On Public Schools and A Particular New Rule in General

Miscellaneous General
1

The insanity of the state (especially in the slavery of public “education”) never shocks me anymore.

I was discussing public schools with a public school teacher. She spoke glowingly of the policy at her school: One-way hallways. This means that children must march down the hallways in only one direction, straight ahead. Each hallway has big arrows that tell the children the only available direction that they must walk. If they go too far, they must make a complete loop around the school in order to visit their locker if they passed it the first time. Any child caught turning around, back-peddling, stopping or stalling is issued a detention slip or worse if they keep it up. I asked her if she was familiar with communist, fascist and statist regimes and she laughed and said “I know what you mean, but we can’t have the kids just walking wherever they want.”

Oh, wow… Thoughts?

2

What makes you believe that “thought” has anything to do with public school?

Their only concern is control.

3

Once we compared schools to prisons. Now they are more and more like a slaughterhouse.

4

I meant that I would like to hear the “thoughts” of other posters. But yes you are right, compulsory education is all about control.

5

I am the parent of a third grader in the public schools. I am appalled not only at the fact that they use calculators in class to memorize “math facts” (as opposed to teaching strategies for simple math) but that rules such as “one-way hallways” exist. As sad as it is, I have come to the conclusion that elementary schools are aimed at teaching reading, writing, arithmatic, and conformity. Nothing more. There are a plethora of inane rules that only frustrate children and parents but serve to teach obedience. Unquestioned obedience. It doesn’t matter if the rule makes sense, you have to follow it. This is why school (third grade, mind you) has become so difficult for my child. He is bright, loves learning, and (much to the annoyance of his teachers and administrators) thinks for himself. He is not violent, doesn’t have anger issues, and works hard to please his teachers. Yet, conference after conference, what I hear from teachers is, simply put, he’s not conforming enough. And every time, their tone of voice contains a hint of accusation to it. Apparently, I have gone terribly wrong by raising a compassionate, free-thinking, logical child for the past eight years. It was even once suggested to me that “behavioral medication” might solve the problem of him speaking up too much in class. Of course, I refused. And you can count on the fact that if a “one-way hallway” rule was ever implemented in my son’s school district that I would be the first parent to stand up at the next school borad meeting and demand to know why obedience has taken precedence over education in the public schools.

6

The only edit I would make to that is that they are there to teach conformity. Any math, reading or writing is only there so you won’t take your kid out.

Don’t wait until they make a rule change that means you can not refuse, or that they don’t have to tell you, or that refusal is evidence of child abuse/neglect.

Homeschooling is much easier than you may think, and not expensive at all. If it comes down to a choice between two incomes and your child’s live, which would you choose?

I know what I have chosen. My 4 year old is reading at a 4th grade level, doing second grade math, knows geography very well, loves art classes at the local city (puke) arts center and soccer at the YMCA.

http://www.secular-homeschooling.com/

7

Bravo, Curt. Good work. The good way to go.

8

Hello there I am new here. I am 31 years old and I hail from the “Glorious Nation of… Europe”!

I just wanted to bring my personal experience in public schooling matters. As a university student and a young pennyless BA I used to give personal tuition to schoolboys to raise a bit of extra money. My fields were chemistry, physics and mathematics.

When I started out I expected my pupils to be lazy boys and girls who needed to be whipped into shape, as I was teached in school. I was shocked to discover the exact opposite: most of them were eager and quick to learn once they were removed from the public school enviroment. I can honestly say that I taught to many boys and girls but I had only one genuine lazy pupil. At least a couple of them were very brilliant boys who just needed a little extra attention to give great results: how can I believe that a boy who can solve a complicated algebra problem in a matter of minutes is lazy or, even worse, “not very bright”? He’s just been taught to tackle the problem incorrectly or, worse yet, he’s been “kept behind” not to interfere with the rest of the class. In such a situation even a gifted pupil can have problems getting the bare minimum to pass class.

When I am told that today’s boys and girls are lazy, good for nothing or just plain stupid I can’t stay silent. Of course older people (particulary those from the so called “Big Generation”) will tell you that the problem is videogames, TV or anything else. I always ask how can they watch a lot of TV or play a lot of videogames if they have so many homeworks to do or if they are forced into so many useless afternoon activities. “Dumbing Us Down”? I can’t but agree.

9

Is attending school obligatory in your country? I’m also one of the people that is strictly opposed to the “public school system”. Education is the task of the parents. Public schools were always suspect to me. It alienates children from their families and their values. Home schooling has become a big issue in South Africa.

Personally I always deeply resented school and teacher, even more then other civil servants. Possibly due to the the difference in world view between the school and what I learned at home. One must imagine the pertinents of the public schooling system. First they coerce you to attend school, then they make you pay for it as well.

10

There’s a George Carlin routine that would be quite appropriate for this topic, but it’s probably too vulgar to be posted.

If I may, considering your clear displeasure with the school system, why wait? It seems to me you already think that obedience has taken precedence over education, so why wait for the system to become even more draconian?

By the way, I would like to recommend to you the works of John Taylor Gatto. If you haven’t already, read them. Pay special attention to the origins of the public school system (assuming you live in the US.)

11

In my opinion, the acceptance (whether it be passive or active acceptance) of what arguably might be called fascism and downright tyranny in our schools portends something far worse for us. Much like how the use of public schools to indoctrinate people into believing that socialism was ever good for our country is leading us towards disaster, the recent (by recent I mean a period of more than a decade but less than two) efforts to condition students to accept fascism and tyranny as acceptable solutions to security problems should be a warning to us all that much darker days are ahead of us.

As an aside, I have always loved the word draconian as an adjective for the way our government operates. The very word itself invokes medieval tyrants.

12

IF the efforts were successful, of course. Sadly, I think they might have been. Back in September, a speaker came to the college I attend to speak about “Survellience, Terrorism, and the Constitution.” I didn’t go, and I’m glad I didn’t after hearing that many of the people who attended gave the distinct impression that sacrificing liberty for security is okay. Of course, this is a college with 7,000 students, mostly from TN, hardly representative of my generation at large…

13

Before homeschooling my children, my most telling incident was when my 4th grade son brought home an essay on which he received a B. The essay was in response to a question that asked, “How would you feel in this situation if you were the main character.” The teacher wrote that my son’s writing was great but that my son would not have felt as he had written. So, the teacher took off points since she didn’t agree with my son’s feelings. Amazing!

14

I studied austrian economics so much that its principles have now become part of who I am. I am studying language teaching at a university in Quebec and I very often feel uneasy both when I study and when I teach in our schools.

School is compulsory and it shows, a lot…

-Most students DON’T want to be there (I often had 10 students 15 minutes late for every single classes, some leaving during class,running, while other just don’t open their books and stare in front of them as if dead and lifeless).

-Many teachers are EDUCATING children, not teaching them. Take note that here we have the ministry of education, not teaching. Most teachers agree that they should have the power to take over parents’ education and just shun when told that they are paid to teach, not educate. For them, teaching is educating and our new educational program is geared toward this very goal: students are now graded on (not making this up): Social conscience, environmental conscience, being critical of capitalism and over-consumption and cooperates to work with others. Those are only a couple examples. This mandatory program (even in private schools) is based on socio-constructivism and absolutely NO pure knowledge is to be taught. In my English classes ,for example, I cannot teach grammar rules. Instead, I must only speak in English and let my students learn grammar by trying to understand what is going on.

-School is mandatory, teachers want to educate students who just don’t want to be there in the first place and no pure knowledge is taught. Woopiedoodlydoo!

Add to this situation:

-That our gov takes ~50% of our income directly on our paychecks and 15% on sales taxes.

-Thus people can’t afford to have children so the gov provides 7$/day kindergarten where parents often leave their children from 6AM to 7-8 PM , often even on weekends.

-University students think it is perfectly normal and expected for both parents to work full-time because sending your children from age 0 to age 10 to a kindergarten 12-15 hours a day when you can’t take care of them is A-OK! People actually look down on me when I tell them I want a traditionnal family where I’ll be working and have my wife take care of our children (or vise-versa - I don’t care really).

15

That is just incredible. What about being critical of the nonsense governments feed people?

16

What are you talkign about? ahaha!

I’ll dig my dusty program book and write down the compentencies for English learning as well as cross-corricular competencies (thats the actual term lolz)

17

Aight heres the list of cross-curricular competencies - keep in mind that at the elementary level , students CANNOT fail because the lowest grade allowed is D which means “Has some difficulties but acheives expected goals”. At secondary/high school level students “can” fail, but I have not seen one fail an oral examination in which they had to give 2 arguments for a law even though they did not remember their own law they had created!:

We have, in order (shown as rings, starting from the outermost ring to the innermost):

Learning domains: (graded on this- these are divided in different subjects but I dont have time to write all 19 of them)

-Social universe

-Languages

-Arts

-Personnal development

-Maths, science and technologie

Cross-curricular competencies (this is what every teacher of every subject must ALSO grade students on):

-Explore Information

-Solve problems

-To use critical thinking (about capitalism, tv, environment…)

-Use of one’s creative mind

-To communicative appropriately (and no, its not effectively that is written)

-To actualize one’s potential

-To cooperate

-To use information and communication technologies

-To give oneself effective work methods

Domains of formation (not graded, but are the aims of this program)

-Media

-Orientation and entrepreneurship

-Health and well-being

-Environment and consumption

-“Living-together” and citizenship

Student

-To structure one’s identity

-To build one’s vision of the world

-To develop action capacity

There is not a single place where the word knowledge can be found.

18

That is pretty much how I’d expect a socialist borg’s educational plan to be, minus any pretensions to ‘critical’ thinking.

19

For most people to be critical is to criticize and to be free is to be free from the hardship of reality. [N]

20

Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t these things that children should learn from their parents or on their own? How can anyone put a grade on one’s ability to think objectively.

Again, aren’t these things that the children have to learn on their own?

This is an issue that’s going on in another discussion. The state has taken over the role of the parent. The problem with the state taking over the role of the parent or simply pushing a parent out of the way is that when the state fails to do its job, problems are magnified. This is what’s happening here in the states.