Posted on 02/16/2012 8:41:38 AM PST by all the best
It is said that the dinosaur had a tiny brain in a huge body, which undoubtedly contributed to its extinction. This huge body also required an enormous amount of food for its survival. The public education establishment has the same characteristics: small brain, huge body, enormous appetite for taxpayer money — its only means of survival.
The government school is also obsolete, a product of 19th century utopian reformers who believed in the perfectibility of man and a secular government education as the means to salvation. None of their ideas have panned out.
The idea of centralized, government-controlled education was imported into this country from Prussia in 1843 by Horace Mann the Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education, who believed that Americans could adapt the Prussian system to American needs. It had everything our statist control-freaks wanted: government education of teachers in state seminaries; a state directed curriculum; state-approved textbooks; compulsory school attendance; truant officers; and obedient parents. Toward the end of the 19th century, the system became the perfect means to indoctrinate children to become the obedient subjects of the growing industrial-government establishment.
Although Americans at the time, in the 1830s and ‘40s, were enjoying full educational freedom and patronizing the growing number of private academies, Mann and his fellow statists saw the public school as the best means of imposing social control over the children of the poor immigrants who were flooding the United States as well as Americans who greatly valued private education.
(Excerpt) Read more at thenewamerican.com ...
Or basically at least half the big city schools are third world level with first world costs and something has to give.
I love Sam Blumenfeld for articulating how I feel about public education. He is spot on.
You are absolutely right. Unfortunately, most Christians and conservatives love their middle-class welfare entitlement - “free” government “education”. The education welfare queens don’t like being called-out on the issue because they want to believe that their welfare is different from “Shaneequa’s” food stamps, free housing, etc. In one sense they are right, education welfare is by far the most destructive for of welfare.
You are absolutely right. Unfortunately, most Christians and conservatives love their middle-class welfare entitlement - “free” government “education”. The education welfare queens don’t like being called-out on the issue because they want to believe that their welfare is different from “Shaneequa’s” food stamps, free housing, etc. In one sense they are right, education welfare is by far the most destructive for of welfare.
Virtually no parent with children in government schools pays enough in taxes to pay the actual cost of government “education”. If you think about it, businesses, the childless, and those who take responsibility for educating their own children are making massive transfer payments (welfare) to those who render their children to Caesar.
I “feel your pain” on the property tax bill, though.
Everyone who takes a paycheck from the public school system is on welfare.
My opinion is that wire service journalism has to be factored into that equation. Journalism is "education" in the sense that it claims objectivity just as objectivity is the planted axiom of education. But of course, Christian education looks objective to the Christian, etc. The problem is that Christian education doesn't look objective to the journalist, and really egregious problem is that too many Christians, even intellectuals, do not think through the implications of accepting the assumption that journalists are objective.Christian education seeks truth in the Scriptures and the traditions of the church; journalism's view of objectivity, if you boil it down, is that objectivity is whatever promotes the influence, prestige, and profitability of journalism. "If it bleeds, it leads" and "'Man Bites Dog', not 'Dog Bites Man'" are considered "objective" by journalists, but to anyone with an ounce of skepticism in their body those rules are obvious guidelines to interesting the public, and have nothing to do with "the public interest." Interesting the public serves the interest of journalism, the public interest requires that the people be informed of things like economics, the law, and the state of international relations. And the actual posture of each candidate for public office.
Traditional math and science education promote skepticism by appeal to logic and facts verified by experiment. History education is controversial because it teaches about politicians of the past whose actions have consequences in the here and now. And even if the facts taught in history are all correct, there is still the enormous gorilla in the room of what facts were not taught.
IMHO belief in one's own objectivity is the very essence of subjectivity, objectivity's antonym. Claiming objectivity, or promoting the belief that others who agree with you are objective, means that you are not actually trying to be objective, since any attempt at actual objectivity must start with an examination of one's own motives. If you are claiming not to have any motives, you are not seriously examining yourself and therefore you are not trying to be objective.
It is acquired wisdom and experience only that teach incredulity, and they very seldom teach it enough. The wisest and most cautious of us all frequently gives credit to stories which he himself is afterwards both ashamed and astonished that he could possibly think of believing. Adam Smith
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