to the taxpayer, the author's description of the problem is an understatement. The answer here is NOT more, and more, and more taxpayer dollars to sustain this unwieldy and inefficient infrastructure.
1. Vouchers is just a transfer of tax money that should not be levied in the first place.
2. The state does not own children, or any citizen, for that matter.
3. Parents are ultimately and eternally responsible for the way they raise and edcucate their children. Remember the millstone that that Jesus spoke of?
4. Many parents know that all the money and the "finest" educational institutions possible can not substitute for the love and attention that homeschooling offers to their children.
Your fears may be unfounded. Vouchers would probably be an asset to homeschoolers too. It is possible they could be used to take courses not available at home, I am truly concerned about our kids in the inter-city slums who are stuck in a no-win situation. They would be much better off in church basement schools where they would be safe and able to learn the three "Rs." What I envision is something like the G.I. Bill. I used it to to college and I feel these kids can use vouchers to go to any school their parents choose without any strings attached.
Taxes would also drop by a lot because will not have to pay for Taj Mahals eqiupped with Olympic-sized swimming pools.
By the time the children will be college age, they will be focused and disciplined; college could work for them, since they will know how to educate themselves. But even college by tutorials is superior to college by the 500 seat lecture hall. Homeschooling has brought about a revolution in education, and it is wonderful! People think and question things they would not have done, otherwise. What a rebirth for education in America; ironically occuring simultaneously with the death of the public school system.
That is not the case any longer, though, and that is precisely why parents are leaving the schools. They have already thought, questioned, and moved onto better education choices for their children.
Homeschooling is not yours, nor anybody's, to permit.
The union's constant drumbeat of the necessity of institutionalized schooling has been by and large successful; most folks simply cannot fathom the concept of education occurring outside such a system. Nonetheless, as it is my decision how my children are clothed, fed, housed, and reared, it is also my decision how they are educated. Statists can kiss my *ss.
Smash the Education Establishment...preferably, in the teeth.
Oh, and teach your children to disrespect wrongful authority.
In my opinion, it is to late for reform in the education system. Reform will never happen, late or not. The cleaver has to come from the top at each state level.
indexing
Here are links to various education threads (also containing numerous helpful links)
FReegards
Open Directory --Society/Issues/Education/Education_ReformDeconstructing Public Education
Source: www.newsmax.com; Published: July 26, 2002;
Author: Diane AldenSpecious Science In Our Schools
Source: Toogood Reports; Published: July 9, 2002;
Author: Alan CarubaSYMPOSIUM Q: Is the National Education Association Being Fair to Its Religious Objectors?
Source: INSIGHT magazine; Published: June 10, 2002;
Authors NO: Stefan Gleason ////\\\\ YES: Bob ChasePublic Sector Subverting Productive Industry
Source: Toogood Reports; Published: May 16, 2002;
Author: Henry PelifianHistory of America's Education Part 2: Noah Webster and Early America
Source: Sierra Times; Published: March 27, 2002;
Author: April ShenandoahHow Communist is Public Education?
Source: sierratimes.com; Published:March 22, 2002;
Author: Chuck MorseHistory of America's Education Part 1: Johnny is in trouble
Source: Sierra Times; Published: March 20, 2002 ;
Author: April ShenandoahAudit rips Georgia schools' curriculum
Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution; Published: March 11, 2002;
Author:JAMES SALZERWhy schools fail: Samuel Blumenfeld warns Bush's education legislation is ineffective
Source: WorldNetDaily.com; Published: March 2, 2002;
Author: Samuel BlumenfeldPublic School Isn't Like I Remember It
Too Good Reports; Published: February 28, 2002;
Author: Phyllis SchlaflyWhat Is Lacking In Our Educational System
Source: Too Good Reports; Published: February 28, 2002;
Author:| Ben CerrutiThe charade of education reform
Source: WorldNetDaily.com; Published: February 2, 2002;
Author: Dr. Samuel L. BlumenfeldAmerican public schools: Working just as designed
Source: WorldNetDaily.com; Published: January 21, 2002;
Author: Vox DayHigh Schools Fail Thanks To Grade Inflation And Social Promotion
Source: Toogood Reports; Published: December 5, 2001
Author: Vin SuprynowiczWHY AMERICANS CANT READ
Source: Accuracy in Media; Published: December 4, 2001
Author: Reed Irvine and Cliff KincaidThe Failing Teacher and the Teachers' Code of Silence
Source: CNSNews.com; Published: December 3, 2001
Author: Glenn SacksTime for outrage! Linda Bowles reports latest results in America's public schools
Source: WorldNetDaily.com; Published: November 27, 2001
Author: Linda BowlesIlliterate in Boston: Samuel Blumenfeld explains U.S.'s ongoing reading problem
Source: WorldNetDaily.com; Published: July 20, 2001
Author:Samuel BlumenfeldNEA - Let our children go!
Source: WorldNet Daily; Published: June 23. 2001
Author: Linda HarveyCOOKING THE BOOKS AT EDUCATION
Source: Accuracy In Media; Published: June 5, 2001;
Author: Cliff KincaidWhy Do Schools Play Games With Students' Minds ?
Source: The Detroit News; Published: April 1, 2001
Author: Thomas SowellThe Public School Nightmare: Why fix a system designed to destroy individual thought?
Source: http://home.talkcity.com/LibraryDr/patt/homeschl.htm
Author: John Taylor GattoDumbing down teachers
Source: USNews.com; Published: February 21, 2001
Author: John LeoFree Republic links to education related articles (thread#8)
Source: Free Republic; Published: 3-20-2001
Author: VariousAre children deliberately 'dumbed down' in school? {YES!!!}
Source: World Net Daily; Published: May 13, 2001
Author: Geoff Metcalf {Interview}Could they really have done it on purpose?
Source: THE LIBERTARIAN; Published: 07/28/2000
Author: Vin SuprynowiczNew Book Explores America's Education Catastrophe
Source: Christian Citizen USA; Published: April 2000
Author: William H. WildDeliberately dumbing us down (Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt's, "The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America"
Source: WorldNetDaily.com; Published: December 2,1999
Author: Samuel L. BlumenfeldDeconstructing the Western Mind: Gramscian-Marxist Subversion of Faith and Education
Source: www.petersnet; Published: Winter 1997
Author: Frank MorrissLittleton Crisis to Government Control
The UN Plan for Your Mental Health
There are lots of really good affordable private schools which are able to instill enthusiam and learning into their students. If you had attended one of them, chances are good you'd be going for a doctorate in education.
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