Posted on 05/08/2002 5:12:55 AM PDT by Boonie Rat
Are Parents Boycotting Public Schools?
May 7, 2002
by Wendy McElroy, mac@ifeminists.com
Take your children out of public schools.
That's what James Dobson, founder of the conservative Christian organization Focus on the Family, told more than five million American listeners in a March 28 broadcast of his daily radio show.
"In the state of California ... I wouldn't put [a] youngster in a public school," Dobson bluntly stated. His words sparked a campaign that reveals the extent of parental discontent with public schools.
Why are they discontented? Some parents worry about the lack of religious or "moral" values; other parents point to low academic standards or bias against male students. (Dobson objected to "homosexual propaganda" that teaches, for example, that "bisexuality is normal.")
The common denominator is that parents wish to choose the values and standards by which their children are educated.
The campaign against public schools snowballed April 9 when the popular radio personality Dr. Laura Schlessinger declared, "I stand with Dr. James Dobson." Indeed, Dr. Laura did not restrict her comments to California.
"Take your kids out of public schools," she advised. The same day, in his Christian talk show Point of View — broadcast over 360 American radio stations — Marlon Maddoux added his agreement.
Marshall Fritz, founder of the Separation of School and State Alliance, described the power of these endorsements in an April 15 press release. SSSA has created an online Proclamation for the Separation of School and State. In the week following the broadcasts, signatures on the proclamation increased from an average of five per day to over 100. Then, on April 23, Fritz circulated an excited memo. An article in WorldNetDaily had reported on the controversy. In one day, the proclamation received over 2,500 new signatures.
The document reads simply, "I proclaim publicly that I favor ending government involvement in education." But the companion list of ten benefits to "school liberation" states as number one, "Parents will be reinforced ... parents will choose schools where teachers support their values." Other benefits include safety, academic quality, decreased cost, and better schools for poor children. From the list it is clear that the anti-public school movement is pro-education in a grassroots sense that returns responsibility for children from the government to parents.
The backlash against public schools comes in the wake of recent horror stories in the media. Some deal with threats to children's safety — and not merely from fellow students with weapons. ABC News reported on a Head Start program that used cockroaches to discipline children. One boy who was subjected to the cockroach punishment at age five remains so afraid of bugs three years later that he refuses to go outside.
Other reports question academic standards. The April 16 Philadelphia Inquirer reported that, for the first time, Pennsylvania would release test results for math and reading by race, poverty and sex. This sparked fears that the quality of future education a child would receive might hinge on race, poverty and sex. Indeed, since the 2000 publication of Christina Hoff Sommers' The War Against Boys, accusations that boys are second-class citizens within the public schools have become commonplace.
What seems to stir up the most anger, however, is the teaching of politically correct values to children against parental wishes. In January, the Pacific Justice Institute filed a lawsuit on behalf of distressed parents against a California school that conducted allegedly pro-homosexual assemblies without notice or parental consent.
As parents remove their children from the public schools, however, governmental resistance to alternative education will probably increase. The most vulnerable alternative is likely to be homeschooling. Stories such as that of California mom Sandra Sorenson may become more common.
The Sorensons decided to set up their own private school after their 10-year-old son's public school initiated a policy of having fellow students issue suspensions to each other, which teachers would sign. "Children should not have the power over other children," Sandra explained. "Nine and 10-year-olds shouldn't be giving out suspensions. Kids can be mean."
As a result, she is facing a possible jail sentence for "contributing to the delinquency of a minor" and claims to have been harassed severely by school officials.
For example, the California Child Protective Service investigated the family based on a complaint filed by the son's former principal. The complaint alleged that Sorensen did not provide proper medical attention for her son's diagnosed Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. A standard treatment recommended by public schools is the powerful and controversial drug, Ritalin. The CPS investigator found the allegations to be unfounded.
Despite such risks, parents seem more likely than ever before to remove their children from "the system." With reports of homeschooled children outperforming those educated by government schools in national spelling bees and on some tests, parents who would never resist authority in any other area seem willing to step forward for the sake of their children's well-being.
Perhaps Marshall Fritz is correct in believing that Dobson's statements could signal the beginning of a revolution.
A bit heavy on the polarization, but I agree to a point. Left/Right should be open to debate. anarchism/totalitarianism was outlined for us in the constitution. If only we would get back to it.
Are Parents Boycotting Public Schools?
Yes.
I understand libertarians too well. They want freedom all righty, but most of them don't want the accountability that goes with it.
Show me where the founder of The Alliance for Separation of School and State feels that way regarding abortion, immigration, drugs and pornography. I suspect he does see a role for government in those fields.
This one is.
This is two. My daughters, 4 & 7 are school-free so far and doing very well, academically, socially and spiritually.
YES! This is what I've thought for years, and few others really seem to agree, or at least think that it might be a factor in the decline.
The funny thing is, it was removed for "touchy feeley" reasons, nothing more. There never were any "horror" stories about teachers or principals "abusing" kids, in any way. The corporal punishment was just stopped because, (and this is only my opinion), in the mind of the liberal school administrators, "It was too much like physical abuse, so we shouldn't even allow that."
As far as those "studies" everyone seems to have read (but never can produce) that show corporal punishment is detrimental to a child's development, there are plenty of others that show children (especially much younger ones) rarely understand anything, on a basic level, as much as they understand some uncomfortable moments. Abstract thinking, i.e., association of an inappropriate act to negative consequences (WITHOUT a physical re-enforcement), is something that really only starts to develop in late childhood/ early teen years.
This is why I think the schools are really as bad as they are, discipline wise. And, of course, without discipline, there really can't be any learning.
It's been developing over at least the past 30 years. During and after the 60s, lots of left-liberal people from the 1960s era and mindset went into education and became teachers, principals, and professors. It has become conspicuous now, but its roots go back quite a long time.
I've given you the url for the organization he founded, Advocates for Self-Government.
I'm not sure why you think he advocates government roles in so many areas when he explicitly started a Libertarian outreach organization about SELF-GOVERNMENT.
"Does Christ ask us to be libertarians? I answer, emphatically, no; He commands it. Christians can be dangerous when they’re not liberty oriented." -- Marshall Fritz
The teachers unions have supported every no good, healy-feely, family killing, tax raising, homosexual pushing, job killing, abortion loving ,whacked-out law liberals have introduced over the last 40 years.
The damage done by government schools is done both inside and outside the classroom.
With 2.5 million members and a tax free income of over $240 million a year, the NEA alone can and has caused profound damage to our social fabric.
Our public schools allocate money for programs such as Reading Recovery, which takes the weakest readers in elementary grades out of class for ONE ON ONE instruction. This is public education...what the hell more do you expect?
I expect nothing from the schools except to take my money and turn out a significant percentage of kids who can't read, can't write, can't do math, can't think, are clueless about history, geography, and science, but who passionately believe that the earth is warming due to the greed of the capitalists, that diversity should be "celebrated," and that they have the gaia given right to be fat, lazy, and greedy, just like their publicly educated parents (who, of course, don't read to their kids because they can't, being victims of the "see-say" reading cult).
There was a movement among parents in the 60's and 70's to get rid of "see-say" or "look-say" because it didn't teach children how to read -- not in a group setting, not one on one. In school districts across the land, the educational bureaucracy fought the re-introduction of phonics with all the tools and money at their disposal. When some of the school districts grudgingly agreed to re-introduce phonics, a whole new industry sprang up called "let's rename 'see-say' and to hell with the parents". So "see-say" became "whole language" or whatever the local variation is called. "See-say" lives on 83 years after Dr. Samuel T. Orton published "The 'Sight Reading' Method of Teaching Reading as a Source of Reading Disability" in the Journal of Educational Psychology. It lives on 47 years after Rudolf Flesch's book, "Why Johnny Can't Read".
Somewhere in the 70's a small group of parents got tired of the grinding and futile process of giving a clue to the clueless and homeschooling was born. We homeschooled our children K-12.
Why don't the public schools teach? I'm not into conspiracy theories, but Richard Mitchell sums things up pretty well:
When we find ourselves wondering about the meaning of conditions and events, it is always useful to ask, who profits? The problems and disorders in education have become more and more visible in the last few years, of course, and even the ordinary citizen who happens to have no children in the schools suspects that something is very wrong, but he will never understand exactly what is wrong until he realizes that all our educational problems and disorders, none of which are new, although they are more obvious, provide endless and growing employment for the people who made them. Barely literate children may be suffering and facing whole lives of deprivation, but consultants and remediationists and professors of reading education and tax-supported researchers and the editors and publishers of workbooks and handsome packets of materials are doing very well indeed and looking for even better days to come. It is important to note, too, that all those profit-makers have not suddenly appeared among us like the wandering bands of looters who can reasonably be expected to show up after the earthquake. They’ve been around a long time, diligently turning the wheel, professing what must be remediated and remediating what has been professed and enlarging in our society the role of what can only be called the educationist-industrial complex. Anything that may seem to us a disorder in education is for them a golden opportunity—indeed, since they live by tax money, they cannot make their profits until we do see a disorder in education and thus feel obliged to shell out.
Interesting. Why haven't you sent them to Catholic school?
Yes. Then, take yourself out of those states which either harass you for doing it, or refuse to to tell the fedgov and the trade unionists to butt out!.
1)I don't trust them to provide a good Catholic education. I'm afraid that Catholic schools have become secularized to a great degree.
2) I'm concerned about peer pressure and peer influence. I think my daughters will learn more good things from their mother than from their peers.
3) There's no place like home. Papal encyclicals regarding Christian education affirm that parents should be a child's primary educators (although not the only ones). Therefore, by the principle of subsidiarity (also affirmed in several encyclicals), it is best if the parents provide the bulk of a child's (Christian) education.
I'm sure that we can provide a strong Catholic education at home, especially since we're using a standardized Catholic curriculum (Seton).
4) I'd like my daughters to spend more time with my wife than with their peers. I want them to have a strong relationship that will carry over into the normally difficult teen years and adulthood.
5) Academics. Nothing can beat individualized instruction. Children can learn at their own pace. If something's too easy they can skip over it. If something's too hard they can slow down. So far my seven year old is two years ahead in reading and a year ahead in math, with "school" lasting on average about three hours per day. I'm hoping that she will graduate a couple of years early and be able to get a full academic scholarship at a good Catholic university somewhere. Or not, if she prefers. I've also thought that if she graduates "high school" at 16 I could take a year off from work and work with her to renovate an old two-family house for her and her sister.
6) Free time. With "school" lasting three hours per day, the children have four or five extra hours to pursue their own interests.
And that can be blamed on JFK who allowed the teachers (and other civil servants) to unionize.
What is fictionalized therein is fast becoming a reality. V's wife.
Amen Brother Amen!
In Fact Atlas done did Shrug in my neck of the woods! Third Year of Academic Emergency and this years Graduating Class Shrunk from 152 (which was the number of their Freshman Class) to under 100 this year. (I am informed by an Ex-Principal Over 30 Left for Private or Home School)
We just built a New Multi-Million Dollar School complex (I guess New School Buildings will Improve those Test Scores) and a New Levy just went down to defeat for a Sports Complex and the Teachers are Livid we did not SUPPORT the Schools... This is the Same Bunch who WENT ON STRIKE (HIGHER WAGES) FOR THE CHILDREN... They ALso Brought in the UNITED MINE WORKERS to Help Bust the Scabs... Scabs are Defined as Teachers who went and Actually taught the Children while our Esteemed Educators made a Literal Ass of themselves on TV with video footage of Beating on Cars with Boards and Ballbats, Egging Teachers who crossed the Picket line and Encouraging Student to Throw Desks and Chairs out of Third Story Windows...
And you want to know why they went out on strike???? Because the Board of Education wanted to Institute Teacher Testing and Evaluations. Gee I wonder why we are in Academic Emergency now???
(/Rant)
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