posted 04-04-2002 10:22 AM            

...because I agree with you one hundred percent (ghasp!). When I was a 3rd-7th grader, my dad was assigned overseas (in Micronesia) and my Mom taught me using the Calvert School home-study curriculum. I think it did wonders for what intellecutal development I ended up with, and it made the last couple of years at a government-monopoly high school a real sleeper for me.

Government-monopoly ("public") schools are probably the single reason that our kids' education is in such sorry shape today, and for a lot of reasons:

First, since we are forced to support the schools even if we don't use them, the teachers and administrators have no incentive whatsoever to get better. If you don't like your Ford, you can buy a Honda next time; If your Nikes are no good, you can switch to New Balance, and so on. But if you don't like the government-monopoly schools, you're screwed. Most people cannot afford to pay taxes for the government schools while shelling out the additional money or time to send their kids to a school of their choice or to home-school them.

The teacher-unions and administrators know this, and they have nothing to threaten their jobs. That's why the teacher-unions are so desperately afraid of private-school educational vouchers; they worry that, if the parents had the freedom of choice from vouchers, it would drive the government-monopoly schools out of business.

Second, Your kid is forced into a one-size-fits-all "educational" experience, where he will learn the curriculum that the government thinks is best. You may have nothing against concepts such as evolution, lock-step nationalism/patriotism, history from a "get rid of the Dead White Males" perspective, or "relative morality", etc. Or you may have something against some of those things. It doesn't matter. Your kid will get them. He will also be taught in a way that the government thinks is best, whether it's look-say versus phonics for readings, collaborative versus directed study, etc. Different kids learn different ways, but in the government-monopoly school, you have no choice.

Third, Your kid is forced into a one-size-fits-all moral experience, where the life rules and values that you think are important to your kid's life and (possibly) afterlife may or may not be taught.

Fourth, the government-monopoly schools are inherently racist and class-warfare oriented. As a well-to-0do White suburbanite, I can always afford to put my kid into a private school or move him to a better school district. But folks in the inner cities, a disproportionate number of whom are minorities, don't have that opportunity! And they're the ones who know just how bad the government-monopoly schools are in their neighborhoods; and it's probably the reason that, based on some recent surveys, Black parents are even more in favor of things like private-school vouchers that their White counterparts are.

posted 04-04-2002 10:41 AM            

edited by mad mod Lu for flaming

posted 04-04-2002 05:12 PM            

thanks BobB...you made the right choice too!

posted 04-12-2002 05:03 PM            

Johnny A'ams

Ignorance is bliss, they say. It's also, perhaps, the biggest threat to
liberty and freedom in our country today. The simple fact is, our
government re-education centers . . . which some continue to call "public
schools" . . . do not impart a proper sense of American history, our
Constitution or the motivations and actions of our Founding Fathers to our
current generation of kids. And this has been going on for YEARS.

Our best defense against an increasingly liberal, if not downright
socialist, state in America is exposure to our nation's early history. And
it's up to US to do that which the government shouldn't be doing anyway:
Teach our own children.

A good place to start, in my humble opinion, would be to pick up a copy of
David McCullough's biography of America's second president and Founding
Father, "John Adams" . . . which last week received the Pulitzer Prize. My
baby bro' just gave me a copy for my birthday and it is fascinating reading
(and I'm not even up to page 100 yet).

I had no idea (I spent some of my years in government schools, as well) that
this great patriot, at considerable personal risk to reputation and fortune,
agreed to represent the British soldiers responsible for what is today known
as "The Boston Massacre" as a matter of principle. At the tender age of 34,
attorney Adams was asked to defend the hated "Lobsterbacks" over the
incident because no one else would take the case. Adams took it "in the
belief, as he said, that no man in a free country should be denied the right
to counsel and a fair trial."

This would be akin to, say, Judge Robert Bork today agreeing to represent
bin Laden and his al Qaeda terrorists over the Sept. 11 attacks for the same
reason and principle. Pretty darned gutsy thing to do at the time. Why I
wasn't taught about this revealing and important aspect of our second
president in school is beyond me.

Let's not waste another generation of Americans by keeping them in the dark
about the nature of freedom and the importance our Founders placed on
liberty. While my two-year-old doesn't yet understand the passages I'm
reading out loud to her from McCullough's biography, she is developing a
love for books and reading which will serve her well in the years to come.
And at least when I point to the photo on the cover of the book and ask her
who it is, she belts out, in a Jar-Jar Binks-like voice of youthful
reverence, "Johnny A'ams." She's learning.

Education is the cure for terminal ignorance. And it starts in the home.

- Chuck Muth, Editor

***************************
Founding Wisdom

"There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to
be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty."

- Right-wing extremist John Adams

posted 04-13-2002 09:01 AM            

A really fine way to start my weekend David! by reading your post here. Thank you.