Posted on 11/26/2001 10:42:57 PM PST by JohnHuang2
Ahh, yes. I remember that line. It was from the late Al Shankar, union prez, and I believe the full quote was, "We'll start representing the children's interests when they start paying dues." Something like that.
Take it from one who wasted three years trying to reform one little elementary schol, it's not just the NEA and Democrats -- its also the average, run of the mill parent who stands in the way of better schools! To my horror and chagrin, I found that most parents of any political stripe would rather rationalize their good feelings about their child's school than take the real effort of going to meetings, researching and finding out the truth about public schools today. Inflated grades and feel good "Blue Ribbon" school awards do it for them. They ask nothing more of their schools than this. If they did, they would have to expend effort themselves to make something happen. Anyway, what does it cost them? Colleges today are going along with the program and lowering standards and even employers have to adjust their standards downwards -- or get Congress to let them bring in brighter foreign workers.
I have given up on school reform from within. The only thing that forces schools to change is competition. Parents who wouldn't take the trouble to check out schools themselves will follow those parents who do know a good school from a bad one. Once they have the ability to change their school, they no longer have an excuse for leaving their child in a bad school. Nothing is a better motivator than the feeling that little John down the street is going to a better school than your own child because his parents went to the trouble to get him in. Parent "peer pressure" then does its miraculous works to bring about accountability.
But the real opportunity of change without the requirement of superhuman effort has to be there. For this reason, vouchers may be the only reform that has a chance to significantly improve school performance and accountability. Personally, my ideal reform would be to take away the responsibility for education from the state and give it back to parents (along with their tax money) and the private sector. This would encourage more private sector schools (which I would imagine would be largely religious) and other imaginative -- we could even use the word "DIVERSE" -- approaches to education. It is amazing how education is the one human endeavor in which liberals think diversity is bad! There would, of course, have to be some safety net education program in the public sector if private initiatives did not step up to the plate to take care of everyone. This reform would be a great step toward recovering the competence of the citizenry to govern itself and would solve the problem of the role of faith in schools.
Schools back then taught the "three R s" and not much else. If we measure schools today by those standards then it looks as if they do a pretty good job.
Main Entry: 1war
Pronunciation: 'wor
Function: noun
Usage: often attributive
Etymology: Middle English werre, from Old North French, of Germanic origin; akin to Old High German werra strife; akin to Old High German werran to confuse
Date: 12th century
...1 a (1) : a state of hostility, conflict, or antagonism b : a struggle or competition between opposing forces or for a particular end <a class war>
It was an act of war. It was an a secret war successfully overwhelming the American public by appealing to their emotions while simultaneously mouthing all the "correct" platitudes. It was carefully planned and waged by corrupt politicians, judges, unions, academics, major media and other Liberals. You know; the ones who are still in power!
This report was also written in 1983, so the country can't say 'we were never warned'. Just imagine how much worse the problem is today than it was then?
The marvel is, somehow America has survived (albeit tenuously) for as long as it has. But the big questions are, can America ever recover and what will it take to turn the situation around before the grievous wounds are fatal?
Not just the NEA but the WHOLE Department of Education.
Remember Reagan's promises?
Public Education has proven to be a failure.
Major BUMPS to those responsible parents who choose to not allow the government to raise their children.
It might be too late for what ikanakattara is advocating. This is a "democracy" ha, excuse me, and the majority rules. If the Mexican population exceeds the anglo in the schools they should all be taught in Spanish.. Remember we do NOT have a national language.....
So many people think that since their local public school is better than some other public school, it's their duty to support the public schools, regardless of the damage to their children and others.
The NEA/AFT dictates the agenda at every public school in the country, including charter schools. They allow enough variation on the theme to sucker parents and taxpayers into "keeping the faith", they'll even pretend to split their teachers union, to give teachers the impression that there are alternatives.
The only viable alternatives are (1) homeschooling and (2) private schools which hire teachers who know and can teach their subject material without injecting socialist (or other) indoctrination.
Unless the voters/taxpayers can remove all the liberals from all public colleges and public schools, there is no hope for reform. Since there is little chance of that happening, every effort should be made to vote away every taxpayer source of their funding.
After all is said and done, it all boils down to this:
The teachers pretend to teach,
the children pretend to learn,
and the parents pretend that
the teachers are teaching
and the children are learning.
The nature of the debate I've heard there and elsewhere can be likened to a situation where were showing kids porn films and merely arguing over the size of the next theater that were going fund and build.
Its all meaningless unless we address what is taught and how it is taught
Bookmarked to read and study again later.
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