Posted on 10/01/2015 4:39:18 AM PDT by Slings and Arrows
In a classroom exercise that has ignited outcry from the public, students at a Texas high school were given a questionnaire asking if their families owned guns, why their families owned guns and how their parents lean politically.
Called The Hawk 2015 Gun Survey, an estimated 100 students in a journalism class at Hendrickson High School in Pflugerville, Texas were given the survey in an attempt to start a dialogue on the Second Amendment. Instead, parents and Second Amendment activists across the country labeled the survey as “invasive.”
(Excerpt) Read more at dailycaller.com ...
You were selfish, and did nothing for your Nation. You deserve the Nation you have, because you just sit back and watch it happen.
You are wrong. There is good in government schools. I now happen to one of them. I will stick to the electronics and mechanisms of robots. By the way, I, a Christian, am exceedingly happy that government agencies are not allowed to teach my children about God. That is my job and my church's job. How sensible do you imagine yourself to be when on one hand you complain about how misguided government teachers seem to be, yet on the other hand lament the fact that they can't teach your kids about God? You can't have it both ways.
I despised when "Bible studies" were forced upon me in the public schools of Kentucky. Imagine how a Lutheran must have felt when Catholic kids deigned to lead me in a prayer around the Rosary. Or, the Presbyterian kids attempted to foist the idea of predestination on me? Not all Christens see eye-to-eye, so I resented that crap that was supposed to be religion in the schools. Individual belief systems should NOT be at the whims of government operated facilities, conducted by peers or government employees. The Supreme Court got that ruling right.
Sensible people understand that. Those religious tyrants who demand participation on the part of unwilling people are not keepers of the Constitution. They are just Pharisees demanding public notice of their prayer.
That would NOT be me. It creates shame for people like you.
This can **not** be fixed because it is impossible to have it both ways ( as you so wisely pointed out). The government schools can not be both godless ( which is **not** religiously neutral in content or consequences) or God-centered ( which is also **not** religiously neutral in content or consequences).
It is impossible for any school to be religiously neutral because such a state of philosophic neutrality is impossible in the mind of any sentient human.
The NON-neutral religious worldview now taught in the government K-12 schools is godless secularism. The children in these classrooms will learn to think and reason godlessly. They must just to cooperate within the godless classroom, read their godless textbooks, and do their godless homework.
This is only one reason among many why government schooling should be abolished. They are are First Amendment and freedom of conscience abomination.
I don't think you have thought this through. Most people would receive a very poor education if an attempt was made to universally educate in the home or in private schools simply because most parents work and most parents cannot handle the wide range of subject material. As I said before, private schools were always too expensive for my family. Our denomination is too weak in the South to be able to support any sort of school. I could not home school because I worked for a living.
Now, let me tell you what I am teaching after hours in high school. First, I teach metalworking including hand tools and machining. The county just bought me a metalworking shop including a nice lathe and mill plus scads of tooling and precision measuring tools. That was a great deal of money. Can you do that in your home? I will teach the kids to fashion parts made of metal. Next I will teach courses in mechanical movements. They will learn to make grippers, positioning mechanisms, and so on. I will teach them to choose motors and gear boxes, or to make gears of their own design. I will teach a course where students will learn to model mechanical components is 3D, and to use those models in assemblies to check functional behavior before the design is committed to metal. There will also be course work in digital and analog electronics, including the use of micro-controllers for control of mechanisms. There's more! I will teach them to program in C/C++, and from there students will learn to make the machinery move to accomplish predetermined tasks.
Where in there do we have time to cover everyone's religious dogma. We don't. I won't learn that stuff so that I could teach it anyway. Do you not yet understand? Now, factor in that there is a great deal of secular material to learn in order to function into today's society. A small group of teachers do not have the knowledge to cover all of the subjects to proper depth. There is not sufficient time to deal with religious topics if the necessary secular topics are to be taught properly. It is certainly not practical to have religious studies for every denomination of Christians (lots of 'em), Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Shintoists, etc in order to preserve everyone's religious preferences. It is far better to leave all of that to the individual families and churches. Anyone who wants to mix education with religion is delusional. I live in the Atlanta area. All races are represented in school in large numbers. So would their religious entanglements if that were allowed. There would be no time to teach the basic skills.
You are correct when you assess that some things are done in schools that qualify as indoctrination or prohibition of religion. THAT is what should be combated, not the concept of public schools. Schools are not religious neutral because conservatives do not engage, they duck and run. It is imperative that conservative people become confrontational at every level in order to enforce Constitutional neutrality in governance.
Conservatives seem to have no skill in "political tactics". They bitch and blog, and then go home to be schooled. They aught to stand their ground. Schools were infiltrated by leftists according to a plan. I personally am infiltrating schools according to a plan. If conservatives will just look at my measure of success and follow suit, a proper balance could be restored. But NO! All you wimps want to do is bitch and duck and belittle the headway I am making by taking matters into my own hands. You people think voting does something! It doesn't! Only action does something. The leftists have known that for decades. Conservatives NEVER catch on. No wonder they think conservatives are stupid.
This conundrum can not be fixed. It is fundamental to all government K-12 schooling. There is a solution:
1) Begin the process of privatization with charters, vouchers, and tax credits ( Tax credits are the best option)
2) Gradually move toward expecting parents to pick up the cost of education their own children. In my state the average private school tuition is about $4,000. That is **average**. That means there are schools charging less than that. This is less than daycare. Working parents manage to pay for daycare for their preschoolers but ( Gee!) can't seem to afford private tuition once their kids hit 5 years old.
3) Government would pay out vouchers for schooling only to the poor.
4) In an ideal world, charity would pay for the poorest.
I bet my seventh grade nun, Sister Mary Victoria, would have found a way for metal working to have reflected Catholic Christian teaching.
Godless metal working is not religiously, culturally, or politically neutral and neither is God-centered metal working.
“You were selfish, and did nothing for your Nation.”
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Rearing righteous children (who are now parents) is not selfish. And...It has done something for our nation.
There’s a legitimate question of what the plan was for this data, once collected.
Anyone else recall that effort to start up a national, Internet accessable database of gun owners, where people could report on and look up their neighbors? I think it was about five years ago, and it dropped off the radar screen really quickly.
For placement into which school? I am Lutheran. What are the chances that I would want my children to be educated in a Catholic school. Zero.
I just don't believe that a fully fractured system of schools can provide for the needs of all people. Some will just be left out. If there were two Jewish families in a town of 40,000 people, would they have to send their kids to a Christian school that taught religious subjects along with the curriculum, or would they have to fend for themselves?
I bet my seventh grade nun, Sister Mary Victoria, would have found a way for metal working to have reflected Catholic Christian teaching.
Exactly my problem your view of education. There is too much to learn in a short time frame for it to diluted with off-topic material. I know that religious zealots of every color cannot stay on topic for even an hour. A metal lathe can rip people's arms out of the sockets. Keeping the work on topic is actually pretty critical. Naturally, I wouldn't want my kids to learn in a Catholic school. Or a Baptist school, etc. I want the school to be totally religious neutral. That is a worthy goal for conservatives to embrace.
Finally, why do you think you are justified to deprive me an others of my ilk of our equal Constitutional rights? I know for sure that public schools CAN AND DO perform well. They do so in good neighborhoods in well-funded communities. Most of the trouble in public schools is centered around problems created by under-achiever kids. THAT is the fault of the parents, not the schools.
I won't argue that, for you are correct. On the other hand, you would serve your Nation in a broader capacity if you pushed tirelessly for religious neutral school as well as religious neutral governance in general.
One of the most important points that brought me into this conversation is categorically ignored by conservatives. People must interact in their communities in order to affect outcome. Bitching and blogging have no affect. Voting has no affect. We MUST provide the leadership in our local governmental facilities, not leave those posts for leftist extremists to fill. Why is this such a difficult point to get across?
It is for this reason government schooling ( especially K-12 schooling) must be abolished.
If I were to lobby for a worldview that I personally would approve, I would be lobbying to impose my worldview on other people's children and advocating that my neighbors pay for it. This is **not** conservative.
Personally,..... my husband and I served as Spanish speaking Christian missionaries for seven years to the Spanish community in our area. ( We went to Costa Rica for six months just to learn Spanish. We lived with Costa Rican families and attended language school. We did not travel.)
Recently, we moved and we have been asked by our church to be “super-mentors” to two women who have recently be released from prison and a man from Iraq who was tortured and suffers from PTSD.
I think we are doing something.
We have fully fractured grocery stores, auto repair shops, and a very wide selection of post high school training and schools. Why is K-12 special?
Just think of the possibilities.
— The local summer camp could open a full-time boarding school. ( I bet a lot of single moms would like that!)
— The local Goodyear or Schawb could have apprenticeships for teens.
__ The local Karate, Dance, Boxing, and Music studios could have programs.
__ The local KinderCare could have schooling through the 6th grade.
__ The local community theater could run a school.
— The local ice skate area could run a school.
— The local soccer and baseball clubs could run a school.
Imagine the variety and quality of training. Real coaches instead of a part-time history teacher who has many other responsibilities.
I disagree, and won't allow that to happen.
More importantly, the number of teachers qualified to teach certain subjects are limited. There are not enough of them as it is, and those numbers could not be factored into large numbers of smaller facilities.
It is MY government. It is OUR government. Why do you object so strongly to MAKING it conform to the needs of the people? What ever happened to a government of the People, by the People, and for the People? Have you surrendered? I surely haven't.
Organizations that school for a profit are not likely to be any better than government facilities. Corporate schools would indoctrinate kids into their corporate mold. All hail to the Phone Company! A local theater group is just chuck full of communist-want-to-bees, for that is the nature of the performing arts. An ice skate instructor is not there because of his grasp of physics or chemistry, and local baseball or soccer clubs are not general hotbeds of mathematics, software engineering, or any scholarly pursuits for that matter. I suppose you think that the local garbage dump would be a great place to find a biology lab and qualified teachers.
You do not seem to have a grasp of reality. It must be nice to hang out with unicorns and leprechauns.
Hey, my kids go to private school. I’m just saying that for whatever reason, that isn’t necessarily feasible for a lot of people. It is unfortunate that we all pay taxes to support public schools that fail to educate, and instead indoctrinate, the children who go there.
But....They started college at the ages of 13, 12, and 13. Two completed B.S. degrees in mathematics at the age of 18. One was teaching math to college students at the age of 18 and had a masters in math at 20.
I think I know what it takes to educate children and it isn't a lot of expensive stuff.
The reason I object is because it is **IMPOSSIBLE** to have a religiously, culturally, and politically neutral government school. Why? Answer: Because NO school can be neutral. Such a philosophic state of religious, cultural, and political neutrality is impossible in the mind of any sentient human.
I object because Government schools are a First Amendment and freedom of conscience abomination.
I object because it is NOT a conservative principle to force my neighbor to pay for my anointed worldview.
I object because just to maintain order and safety in the government school, the government functionaries **must** trash First Amendment Rights of the children. There is a risk that the children may become accustomed to having their human and First Amendment Rights trashed by government workers.
I object because government should not be running a monopoly cartel that is funded by way of police threat and with “customers” that are also under police threat to use the service.
I object because I fully believe that the private market would supply more flexible, more creative, and more effective education that would more closely uphold the values taught in the home.
And...None of the above can be fixed because it is a structural part of the government school monopoly cartel.
Is that enough reasons?
The above is a personal attack . Do you know what that means?
I am not impressed.
Given that you are teacher in a government school, I have complete confidence in your professionalism with your students. I fully trust if a student challenged your worldview’s belief system that you would be completely and totally professional and would never, never, never, attack a child on a personal level.Nope a government teacher would never do that.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.