Sorry, but there’s just no longer any excuse for continuing this colossal waste of money and crippling of children’s minds. We could be feeding hungry nations with the money we dole out to teachers’ unions.
For instance:
A charter school in Atlanta made the news recently when its dingbat principal decided to get rid of the Pledge of Allegiance and replace it with some mummery cooked up by kids and some sort of “leadership team.” The idea was to “create a better pledge” that would stress “civic responsibility to… our global society” (http://eagnews.org/parents-fight-back-after-school-drops-pledge-of-allegiance-for-student-authored-oath-to-global-society/).
What? What is she talking about? What “global society”?
Well, gee, she says, it was just “an effort to begin our day as a fully inclusive and connected community.” Do you know what the deuce that means? I don’t! Where’s my Blather Bingo card?
Anyway, word got out, the poor peasants who pay this idiot’s salary (and benefits! don’t forget fantastic benefits!) got exceedingly ticked off, they lit a fire under some of their elected representatives and got them ticked off, too, and the school dropped the plan before the new oath to the global society could be written. Don’t you wish we could’ve seen the finished product?
The principal also said she decided to replace the Pledge of Allegiance because the kids weren’t standing up for it or reciting it.
Well, whose fault is that?
When I taught in a certain public school district in the 1990s, I was never in a classroom in which anyone but me stood up for the Pledge of Allegiance. Mostly it sounded like a penguin rookery.
Again, whose fault is that?
There is no meaningful education that public school can give you that your family can’t. Or they can send you to a decent Christian school.
But, boy, if you think our republic can survive the constant gnawing-away at its roots by teachers’ union members and other Far Left Wackos–hey, you’d better think again.
Civic responsibility to our global society? Apparently there are people out there whom believe that everything will be hunky-dory if only they can get people to come together and agree on everything. The fact that this has never happened in all of history doesn’t seem to phase them a bit.
I wish it were so simple, but the well-wishing of all the do-gooders in the world will not bring about meaningful change. We’ve had such thinking for a very long time, but I would venture to say that the world is more divided today than at any other time in my lifespan. Having children recite some fantasy at the beginning of the school day won’t fix this fallen world.
When I sub teach in the elementary schools most of the kids will recite the Pledge. In the Jr. & Sr. high schools, everyone stands up but no one says the Pledge, just the person on the PA system and me. I read recently where four of the five cheerleaders at a high school took a knee during the Nat’l Anthem and were booted off the squad.
Monkey see, monkey do.
When I subbed at the high school, home room was a gehenna of noise and random movement. It never let up for the Pledge.
That is how I perceived much of my career as a public school student. My way of doing things is to face the task at hand, finish said task, and then recreate. It struck me that schools were all about the opposite approach, finding every distraction possible and diluting the experience.
I’ve always felt that my 12 years in the public school system could have been accomplished in 2 or 3 years, at the most. The indoctrination of badness that came along for the ride was what took the most time. Yes, I learned some reading and math in school, but I also learned profanity, obscenity and was exposed to the company of immoral and dishonest people along the way. It was a massive waste of time and effort with very little to show for it.
More than one child in my extended family was home-schooled and in every case the time required to accomplish this was amazingly little. If the masses were savvy consumers, they’d go one of two directions: Either they’d demand more for their tax dollars, or would conclude that school amounted to low-cost daycare. I think that the latter accurate description.