Tag: how public schooling hurts America

Hey, We Try REPRINT

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

From August 8, 2019

Image result for images of dog in a tree

On this blog alone there are enough “education follies” posts to fill a good-sized book–actual news reports of real follies and outrages perpetrated by what we laughingly call “public education.”

In spite of the mass of information to the contrary, tens of millions of our fellow Americans continue to send their children to public schools to be educated by strangers trained by very Far Left teachers’ unions–and then on to college to finish the job. Why do they do this?

After some fruitless conversation in a chat room yesterday, it was made clear to me again, for the umpteenth hundredth time, that people simply refuse to believe the truth about public education. The truth is plain for all to see: it would take some effort to miss it. Nevertheless, most of America does not see. Decide for yourself whether it’s because they really can’t see or have just chosen, obstinately, not to see.

Yesterday the thing they refused to believe (the people I was chatting with) was that the single biggest lesson taught in public schools is that your age-group peers–other kids–are the most important people in your life. So you must please them, you must conform to their expectations, you must try, no matter what the cost, to be popular. They are much more important than your family. Your family is so un-cool! Boring! But conformity with your “friends” is everything.

That was the case even when I went to school, way back when.

It is still the case now.

Uh, people–could you, like, just take a minute to look at our freakin’ culture? Do you like what you see? Really?

Sing louder.

Keep trying.

God help us.

The Crazy Thinking Behind Our Crazy Public Schools REPRINT

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Arne Duncan's new book How Schools Work: An Inside Account

It was nice of him to answer my question–but his ideas were truly out to lunch.

Back in 2010 I interviewed America’s Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan. He shared with me his vision of year-round school, 14 hours a day… and virtually a total ownership of the people by the government.

https://chalcedon.edu/magazine/messianic-secretary-calls-for-messianic-schools

“Community centers that address the needs of children…” What kind of needs would those be?

A Washington Post columnist gushed over the benefits to her children of their year-round school: “My second-grade daughter… made potions in her Harry Potter class.” Did they work?

Too many Christians totally don’t appreciate just how crazy public “educators” are. I’m talking howling-at-the-moon crazy.

Homeschool, Christian school… while you still can!

America is “educating” herself to death.

Rooting ‘Critical Race Theory’ Out of Virginia’s Schools REPRINT

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Glenn Youngkin is sworn in as the governor of Virginia : NPR

Go get ’em, Glenn!  From January 20,2022

Virginia’s new Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin, has asked all the personnel of the state’s “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” office… to resign (https://citizenfreepress.com/breaking/glenn-youngkin-just-gutted-virginias-state-crt-office/).

His new Chief DEI Officer, Angela Sailor, has already replaced “Equity”–a word that leftids have rendered totally meaningless–with “Opportunity.” She has also called Critical Race Theory, beloved of Far Left “educators,” a “dangerous philosophical poisoning in the blood stream.”

The question is, why is there still a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion office? How is this anything but a relic of crazed left-wing social engineering? It was created to activate Critical Race Theory as the doctrine behind the teaching that all white people are born evil and all non-whites are hopeless victims of “oppression,” etc., etc.

Well, cleaning out the Augean Stables of Virginia’s Dept. of Education will not be accomplished in a day: there is an immense quantity of muck to muck out. We should all be grateful to Gov. Youngkin for getting the work off to a good start. He is showing American that it can be done: we do not have to bow before the teachers’ unions.

Some of us would prefer to see “public education” scrapped altogether, and all the children removed from the schools. We expect it will be necessary to do this.

But meanwhile, Gov. Youngkin is trying to do his state and our nation good service; may God bless his efforts.

 

The Mystery of the Rotary Phone REPRINT

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

From April 18, 2019

These two 17-year-olds are smart enough to be engineering students: but can they figure out how to use a rotary phone?

We’re not making fun of them. They’ve never seen, let alone used, one of these before. And yet it wasn’t so long ago that a rotary phone was found in every American household.

This is how knowledge gets lost. And it can happen quickly.

All right, rotary phones are obsolete, we don’t need them anymore, few people still have one. The rotary phone has been replaced by more advanced technology. But much more important knowledge can get lost, without being replaced: a knowledge of history, for instance, or a grasp of civics. Thanks to our laughably inadequate “education” system, knowledge of history and civics is all but extinct. That’s why there are millions of young people who literally do not know that the law of the land, the Constitution, limits what the government is allowed to do.

We don’t need the rotary phone anymore, but we still need history and civics. And we’re quickly losing that knowledge.

We could wind up paying a very heavy penalty for that.

Confessions of a Blindfolded Newsman REPRINT

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

6,888 Blindfold Photos and Premium High Res Pictures - Getty Images

From March 27, 2023

In the 1970s the U.S. Dept. of Education was founded, and various states set up their own departments of education, or else greatly expanded the powers of those already in existence. These steps drastically altered the state of public education in America… not that it ever was all that good an idea in the first place.

I was a newspaper reporter and editor in those days. Among other duties, I covered three school boards and had part-timers covering the rest. When a major story came along, we worked on it together.

Very important changes were put in place back then. These happened right before my eyes: and I’m ashamed to tell you that I didn’t see them. Right out there in front of me, and I might as well have been wearing a blindfold. I can only say I couldn’t see the forest for the trees. Too many distractions kept me from seeing the big picture.

I saw the state education bureaucracy swallow the authority of the local boards–and didn’t realize what I was seeing. I remember now a meeting of the Matawan Board of Education, in which a nerd from the state came and told the board members what New Jersey would be expecting of them from now on.

One member objected. “What is this?” he said. “It sounds like one of those old Soviet five-year plans!” The response was a coy “Tee-hee! Once you buy into the program, you’ll have a clearer understanding.” What I didn’t realize was that he already had a very clear understanding of exactly what the state was doing! But he wound up resigning, and it never occurred to me to sit down with him for an in-depth interview.

Dammit all! I was a newsman, and this was news! I had it in my power to inform the public that they were all being taken for a ride. That they were down there in Trenton growing the government at the community’s expense. That the teachers’ union had the state wrapped around its little finger.

So the people who paid for the schools, and sent their children there, would no longer be getting what they thought they paid their taxes for, but what Far Left teachers’ unions and quasi-Marxist, grey ponytail “educators” in Trenton thought they ought to get.

By and by the newspaper workload became too heavy a burden for me and I resigned, too.

People who don’t much like us, and want to change our way of life, have been working on our schools for fifty years.

Pull your kids out of there. That’s all that’s left for us to do.

Can They Really Sidestep the Constitution? REPRINT

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Image result for images of democrats shredding the constitution

 

From February 15, 2020

First you rip up the State of the Union Speech, and then the Constitution

Can the states get together and chop a piece off the Constitution?

Democrats have made a lot of noise lately about abolishing the Electoral College, which protects 47 states from being dictated to by New York, California, and Illinois. Because there’s no longer any meaningful instruction in civics anywhere, most people don’t understand what the Electoral College is, how it works, and why we need it. That makes them easy prey to pious babblings about “making the country more democratic.”

So a bunch of blue states, Democrat states, have this thing going, the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact: by which, if they get enough states signed up, they can completely overturn the purpose of the Electoral College by providing for all the electoral votes of any state to go to the candidate that wins the popular vote, nationally–no matter how the people in that state may have voted. This is an end run around the Constitution.

For the sake of simplicity, what does the Constitution actually say? Do you need to go to law school for 17 years before you can begin to understand it? Let’s just see what it says (https://www.thoughtco.com/constitution-article-i-section-10-3322336).

Article 1, Section 10–we are interested primarily in the third clause, which says:

“No state shall, without the consent of Congress… enter into any agreement or compact with another state, or with a foreign power…”

I don’t think that’s so hard to understand. Do you? Like, the whole section is merely saying that states aren’t allowed to act like independent countries.

An immense amount of pettifogging lawyer lingo has sprung up around these clear and simple words, so that now no one is sure whether or not the states can drastically alter the Constitution without going through the amendment process. Our founders purposely made the amendment process long and difficult, so that foolish things should not be done in the heat of the moment–historically, a fatal failing of “democracy.”

But because our education system is a bad joke played on us, every day, by radicals, most people know very little, if any, of our country’s history, virtually nothing of her founding documents, and have little or no appreciation of what those things are that make the United States uniquely great among all the other countries in the world.

Trust me on this: you absolutely don’t want to trade our Constitution for the United Kingdom’s. Or anybody else’s. The United States grew great because it was different! And one of the most important factors in that difference was our Constitution. As written! As duly amended! And certainly not as “re-imagined” by slippery, conniving liberals and their sleazy lawyers.

Besides which, you’d think just about anyone would be smart enough, when he hears liberals recommend we do something, to realize that doing the very opposite is always best.

‘Teaching Children to Lie’ (My Newswithviews Column, Dec. 14)

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

liar: Think you are good at lying? You could be a psychopath ...

What might the future hold for a republic that spends billions of dollars to “teach” children things that are not true? To curry favor with “authority” by telling teachers and other adults what those adults want to hear, even when both parties know it isn’t true? To get ahead by lying.

Teaching Children to Lie

Wow. Won’t that make our business and our politics just swell, with everybody lying to us all the time? It’s already hard enough to get a straight answer!

And which outcome is worse? People learn to believe the lies they’re told–or else wind up believing nobody? Either way is bad for us.

Public education: working every day to dumb us down and strip us of our freedom.

‘Can We Make California’s Schools Worse?’ (2019)

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

183 Classroom Chaos Stock Photos, High-Res Pictures, and ...

Just try learning anything! (Betcha can’t!)

This is another one of those stories that sort of fades away before we can find out what ultimately happened.

https://leeduigon.com/2019/12/page/2/

Just judging by my own teaching experience, abolishing suspension as a disciplinary measure would make it impossible–yes, I mean impossible–to maintain order in the classroom. I thank God I don’t have to teach anymore.

Sometimes, given the absurdities and idiocies of our system, I wonder that anybody ever gets educated at all.

Toldja So

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Who needs the Bible when they’ve got Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out? One of the books she swore in on…

Well, we warned you, didn’t we? A public school is no place for your children–especially for Christian children.

A few days ago in Central Bucks, Pennsylvania, an incumbent school board president, recently re-elected, had herself sworn in on a stack of smutty with-it “books” (I use the word loosely) aimed at children to turn them into good little nothings (https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/12/sick-democrat-pennsylvania-school-board-president-sworn-stack/). In civilized places they swear you in on the Bible.

A bunch of other Democrats got elected, too; so the school board there is now majority-Left and pumped up to indoctrinate the kiddies.

And here’s what we warned you about, boys and girls:

The Democrat Party pumped several million dollars into this local school board election! Where the devil are they getting all that money?

Are these the people you want “educating” your children?

‘Public School Assignment: Find Mom and Dad’s Sex Toys’ (2015)

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98 Propeller Hat Stock Photos, High-Res Pictures, and Images ...

You could win this! The hat, not the person wearing it. She comes extra.

I went to school when such things as “sex toys” did not exist; or if they did, I had certain never heard of them.

In 2015 a public school teacher assigned students to snoop around and find their parents’ “sex toys,” to be exhibited as trophies to the class.

Try to guess what would have happened to any teacher who did that in 1963.

Public School Assignment: Find Mom and Dad’s Sex Toys

The more time passes, and the more I see, the more convinced I am that public education is culture-killing on a lavish scale: it would have made Caligula drool with envy.

We are “educating” ourselves to death.

And civilizations do die. You could look it up.