Posted on 12/16/2012 6:55:19 AM PST by wintertime
If Barack and Michelle Obama feel comfortable allowing Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn to babysit their children, that is their problem. The question is, would you allow them to babysit yours? Let's take that a step farther: would you let them raise your children? Would you give them exclusive supervision over the majority of your children's daylight hours up to age eighteen, primary control of your children's academic curriculum and teaching methodology, and authority to arrange the broad social and moral framework within which your children will be educated? No? Then why do you accept modern public education? Furthermore, why, after having delivered generations of children into this Marx/Dewey/Marcuse/Ayers educational program, is anyone perplexed at people's inability to respect individual freedom, understand property rights, or hold themselves to standards of character and reasoning higher than that of a mugger?
Perhaps, as Allan Bloom suggested with regard to gladiators, witch burnings, and rock music, a civilization's greatest absurdity always seems normal to itself. In seeking to explain such a quotidian absurdity, the best angle from which to begin our search may be sideways.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
So? Why are people so foolish as to believe such a socialist and single-payer monstrosity can be reformed? Why are our citizens blind to the extreme danger that godless government schooling poses to our children and our nation's continuing freedom? Simply by attending children must think and reason godlessly just to cooperate in the godless classroom. They risk learning to be comfortable with socialism because any voting mob powerful enough to give them tuition-free schooling is powerful enough to give them **lots** of free stuff. And...(The most serious) They risk learning to look to a godless socialist government as their redeemer and savior.
Personally, I consider government schooling to be so evil, so harmful to children, and such a threat to our nation that I will not have a government teacher or government school worker for a friend. They are too evil, too stupid, or too much of a Useful Idiot to be a friend. ( I wouldn't have an abortuary worker for a friend, either.)
If conservation hope to have any chance at saving our nation from tyranny they must begin the process of closing down the government school indoctrination camps, finding as many alternatives to college attendance as possible, and reforming what would remain of higher education.
And...It isn't about just saving our nation. Most important and urgent is to save the eternal souls of children and to spare them lives lived in misery.
This is an excellent article and outlines very well many of the reasons why I consider government socialist-funded and single payer schooling to be so evil for the child and such a threat to our continuing freedom.
I can tell you what happened.
When I grew up in the 1950s and early 1960s (I started high school in 1965) we were all just normal kids, which encompassed a wide range of personalities and traits. There were very, very few real screwballs, and they were so rare I can honestly say I only personally knew one, and he disappeared from the scene rather quickly. And no one – and I mean no one – ever thought for a millisecond about bringing a gun to school to shoot up the place, or to take a gun to a theatre to create mayhem, or use a gun at all for any unlawful purpose; and this at a time when pretty much every household had some kind of firearm.
So, the question begs, what happened between those halcyon days and today, when out-of-control nutcases seem to abound?
I think the answer is simple: Liberalism happened. Specifically, its most virulent strand: Radical Leftism.
It began in the 1970s when the hardcore lefties all started to gravitate towards a degree in Education. Think about that: It is Leninism 101. Totalitarians embraced Lenin’s dictum that if you gave them your children they would create a generation of radical revolutionaries, which in turn would create another generation, and so on down the line. This would ensure perpetual power by those revolutionaries. And pity anyone who fell afoul of them! (It is no coincidence that Obama’s friend and fellow-revolutionary, the hardcore radical leftist William Ayers, became an educator.)
Then, in the late 1970s the wholly feckless Jimmy Carter created the most damaging and oppressive government body ever: The Department of Education. It was to be staffed and run, of course, by the radical lefties who had championed and encouraged its creation in the first place.
Thus, with the stroke of a pen the nation’s public schools all fell under the thumb of this federal horror.
Educational standards plummeted; scholarship was dumped at the curb along with ratty sofas and broken appliances. Discipline in the schools disappeared. Students were told they were not responsible for any failures or ills that may befall them; rather, their failings were to be blamed on someone else, or on society in general. Students were no long held accountable for their own actions. Not only could they not be disciplined, they could not be flunked or held back! Functional illiterates (and even non-functional ones) were passed on to the next grade. The preservation of the little darlings’ self-esteem became the primary goal of education.
At the same time, these radical lefties, now so firmly at the helm of the nation’s educational system, did what totalitarians the world over have always done: They sought to eliminate individuality and mold their charges into one homogenous block of clay, the easier to manipulate and control. Of course, some kids were seen as “different,” because they were perhaps more shy, more introverted; or they were prone to daydreaming; or they were “fidgety,” and their attentions were diverted and their imaginations soared such that they were not so easily indoctrinated. This was intolerable to the radical lefties. So, they had to do something to bring these “wayward” kids back into the fold. With the happy collaboration of those other bastions of leftist groupthink, the social workers and the psychologists, they decided to drug these poor dreamers to keep them from straying. Thus, in order to justify this mass drugging the powers that be trotted out a laundry list of ailments, and we saw the advent of the alphabet diagnoses of ADD, ADHD, and a host of other maladies and disabilities that in previous generations were what they had always been: The actions and behavior of just regular kids.
As a consequence, we now have countless drugged-up zombies walking through life in a medicated fog. Is it any wonder that some of these kids, at some time, may have a reaction to this over-medication, or cease to follow the regimen, and thus snap or “go off the reservation?”
So, we know who is responsible for so many of this nation’s tragedies, and I can include Newtown, CT among them. Lenin and his ilk would be proud of what the lefties have wrought. The rest of us, we are disgusted.
100% agree. Dewey Camps with theories based on the Blank Slate Theory and in many ways they inflict drug abuse on boys, and hence we get the Lanzas. Another total Materialist failure.
I might be concerned with them raising my kids, but I DEFINITELY would not let them cook for my kids, ESPECIALLY if they prepare Hoisin Ribs.
Reminds me of the following quote:
Do we really think that a government-dominated education is going to produce citizens capable of dominating their government, as the education of a truly vigilant self-governing people requires? - Alan Keyes
I admit I never thought about public education in ‘single payer’ terms but it fits perfectly. And we know full well how that has turned out in terms of results and ideology.
The bueaucratic power over life and death without the need for police, bullets, drones, checkpoints, etc. is the dream of totalitarians everywhere but especially in Washington where they never tire of making smarmy speeches about ‘fairness’ while attempting to place those who oppose such measures in a virtual gulag. Cheaper than building the real thing.
When medicine becomes political, eventually all politics will be about medicine since we will all die of something and power struggles about funding for this illness or that drug will go on forever. Look at the UK and their NHS, where novices in Parliament are happy to hold the public’s health hostage. Meanwhile patients die of outright neglect while lying in hospitals...patients call 999 (their 911) on mobile phones from their beds in order to get nurses’ attention...doctors must write prescriptions for DRINKING WATER so that nurses don’t forget, etc.
Single payer and rationing are two sides of the same coin. Single payer i.e. public education has produced multitudes of dangerously ignorant, radicalized ‘graduates’ who believe that because something exists, they should receive it for free. They believe, apparently, that wonder drugs, surgical technology and procedures, radiology, etc. were created and developed out out of the goodness of people’s hearts and brought to market by eight tiny reindeer.
Marxism mocks religion as superstition but what is more superstitious than believing money grows on trees and that the economy is heliocentric with Washington DC playing the role of the sun?
Precisely correct.
And no conservative yet has come up with a solution for the problem.
Homeschooling? Sure. We did it before it was cool starting in ‘82, and homeschooled 8 great kids, eldest being first home-schooled kid admitted to his university, and got a full-ride that turned into 5 years, 4 degrees, Summa Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa as a junior....
But the masses will never homeschool - only enlightened conservatives.
Liberals will never home-school, as the gov schools brainwash their belief system. And the moderates will never homeschool because they don’t see the problem.
Without replacing the gov. school brainwashing system, we are pissing into the wind, and as Rush says, “outnumbered and losing ground..”
Still waiting for a solution on replacing the gov schools.......
Because there is none.
Only the collapse of our nation and a re-set.......
Excellent, rational essay and post. However, you will be flamed by the radical homeschool crowd because you implied that prior to the 1970’s that public schools were not total communist indoctrination camps.
But, you are correct in that federal control has enveloped the public education system. The only way to change that is for conservatives to become teachers, principals, local school district leaders, state legislators, and govenors. These people still have a lot of power over what is taught in the local school districts.
The radical homeschooler group (and, by the way, I do not include all homeschoolers to be in that camp - my wife and I homeschooled one of our children, too) paints all public schools as being equally bad everywhere. The problem with that is - do we say all churches are equally bad because there are extremely liberal ones or left leaning ones?
Are all pastors or priests equally bad because there are some who turn out to be con-men or pedophiles??
I don’t know if this change is possible because, as was demonstrated in the last election, the low information voters are in charge. The only political hope I can see is if state govenors stand up to the feds and say “No, we are not going to follow your crap anymore”. They must refuse the money from the Dept of Ed, they must say no to the so-called “common-core” curriculum (states do not have to cooperate with this stuff). Demand your state governments and govenors to grow a pair and tell them to “just say NO”.
You are correct that the public school system in our country was not what it has become in the last 30 years (and, there are still some states and districts that have not yet sucumbed). The radical homeschoolers are correct that Dewey was bad news, but the problem with their theory is that there was no federal department of education when Dewey was around. Yes, he definitely had influence on public education, but the more radical of his ideas were not a part of most public school systems because that were run and supervised completely on the local state and local school district level.
Most teachers, at the elementory level and even somewhat on the secondary level, prior to the 1970’s did not have to have a college degree to teach - just a high school diploma. Most teachers and principals grew up and lived in the area where they now taught. Local control was predominate. If a teacher or principal went whacky, the local community rose up and got rid of them (unfortunately, that didn’t always work out as in the Scopes “monkey” trial) - but, as I said, most schools and districts were made up of people who had a history and roots in that community.
As the late 60’s and then the 1970’s arrived, unions took control of many states and began requiring all teachers in those states be in their union, college degrees for teaching in general were also now a requirement. This took predominance away from the local community in knowing who was being hired as teachers. Now, with college degrees being required, states began hiring newly-graduated “education” students from all across the country - graduates that were being indoctrinated in socialist ideology and the latest “new” educational methodologies.
Of course, over time, these college “educated” educators became principals and school district personnel - all this had a tremendous influence on public education. In the Blue states where unions dominated society in general and Dems controlled the cities and school districts for ages, the public school systems in those areas began to show the increasing signs of deterioration. State governments in the east were dominated by Dems and liberals, big cities everywhere across the country were also dominated in the same way.
Holdout schools and districts were still plentiful in the flyover states and in more rural areas, but it is ever shrinking. Then along comes, as you mentioned, Carter’s new Dept. of Education. That was the worst thing to happen to public education as it extended more and more federal control over public schools because of the money.
I’ve gone on too long, but I just wanted to compliment you and your excellent post. Don’t let the radical homeschoolers discourage you. As I said, I don’t know if this can be turned around - heck, we don’t know if the country can be turned around, but we need to try.
That Ayers and Dorn did not meet the death penalty may still kill us all.
It’s everyone’s problem.
“Then why do you accept modern public education?”
You know the answer, probably better, than anyone on this site:
People pay property tax to THE MAN and to hell if they’re not going to get their money’s worth. This is their way of getting back at THE MAN.
I pay property tax too, probably a bit more than most others, but my kids have NEVER been enrolled in their schools and never will be.
THE MAN can have some of my money, but he CANNOT have my children too.
The promoting and teaching of relativism as the proper way to think about and view the world is the cause of many folks’ mental illness, even the more moderate forms. As relativism creates unstable ways of thinking about right and wrong, good and bad, healthy and destructive. Relativism confuses people by telling them to think of all things as equal or the same when all things are not equal or the same. There is wrong and there is right, there is good and there is bad, there is no saintly and there is no evil. When a mind instructed or influenced by relativism tries to process what are real or actual differences in culture or society, it leads to destructive thought patterns, confusion and perhaps even violence as all is equally fair and right as pertaining to the person’s views or attitudes, no?
Yet at the same time folks are being bombarded with their are only certain ways to think, such as global warming, global cooling, there is only one way to be healthy, eat this don’t eat that, bad behavior (fill in the blank) is normal and good. So while confronting relativism with it’s non-absolute approach, people are also being told to follow new absolutes which most often are the promoting of that which was never considered morally healthy.
This ping list is for the “other” articles of interest to homeschoolers about education and public school. This can occasionally be a fairly high volume list. Articles pinged to the Another Reason to Homeschool List will be given the keyword of ARTH. (If I remember. If I forget, please feel free to add it yourself)
The main Homeschool Ping List handles the homeschool-specific articles. I hold both the Homeschool Ping List and the Another Reason to Homeschool Ping list. Please freepmail me to let me know if you would like to be added to or removed from either list, or both.
This ping list is for the “other” articles of interest to homeschoolers about education and public school. This can occasionally be a fairly high volume list. Articles pinged to the Another Reason to Homeschool List will be given the keyword of ARTH. (If I remember. If I forget, please feel free to add it yourself)
The main Homeschool Ping List handles the homeschool-specific articles. I hold both the Homeschool Ping List and the Another Reason to Homeschool Ping list. Please freepmail me to let me know if you would like to be added to or removed from either list, or both.
I meant to write there is saintly and there is evil. The whole topic of relativism confuses me as it would teach there is no saintly and there is no evil, there only is “is” (existence).
I read an interesting article yesterday about what Mississippi did after integration- how they essentially saved their education system. Although it is couched as racially motivated, it would remedy the social indoctrination problem by restoring parental/ local control over how children are educated.
Read the comments, too. Many of the replies are from people who went to these schools. Although the website is left leaning, the article is fairly unbiased (at least for the Atlantic).
There’s more than one way to skin a cat.
DISCLAIMER: This article came to me via one of the Southron forums- Occidental Dissent, Confederate Renaissance, or Southern Nationalist Network. I believe it was posted by someone commenting on one of their articles.
I *do* believe that secession/ partition is our only road out of this mess. And the South is the most solid block of conservative Christian traditionalists in the country. YMMV.
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/12/in-southern-towns-segregation-academies-are-still-going-strong/266207/
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This is an interesting article, and, I agree, it is remarkably balanced for The Atlantic.
Isn't it amazing? The private academies manage to have textbooks and structurally sound surrounding even though the tuition is inexpensive. I bet the amount spent per student in the government school is many times that spent in the private school.
Re: Newton
This article was published before the Newton shootings.
Re: Liberalism happened ( to the government single-payer schools)
The liberalism was always there. The patient ( government schools ) just didn't look sick until the full blown symptoms manifested themselves in the late 60s and 70s.
Please remember that Progressive Liberalism was endemic in government education from the very beginning. Compulsory, state owned and run, socialist-funded, and single payer schools was the product of Progressive activism of the mid-1800s. Remember that Bill Ayers and his ilk didn't get into positions of power without the help and mentoring of **lots** of Marxist progressives of my father's generation ( born 1913.)
Progressives since the beginning of modern government single-payer schooling have always controlled teacher training and textbook and curriculum development. Progressives have always been pushing the outer boundaries of societal norms in their government schools.
Re: The Department of Education
Socialist-funded, single-payer, compulsory-use schooling is evil regardless of the level. Even all federal, state, and county control were removed they would still be evil. Even if districts were the size of a city block they would still be socialist-funded, single-payer, compulsory, and **never** religiously neutral.
1) It is impossible to have a culturally, politically, and religiously neutral education. Such a state can not exist in the mind of any sentient being. It is **impossible**. Therefore.....When any community forces students to attend, and forces taxpayers to pay for government schooling, the most powerful voting mob imposes ( by threat of law and police action) its anointed cultural, political, and religious worldview on the less powerful.
Fundamentally, government single-payer and socialist-entitlement schools are a First Amendment and freedom of conscience abomination. This has **always** be true. It is true today and **always** will be. It is fundamental.
It’s like letting government do a lobotomy on their children’s minds and souls just because “THE MAN” is doing it for “free”.
By the way, if tyranny comes to our nation, the oligarchy thugs will not use cattle cars to haul the sheeple off to the re-education camps. No! No! They will use big yellow school buses, and the sheeple will compliantly board them just like their government teachers taught them to do.
Bet on it!
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