Government Schools - The Continuing Collapse (Vanity)

“Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm – but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.” T.S. Eliot

All of you undoubtedly know that the education system relentlessly promotes a leftist ideology. Still, you may find it instructive to read how the system works at the grassroots to reinforce the Gramscian voice in teachers' heads.

In a Colorado district, teachers were recently treated to diversity training from a trainer who must have had at least a Ph.D. in "Whiteness Studies". From a sheet given to teachers during the "training" :

"Most white people most of the time" share the belief that "bland is best" when it comes to aesthetics. They believe that "wealth equals worth" and that a wife is "subordinate to (her) husband." In communicating, white people "don't show emotion" and "avoid conflict, intimacy." They share an ethic of "win at all costs" and possess a "master and control nature." http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/opinion_columnists/article/0,2777,DRMN_23972_5333019,00.html

Pull up your easy-chair and get out the popcorn; there's going to be a donnybrook in Utah. The Utah legislature's lower house just passed a voucher plan:

Utah's plan is modest, and at the same time revolutionary. It would reimburse parents sending their children to private schools between $500 and $3,000 a year based on their family income. Parents whose kids currently attend private school would not be eligible unless their income was low enough. But all new kindergartners would qualify, so that by 2020 all private school students would be eligible for vouchers. http://www.opinionjournal.com/diary/?id=110009624

Current betting is that the Utah Senate will pass the bill and that Governor Huntsman will sign it.

Interestingly, a key feature of the bill that got it through the Utah House is a provision giving school districts $1,500 for every student who leaves with a voucher. None dare call it a ransom. But, hey, highly trained education professionals will grab a dollar any way they can.

In any event, even with full passage and signing, the fight won't be over. Utah is one of 37 states with a "Blaine Amendment", a 19Th Century expression of anti-Catholic sentiment much beloved by nativist groups like the Ku Klux Klan and, today, by the left and the government education monopoly.

From the outset, the Blaine Amendments were intended, in part, to make sure that no state funds were used to support parochial schools. (Here is Utah's version: http://www.blaineamendments.org/states/states_files/UT.htm). Not long ago, a small Florida voucher program was declared unconstitutional under the Florida Constitution on the basis of Florida's Blaine Amendment (http://www.mackinac.org/article.aspx?ID=7528).

Rest assured, the education special interests have only begun to fight (apologies to John Paul Jones). The folks who think vouchers are the answer are effectively ceding game, set, and match to the education monopoly. The obvious and straightforward solution is simply to get our children out now. If just twenty percent of parents were to rescue their children, it would probably be more than enough to cause the entire corrupt system of government schooling to collapse.

YOUR CHILDREN ARE SAFE IN GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS BECAUSE OUR HIGHLY TRAINED EDUCATION PROFESSIONALS REALLY CARE AND ARE HELD TO HIGH STANDARDS [Can you see my nose growing?]

Not everyone cares enough about children to be an education professional. To see if you are cut out for this calling, answer this question: What should you do if you discover a 12 year-old is sodomizing 6 year-olds in your school's bathroom?

1. Beat the living be-jabbers out of the adolescent pervert and then call the police? 2. Detain him and call the police? 3. Call the police? 4. Not call the police and cover it up, thereby allowing him to find 3 more victims?

"Teachers and administrators at Central Elementary School knew they had a problem with F.H., a 12-year-old who had been accused of going into a bathroom stall and sexually assaulting a first-grade boy. But instead of calling police and removing F.H., district officials covered up the attack and allowed him to remain in class, leading to the sexual assault of three more first-graders, parents say."

In a civil action by the 6 year-old victims' parents against the school district, the district's lawyer correctly stated that under existing law:

"...school officials cannot be held responsible simply for failing to protect youngsters from assaults by other students. He cited federal court rulings that say school systems are generally immune from paying damages unless it can be shown that they actually took “affirmative” steps that put youngsters in danger, and that the action taken 'shocks the conscience.'"

The District's lawyer's point, obviously, was that the district wasn't liable because it took no affirmative step that "shocks the conscience".

Now, let's leave aside that the highly trained education professionals in Allentown had their lawyer argue that covering-up the rape of six year-olds and leaving the perp in the school to troll for victims doesn't involve an affirmative act that "shocks the conscience". How many parents know that the law holds government schools to such a low legal standard regarding the safety of schoolchildren that the standard itself "shocks the conscience". The full story is here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17030722/from/ET/

Contrast the standards the courts have concocted to protect our highly trained education professionals from the consequences of their perfidious behavior with the treatment of a 10 year-old in Texas that was so outrageous that even a liberal Dino media columnist is up-in-arms about it.

In Tomball (one of those places where the schools are "different"), 10-year-old Casey Harmeier was charged with a felony for deliberately setting off a fire alarm. Only the persistence of his father led to the admission by the school district that his son didn't set off the alarm, a highly trained education professional had: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/casey/4523078.html and http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/casey/4531988.html

Because the child had only bumped into the plastic cover on the alarm, thereby loosening it, and then removed it, the prosecutors have reduced the charge to a misdemeanor. The boy goes on trial May 15. Such are the wages of handing children over to the government schools.

Please don't think, however, that our highly trained education professionals can't recognize genuine threats to our children when they see them. In Key Largo, Florida, Gideons were arrested for distributing Bibles on a public sidewalk outside a school: http://www.ednews.org/articles/7795/1/Gideons-arrested-after-school-officials/Page1.html

The school officials probably feared that the Gideons might cause an outbreak of reading among their schoolchildren.

Lest you think that this fear is limited to Florida, Texas school officials also have had Gideons arrested for the crime of distributing Bibles on a public sidewalk. Perhaps our educators worry that the presence of Bibles might make the members of their school's Gay/Straight Alliance club "uncomfortable" or damage their self-esteem.

In the last edition of the Continuing Collapse, we discovered that a New Jersey district had been caught paying $130,000 a year to an employee who had died in 1974. Now we find that a Brooklyn teacher allegedly pocketed $6,000 for tutoring a student after he had died in Vietnam. http://www.nydailynews.com/news/story/495736p-417734c.html

If they could just arrange to have the dead school employees teach the dead students it might clear everything up. At least there wouldn't be any union grievance or student discipline issues to bother busy administrators.

ETS, a sworn member of the education monopoly, recently issued a report warning that as baby-boomers retire the workforce is likely to become less literate.

Don't worry, this isn't a hit piece on our highly trained education professionals. The problem, they tell us, is them there Latin American immigrants. Why, if it weren't for them, we would have the best educated workforce ever. Really. http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0206/p02s01-legn.html?s=hns

Spoilsports - the kind of people that right thinking highly trained professionals and journalists should never pay attention to - think that perhaps the problem just perhaps has something to do with how our highly trained educational professionals are educating their inmates. Here are a few words from the spoilsports: http://4brevard.com/choice/international-test-scores.htm AND http://www.edexcellence.net/institute/publication/publication.cfm?id=50&pubsubid=726#726

In Houston 300 teachers staged a near riot at a recent school board meeting because they were upset that the district had adopted a performance bonus program, which of course meant that there were winners and losers.

Not only did the sheer enormity of being "judged" on one's performance cause a radical spike in the demand for grief counselors in the Houston area, but the disgruntled highly trained education professionals sought therapeutic relief by giving grief to the board (which grief sharing nearly got out of hand). http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/4539311.html

For at least two years, Texans have been wondering if our beloved Republican Governor Perry had slipped away unnoticed to Tijuana for the political equivalent of a sex change operation. Now we know.

As reported here last week, Perry decided to come out of the closet by issuing an executive order requiring all government school girls to be vaccinated for an STD before entering 6Th grade. Now the Texas Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics have taken some of the fun out of his political-bath house impersonation of Jocelyn Elders.

"Gov. Rick Perry's order requiring schoolgirls to get inoculated against a sexually transmitted virus linked to cervical cancer may be unpopular with social conservatives, but another important group also is lining up against it: doctors. From, among others, the Texas Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, many doctors are saying it's too early to mandate the vaccine, which was approved for use last June." http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/politics/4532274.html

Absent from the Texas debate is any discussion of the Governor's use of compulsory attendance laws and government schools to coercively implement a bit of his private vision of utopia.

In the 9th Circuit's Palmdale decision, the Court stated baldly that once your child enters the government's school the government can teach your child what it wants, when it wants, and how it wants. This incident in Texas simply reminds us that the political power that can be wielded through the government 's schools goes far beyond curriculum and teaching methods.

Parents who are offering their children as a sacrifice to the Moloch of government schools are effectively giving up control of health decisions for their children and, as the legal standards exposed in the Allentown case show, are effectively giving custody of their children to an institution that will only rarely be held accountable for even the physical safety of their children.

My sister is a 6th grade teacher in Gilbert. She called Saturday and complained that she was no longer a teacher, but a babysitter.

Out of the 30 kids in her class, only 10 are "normal," as they have no labels attached; such as, learning disabled, Spanish speaking, ADD and so on and so forth. There's no way she could expect such children to take their seats, keep quiet and participate. The administration won't do anything, the parents won't do anything and she isn't allowed to do anything about it.

She thought I was a wacko when I told her I was homeschooling my son, but now that her kindergartner has been beaten up three times she doesn't judge me anymore. I have almost talked her into jumping ship, breaking contract with the state and starting a private school or tutoring business. She could make more money and save her sanity.

Keep an open mind and hopefully another option will come to you.

That tutoring business is a great idea, I hope your sister goes for it and saves her own child in the process. In Michigan, Sylvan and other tutoring centers are big business. We homeschooled for 12 years, government schools are dangerous places.

Great vanity. I had to stop half-way through because my head was going to explode.

Some voucher advocates have speculated about paying off the unions. It's a bribe that's worth paying.

Compulsory attendance laws violate morality no matter what the government schools do or teach. They initiate a threat of violence against all parents and they condition children to accept involuntary servitude.

Amen.

The underlying principle is that the State has the primary right to educate children, not parents.

It's a bribe that's worth paying.

Yes, and that is why the unions adamantly oppose vouchers even with these "incentives". They know that they have a product that only uninvolved, very materialistic, or stupid people want for their children. Vouchers, tax credits, etc. mean the end of the line for the government education monopoly.

Bob Chase, former pres of the NEA, peremptorily cut off an interviewer's questions on this subject with a series of "No's" when asked if there was any amount of additional money going into the system that would lead the union to support vouchers (What if we doubled the money" No. Tripled it? No....)

Utah is a right to work state, which is how this thing got through the House. I have serious doubts about it making it all the way through (including the courts).

Bob Chase, former pres of the NEA, peremptorily cut off an interviewer's questions on this subject with a series of "No's" when asked if there was any amount of additional money going into the system that would lead the union to support vouchers (What if we doubled the money" No. Tripled it? No....)

Ugh. The blame for this goes back to JFK who legalized government unions.

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