The founders must be regretting public skools at this point. They were pretty decent through the 70s
“The founders must be regretting public skools at this point. They were pretty decent through the 70s”
The world war 2 generation started to retire around 1969. The hippies had graduated from college and become teachers. I was in high school and I noticed the change, which was stunning. It has only gotten worse. I was talking to a middle class white kid in the gym (23.) He did not know who JFK was and he’d never heard of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. He could name the presidents starting with Carter. He said he’d graduated near the top of his HS class.
no--they really were not... by then the public school system was infiltrated by socialism... even before the 70s... read Fahrenheit 451--which came out in the early 50s... schools were already indoctrination centers... no encouragement of free thinking... from the start, public schools--the entire idea of "kindergarten," was to create "servants."
The term was created by Friedrich Fröbel for the play and activity institute that he created in 1837 in Bad Blankenburg as a social experience for children for their transition from home to school. (Wikipedia)
i am not sure the Founding Fathers had taken public school into much consideration... many of the Founding Fathers were privately educated within the home... right now i am reading a biography on Thomas Jefferson--a 6-volume biography... i am on the first volume--The Virginian... i read about his early education today... i have read other books about Thomas Jefferson and his education... as a homeschooler--his type of education is what i have had in mind for my own two sons...
the idea behind Sesame Street also fits into the "kindergarten" experiment... early start indoctrination... we who went through the "conveyor belt" of public education in the 50s, 60s and 70s mostly believe what we got was good... compared to the educations many of the Founding Fathers received, what we got was crap...
today, the system is deceptively called public school... but we no longer have public schools... the public has no say in what goes in these cesspools... indoctrination institutions... they are now government schools... and most parents send their children to them day in and day out... year after year... even conservative parents willfully hand their precious children over to the enemy...
i highly recommend A Thomas Jefferson Education by Oliver DeMille, The Underground History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto, and Another Sort of Learning by James V. Schall (really any book by him)...
mis dos centavos...
“They were pretty decent through the 70s.”
You are being VERY generous. I managed to get a decent education due to PURE LUCK. My sister wasn’t as lucky and paid the price.
...and that was at a “wonderful” suburban school district, among the top in the state, perhaps even nationally.
The bottom line, as my sister found out the hard way, was even back then, you needed to get your REAL education from outside sources.
Obviously now it’s even worse...and it still depresses the hell out of me to see parents that are SO SELFISH that they actually put their kids on that big yellow bus.
Don't blame the Founders on the public schools -- that wasn't an idea till after the Civil War. You are right, though, that the public schools retained a shred of competence through the sixties.
The Progressives grabbed control of the budding public school system in the late 1890's. Everyone approved because they wanted to create a "democratic" educational system -- not one that favored one group [such as, say, the natively intelligent] over another.
Gradually, during the beginning years of the 20th century, the schools were changed from places where people were educated into places where people were trained. Now, training a dim-minded boy to read, cipher, and perform a job may be good. But when his bright schoolmate is stuffed into the same curriculum, only frustration and boredom can result.
It took several generations, of course, for the damage to be done. And by the sixties, the last of the well-educated teachers were gone and we are left with what we're left with.
The Facebook, MSNBC generation.