Posted on 09/06/2009 6:23:17 AM PDT by Freedom Dignity n Honor
Host Tucker Carlson, asked experts, teachers, publishers and parents the same question: "Do you know what is inside your children's textbooks?" From kindergarten through college, we found staggering errors and omissions which may be pushing agendas, hidden and otherwise.
We spoke to the author of "The Language Police," education historian Diane Ravitch, who said textbook publishers censor images or words they deem to be controversial in children’s textbooks. She told us that publishers pander to special interest groups, and assemble bias and sensitivity review committees. These committees decide what words to ban or redefine, and even what images are deemed offensive.
And we examined some college textbooks both in print and in digital forms. We found a glaring mistake in an expensive history book written by Alan Brinkley, Provost at New York’s Columbia University.
And in Fairfax County Virginia, questions remain about what textbooks are used in the private Islamic Saudi Academy. The ISA teaches about 1000 students each year pre-K — 12. Questions have been raised about its textbooks at least since 2006.
This summer, Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, ISA’s 1999 valedictorian, was sentenced to life in prison for his role in a 2002 Al Qaeda plot to assassinate President George W. Bush.
The ISA is wholly owned by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and teaches students from textbooks, which according to a report by a Saudi scholar interviewed by FOX News, continues to “propagate an ideology of hate to the unbeliever...
snip
We tracked down two American college professors who were paid by the ISA to review these textbooks. They signed a letter obtained by FOX News that the ISA's 2008-2009 textbooks' do not contain inflammatory material…” One of them sat down for an interview; the other refused.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
We sent ours to Catholic grade school and thus avoided much of the propaganda of the public schools. And I believe they got a better foundation in the basics -- the building blocks of secondary education -- than they would have gotten in the local public school.
We sent them to public high school -- as Catholic high schools are very expensive -- but by high school most kids are able to think on their own.
You wrote: If government is giving its educational services away for free, the conservations must match this price: FREE!
TANSTAAFL - There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.
Someone’s got to do the plowing.
Nothing the government does is free.
I think you might have meant ‘conservatives’.
Can you convince 50% + one of the voters that they can schuck off government schools. How will you overcome it when the day care element is so convenient?
They know their kids are getting a substandard education and one that is morally corrupt. I find a rare parent who defends the system as is, but you won't get there from here without vouchers.
Tie them to inflation plus population growth to limit the cost and set them at 1/3 to 1/2 to cost of government schools. Watch government schools fail worse and save a bunch of kids. That is the way.
The argument you make here works for libertarians and smart conservatives, how do you convince the mushy middle?
Black slaves learned despite all that stood in their way including those things you mentioned with the added aspect of real, pernicious racism.
Drop government/force and you'd still get educated people. They'd really want it though and the rest would know enough to work at a skill.
You will never overcome a public school system that includes before and after school day care, not for single moms and struggling families, but in CA, where public education is often as bad as it gets, even in upper middle class neighborhoods, many former stay at home moms work just to send their kids to private schools. I know one man that served in the Naval Air Reserve for twenty years and used the money to send his five kids to Catholic schools. People are waking up to what is going on, but it is far too slowly. I just wish that I had taken a more active role in the education of my kids. I knew what was happening, but didn’t know what to do about it, except complain.
The government is running a business ( using tax dollars) and giving the product away to the parents for the price of FREE. If conservatives are going to compete against the price-fixed-monopoly government schools they **must** meet that cost to the parent. FREE.
They only way I see that it can be done is by very generous donations by the wealthy. Perhaps annuities could be offered. This would allow the middle classes to fund private K-12 schooling, as well. But...I do think it is possible. Harvard has and endowment of 35 Billion. Universities and colleges across the nation have endowments in the billions. I am willing to bet that a lot of that money came from conservatives.
What must be done is to convince conservatives that K-12 education deserves and needs the same funding that college and university endowments receive.
Also...If we are make private conservative education available to all the nation's children we **must** reduce the cost of delivering the education. There are many excellent and low cost curriculum available now. If conservative educational foundations funded the teacher directly, he or she could open small schools for up to 10 children. They could be run in homes and would not require any more regulation or zoning than a home day care. The foundations would certify the teacher, test the students, and certify the curriculum.
Conservatives **must** also break the government monopoly on team sports, government school theater and arts..etc. In my county these side activities create a great deal of “rah-rah” support for the government schools. The foundations could do this by sponsoring sports leagues and larger community theater, dance, and arts programs.
On the university level, conservatives, ( if they are going to donate to universities) should pool their money, again using educational foundations. If the amount of money given is large enough, it can influence who gets hired and fired on the university campuses.
( Not proof-read)
I fantasize that if I were a billionaire, I would buy up these old school buildings I see around my area and start america-friendly, private schools. The big expense would be to afford paying salaries/benefits to qualified teachers. Also, finding qualified, willing teachers would be a challenge.
For far too many people vouchers are the endgame. I'd take vouchers as a step toward eliminating socialist schools. But I'm interested in getting more voucher supporters to understand that a voucher system is still a socialist system.
The socialized medicine debate is a great teaching tool. The arguments in favor of switching from a capitalist system to socialized medicine are the same arguments for keeping socialized schooling.
As more people see this, the number of people who understand that socialized schools have no more place in a free society than socialized medicine does.
Nothing will change over night. But every person who understands that the private sector can take care of education, the closer we are to returning to a capitalist schooling system.
For far too many people vouchers are the endgame. I'd take vouchers as a step toward eliminating socialist schools. But I'm interested in getting more voucher supporters to understand that a voucher system is still a socialist system.
The socialized medicine debate is a great teaching tool. The arguments in favor of switching from a capitalist system to socialized medicine are the same arguments for keeping socialized schooling.
As more people see this, the number of people who understand that socialized schools have no more place in a free society than socialized medicine does.
Nothing will change over night. But every person who understands that the private sector can take care of education, the closer we are to returning to a capitalist schooling system.
Morally we are correct, but you'll not pry middle-class entitlements easily out of the hands of those recipients. They are between a rock and a hard place.
Practical conservative politics requires steps to implement goals. The way out is not revolution, but evolution away from socialism. It has to work and it has to make sense to the average American. We'll need their support to succeed.
We don't want to overreach like Obama has. Hubris is an enemy.
I just don't think of anything as “free”.
I think that those who receive anything at no cost to themselves don't appreciate it's importance.
I also think it necessary to start all sentences with “I think” as so few people realize all thoughts are filtered through personal bias. One can only speak for one's self.
Next, we must undo laws that grant a teaching monopoly to unions and government schools. This will include: vouchers, eliminating certification for teaching (this will partially be achieved through home schooling support and the automation of so many learning programs - foreign languages, spelling, rote mathematics, etc.), creating educational choice, etc. This is the trickiest part.
The unions and teachers have a death grip on legislatures and school boards. Contracts are long term and built to cause maximum pain to busy parents, i.e. they are set up to expire right as school starts over the summer so that when school starts so do the strikes.
The libs have created a tangled web to reinforce their beliefs and control. We need to untagle it carefully.
The unions and the classroom bureaucrats (teachers) are one and the same. Too few people understand that. And you’re right they have a death grip on the political hacks.
They turn out in mass to vote out anyone who tries to fix the schools and they use their position in the classroom to spread the union’s socialist line.
A few years ago a friend of mine pulled his kids out of government schools after his son’s classroom bureaucrat told the kids that people against a school tax increase were trying to ruin the schools and ruin the quality of education in town.
When he told me, I just laughed and asked, “what did you expect when you dumped your kids in a socialist school?”
Why buy brick and mortar? Why adopt an outmoded Prussian, military style, lock-step learning paradigm? With today's technology we can abandon the brick and mortar school.
I suggest that conservative educational foundations could issue grants to individual conservative teachers. These teachers would open tuition-free one room school houses, mini-schools, or homeschool co-ops. They should require no more zoning and regulations than a typical day care center, or home baby sitting service.
Think about this. Children could move at their own pace. They would have the time to fully master a area before moving on to the next level.
My own kids were homeschooled. By age 15 all three had finished all college general courses and Calculus III. By the age of 18 two had finished B.S. degrees in mathematics. By age 20 one child had a masters degree in math.
The conservative educational foundation could certify the teacher, inspect the facilities, test the students, and approve the curriculum. The foundation would also run larger scale sports teams, and theater, dance, and arts programs.
Starrett actually said this to try to defuse the horrors these textbooks include:
“textbooks are not causal agents, they do not make people do anything.”
What a dumbass. Paid propagandist for the Saudis or the Turks.
Sounds good to me. Wish I had alot of money to donate.
Too few people are willing or able to home school, but I've never met a person who criticized the home school curriculum - real math, real grammar, phonics and quality reading materials and history that recognizes the truth behind the success of America (& Western Civ): Christianity, Liberty and the Free Market.
We'll win, but we have to do it incrementally, use technology to our advantage, and stay positive. We want RINOs, Dems and independents on our side - It is for the children afterall!
That is incredibly impressive. Finishing Calculus by 16 is more the norm. How did you do the college general courses? AP? CLEP?
We have a Christian school here and it’s been going for 26 years now. It’s been a blessing to the parents who send their kids here. I wish more could see the value of a Christian education.
Christian schools can hire people who are certainly qualified to teach but don’t go through teaching colleges. Our school has great teachers who never graduated from a teaching college. Unfortunately they don’t get the money teachers from public schools get, but they are great teachers who believe in what they are doing, giving kids a great education from a Christian viewpoint.
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