Why Conservatives Must Lead on Education Reform
My guest today is Rob Nelson, a political activist who works on behalf of Right To Succeed, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit organization that launched the “Drop 50″ campaign, to cut school dropout rates across America by 50% over five years.
Glazov: Rob Nelson, thanks for joining me.
I want to talk to you about why conservatives must lead on education reform in this country, but first talk to me about the problem in American schools and about one of the most telling manifestations of this problem: the dropout rate.
Nelson: Thanks, Jamie. I think by now most people know we have a major crisis in American education. Across the country public schools are failing and failing big. They’re often poorly run, bureaucracy heavy, and failing to bring kids over the bar. But here’s something you may not know. On average, almost 40% of American kids are dropping out before they finish high school. In Chicago, it’s around 50%. In L.A., it’s almost 60%. In a few big cities, it’s nearly 70%.
Why dropout rates as a measurement of success or failure as compared to test scores? It’s a bottom line measurement and you can’t argue with it. When nearly half to 2/3 of kids aren’t graduating — it’s total system-wide failure. If a school is getting 100% on their exit exams, but half the kids aren’t taking the test, is that success? What if Fed Ex delivered 50% of its packages on time and to the right place, but the other half never arrived? The CEO and top management would be fired. When it comes to schools we need to start holding the top management of our cities and our schools accountable in the same way. The system wide level of failure is unacceptable and absolutely inexcusable, and a looming travesty of astronomical proportions.
Glazov: But wait a minute, isn’t it the responsibility of the kids who drop out?
Nelson: Well, Jamie, a lot of people might want to blame the kids. Yes, they’re the ones choosing to drop out and we are each accountable for our own actions. But so many of our public schools are doing such a terrible job of making school relevant to kids, creating an engaging learning environment, and then investing kids in the process of their own education so that they want to stay in school. Did you know a major reason for many dropouts is boredom?
Keep this in mind. Blame the kids. Blame parents, unions, bureaucrats….blame whomever you want — there’s plenty of blame to go around. At the end of the day if we’re losing half our kids to a future where they are without the knowledge, skills, and education to participate in a productive way in our society the rest of us are going to pay the price — literally! Prison costs, welfare, homelessness, crime, medical bills. You don’t like handouts? Well, if we don’t fix this, get ready for some major ones. It’s simple math. If drop out rates continue at their current rates, in 15 years, 25% of Americans will be supporting the other 75%. Is that a future you’re comfortable with? Is that a price tag you want to give your kids?
Glazov: So why should conservatives lead on doing something about this national crisis?
Nelson: Education has always been considered a liberal issue. But actually, reforming public education in America is a perfect opportunity for conservatives. The traditional issue has always been about money. Liberals think we’re not spending enough, conservatives think money isn’t the answer. Money is a factor. Often there aren’t enough resources, and just as often it’s not being well spent, and the wrong people are making the spending decisions. But money is secondary to the real issues that must drive education reform in America. So right there you have one thing most conservatives like to hear — it’s not primarily about how much we spend.
Here’s the deal. The way to reform public schools matches with a lot of conservative values. If conservatives got out in front on this issue, took the lead, and made this issue one of their top priorities, they could not only help force systemic change that is in line with their core principles, but they could be seen as champions of the most important social issue facing America today — and counter the perception that they’re only for the rich and want to keep the poor and minorities down.
What’s more, conservatives might be the only ones able to muscle through the changes that will reshape our public education landscape, driving a much needed wedge into the bureaucracy laden process so that our public school systems start to work, not just for those in affluent communities, but for all Americans — especially the poor and minorities who make up the vast majority of failing American public schools. And wouldn’t that be a nice victory for conservatives to claim leadership on?
Stop making excuses for pupils who refuse to learn. It takes two to tango. The best teachers are powerless if the pupils can’t be bothered to open a book and read a sentence. Whether these pupils drop in or out — the results are the same. It’s like buying or not buying a lottery ticket: the results are nil.
Kids arrive at school knowing only what their parents have taught them beyond what is on the idiot box. The Knowledge that schools are supposed to teach took thousands of years for mankind to accumulate. The kids cannot know Cicero from Jackie Collins and the schools are more likely to introduce Jackie Collins or Gore Vidal.
It really burns me when failures blame the kids for not arriving at school already better educated than the people paid to provide education. Before we had the union protection of incompetent teachers the chances were 70% an American eighth grader would know who Cicero was. Do you?
It is necessary to have access to other people who have interests in a subject to find out where knowledge is before you can learn it. Americans were much better off when “those who can’t do teach” was true. Today’s professionally trained teachers not only do not know what to teach but cannot imagine anyone wanting to learn it. They will not overcome the bias built into entertainment and publishing against “nerds” or those who wish to dumb down the public on one or more subjects. The FBI cleaned out my high school library in the summer of 1972. I do not know all that they took but the June applied technology section was six three foot shelves were three and September section only took up three a half. What child can understand political correctness from the books that remain in schools? The history books are 100% nonsense but so are most of the math and science text books.
“empiricist” and his fellows together with the lawyers are what is wrong with schools. Show the children the reasons to learn and how to learn it and they will.
Is there perchance a causal relationship between the school dropout rate -and unwed parenthood?
It’s the culture, folks. We all know it. Victimology for the benefit of an ideology is devistating to the inner-city culture, without which the left would lose its political power. The left offers but evil results. Divide and conquer and neutralize is their transparent game with its class warfare – envy – the racism of low expectations. The welfare safety net is really a spiderweb for the left to catch their prey. The abortion rate the left encourages for the downtrodden black community exposes their real love for these folks, who apparently have naively sold their souls to the government plantation for a lifestyle that more closely resembles euthanasia than it does freedom.
This is the real cost of the faux hope and change they bought hook. line, and sinker.
(A past high school dropout)
I agree. As a former teacher from a small town (Alabama) school, I saw firsthand how many students from multi-generational welfare families were only biding their time until they could drop out and get on welfare themselves. A teenaged girl can get pregnant and get a lot of welfare assistance. If you added up the value of all those programs, she’d have to get a job earning over $15 an hour just to break even with the welfare benefits. It’s actually a perverse but rational economic decision on her part to go on welfare. Lacking any marketable job skills, she can actually live better on welfare than by getting an education and working for a living. Until we change that, I doubt you’re going to make much of a dent in the dropout rate.
The situation isn’t completely hopeless. One of my former students from taht school escaped the poverty trap. He’s now an Assistant Professor of Cardiothoracic Surgery at Emory University. As a child, his parents (plural) stressed the value of an education. He worked very hard for many years to get where he is today. I knew him when he was 15 and was always impressed by him. If I or some member of my family needed that kind of surgery, I wouldn’t hesitate to have him do the job.
It didn’t help that so many of his schoolmates thought he was “acting white.” I never dared to ask them what they meant by that. If working hard, studying, becoming very intelligent and getting good grades is “acting white”, what would “acting black” be like?
Wow, this assumes that only girls drop out….
So…. What excuses are you giving the boys for dropping out?
Or don’t they affect the dropout rate?
I attended and alternative school for teen parents. Funny thing was, they would NOT allow the BOYS that got those girls pregnant to come to the school while it was called ‘Teen Parent’. They had to change the school to ‘Alternative’ in order for the boys to qualify.
I was a teen mom. I HAVE MY HIGH SCHOOL DIPLOMA!!!!! I rarely worked less than two jobs simultaneously for 15 years! Possibly, you should get a grip on reality and not try to simply blame one portion of the population.
EDUCATION AND FANTASY: Why US Schools Cannot Succeed-Ever
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I disagree with the premises of most modern educational goals, to wit, that everyone should get an education and that academic success is largely a coefficient of what goes on in the classroom. Here’s why:
1. In fact, academic success is nearly 100% dependent on what goes on at home, not in the class. If you come from a home that is largely dysfunctional, if neither of your parents ever reads a book (assuming they’re the original parents or that there’s actually 2 of them), if they never purchase a book and there is no substantial reading material with a permanent place in your home (I’m not talking about cereal box logos), your chances of academic success in school are practically nil and you may as well face it and make appropriate future plans.
2. The idea that everyone has to “go to college” is so hare-brained as to not be worthy of discussion. The fact that this “slogan” has nearly taken on the the force of an amendment to the US Constitution is the cause of untold pain and waste. The vast majority of the population simply has no business “going to college”. They either lack the “gray matter” to make a go of it, or are in college for spurious, fantasy-like reasons. In addition, the vast majority of women – and they will admit it to you in private – are there for reasons that have nothing to do with academic excellence or achievement. They’re there to catch a mate. In principle, I have nothing against such a practice – all I’m saying is that they’re not there for academic reasons.
3. It is for these and similar reasons that “education” and educational institutions have lost their academic base and have turned into “socializing” and “welfare” institutions and why “popular” courses and even “majors”, resemble programs designed for the mentally deranged or incompetent. Teachers are no longer there to educate but to “entertain”. Or to “train”. They’ve become pathetic clowns.
Real education is hard, it is boring (at least at the beginning stages) and results only show up in the distant future. There facts are not only incompatible with current thinking (I almost laughed when I wrote that word), they are actually inimical to the current American scene.
So go ahead, fill up your classroom with “computes” and the latest technologies and so on. The results will be the same. A largely ignorant, anti-intellectual population that the whole world is slowly beginning to laugh at.
the vast majority of women – and they will admit it to you in private – are there for reasons that have nothing to do with academic excellence or achievement. They’re there to catch a mate.
As a college-educated woman, that’s news to me.
Wow, I hear a lot or woman bashing here.
Two of my three daughters are college educated, and they weren’t looking for a man while they were there. The other joined the military so that she could pay for her college education ahead of time. She is surrounded by men daily, as she is the minority… she isn’t looking for a man either. She giggles to me on the phone when she tells me about the men she politely says, ‘no thanks’ to when they ask her out on dates.
Reality folks. Generalities based on your biased opinions just aren’t cutting it!
Thanks for this information which sheds light on what is proven to work. Anyone who has studied intelligence and creativity knows that we all fall somewhere on a bell-shaped curve of academic skills. Teaching a group of students by definition aims at the middle. However, the middle has slipped downward due to political decisions made in Washington and state capitols.
No Child Left Behind centered on the lowest end of the spectrum, and forced teachers to deal with a classroom including children from all levels. A friend who teaches 8th grade Family & Consumer Science (6 classes/day of 30 students each) described the effects of one such child who dominated the class and disrupted the learning experience for the other 29 children. The teacher had no tools with which to deal with such disruptive children and was mandated to pass everyone. This is a recipe for disaster, all because some politician in Washington had the power to make it happen. The current fads of teaching language without phonics and teaching math without logic are more examples of the same thing.
The children that have been left behind are those exceptionally bright ones. The model of public schools forces all children into an age-based environment geared to the middle of the academic skillset. Some of us suffered through the ridicule, jealousy and frustration of being called ‘teachers pet’, along with being bored to have to sit through lessons we had already learned. Most of us left at some time prior to 12th grade; I was lucky to have parents who loved learning for its own sake, so I took the GED at the end of 10th grade and went to college. Other bright kids aren’t so lucky. The model has never worked for this group of children. My school district has a ‘talented & gifted’ program, which is a weekly class designed to promote big egos and indoctrinate the kids on political issues like ‘global warming’. I teach art after school and one student is in the program. She is 12 years old and already bored and frustrated because she already knows what they are teaching. I know another 10-year old who tested at the college level in math in the 2nd grade. She’s lucky to have parents who are sacrificing in order to home-school her. She’s already mastered introductory calculus. Her socialization takes place in the 4H Club, community soccer leagues and horse riding competition, all more or less age-based. Since my state universities have no requirement or facilities to handle young students, she will be forced to continue learning at home through virtual classes and standardized testing. How many children of poverty also share the brilliant minds and have no one to help?
For the first time in history, technology offers the solution to these challenges. Children today are electronically savvy, and distance learning can be individualized to each student’s knowledge and abilities. While we dither about the old 18th century classroom failures, the virtual school is replacing the entire brick and mortar model. A teacher can handle multiple virtual students in any location from any location, including the teacher’s home….Child care centers could easily oversee the children for working parents.
Hey, emmaliza, well said, and well written.
Sounds like you are quite busy with your life, but your comment was more of an article fit for posting somewhere. If you have the time, you should think about writing articles as well as comments. With a little more work, Pajamas might have published your comment as an article.
StraightThinker.com
I completely agree.
I had a 5th grader with a reading skill level of 2nd year college. They said the only books on her reading list were Shakespeare and Technical manuals. She was advanced in every subject. They kept telling me, not such classrooms or teachers available.
Standardized Math, Reading, Science, History. All schools must be K-12 in the same buildings… smaller schools, smaller classes. if you have accelerated reading, then during reading hour you get up and goto the higher level classroom , and if you have lesser skills, get up and go to that classroom. It doesn’t cost a dime. The kids are in the correct teaching/learning levels for all classes.
So many programs for the ‘slow’ and ‘retarded’ and ‘special needs’ children.
My daughter was special needs! Her special need was to have accelerated classroom opportunities that challenged her intellect and pushed her to a higher level. Instead I was pushed out their door.
I felt obligated to do everything I could to accelerate her learning on my own. I did that to the best of my ability, however, I resented that I could NOT get any help from my local schools.
Privatize it. All of it. K through whatever. I pay for my kids, you pay for yours, or not. Your choice. You keep your hands the [expletive] out of my wallet and I’ll do the same with yours. Stop taxing people who don’t have children to pay for those who do. Throw out 95% of the government regulations and let the market work. Socialist education (which is what we have now) be damned. Screw the unions (aka democratic party funding goons). I worked for 5 years as the head of administrative computing for a junior college, and what I saw was enough to bring me to the conclusion above. Thank G-d I have a job in the private sector again. The public educational system is not reformable in any meaningful way. Start with a clean sheet of paper by defunding the whole enchilada. And I don’t mean vouchers or charter schools.
Conservatives ought to be wary of the way public schools are adopting the International Baccalaureate program http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_baccalaureate which is a Eurocentric socialist curriculum whose founder wrote “Is There a Way of Teaching for Peace?”
You’re joking, right? I thought even conservatives were okay with peace in the right context.
The IB school I visited in Oakland County, MI was amazing. You should wish your kid went to a school with a curriculum that rigorous and thoughtful. If there was a specific political agenda, I missed it, but then I’m not looking for scary socialism (or whatever you figure the founder is up to) under every rock. I’m more interested in seeing schools that lead students to thoughtfully evaluate the information they read, see, and view on-line. That’s an essential component I saw in that IB school.
In any event, you’ve given me a new insight into conservatism: it’s a political philosophy of war and violence, I guess. Thanks for setting me straight on that score.
From where is he getting those dropout stats? The 2010 stats I’ve seen say around 32% dropout, not 40.
In any case, it’s abysmal, especially considering that today’s high school diploma is akin to a much lower level of education than it was a few decades ago.
“Did you know a major reason for dropouts is boredom?”
Oh, how awful for these kids that they they’re bored. News flash: boredom permeates real life. School is not about entertainment. Little kids have short attention spans and need to have activities changed frequently. However, as they progress through the grades, teachers should increase the time that students work on their own, so that by the time they get in high school, they’re able to focus and work independently on reports, essays, whatever projects the teacher assigns. How many adults have jobs that require them to focus, on their own, on job assignments like writing company reports, analyzing budgets, etc.? Millions do. These jobs sound boring to me, but they must be done, and they must be done by people who can immerse themselves in the task at hand. By saying that kids must not be bored in school, we’re setting them up for failure in real-world jobs, many of which are boring. I wonder how bored these drop-outs will be flipping burgers or driving a forklift.
Our kids are too fragmented in their interests. They are all wired to some gadget–ipods, MP3 players, cell phones, blackberries, computers. Who can think straight with all that coming at you? When I was in school eons ago, school was the main focus of my life. Also, parents are running themselves ragged getting their kids to and from sporting events and other extra-curricular activities, which are all highly structured. We used to just go outside and play. Our creative and imaginative instincts were let loose in old-fashioned play. I feel sorry for our kids today. We’re killing their innovative spirit by planning every single second of their waking lives for them.
Money does not ensure good education. It’s common for schools to have a per-pupil dollar rate of $10,000 per student. In a class of 25 students, that’s $250,000! If a school has 30 classrooms, that’s $7,500,000 per year for one school! Where does all that money go? As I’ve said before, give me a world map, an old-fashioned chalkboard, paper and pencils, some classics to read, and I will educate the kids. Pouring more and more money into education is not necessary.
Get rid of teachers’ unions. Remember what Albert Schanker of the American Federation of Teachers said: “When school children start paying union dues, that’s when I’ll start representing the interests of school children.” That says it all.
And the last thing: Abolish the Department of Education and give control back to local communities.
Bravo! I agree 100% !
With all due respect, I think you missed the author’s point about boredom.
I think the point is, that some kids are bored and not engaged in school because it’s too easy for them!
This is going to be an increasing problem, as the dumbing-down of the curriculum continues apace (since it’s the bureaucrats’ preferred solution to handing out diplomas to as many as possible; not to speak of college degrees, now!).
Teachers who know their subjects ought to be able to come up with extra work (not “enrichment,” but more content) for the students who master what the class is working on with ease, or have entered the class already knowing it. Happily, there are such students, at least in my high school. It takes some effort, but over time you have built up a huge bank of readings/exercises/ etc. (mine are all for Latin) that you can hand to the student who is capable of working at his own pace. Kids can complete more than one year’s worth of work in one academic year, for sure; and why would we hold them back?
Years ago, a member of my extended family told the elem. school teacher (at a ritzy private school, too!) that she’d already read the book the class was reading for literature. Believe it or not, the lady didn’t care, and said she had to read it anyway. Talk about lazy (and vindictive)…!
Hmmm, my daughter read “To Kill a Mockingbird” 6 times!!!!!! With 6 different teachers. I finally told her, get creative with your report. So the last time she actually did a ‘roast’ and did a nice satirical piece. The teacher was astounded. She got ANOTHER A.
Yep, it’s time to teach the students all the things they should be learning, not what the federal government is ‘mandating’.
Some fascinating research (sorry I don’t have the link but you could probably Google it) shows that a child’s ABILITY TO DELAY GRATIFICATION is the single biggest predictor of who stays in school, postpones childbearing until after marriage, and keeps a job. It matters what children see at home and how they are expected to behave at home. Some new school programs are being developed to help all children–even those from chaotic homes–learn how to delay gratification.
Since you’re retired and anti-union, I trust you voluntarily are giving up your pension. No? What a non-surprise. Nothing like hypocrisy to spice up the day.
I have a kid who is in 11th Grade. I have seen school up close for the last 13 years. This guy is just a Conservative saying the same BS that Progressives have pumped out for the last century. Been there, tried that, it won’t work any better than the last 12 times we tried it.
My kid has gotten a fine education along side of all the ghetto kids and minorities who have been passed along from grade to grade and can’t spell “English” despite having supposedly studied the subject for the last decade or more.
You want to reform education so it is functional? Try this.
Cut back to sending only those who have IQs of 115 or higher to college, and then only if they behave in school, take honors level courses, and get good grades, which is the best test of ability to do actual college level work. Cut colleges back to only teaching rigorous courses designed to turn out the high skill experts and professionals the country needs.
Admit that there are four types of students, and have four different types of schools that meet their needs and serve society better.
College Prep schools for those who are actual college material, and plan to get a serious college education that leads to a high skill, high pay job.
Plain old regular school for kids who are not college material but behave and do their work, which gets them ready for a life as a worker. The motivated ones can continue on to a two year college to learn a skilled trade or to be low level management.
High discipline schools for those who do not do work, disrupt classrooms, and come to school to rob other students, sell drugs, and otherwise prepare themselves for a life of welfare and crime. The goal of these schools would be to motivate those kids to get back in to whichever of the two schools above they should be in and reclaim their lives before it is too late.
Schools for those who are too low functioning or too medically fragile to ever be employed or self supporting. It is a foolish waste of money to “mainstream” these children, an expensive fantasy that mostly serves to stroke Liberal egos and feed their fantasy of how much they “care”.
I know this will never happen because it makes too much sense and would require people to admit too many truths about themselves, their children, and the realities of life.
Sounds like an old school idea to me. I like it, seem to remember something like that when I went to school in the 70′s. Lets see, Advanced classes, industrial arts, regular classes and study hall, all within the same school. Disruption is the major problem. Study hall is specifically for the student who continues to disrupt the class. Once that student starts to get it, he/she can then move back into the regular classroom.
Let’s talk about the elephant in the room ….
We’ve thrown tons of money at the problem with little success. The fact is that blacks and hispanics make up most of the high school dropouts. It is the cultural attitudes of these groups toward education that must change. Often, Korean and Chinese kids who attend the same urban schools do very well. Their parents place a high value on success.
More government funds cannot change self-defeating belief systems.
i, as a conservative, will take the fist step in education reform…
step 1— ELIMINATE ALL FEDERAL FUNDING FOR PUBLIC EDUCATION
(steps 2-xx: will deal with control going to localities and subject matter)
“i, as a conservative, will take the fist step in education reform…”
It’s a pity I don’t have a red pen handy.
lol *FIRST
i sent a suggestion to pjm today to have an edit function
All that is true but in addition the curriculum is often horrendous. In a number of schools around were I live history, civics, social studies, whatever you want to call it is not taught. Not at all. Not one bit. What will kids have to compare to the stupid things happening in the world today? How will they know how socialism has been the bane of the world for the last 90 years? Wait, maybe I answered by own question.
Socialism? Gee, I thought that was communism. And then there was that whole fascism vogue within the last 90 years. But hey, socialism, communism, fascism, they’re all the same thing, right? If you’re utterly ignorant, that is.
Over the past fifty years everything has been tried to “reform” education. Some of them were busing, black principals, smart students teach dumb ones, community control, smaller class size, parental participation and what not. The best that can be done is to recognize that the bell curve applies to intelligence just like it applies to weight and height. Years ago this was a recognized fact. When you were in the ninth grade, for example, there was a class 9-1 for the best students; clas 9-2 for those not so bright, class 9-3 ……class 9-26. To be a good teacher meant to have class 9-1. Then curricula can be adjusted to ability. No more lake woebegone where all students are above average. The kids will feel better. They will have a better time in school. They will have an incentive to get out of class 9-26 and to try to get into class 9-10. It worked in the past. I don’t see why it wouldn’t work now.
Hmm, sounds like in your mind “reform education” is identical to “solve problems of racial segregation.” I never realized!
Of course, there are connections between the general failure of education in high-poverty areas, and economic and geographic discrimination. But I suspect that’s not really what you’re trying to get at. Sounds more like, oh, maybe racism?
Those who call for total privatization are 100% correct. The govt. schools are broken past any hope of repair and corrupt past any hope of reform. Further, technology has rendered them as obsolete as that other high-cost, low-quality govt. institution, the post office.
It won’t be possible to abolish govt. schools in one fell swoop, but it would be easy to phase them out a grade at a time. Simply prohibit all new enrollments (except for in-state transfers) and let attrition do its work. Eliminate 1st grade after year 1, 2nd grade after year 2, etc. Within 12 years, public schools will be nothing but a bad memory and a warning to future generations.
Of course, Step 1 of the process must be the repeal of all compulsory-attendance laws and the removal from all state constitutions of any mention of education. This would also eliminate the problem of dealing with disruptive kids (see post #9) and the super-bright (see post #4). Even if public schools had never existed, those laws are evil per se because they are based on the evil assumption that children are govt. property.
No one is zooming out and looking at the real problem with education in this country. The real problem with education in this country has nothing to do with what was discussed in this article and is rarely discussed anywhere. The real problem with education in this country is that is has evolved into a system by which we are cultivating an entire population of consumers buying into a culture of consumption. We start children out early on and train them to regurgitate information and rewarding them for doing so. Like Pavlov’s dog, they are conditioned to forge a direct correlation between hard work and reward, continuing all through childhood, adolescence, and into adulthood where they leave an accredited university to work for the man and continue to regurgitate information and work hard awaiting the award to come at any moment.
In none of the discussions of education is there any mention of two fundamental human traits we are born with: creative and critical thinking. We are first and foremost creations. It is in our nature to create ever since we are children. We are also curious beings and we are born questioning. Yet we have little to no room in our education system to address creativity as we slash the arts funding or critical thinking as we push hard for kids to pump back answers and do what they are told as we slash empirical sciences, social sciences, and literature. That’s what’s wrong.
I don’t know but this line hit me when thinking about education, kids, and drop-out rate. Deuteronomy 6:7 read: “And you shall teach your children.”
Parents are their children’s FIRST teachers.
Don’t expect the schools to do YOUR job!
Parents who work are not exempt from teaching their children. Starting with manners. YOU are your child’s best asset! If the schools are not meeting our expectations, then it becomes our duty as parents to step in and provide that education.
Our school did not want to teach about the Holocaust, so I taught my own children. When the school taught evolution, I taught them creationism and gave them the opportunity to think for themselves.
Why do we expect someone else to do our parenting for us??? If we are intelligent enough to know that our children NEED more, then shouldn’t we provide it ourselves? Why must we wait for the government to do it and complain the entire way? Simply step in and take control of your own child, their education and their future.
Many times I have de-railed what I consider to be poor teaching in the public schools by taking charge of the subject matter at home and providing additional information and and projects and trips to learn more.
Let’s Help Ourselves!
Given that you taught your kids pseudo-science, the mind reels at what you taught them about the Holocaust.
Eliminate all government funding and involvement in education.
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Can we conservatives wait until BHO and his radicals are out of office before we start implementing any changes? The far left foundations like Gates, Broad, etc want to move in with their socialist, globalist, one world order curriculum and with their privitization rhetoric they are baiting the Repubs to go along.
The cultural swamp of disintegrated families has left children communicating with monitors and not parents 90% of the time. The libs have destroyed marriage, the family, tradition, religion and education and we want to blame it on teachers, boredom, unions, irrelevant curriculums? I have an idea, if the kid drops out throw the parent in jail for 30 days! If the kid brings a weapon, hits another student, teacher or whatever throw his or her parents(wherever they are) in jail.Last I looked I was responsible for my kids until the age of 18-who the heck is abandoning their kids like this and letting them drop out. Hey parents, get off the crack, the couch, the welfare and take your kid to the library-books are free.
http://potterwilliamsreport.com/2011/03/21/sleeping-with-the-enemy.aspx
School Daze
Reading, writing, and arithmetic have long been passe’ in America’s schools, their place supplanted by political correctness, the inculcation of self esteem, and a quest for diversity and societal innovations. After all, who needs learning when more pressing indoctrination is involved?
Some examples of schools, school administrations, and teachers who have gone off the deep end:
GAY HISTORY: California, the vanguard of change in America, is considering mandating the teaching of “gay history” in its schools, making that study the equivalent of already mandated studies of “contributions to the state and nation of women, African Americans, Mexican Americans, entrepreneurs, Asian Americans, European Americans, American Indians and labor.” (http://tiny.cc/dgz6h)
Precisely what contributions the teaching of “gay history” is expected to make for Californian kids is unclear. How best to utilize gerbils? The proper use of sex toys? How not to get caught in public? Who knows?
Ostensibly, the proposed legislation is intended to soothe the psyches and mitigate bullying of gay kids but, if anything, the mass of straight kids will rebel against the forced study and acceptance of homosexuality.
California can mandate all it wants. Californian kids will still tell the state to shove it.
FREE MUMIA ABU-JAMAL: Teacher unions have gotten a lot of press lately, principally in Wisconsin where they trashed the state Capitol building in Madison in their protest campaign against Gov. Scott Walker’s efforts to rein in their and other public unions’ exorbitant salaries and bennies. California teachers have now out-radicalized their Wisconsin counterparts.
The California Federation of Teachers (CFT) has passed a resolution advocating freedom for a convicted cop-killer on the basis that, “the continued unjust incarceration of Mumia Abu-Jamal represents a threat to the civil rights of all people. . .”
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=4171)