Posted on 06/23/2010 6:27:30 AM PDT by shortstop
Exactly. If he'd like to listen to the speaker he mentioned and address the person's points, that would be respectable ... but it's easier just to dismiss it, in spite of the very substantial numbers of conservatives who agree.
I guess the author thinks I’m stupid. I would like to see the current public school system demolished. They are little more than publicly financed indoctrination centers. Our children are basically held prisoner there for hours per day while union member teachers try to break down the values good parents try to instill in their children. The system needs to be demolished, the unions broken and the textbooks burned. After that we can talk about rebuilding the system in a healthy way.
What has gone wrong is that public education is no longer reflecting the wishes, morals and needs of the public. It started to go wrong when various "elites" decided they knew more about the real world than the rest of us - politicians, social activists, political theorists, even teachers. Teachers have a valuable input on educational theory - HOW to teach, but they should have no more input than the rest of us on WHAT to teach.
Why? Why should we not be against government-run education? (I'm dismissing your "are not" contention, because "we," most posters on this thread, are demonstrating that we ARE.)
Assertion is not argument. Do you have an argument to make? Mr. Lonsberry didn't seem to have one, other than, "It's not always as bad as it could be."
But better than having the State write one.
Well-put and for my wife and I that was the clincher: she could work and we could put our kids in school/day care, but the cost would basically eat everything she could earn. Why not eliminate the middle-types, cut the cash flow and improve the result? She home-schooled and our kids all entered college at least three years early.
And it didn’t take all that much ‘courage’, even though we did this in the SF Bay Area, which, you would think, might be one of the worst places to attempt it. Sure, we were broke all the time, but we weren’t insane, so that’s big enough plus for us.
Federal control of the schools is unconstitutional. Local control with parents on the boards deciding curricula is what needs to happen. Anything else is unacceptable.
That said, the curricula HAS been perverted by the Progressives, ever since the 1930’s and the progressive, Dewey. Dr. Seuss was mocking the dumbing down of the curriculum when he wrote Cat in the Hat== when government intentionally said that children should have a limited number of words in their readers. I think it was only 65.
Just compare the McGuffey Readers with the Go Spot Go books. McGuffey readers had been so successfully used prior to the books which limited the vocabulary to one and two syllable words. It is a crime when any smart parent knows that the rich language a baby is exposed to makes that baby more intelligent than if only exposed to simple vocabulary.
The brain is a marvelous organ and can accommodate massive amounts of information, especially at young age. One on one is the most efficient transfer of knowledge and it is best done by a loving adult.
Why do you think “preschools” are promoted? Look up the history of orphanages...daycares...and then the renaming to “preschool” to make it more palatable to a mother. No one used to send children away from loving family to learn???? They thought it evil to take children away from the safe homelife and put him with strangers to care for....orphanages were thought of as evil and daycares also until government reprogrammed adults into believing that children learn more when they are away from adults who will model adult behavior.....they should learn the behavior of other two year olds....that’s great, isn’t it?
Learn what???? How to be anti social by learning to hit, cuss, bite. I suppose teachers in preschool have the time to meet all the emotional needs of all the kids at once....what a joke.
Does anyone really think strangers are better teachers than a loving parent when the ratio of one on one is proven so superior than “group” learning.
(I am not advocating kids never playing with other children. Ideally is would be neighborhood children and children of all ages).
Children used to not go to “schools” until 7, which was pretty much when their worldview was formed and when reasoning begins so they wouldn’t be easily reprogrammed. Of course, progressive Dewey said that you had to get the children when their minds were more plastic...so they could mold them to be
“better” citizens....this is when all the social science was put into the schools instead of the 3 R’s which were so successful for our country.
This new worldview inserted subtly into the curricula promotes Marxism, atheism, moral relativism and mocks religion and moral absolutes.
The public schools use humiliation to make kids conform to these ideals. Boys are much more prone to fail in this Prussian system of education.....Very easy to see why we have mass conformity and little deviation from the “proper” way to think. All little obama voters....mmm mmmm good.
Added bonus - if you cut your income, you don’t feed the beast as much either.
A good conservative should be in favor of abolishing government RUN education, not government FUNDED education.
As a hard right winger, I have no problem with the idea that my tax money goes to support the education of children of parents with considerably less money. The children can’t help their parents’ straightened economic circumstances. It helps them and me if they become educated and productive members of society. So, yes, I’ll vote to give them my tax money.
BUT: There is no reason whatsoever to conclude that Government Run education works. Give every kid a voucher, and let schools be free market suppliers of better and better education for the dollars we ship in Susie’s backpack.
That is one of the best things I have read “by example”. I have had my children come to me and show they can do things that I know I never sat down and taught. My 12 year old likes to read to her brothers every night. My 7 year old pretty much taught himself how to read.
Yep, we factored that in, too.
I think that's acceptable for those who want that, and want to pay for it themselves. I don't think I should have to pay to educate other people's children, and I don't expect them to pay for mine.
I also don't want other parents deciding our curriculum - they have different values, different priorities, and different children with different interests.
That depends on what your odds of being a good teacher are, and if you can afford the time to be a teacher as well as holding down a full time job. Then how qualified are you to teach the full range of subjects? If you can do all of that, are you wise enough to expose your children to ideas that you do not yourself hold?
The public system needs to be undercut via freedom of school choice policies. While many public schools are of decent quality, I’d say that the intensified focus on high stakes testing, zero tolerance, etc. has made public schools places where kids simply learn to obey. I’m a former public school teacher myself, but today I advise talented young people to avoid public school teaching careers. If you love teaching, look to the private, religious, or cyber sectors.
I agree with you. I was using the number in the article rather than arguing that minor premise as well as the major one.
Look at the statistics for Christian kids, the percentage that leave the church after school for public, even religious private schools, versus homeschooling. It's ridiculous, it's like over 70% odds versus 10% on homeschooling.
Most homeschool families sacrifice to have one parent not be employed outside the home full time. Right now I don't work (though I am trying to grab a contract I can do from home) because my one year old needs me more than anyone else does.
Qualified to teach the whole range of subjects? If you aren't actively brain damaged you can teach elementary school. By the time your kid is done there, you'll have the know-how to acquire resources, learn things yourself, or contract the work out. My mother, with no more than a high school education to her name, has educated kids to become software engineers, Ph.Ds in history, video journalists, electrical/computer engineers, and my two youngest brothers aren't in college yet. Oh and two of those are in the military as well.
If you can do all of that, are you wise enough to expose your children to ideas that you do not yourself hold?
Load of old tosh. Yeah, kids will be exposed to those ideas - like the Holocaust, I don't agree with that but they'll learn about it, just in a "this was wrong and here's why" sense not a "well let's see, maybe Hitler had a point" sense. Same with all controversial topics. It's entirely possible to learn the arguments for all sides of a topic without wishy-washy "from this point of view maybe they were right" or "who are we to judge" nonsense.
But to recap, I think what Mr Lonsberry is asserting, which I agree with, is that there is a difference between government-organised education, and government-run education. And I think there is a fair amount of support on this thread for that theory.
It's far more efficient to centralise the learning process, especially for the more technical subjects. And professional teachers are (or should be) better than amateurs. The problem comes when the government mandates WHAT should be learned, and/or when educators have any kind of agenda other than excellence in learning, and/or when teachers put their efforts into looking after their own interests rather than those of their students. All three are now widely prevalent, but that doesnt invalidate the principle of public education. It just illustrates that the principle is being abused.
Good for you (and your mom).
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