There is no satisfying government’s appetite for controlling people’s lives. Please trust me on that.
This is something we should remember.
Back in the Obama years, Big Brother was spending our tax money on various projects aimed at gaining total control over our lives. Like this one.
They spent some millions of dollars on a “smart” gizmo you’d put inside your shoe so they could track your weight and eating habits, 24/7. I wonder what happened to that little science project.
Election Day will be here soon.
Voting for Democrats is voting to enslave yourselves. And others.
What amazes me, is the appetite many people have for accepting tyranny.
Yes, you’d think they’d resent it. They must’ve just loved being in school.
… and I detested it. This wasn’t because I hated learning, which I love to this day, but because they were teaching obedience to arbitrary authority, and anything else you learned could be a pleasant bonus. At my time literacy and basic math skills were taken away by most students, but little else. I feel that my 12 years in the public school system actually afforded me 2-3 years worth of actual learning.
We do need education, but the school system, IMHO, is trying to standardize a process that is by its nature, individual in nature. I can offer no better example than myself. I was reading 5th and 6th grade books while in 1st grade. Reading came very easy to me, and to be honest, the time spent in reading related studies was mostly wasted upon me, because I had already figured it out. Instead, I should have been allowed to advance and once I got to the point where I could read at a college level, I should have been considered as complete. This would have happened somewhere in grade school, and had I been availed learning paths appropriate to my needs, it probably would have happened by 2nd or 3rd grade. I’ve grown in experience as a reader throughout my life, but by 3rd grade, at the latest, I needed access to material of value, in place of material designed to teach reading skills.
OTOH, my handwriting was, and remains, atrocious. As the subjects of reading and writing morphed in to the more general category of “English”, my grades declined, because my handwriting is poor. I am dysgraphic, and remain so to this day. I am currently studying for an industry certification, and my handwritten notes look like they were written by a first grader, with poor penmanship. This will never be remediated, because I believe it is a neurological limitation.
Instead, I should have been taught to type, and disciplined into proper touch typing technique, form an early age. I assure you, my overall grades would have been better. Instead of this, I was called, stupid, lazy, sloppy and lacking in motivation. There are a couple of teachers in my past for whom I have serious disdain, because of verbal abuse. OTOH, there are several more whom sincerely sought to help, but were hidebound by an educational system that had no place for someone in my situation. So they gave me a D and hoped that I’d do better in the future.
When I first saw a Word Processor in the movie Absence of Malice (Sally Fields, Paul Newman) I wanted on, and when I finally got my hands on one, I started writing like it was nobody’s business. Has this been available in my school years, I assure you that I would have placed better in virtually every subject.
Math came easily, and by second grade, I had tired of rote exercises to teach me something an already innately understood. I believe that had I been allowed to progress at my own rate, I would have been much better off. By third grade, I actually taught long division to other students, before the teacher introduced the subject. She was a great teacher, but bound by the curriculum. What I really needed was applied mathematics, and hopefully the progression from that point on would have been easier, instead of rote exercises which wasted time.
Geography was a walk in the park, and I should have been able to test out of that subject, from early on. I took an assessment in my mid 20s, and my score on geographical subjects was very near the 100th percentile of anyone who had taken that assessment. Once again, the answer would have been to allow me to advance into something with practical application.
Music was telling. It started out as singing, and I did so enthusiastically. I wasn’t particularly gifted at it, but I sang competently. Our school, bless them, had a good music program and we had a teacher who taught reading skills and some basics of theory, which I ignored, because I could see no purpose in it. Then, towards the end of grade school, I started playing guitar, including learning to read music, and I suddenly became an A student. I now had reason to be interested, and I was very interested.
My interest continued throughout my school year, throughout life, and to this very day. Somewhere in my early twenties, I had a series of epiphanies regarding music theory, and I believe that the theory taught in grade school had been lying in some remote corner of my mind, and made itself known, helping me to come to the point of these epiphanies.
I have taught private music lessons and played for money. I found that the guitar required a lot of discipline to play cleanly, but I got to where I wanted to be. Mastering the voice was even more challenging, but I have kept at it, and added vocals to my tool belt, as the years went on. I appreciate the music education availed in the public schools, but would criticize the one-size-fits-all nature of how it was applied. If there is going to be mandatory music classes as part of the education system, it should be ungraded, because not everyone will benefit from it, while others will take that information and put it to use.
Students with low affinity with music should not suffer bad grades for their limited affinity, and shouldn’t have to feel bad that they aren’t achieving the great success some other students will experience. Had someone put a ukulele in my hands in first or second grade, that would have been very good, and I would have grown in my skills from an earlier age. But music education has to be tailored to the individual.
One last hurrah was Aviation, one of the last electives I took in the public school system. In our high school, there was a retired Air Force Colonel whom taught history. He was a pretty decent history teacher, but then he asked to be allowed to teach an aviation class, sort of as an experiment. Basically, the syllabus was Private Pilot Ground School, which is a challenging subject to walk into cold. I had an ongoing interest in aviation, going in, but this course focused my interest and I did well in it. This was a real world class, with real world application. Eight years later, I passed my Private Pilot written exam, mostly on the strength of this one class, and went on to work in aviation holding two Airmen’s Certificates.
So, as a synopsis, they taught me to read, but no one can teach me handwriting. They taught me math, but it really wasn’t until Aviation that I got to apply that math. They taught me music, and since then, I’ve used the reading, the math, the music theory and the aviation training. I had to compensate for my limitations in handwriting, but once I had a workaround for lousy penmanship, I found out that I could express myself in the written word. I used the music and aviation directly, and ended up working on networks and communications systems, which is essentially applied math and a lot of reading. What I regret is that the enforced schedule of public schools, hindered me from advancing in subjects in which I did well.
At the end of the day, government, whether in education, or any other area, tends to lay a heavy hand upon individual needs. They claim to help “the people”, but it’s not easy to find any single person who has been helped. The schools helped me, but they hindered me even more. I think that this is very common, when dealing with governments.
Very well said–thank you.
I think the lesson here is: here is WHY home schooling and self-education always outperform the public education model.
Always.
Had I been home schooled, I would have learned more, and done so in less time. I’m a man who loves to get ahead of problems and challenges. I use today’s opportunities to get in front of tomorrow’s challenges. If I could have had the flexibility of home schooling, I would have gotten ahead on my good subjects, allowing more time for the subjects I found difficult. I believe that overall, I would have been much better off.
Beyond that, schooling would not have taken up most of my daylight hours, and I could have pursued learning by doing. When I was 12 years old, or so, I was fixing my own motorcycle (just a beat up old trail bike) and I learned a lot from that. If I had more hands on opportunities, I would have learned practical skills, but it also would have made me more interested in math, physics, etc. Try to fly an airplane without math; it can’t be done. Try to work on a complex electrical of mechanical system without math and physics, and once again, it can’t be done. If I had been exposed to these things earlier in life, it would have spurred interest in the academic subjects, as well.
One other great learning tool, which is sadly becoming less popular, is Amateur Radio. Studying for that license was ver6 educational, and made my FCC Operators license a lot easier to obtain.
I often wonder what the founders of this country would think if they saw all this madness. They probably would think of how hard they all worked back then to establish a republic only to have it disintegrate in later years.
They would be extremely vexed!
If these devises are so great let the people decide for themselves if they want to use them.