Posted on 02/05/2004 10:56:40 AM PST by FlyLow
There is a reason why Democrats want the government to keep control of the education of our children. If you do not understand that reason, then you probably went to government schools.
Is there a parent out there who hasn't lived through this scenario?
You have a soon-to-be brand new first grader in the house. Yes, after over five years of careful nurturing your little rug rat is ready for that great adventure called education. It's time for school. Sadly, for most parents, it's time for government school. You're about to take the most precious thing in your life and turn it over to a government that, at some level, you know to be completely incompetent, for an education.
Ah, but first there's the school supplies! Through your exercise of due diligence you have acquired a list of school supplies that your proud new first grader should have with him when he reports to the first day of school. So, off you and your bouncing bundle of energy go to the local Wal-Mart or CVS to stock up.
There's pencils, white paste, construction paper, a protractor, ruler, paper clips, scissors (the rounded type that won't get your child bounced on a weapons charge), notebooks, erasers, and who knows what else.
Many of you with older children remember this day, don't you?
As soon as you get home from your school supply shopping trip your child disappears into his room with his bag of treasure. The pencils, rulers, paste, notebooks and everything else are dumped out on the bed and arranged neatly. First they're arranged according to size, then according to color. Which looks best? These are your child's supplies and he is going to make sure that they're in perfect order and condition when he proudly carries then into school on that magic first day.
This arranging and re-arranging process is so detailed and critical that you have to coerce your student-to-be to come to the table for dinner. Never have you seen a plate of asparagus and a slab of liver disappear so quickly. Then your child is off in a flash back to the bedroom to make sure that (a) his supplies are still there and still in good condition; and (b) that they are arranged and stored properly. The last inventory check of the school supplies takes place on the very morning of the first day of school. It's the final preflight. Your proud first-grader is certain that if everything is not absolutely perfect with the condition of those supplies, and the way in which they are neatly store into his back-breaking backpack, his entire education will be jeopardized and he'll end up making a living restringing a weed eater somewhere.
There's time for breakfast, one last check of the supplies, and into the car (you wouldn't want your child to ride the Loser Cruiser on the first day of school, would you?) and off to your local government indoctrination center.
Hold on here a minute! Did I just call your child's wonderful public school a government indoctrination center? Why, I think that I just did! How terribly insensitive of me! Read on.
About six hours after you watch your child disappear through the door of his brand new school, you're there waiting to welcome him as he emerges from his first day. Something's wrong, you think. He looks a little sullen. Discouraged.
"How was your first day of school?"
"Fine"
"Was your teacher nice?"
"I guess"
"What did you do?"
"Nuthin"
"Isn't this going to be fun?"
"I guess so."
You know something's wrong. Something happened that first day of school that has your tricycle motor upset.
At that moment if you were to check your child's backpack you would notice something. Something is missing. All of those school supplies that your child was so proud of are gone. There's maybe one pencil and one notebook left.
Here's what happened.
First, to fully understand what's going on here you have to understand why I refer to what you call "public schools" as "government schools." These schools are owned and operated by the government. Every single person working in these schools, from the principal down to the janitor, are government employees; and this includes the teachers. There are agents sent by the government to educate, (your word) or indoctrinate (my word) your child.
On your child's first morning of school, no more than fifteen minutes after the bell rang, the teacher instructed all of the children to bring their school supplies to the front of the room and deposit them neatly in a large box. The students, including yours, were told that their school supplies now belonged to the entire class. When a student needs something they just have to go to the government authority figure and ask. The government authority figure will then go into the box of common property and hand the student what he needs.
So, what did your little bundle of innocence learn on his first day of school? He learned that when it comes to government there is no such thing as private property. Whatever your child thought belonged to him when he entered that building on day one .. soon belonged to the entire class; to the collective.
No, this doesn't happen in every grade school classroom in America on the first day of school, but the practice of seizing and redistributing school supplies is widespread and becoming more and more common.
This practice doesn't always start in grade school. My first experience was with my own daughter at a day care center. She went to day care one morning with a supply of candy to last her through the day. When I picked her up that afternoon the proprietor handed me the bag containing my daughter's candy.
"We don't allow this." She said.
"You don't allow what?"
"We don't allow kids to bring candy to day care unless they have enough to share with everybody."
"Why's that?"
"Because it's not right for one kid to have something another kid doesn't have."
"Do you think it's right for you to have things that other adult's don't have?"
"Well of course it is."
"Then why isn't it right for children? They're learning their core values right now, and you're teaching them that they should never have something that everybody else doesn't have? Is that the kind of country we want? Where everybody lives in the same price home driving the same type of car wearing the same type of clothes? How in the world would you reward someone for extra effort or good decision making in a world like that?"
To her credit, the day care operator looked at me, blinked, paused and took the bag of candy back out of my hand. "I'll give it back to her in the morning and apologize."
This denial of your child's basic property rights on their first day of school is no accident. There is a design here, a lesson to be taught. That lesson is that there is something inherently wrong with possessing private property. The lesson which government seeks to teach here is that the right to property is not a right that vests in the individual. It is, rather, a right of the collective, the group, the commune. You can compare your child's first day in school with some brainwashed adult's first day in a cult. One of the first things that is required of the new cult member is the abandonment of all private property. Everything belongs to everybody now. You give what you can, and you take what you need.
Some of you might already see that this mindset comes uncomfortably close to something some chaps named Marx and Engels wrote back around 156 years ago: "From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs." That was the basis for some other system of government and rule, not ours, and it is alarming to see it being resurrected in our government operated schools today. Is this denial of private property exercise effective?
Several years ago The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ran a story featuring the charitable efforts of a sixth-grade girl in a northern Atlanta suburb. This young lady was a one-man (I just love doing that) charity machine in her neighborhood. One week she would be collecting for this, and the next week she would be having a garage sale for that. "This" and "that" being charities, of course.
The newspaper interview of this young lass revealed some well-learned lessons from her government school, for she proudly proclaimed that "everybody ought to have an equal amount of stuff." Our long-dead friends Marx and Engels would be so proud.
You will see this repeated throughout this book. Freedom cannot thrive in a society that does not recognize the sovereignty of the individual and the individual's right to property. Our government schools waste no time in attacking property rights. The very first day of school is not too soon.
They are spending $11,000 per student here, and we are still last ** pulling hair **
Just give me my damn money back, I'll quit work and school my child. Its a shame when our son comes home and tells us they are teaching what he already knows. What is wrong with parents that they don't even give a flip.
So true. My lovely wife does nearly all the home schooling, but I get to do some of the science and math that she knows I'm good at. What a joy to watch when they "discover" something for the first time.
Are you nuts? Few males are allowed to teach anymore, the school system has been turned into a maternalistic/socialistic brain washing factory. It all fits with the old communist theories of taking over the pedagogy of the lumpen proletariat. While you don't hear those terms anymore that's what this is all about - and the smart ones in academia know exactly what they are doing. Go take the tests for seventh graders from the old school books and you will see how it has all been dumbed down. Lincoln was mostly self taught, I guess he was a lonely has-been.
You work hard and take the test and get an "A." But the teacher says that's not fair to the other kids. So little Johnny who didn't study and got an "F" gets to take part of your grade, and you each end up with a "C." Her first reaction was "that's not fair."
We said, "Yes. But that's socialism. From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." Very effective teaching. She's 39 years old, and understands socialism still.
Carolyn
I've never seen it either. I'm from Massachusetts and have 2 kids that are in some fine public schools.
I am closely involved with my children's education in the schools in our town and I must say that this article and many other instances of what goes down in public schools across the country are BS to me. The weird stuff that I read about on FR doesn't go down here.
This is why I will, from time to time, take some Freepers to task for painting public schools with the same broad brush. Not all of them are government indoctrination centers. I wouldn't put up with that kind of BS in my town's schools and neither would any of the Conservative parents I know who also send their kids to the same schools here.
.As a matte of fact, gel-pens, glittery pencils and erasers in cute shapes sometimes get used as rewards for good work. And often, the teacher DOEs pay for them.
Tia
Sadly, this is true and it breaks my heart.
We moved to this town before having kids over my objections. My wife grew up here and knew the school system. It was mainly for this reason that she was adamant.
We are Town Meeting members and make it a point to be involved with the schools and know the teachers. Still, in many towns across the nation even that isn't possible and sadly, is frowned upon by the administrative forces that run some school systems.
I'd love to get out of Massachusetts, but until the kids are out of school and in college...I'm stuck.
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