Posted on 12/22/2012 6:19:52 AM PST by wintertime
I’m just trying to figure out your point, but you keep broadening the discussion without much clarification.
You agree that no parent can correctly teach their child, but that no school could do so either. And that no public school can teach anything, but also that public school teaches all the wrong things. And that there wouldn’t be any muslim parents teaching their children if we didn’t have immigration, as if there are no american-born muslims.
And you keep wrapping it around some general attack on public schools, for which any question about your statements is seen as a defense of those schools.
I am a product of Public schools. I am a strong supporter of home schooling. I support school vouchers. I taught my children many things. They also have taught me things.
One thing I can say for certain — your claim that no public school has ever taught anybody anything is absurd. I learned a great many things from the teachers at the schools I attended. I know how to build a transistor radio, and how to differentiate and integrate. Interestingly, there is nothing particularly religious in a math class — but in my public college Calculus class, the teacher assigned us a paper based on a clear Christian message, because he used that opportunity to evangelize his class.
I suppose if you stay away from practical learning or hard science and math, you might well find that schools can be problematic from a religious perspective. There is nothing particularly religious about quantum equations, magnetic field theory, or the Ott thermal cycle.
But it is stupid to say that only a parent could teach anything to a child. After all, teachers are often parents as well. Your argument is that they could easily teach their own children things, but it would be impossible for them to teach any other child.
BTW, Virginia, which has a strong home-schooling tradition, allows for group schooling within the home school community. IT appears you would object to that, because obviously one parent couldn’t really take all those kids and teach them, since they can only teach their OWN children.
But in the real world, that form of homeschooling works, broadens the horizon of the students. They can take field trips together, and horror of horrors for you, even go places where some professional will actually teach them something that their parents might not know.
My kids both went through public school. I think as a parent who could teach my own kids, it was easier that way. If I was incapable of fixing the errors my kids might learn in school, I’d have to consider sending them to a private religious school.
But they won’t be my kids forever. School taught me how to understand my faith, to defend my faith, and to recognize false teaching in others.
Why **assume** that learning happens in the school when the input of preschooling, the hard work done at home by the child, outside reading and travel, and private tutoring has NEVER been measured? Only a fool would do that.
It amazes me that some government schools are declared “good” while private tutoring ( parent-led, student-led, or professional) is **never** measured or information on “outside the institution learning and teaching” is never provided.
I know a city full of Catholic nuns and educators that would **strongly** disagree with you, as well as millions upon millions of members of many other faiths.
This is what I mean when I say that a fish does not know it is swimming in water, or that humans rarely think about the gravity that holds them to the earth. In talking with defenders of godless secular education, I believe that they **honestly** and **sincerely** do NOT see the secular water in which they are swimming.
But it is stupid to say that only a parent could teach anything to a child.
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This is a straw man. I have never said this. I can’t defend a straw man argument of your creation.
Same here.
But then when you dig deeper, you realize that even those hours are typically a reflection of the curriculum devised by Rockefeller and Carnegie, which has little to do with anything important.
What's important in life is being good and seeking truth.
The methodology of schooling is antithetical to both. The real lessons of schooling are... The Seven Lesson Schoolteacher.
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Yes, indeed, I do verbally attack government schooling.
1) They can not be religiously, politically, or culturally neutral in content or consequences for the child or our nation. Those who control the content will be the most politically powerful. The rest have their First Amendment and freedom of conscience human rights TRASHED! This has always been true and is still true. It is fundamental and foundational flaw that can not be fixed or reformed.
2) Our nation's government schools are currently godless. The children who attend must think and reason godless just to cooperate in the godless classroom, godless curriculum, and godless textbooks. How could it possibly be otherwise?
3) Government schooling is the very definition of a socialist, single-payer, and compulsory-use entitlement. Children who attend risk learning the the voting mob powerful enough to give them tuition-free schooling is powerful enough to give them **lots** of free stuff.
4) Government schools must strictly control First Amendment freedoms ( speech, press, assembly, and expression of religion). All institutional schools must just maintain safety and order. However...When government trashes the First Amendment Rights of its captives ( oops! “students”) the children risk learning to be comfortable with government force, government compulsion, and government violation of basic human rights.
) Yes, there is an escape hatch I call it jizya or ransom. If a parent can find a private school ( not likely in many counties since the price-fixed government school corrupt business practices have driven them out of business) or if they home school ( not likely since both parents are likely to work due to high property taxes and rents to pay for the corrupt and price-fixed government schools)
Not proof read. Guest have just arrived.
Besides the gross injustices of modern schooling, there are the often forgotten opportunity costs... You have to have a heart of stone to not be affected by this one.
I think you confuse religion with faith, or should I say with God’s plan for this world.
I have a religion, but it is religious in nature. I have faith in God. All things are of God, but not all things are part of religion.
I apologize. I mistook “institutional school” for “a place outside of the home where children are sent to learn”.
I think now that you meant “public school”, and that you did not consider the Catholic school system institutional, or other private schools “institutional”, since I see in some other responses to me that you support parents sending children to schools of learning run by others, which many of us would call “institutes of learning”, or “institutions” for short.
Now I still disagree with you, in that I believe public schools do teach things, just as I believe private schools of various types teach things. I think you really think they teach as well, because you have expressed concern about what they teach.
I would never have argued with someone saying they didn’t like what kids learned in public school; I actually rarely argue with people who call me names or attack me for sending my kids to public school, because they mean well, even if they are actually being condescending. Of course, I don’t worry about the opinions that anonymous internet posters have of me, which makes it easier to turn the other cheek when they insult me.
Exactly ! There are the opportunities that a lost to children when they attend godless government schools. The opportunities to teach the true love of Christ that arise throughout every day. All of this is missed in a godless government school. If some Christian teachers do try to sneak it in, unfortunately, they are teaching the children that Christians are sneaky.
At their very best, government schools could only offer up a very generic and lukewarm Protestantism. Those defending their government school educations that they remember from the 50s and 60s are like being color blind and not knowing it. How can a person explain what color ( or a truly religious education ) to someone who can't understand it? Like fish, they have swum in secularism they don't see or feel the secular water surrounding them.
I honestly don't think most are being malicious. They genuinely don't see.
Also....Government owned and run schools are among our LEAST public institutions in America. They are the most profoundly segregated by class and race. The government dictates who can or can not enroll in a particular government institutional school. To gain entrance to a particular government school, the parents must go to the DRASTIC action of MOVING. I call that highly restrictive and very NON-public.
Public is a city, state, or federal park. Anyone who can get there and pay the small admission fee can attend. Macys, Mc Donalds and Burger King are likely examples of our nation's least discriminatory and “open to the public” institutions in America and they happen to be PRIVATE! Imagine that! PRIVATE!
Your strawman:” Now I still disagree with you, in that I believe public schools do teach things,”
I said, that THERE IS NO PROOF that they do! These studies have never been done. It is impossible to know the effectiveness of any institutional school unless what is learned in the classroom is compared to that acquired in the home due to the preschooling, home habits of study, home assignments and study done by the student IN THE HOME, and tutoring ( professional, parent-led, or study-club directed).
These studies have NEVER BEEN DONE! We spend up to $30,000/year/child in government schools and no one really can point to any study that proves these institutions are effective or if it due to the home study habits of the child and parent.
My anecdotal observation: There is no difference between the home study habits, and the amount of time spent in personal study, between successfully educated institutionalized children and successful homeschoolers. This is ANECDOTAL but I doubt any “educator” would be curious enough to check it out.
No one has attacked you or your child on this thread or called you names. As for my posts I strive mightily to keep it general and applicable to the entire principle of our **national** system of schooling. I have no control, though, over how you may **feel** about it.
That's testimony to the effectiveness of compulsory government schooling. The lessons imparted aren't the ones on the chalkboard.
Similarly, almost everyone who went through school hated it. Yet we all send our children off to school without a second thought, except for the mothers who shed a few tears on the first week of kindergarten. It's quite a thing to drive mothers to mistrust their maternal instincts.
My conclusion: Government schooling is a First Amendment and freedom of conscience abomination.
It's obvious.
We just don't see it because, as you said before, we're "swimming in it."
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