Posted on 03/13/2017 1:44:00 PM PDT by BruceDeitrickPrice
[A simple explanation for why nothing improves in our public schools.]
In the movie, Bill Murray gets up every day and has to live through the same realities that he lived through the day before. Nietzsche called this predicament “eternal recurrence.”
Einstein weighed in on this topic. Doing the same thing again and again, while getting the same results, is a working definition of insanity.
So there you have our public school system, an insane Rube Goldberg contraption with lots of wheels turning, balls dropping, springs springing…. but nothing is accomplished.
I've been studying education for 25 years and finally see a simple way of explaining the nonsense and inertia that we all witness. Every day is Groundhog Day because the essential conflict has not changed in almost 100 years. The underlying forces don't evolve. We are stuck.
Traditional education, where an expert teacher tries to transfer all the interesting stuff about our civilization to the minds of the young, is the proper job of schools. It is the right way to do things (even if we today would like to see more fun and cleverness in the classroom). So the community, and common sense, are always trying to push the schools to do what they ideally should be doing. That’s the situation today just as it was in 2000 and 1980 and 1960 and 1940 and 1920.
On the other side, we have “progressives” (that’s code for Socialists and Communists) who want to transform the schools so they become part of a collectivist transformation of society. Knowledge, facts, interesting stuff of all kinds, is of no interest to these people. The schools have only one purpose: social engineering. If some kids learn a lot and some kids learn a little, this opens up divisions in society. If children learn to think for themselves, they will argue with their ideological overlords. So in general the people at the top of the Education Establishment prefer dumbing down, mediocrity, and low standards. These people are for me the merest hacks. But you have to give them credit for hard work and relentless discipline. If even the smallest smidgen of education takes place in the schools, they will try to expunge it. They have dozens of bogus theories and dysfunctional methods designed to accomplish precisely this goal.
So this war—this battle for the souls and minds of the children—has not changed in the last hundred years. The apparent changes are all superficial: nomenclature, jargon, faddish claims. The community wants children to be educated. The progressives want children to be indoctrinated. That’s it. That's the whole game for 100 years.
That’s why K-12 is Groundhog Day.
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The progressives have a vast interlocking network of people and organizations intended to keep the schools mediocre. Last year I would've said: the fix is in and the situation is hopeless. Now, however, new people have taken over the Department of Education. Now we can start to drain the swamp, as explained in an article on American Thinker: K-12: Drain This Swamp.
Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos are promoting charter schools and vouchers. Choice is the key concept. If the public has choices, the public will pick what delivers the most traditional education. That's how we disrupt this "eternal recurrence." --
Is there any reason you just post your own stuff?
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/by:brucedeitrickprice/index?tab=articles
Do you really like yourself a lot and just want to see your name?
Have you ever tried to post stuff from where ever you found it,
like a normal person would do? What is wrong with you?
Einstein weighed in on this topic. Doing the same thing again and again, while getting the same results, is a working definition of insanity.
Not what he said, and that sentence makes no sense.
Doing the same thing again and again and getting the same result is the definition of consistency and repeat-ability.
Doing the same thing again and again and expecting a different result, now THAT is the definition of insanity.
Anybody ever heard of proofreading?
But I did go to the site and have glanced through some of the articles, and, being ON a school board, I can attest to the fact that THIS is a true statement;
"So this war—this battle for the souls and minds of the children—has not changed in the last hundred years. The apparent changes are all superficial: nomenclature, jargon, faddish claims. The community wants children to be educated. The progressives want children to be indoctrinated. That’s it. That's the whole game for 100 years."
So I'm not going to quibble over that oversight, I don't think it was, nor meant to be, mis-direction.
This is why Rush’s books are doing so well... I have kids that I’d love to get out of the system and teach them myself but the wife doesn’t see how evil it is...because her parents were schoolteachers in a country where they taught instead of indoctrinated.
I dunno, I appreciate the fact that he at least posts using his own name with complete transparency, unlike some who try to secretly pimp their blog with multiple ID’s.
And he’s quite correct that the public union schools are completely owned by the progressives (aka socialists) at this point in history and are only interested in indoctrination.
Yeah? Well I think he's a fag trying to make money from blog posts
that he thinks people will click on that pays him money to go
hopping around in a gay bar hooking up with anonymous homos.
You may note that he does not comment here, but just posts his stuff.
Because he's too busy hopping around in a gay bar hooking up with anonymous homos.
Bloggers.
He’s not blog pimping. He genuinely trying to make education better.
I happen to like his stuff and look forward to reading it when he posts it.
I have been having “issues” with my children’s reading abilities, and his materials have been great ammunition to get them to stop using their stupid “sight words” and other recipe’s for failure.
I have been using his material in my conferences with the school district and have been calling what they are doing a dereliction of responsibility. It is a wonderful thing.
His blog has no advertising on it to generate click revenue.
Stop being a nasty old crank. Blogs are posted on FR all the time. Many have become staples here and are so popular they no longer have to pimp their own blogs because their fans do it for them.
No.
Blogs are posted on FR all the time.
Unfortunate, that.
Many have become staples here
If true, it means we are growing ignorant.
are so popular they no longer have to pimp their own blogs because their fans do it for them.
Yeah, homeless drunks on library computers are real news.
Yep.
Thank you.
Seems like he’s PLAYING BY THE RULES here...not hiding anything and not excerpting his own blog. Not to mention that it’s DAMN GOOD STUFF.
Perhaps we’re missing something?
This is a tough room, but fully expected.
I guess I clicked on this thread expecting a different result from the usual “blog pimp” hatred.
Instead, I got exactly what I expected. Blog pimp hatred.
I’m insane, apparently.
Also, Democrats and Communists have had their hooks in schools for a long time, but no 100 years.
Thank you.
Humblegunner is obsessed with people making money on the web.... I never did. I write about intellectual topics that don’t have a large audience. But I did decide at the outset to use my full name and to be fully transparent. I want people to know who I am and to trust me. Many do.
For example, a reform group in Italy wanted advice on fighting sight-words in their public schools. They read my internet articles and decided I was the expert they would trust. I’ve been advising them for 3-4 years. I’m scheduled to speak at their Milan conference in October. I do not speak a word of Italian so you can see this is a great honor.
Here’s a report a year ago on this group and me:
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/01/education_reform_italian_group_shows_americans_how_its_done.html
I accept flak as part of my reform efforts. Not to mention, I get a lot of good mail, for example:
“Hi Bruce - I never miss your articles and forward them on to local school board members and local media. I am 84 years old, a 35-year career long Middle School Principal, still of sound mind and body. Oh how I wish you could come to Grand Junction and speak. I believe with all my heart that the U. S Department of Education should close (be abolished), it serves no purpose, has no effect on improving teaching and student learning, NONE. What do you think? Keep up your excellent work, Bruce..... F. L. , GRAND JUNCTION”
Re: “I have been using his material in my conferences...”
I really appreciate hearing this.
Thank you for putting your stuff out there. It has been a great help to me in advocating for my kids and calling out the idiots who run the schools and the ones who taught them.
My kids have been subjected to the “sight words” and various other crap that passes for curriculum in elementary schools these days. Any you’re right. They throw out crap like dislexia to cover for their failure to properly teach them how to phonetically decode words.
I spend more time de-programming them from that crap and reeducating them in reading and mathematics.
Don’t let Humblegunner get to you. He does call out blog pimps and rightly so, but I have found your stuff to be a great resource and everyone with kids in school here should spend time reading it.
Every ONE of us here ... YOU INCLUDED ... use words to convey messages, argue and debate and IMO, It doesn't matter WHERE the words come from.
If they're good and true and help to save our nation, they are MOST welcome herer.
You are welcome. My mother was involved with the Reading Reform Foundation for many years. Both she and my father had a functionally illiterate younger sibling and discovered “Why Johnny Can’t Read” back when they were starting a family in the late 50’s and taught all her children to read using phonics and Open Court materials long before we entered kindergarten.
I myself took training in the Spaulding method when I was a teacher and used it with my own home schooled children.
It is my fervent hope that the internet will finally break the stranglehold the progressives hold in schools or better yet, destroy the public union school model.
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