Posted on 06/25/2010 11:36:31 AM PDT by BruceDeitrickPrice
Anyone who has ever tried to sue a school, change a PTA, join a school board, or in any way to manipulate what a public school was doing, please share your experiences and suggestions. To start the discussion, here are a few options:
YAHOO GROUPS: anybody can form a group on Yahoo. I know of a group in Jersey City where parents share notes about teachers, courses, and candidates. This is an easy way to mobilize 100 or 200 people so theyre all on the same page when they deal with the school.
PARENT-TEACHER ASSOCIATION: Martin Gross, in his book The Conspiracy of Ignorance, argues that most PTAs have been corrupted. He recommends that parents regroup in independent local groups called Parent-Teacher Organizations or PTOs.
SCHOOL BOARD: Martin Gross also offers his opinion that many school boards are controlled by the NEA, and the apparent free discussions you see at meetings are stage-managed. How do we liberate the school boards?
INDIVIDUALIZED EDUCATION PLAN (IEP): Rudolf Flesch in his Why Johnnys Still Cant Read book, says that if your child is having trouble reading, that child can take advantage of provisions for special ed kids. Specifically, Flesch says take a lawyer to the school and demand that the school sign a contract promising your child will be taught phonics, not sight-words. Anyone ever done this?
STATE SUPERINTENDENTS: What if these people were elected officials? My impression is that most superintendents are conduits for orders coming down from the commissars at the top. (Ann Coulter proposed firing all superintendents.) Are these people ever elected? Would that be an improvement?
LOCAL POLITICS: Martin Gross also notes that while the NEA might give money to lots of candidates, the big donations go to liberals who will do what the NEA dictates. If the NEA favors a candidate, thats a red flag.
PEOPLE TO THE PEOPLE! FIGHT THE SYSTEM! Maybe those old hippies had it right. So the question is, what can parents do to make schools work for the people?
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[Builds on an earlier post called What Are The Best Ways To Defend Your Child Against Dumbing Down (see link). Im lookiing for ANY ideas that empower parents. The results will appear here in August and on my site Improve-Education.org.]
Pinging you to post 30.
All funded by your tax dollars (and mine).
It doesn't matter whether you send your children to the public schoolsyou and I are paying for the whole mess.
Everyone, even the most ardent home-schooler, has an interest in seeing that the public schools are cleaned up. Otherwise, we will all suffer from the general dumbing-down of society.
Yes, my friend. You are entirely correct.
Eliminate socialized schooling and return to a free market capitalist system. Government schools have no place in a free society.
http://www.freedomofeducation.net/
http://www.schoolandstate.org/home.htm
The arguments for socialized schooling are the same as the arguments for socialized medicine, socialized housing, etc. They are based on a distrust of the free market and capitalism.
People who would never willingly move into a public housing project will put their kids in a public school. They are conditioned to accept socialized schooling. People who have spent 6 or 7 generations in government housing projects are conditioned to accept socialized housing.
Socialized schooling has no place in a free society.
I’ve homeschooled for 24 years. My youngest has one more year of high school. I wouldn’t have missed it for anything. We had such a wonderful time together. You are free to travel, free to study whatever you think is important. I wouldn’t want my dog to have to attend school all day.
As important as everything you mentioned is the lesson you are teaching by example; taking responsibility for your one wants and needs.
People using the socialized schools are having their lifestyles subsidized by others. The example they are setting is that it is OK to feed at the public trough.
So the little one room schoolhouses of the past were just socilalist training facilities?
If you believe that, your teachers were morons.
The one room school was as much socialized schooling as the three-story city school. The education was undoubtedly more in keeping with community standards but the example parents gave the children was the same; socialism is OK.
People who use the government schools of any size are doing the same thing people who move into government housing projects. They are abdicating personal responsibility They are having their lifestyles subsidized by others.
It is hard to break the cycle of dependency whether it is dependency on government schools or on government housing, or on government medicine. Also, as with all socialized industries, the quality of the product never improves over time. The quality of the product declines because there is no competition. There is no incentive to maintain quality.
Socialized schooling was the first target of the progressives because it plants the seed in childrens minds that socialism is a proper means for supplying their wants. We must do away with socialized schooling and return to free market, capitalist schooling.
Apparently Ben Franklin was a socialist too.
You clowns rewrite history just as surely and honestly as the left does it.
Ben Franklin didn’t start a government college. He started a free market college, the University of Pennsylvania.
You have no way of refuting my facts so rather than hold a rational discussion all you can do is name-call.
You are the product of socialized schools, aren’t you?
Who said anything about college?
Franklin set up a whole series of community schools.
When did he do that? Were they government schools?
Jefferson advocated socialized schooling but couldn’t get the majority of Virginians to buy into it.
Socialism doesn’t work. Socialized schooling should be replaced with capitalist schooling.
Thanks for all these comments. (#42 and #43 are my own starting point.)
Perhaps I’m unrealistic about what is possible; but I’m motivated by the thought that we have to try.
Why should we allow all those hacks and quacks in the Education Establishment to have so much influence?
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