Your post is nonsense. My children attend fine public schools. They are tested weekly and are reprimended if they are behind. They are expected to be tidy and ready to learn.
They may pray for a classmate or whomever their teacher asks them to pray for. They had a Nativity play at Christmas and they are anticipating Easter.
My youngest child's teacher was voted Oklahoma state teacher of the year.
This chicken little nonsense is wearing thin with me.
As with many things, generalizations of all kinds aren't going to hold true. There are fine public schools such as you are experiencing, and then on the other hand there are some which are truly dreadful. Here in So. CA I've watched the quality decline steadily, as a very involved mother of 4 (have volunteered, talked to principals, been to school board meetings, etc.). My eldest is in H.S. and has some very fine teachers (two were my own teachers!) and some who are ghastly. One shouldn't be in the classroom at all (foul-mouthed screamer who I suspect has mental problems -- the school admits they have met with many parents about him but it costs literally hundreds of thousands to remove a teacher due to union power). We have frankly given up on the elementary and junior high school (attempts to effect positive change resulted in a very sore head from banging pointlessly on the wall of bureaucratic inertia), and I'm now homeschooling my younger 3. Decided it was better in our case to expend my energy positively and be certain they were getting a solid education.
Your post is nonsense. My children attend fine public schools. They are tested weekly and are reprimended if they are behind. They are expected to be tidy and ready to learn.
They may pray for a classmate or whomever their teacher asks them to pray for. They had a Nativity play at Christmas and they are anticipating Easter.
My youngest child's teacher was voted Oklahoma state teacher of the year.
This chicken little nonsense is wearing thin with me.
Ok, Anny.... maybe some public schools in Oklahoma have the right idea. That's great for your kids!
My post is NOT nonsense, and I take offense at your calling it such. I see it getting worse, and I am in my 40's. I had 3 high school boys help me last year with some landscaping. One of them (a junior) could NOT READ! How is it that he made it to the 11th grade?
But isn't it funny to read the paranoia of some? If I believed every word they said, I wouldn't even drive past a public school for fear that students would swarm my car and try to have sex on the hood. And of course the teachers would bash my windows in once they found out that I am a Christian, only stopping to score some drugs from the dealers that infest the schoolyard. And I wouldn't dare look up- because that's where the religious students are dangled out the windows by the ankles for their beliefs!
It's nonsense to conclude that your good experience with your local public school is the only reality out there. Your "head in the sand" myopia wears thin with those of us whose children have been harmed by public school teachers and administrators. Be grateful that you have the blessing of prayer in your school; I will pray that your heart will be more compassionate toward the rest of us whose children would be suspended for praying in class, and whose teachers would be fired for the same. Chicken Little indeed.
It's great that your kids are in a public school that is so wonderful. Many others, however, are in a situation where the schools actively undermine what the family teaches at home, where kids who are Believers are ridiculed by their fellow students, and sometimes by their teachers. These situations are untenable, and families are responding by pulling their kids to send them to private schools or to homeschool them.
We've done all three, though we only did public school for half of one year for our oldest because there was no room yet in the Catholic school when we moved to town. The other three only had public school for kindergarten.
The Catholic elementary schools were not as strong academically, but we supplemented their education with field trips and home discussions. At least the school reinforced our family's beliefs. The Catholic high school our older sons attended, and now youngest son attends is excellent, and that's why we sent them there. The teachers don't put up with freshness or nonsense. It is a professional atmosphere, and the boys are taught respect for their elders and others. The boys are not perfect, and don't always turn out to be respectful young men, but at least the school doesn't encourage their flaws.
We began homeschooling our daughter when she entered 8th grade, and she continues as a Junior. She enjoys the freedom to learn on her own, and is now taking some courses at the local Community college and has no trouble fitting in with the older teens and young adults in her classes. She's looking into colleges, getting at least 3 letters or brochures every day since the PSAT scores were posted.
Just because you don't like the idea of homeschooling, doesn't mean it's not a valid choice for some families. They may have experienced a crappy public school situation, or may have them in their community and don't want to even be a part of them. That's the beauty of this country;each family can do what it considers best for it's own children.
You are in Oklahoma. That state is still a traditional American state.
Sadly, publik screwls in most of the rest of the country are in terrible shape.
Do what you think is best. MY child(ren) will be homeschooled.
Bravo! My kids have been to a lot of schools -- great public schools and bad, great private schools and bad. It's all about the talent and devotion of individual teachers.
It all depends where you live. There are many fine public schools. Just not enough.
The troubled public schools could be fixed readily enough if the political will existed to do it. It doesn't. So parents flee out to a suburb or small town where the demographics ensure that the public schools are ok, or opt out.
"This chicken little nonsense is wearing thin with me."
Amen. There's too much broadbrushing of them all as bad.
Wonder if anyone else has noticed? With a couple of exceptions, all the references to "things gone wrong" reference schools in BLUE states, WA, NY, OR, CA etc.?
I think it fair to say your the exception, not the rule - especially with open prayer & nativity plays.<p.What city/State are you in?
Read post 17. I would be curious to see an answer.
They may do this until one person, and it only requires one, decides that they are offended by this imposition of religion. Then the prayer in your public schools will come to a screeching halt. And that is the issue, not whether there are actually any good public schools left out there.
Also, I should state that North Idaho public schools are getting better, due to increased competition with home schoolers. They have even change curriculum to some of the old homeschooling standards like Saxon Math, in order to compete. Socialist Unions bad, Capitalist competition good.
The problem with your feel good attitude about the pubic schools is that they have dumbed down that testing you rave about to the point where they are meaningless.
I agree with you, I like my local public schools. My mildly autistic son benefits greatly from the socialization with the other children. The curriculum is not left wing and they have great teachers. I could never afford a private school even with vouchers, and there is no one capable of home schooling him.
[In ideology, the Frankfurt School eschewed the economic aspects of Marxism and promulgated a substitute based on Marx's 1843 preachments. Later labeled neo-Marxism, the program called for the destruction of religion, the family, education and all moral values, along with the capture of the intellectuals and the instruments of mass communication such as press, radio and films. To this it appended a new Freudianism, which reduced human relationships to rampant sexuality and the grossest pleasure principles -- a program its secret founder boasted "will make America stink."
The Frankfurt School's program, implemented by the NEA, made the goal of education not to educate the young but to give them an anarchic "self-esteem" and deprive them of any sense of what's wrong or right. The "track" system, whereby the bright students could learn at a faster pace and the less bright at a pace of their own, was abolished, condemning the brighter students to boredom and the slower to frustration. And it preached the alienation of children from parental guidance, urging them to "inform" on their families, as in Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany.]
This from an article concerning the NEA, the communist teachers union of America.
Good for you. Your head in the sand refusal to acknowledge that there are problems elsewhere is wearing thin with me. You are either a teacher, school employee or married to one. You make a fine little robot for the teacher's unions.
That may be the case in Oklahoma, in parts of Texas (my oldest daughter and her husband are stationed in W. Texas), and probably a few other areas that have thus far escaped the scrutiny of the ACLU and the NEA. However, throughout much of the country, that is certainly not the case. In many parts of the country, children are compelled to dress like Muslims, practice Muslim religious rites (including praying to the East on a prayer rug), and celebrate Muslim holidays, but are forbidden from wearing a cross, a "WWJD" bracelet or any other accoutrement that might indicate a Christian belief, and forget prayer.
My wife and I opted to homeschool our youngest children when it was apparent that they were not learning the most basic of skills, and when almost everything they brought home was extolling the virtues of the UN, the validity of evolution and global warming, and other theories in which we either do not believe or about which we have serious doubts. If that is not the case where you live, I for one, am happy for you. Here in Pennsylvania, the most powerful force in state government is the PSEA - to the detriment of children and education; I believe it even eclipses the influence of the USW and UMW at the zenith of their power. Some of us choose not to ignore the declining state of education - at all levels - in the United States and will take our children, if not our school taxes, elsewhere.
Most "Teachers of the Year" I have met were poor teachers....the Kappan agrees !!