Posted on 04/02/2013 4:36:36 AM PDT by SJackson
With all the political correctness, secular progressive propaganda and outright craziness going on in schools today, I wonder if kids are actually learning anything at all. In my world, you went to school, learned a skill (as I did in my vocational high school), and got a job. Higher education came much later for me. I was expected to work out of high school. I can’t imagine how I would’ve supported myself if I had to endure the kind of dopeyness I read about today – starting in our elementary schools all the way through college.
A new policy in Chicago will require sex education in every grade, including kindergarten. Fortunately, parents can opt out of this program, but, one would think, with one of the highest drop-out rates in the nation, Chicago would be a little bit more interested in the basics or is reading, writing and arithmetic a thing of the past?
A mother of a fifth grader in Corpus Christie, TX, objected to a test question following the viewing of a film entitled, “Remembering September 11th,” which read, “Why might the United States be a target for terrorism?” The “correct” answer was “Decisions we made in the United States have had negative effects on people elsewhere.” The other options were “Other people just don’t like Americans,” “Terrorists hate everyone” and “None of the above.” When did it become okay to teach our children that we caused the atrocities of 9/11? Why wasn’t the correct answer, “Because Islamic terrorists hate freedom and everything else the U.S.represents.”
In Houston, an elementary school held an assembly entitled, “A Dream Come True – Living in the present by remembering the past and looking forward to the future.” The lyrics of the first song, “Feels Like Change”:
Oh, I tried to believe in George Bush,
I tried to trust,
But it’s ashes to ashes now,
And it’s dust to dust.
Do you feel it baby?
Oh, do you feel it?
It feels like change!
The rest of the program, with the exception of a couple of songs focused on Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr., was a lovefest for the President Obama. Talk about indoctrination and propaganda. (After the program was put on and after reviewing the lyrics, the principal agreed that some of the songs were “overly political” and shouldn’t have been included.)
Recently, a Florida teenager, along with two others, forcibly disarmed a fellow student who allegedly pointed a loaded gun and threatened to shoot another pupil on a school bus. Instead of praising these heroes, they were suspended for three days. Now it’s up to them to fight to remove this suspension from their records.
In McAllen, Texas (what the hell is going on down there?), a teenager now has to sue her school because she was punished for not reciting the Mexican national anthem and pledge of allegiance (to Mexico) as part of her intermediate Spanish class.
And now we come to Massachusetts. Earlier this year, the Dept. of Elementary and Secondary Education released an 11-page document ordering the state’s K-12 public schools to permit “transgender” boys and girls to use the opposite sex’s locker rooms, bathrooms and changing facilities as long as they “claim to identify with that gender.” Neither a doctor’s note nor parental permission for a child to “switch sexes” is needed. If a boy says he’s a girl, as far as the schools are concerned, he’s a girl.
A friend of mine went through sex-reassignment and was required to go through years of psychotherapy, hormone therapy and living as a person of the opposite sex for an entire year before his surgery was approved.
How does a kid, somewhere between the ages of 5-17, get to make that decision without medical supervision or parental knowledge? This is absolute insanity. Some schools include kindergarten through 8th grade, which means, that boys as old as 14 could share toilet facilities with girls as young as five and vice versa. If a boy who “identifies” himself as a girl doesn’t want to use a urinal in a boys’ bathroom, then he should use a stall. And what about a girl? How does a girl who “identifies” herself as a boy use a boys’ bathroom any differently than a girls’ bathroom. Does anyone really want to think about a 14-year old girl using the same changing facilities and showering with 14-year old boys?
According to the guidelines, if a female student is uncomfortable and objects to a boy’s presence when she’s in the bathroom, the rules say, the complaint “is not a reason to deny access to the transgender student.”
Finally, Ryan Rotela, a Florida Atlantic University student, is accusing an instructor and local Democratic party leader of suspending him for refusing to stomp on a piece of paper with the word “Jesus” written on it. This “exercise” was part of an intercultural communications class (whatever that means) and was supposed to encourage discourse. Could you imagine if a student was told to stomp on the name “Mohammed” or even “Obama”? Fortunately, Ryan has received an apology but the instructor has been put on administrative leave for “safety reasons” whatever that means.
I don’t get it, but if you do, God bless you.
I’d love to see a poll on where FReepers with children send them to school.
Very, very little. Many have no idea of how bad it is in the public schools. Generally speaking (not in every case), they run the REALLY good teachers off. The reason is that the really competent teachers mirror the incompetence of those who are not doing their jobs correctly. The whole system is broken down.
Alas for some there is no financial ability to send their children to private school. I don’t have children so I never faced that delema but at the time I would have faced it, I did not have the income to support such an idea. My wife who sent her kids to public school regrets it every day but she did not have the facility to do otherwise either. Now if there were a trade off between paying “school” taxes or using those funds to send kids to private schools, I believe most public schools would be virtually empty. Of course the education industry would not stand for anything like that to happen. I say “industry” because that is exactly what it is. I don’t even blame the teachers in it, I blame the administrators who are the ones who set the standards and programs to be followed. These are the true bad actors in this whole scheme. Sex education in kindergarten, give me a break.
Bookmark
You really do? Sadly, I don't believe it.
As for financial ability, what has that to do with it? Homeschool doesn't cost whatever one pays in property tax. Private school generally costs more than one pays in property tax, so the voucher, even a full refund, wouldn't cover it.
There are innumerable excuses for doing wrong, and sending children to public school is very wrong indeed.
Well, this Freeper's kids are all home schooled, and have been since day one. Sending your kids to public schools is sending them to Commie/liberal indoctrination camp. Not a chance.
The kitchen.
“You really do? Sadly, I don’t believe it.”
There are quite a few families who would love to have their kids get a decent education. Unfortunately they are at the mercy of the bums who are aided by the race pimps who curry favor with the local dems pols and/or the education industry. Most of them are not able to home school either from a financial or ability standpoint.
My personal experience was I attended church grammer school and public high school. Neither school had “junk” or “fad” courses. Close to 90% of my high school class in 63 went on to college. Granted it was a different era. Sending my child to such a high school I would not consider wrong and frankly resent the inference that doing so was wrong for my family who was not well off or able to provide as decent an education to the one I received. As I said, I don’t have children so I have no dog in the home school/private/public school arena. However, I do believe one gets their moral and ethical foundation at home and should also have their foundation ABCs by the time they attend schooling.
At the time, it wasn’t wrong for your family to send their kids to public school, because they were still decent then.
Now, they’re nothing but indoctrination centers with the goal of an Orwellian society.
They are learning to be liberals. Taught by socialist leaning gov workers (teachers unions) what else would you expect?
Oh, it means "Up yours, Whitey!".
Well, this will start up a major, blazing flamewar, but if more conservatives would go into teaching, we’d have a chance to counter this trend. But they’d rather jeer from the sidelines.
People who think that way, have low responsibility, and have chosen to be victims.
When our kids were still pre-school age, my wife and I were both wage slaves, and felt we had no option but to send our kids to public school when the time came. When the job I'd held for nearly a decade disappeared one day, I realized that the only security I had, was in myself. It was at that point that I decided to start my own business.
The first year was tough, but we made it to year two intact. The second year was nothing but asses and elbows, trying to get it 'right'. By year three, we really knew what we were doing, and began climbing in the local business community.
By the time our eldest was ready to start kindergarten, we were in a position to choose home schooling rather than public school. After giving the local kindergarten a try for some months, we saw that it was everything we feared it might be, and took our boy out.
Point is, if your kids are important enough to you, you can move mountains to keep them safe. If my wife and I could do it, anyone can. It just takes intention, dedication, and problem solving.
The cost of many, if not most kids in public schools is highly subsidized by people who may never have had children. The last time I checked, a few years back, tuition at the closest private school to me (A Lutheran school) was $6500 per year, per student.
If you have 2 kids, your cost would have been $13,000 per year. Unless your property taxes exceed that amount, your cost would have gone up to school those two kids, at least in my example of the Lutheran school.
Of course a less expensive option would be to home school, if you can afford to have one spouse not work outside the home.
I know I'm going to get some flak for that last sentence, it's inevitable.
“not able to home school either from a financial or ability standpoint.
People who think that way, have low responsibility, and have chosen to be victims”
That may be the case for them, I don’t disagree with your assessment BUT the reality is most generally do wish their children would get a decent education. Sadly, a good number of children today are born into single parent households and they fit the description of financially unstable and intellectually reduced households. That does not mitigate their desire for decent educations. The system needs to be cleaned out top to bottom by getting rid of tenure, unions, and instilling school discipline. If a student choses not to cut it, kick them out, put them in reform schools or juvenile facilities but get the bums out. On the other hand, everyone home schooling their kids is not the answer IMO, it is avoidance.
Avoidance of what? Mandatory government schooling? Where in the Constitution does the government have the authority or mandate to implement a program of compulsory education? What state has such language in their constitution?
When individual communities of people chose to pool their efforts and create public schools for their own children, public schooling was a good idea that produced honestly educated Americans.
Statists, globalists, Communists, and other social miscreants soon realized that gaining control of, and expanding such an institution, would give them the means to imprint their boilerplate ideological dogma upon the impressionable young minds in the classroom.
In only a few generations, they gradually dumbed down the curriculum, and injected their destructive agendas into the daily regimen of lessons, effectively re-purposing the original intent of public education.
Avoidance? Oh, hell yes. To do otherwise, is to feed your children into the mouth of the beast.
“Avoidance? Oh, hell yes. To do otherwise, is to feed your children into the mouth of the beast.”
Avoidance in fixing the problem. It has to be addressed or as you say most all of the children will continue to be indoctrinated in ways anathma to our way of life, culture and mores.
Start with the Board of Education and get people on it who agree with our positions.
Unfortunately many rage on about the system but few do anything about it. When I lived in NorCal, I attended my first parent teachers night. Our district was 89% white, 9% black and 1 percent each asian and hispanic. At the meetings there were 50% white and 50% asian in attendance. The asians were involved and got things done way out of porportion to their population representation.
Home schooling and fixing the system are not mutually exclusive.
People who send their kids to public schools while 'raging' about it, are hypocrites. So are those who sit around pontificating about the situation when they don't have a dog in the fight.
My wife and I have sacrificed a lot to keep our kids out of the hands of the Commies. We stopped supporting the indoctrination camp evil long ago, so I've got nothing to prove to anyone.
I have no interest in 'fixing the system'. I've schooled my own.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.