Public Education System

     First thing I want to say is that I have family and friends who work as teachers and aides in the public education system. Please, do not get offended with what you will read. But, as you know, I speak my mind and I can not apologize for the way I feel and maybe, just maybe, you will agree with me on a point or two. So, without further ado, here is what I think about the public school system.

     The most dangerous entity at work today in America is our government school systems. First thing I want to do is get our terms straight. Our so-called "public schools" are government schools. They are operated by the government, they use government employees, on government owned and controlled property, using government funds, and should be identified as such. Supporters of this destructive system would object to such candor since most Americans know that to identify something as a "government institution" is to brand it as ineffective at best. To refer to these schools as "public" would be to associate them with the rank-and-file Americans.
     Child abuse is neither always obvious nor intentional. The most rampant form of child abuse in this country is not only legal, but is committed routinely. It is the act of taking the most precious things in your life - your children - and placing their education in the hands of the government.
     There is no denying that America has problems, it has some huge problems. I believe that these problems have a common cause - the dumbing down of America by the education received at the hands of the government. (Don't puff up and leave yet!) Year after year, our government education system releases hordes of young men and women who are completely unable to cope with, let alone understand, our culture, our history, our institutions, and what it takes to survive and to thrive in America.
     The average high school graduate can not tell you what the three branches of the government are, what each branch's responsibilities are. They can't tell you the name of our vice-president, and probably don't even know that there is a third line in presidential succession. They can't make change or do mathematical computations without a calculator or a computer. They can't read apartment leases, balance their checkbooks, or read a map. They surely have no understanding of capitalism or free enterprise, and couldn't write one paragraph describing what constituents a profit.You would die of old age before you found one freshly minted government high school graduate who could tell you the difference between a profit and a profit margin.
     A high portion of this government school graduates end up in remedial courses in college before they can take on any actual college level material. Our government educational system turns out Neanderthals with no sense of self-worth, no sense of individuality, and no understanding of what it means to live in a truly free society. Internationally, our education system is a laughingstock with a well-deserved reputation for mediocrity, if that. America may admired for a long list of things but education is not one of them. Most of the rest of the industrialized world is putting us to shame when it comes to education. Our children rank well below those of most European and Asian nations when it comes to testing on the basics. The European children are scoring well above American students on math, reading, and science tests. It is a little embarrassing to say the least.
     In the spring of 2006, John Stossel hosted an ABC special called Stupid in America. Stossel reported that American fourth-graders do well on international tests, but, by the time they reach the high school level, American children are well behind those in most other countries. After the report aired, teachers unions went crazy on Stossel, even protesting outside of his New York office. The moral of this story? Don't screw with teachers unions.
     As part of the special report, Stossel gave a portion of the international test to students in an above-average New Jersey school. The same test was given to some students in Belgium. The Belgian children made our children look like morons. When the results were released, the Belgian students themselves called the American students "stupid."
     Why do we put up with these atrocious standards? Why do we allow our local governments to seize huge amounts of cash from school taxes, and then spend impossible amounts of money not educating our children, while we sit back like a bunch of numskulls and do absolutely nothing? Aren't we better than this? Don't we want better for our children? At what point do we start realizing that the government has failed at education as it has in everything else it has tried? Was that too harsh? Tell me one other government program that the government has run well.
     In June 2005, Diane Ravitch, the education historian at New York University, wrote a column for the Wall Street Journal about math education in our government schools. she noted that in the early 1990's the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics issued a new set of teaching standards that "disparaged basic skills like addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, since all of these could be easily performed on a calculator." That is like saying we don't need to teach history because any student in need of a historical fact can just look it up in a history book.
      Ravitch's column noted that researchers William Evers and Paul Clopton had compared a 1973 algebra textbook and a "contemporary mathematics" textbook commonly used in our schools. In the 1973 book, the index entries under the letter "F" included words like factors, factoring, fallacies, finite decimal, finite set, formulas, fractions, functions. The 1998 textbook? . Reading this I have another "F" word that comes to mind - as in What the F are these people trying to teach?
     Before continuing down the road of what can we do, I want to put another misconception to rest. What if I told you that these government schools aren't there for the purpose of truly educating your child in the first place? What if the people who developed our system of government-run, compulsory education had other goals in mind? Let me suggest that our government schools were designed not to foster excellence through knowledge, but rather to insure that the American masses are relegated to an insipid, dull existence where they barely have enough knowledge and drive to sustain themselves in an anti-individualist society, but not enough of an education to understand how thoroughly our system of government is destructive of individual initiative and the quest for excellence. Also, while these schools are busy robbing our children of their uniqueness and ambition, the collectivist left regards it as an added bonus that these schools just happen to provide jobs for thousands of loyal government workers - who become good little government union members.
     If you are interested in what the people who designed this mess were thinking, John Taylor Gatto, the author of The Underground History of American Education: An Intimate Investigation into the Problems of Modern Schooling, has done some serious homework. Gratto was a teacher, and by all accounts a good one: He was named New York City's Teacher of the Year three times, and won the state title once. Gratto became disillusioned with schools - the ways they enforce conformity, the way they kill the natural creativity, inquisitiveness and natural love of learning that every child has from the beginning. Gratto began to dig into the education system.
     gatto turned up, that in 1988 the Senate Committee on Education expressed concern that the nonstandardization of education brought on by local control was actually teaching the children too much! the committee report said, "We believe that education is one o the principle causes of discontent of late years manifesting itself among the laboring classes." By their own admission, the legislators entrusted with our children's education were mostly concerned with making sure your children wouldn't learn so much that they would become discontented worker bees in their later years. Think about the number of ways the federal government stifles initiative through tax and regulatory policies. Isn't it to the advantage of the government bent on suppressing individualism and individual initiative to rob the citizens of their drive to excel?
     Find Gatto's book to learn more. But the outrages date back to the turn of the 20th Century. In 1890, the psychiatrist and education reformer John Dewey wrote:

     Every teacher should realize...that he is a social servant set apart for the maintenance of the proper
     social order and the securing of the right social growth.

Here we were, thinking that these teachers were there to teach our children - and now we learn that they are there to maintain some sort of proper social order. As determined by whom?
     In 1905, Elwood Cubberly, the future Dean of Education at Stanford University, defined schools as factories "in which raw products, children, are to be shaped and formed into finished products...manufactured like nails, and specifications for manufacturing will come from government and industry." You see, your children are to be manufactured into a finished product according to government specs.
     Gatto quoted the Rockefeller Education Board, which funded the creation of these government schools :

     In our dreams...people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present
     educational conventions [intellectual and character education] fade from our minds, and
     unhampered by tradition we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive folk. We shall
     not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or men
     of science. We have not to raise up from among them authors, educators, poets, or men of letters.
     We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians, nor lawyers, doctors, preachers,
     politicians, statesmen, of whom we have ample supply. The task we set before ourselves is very
     simple...we will organize children...and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers
     and mothers are doing in an imperfect way.

If those words don't bother you then you are part of the problem.
     These are our children we are talking about here. you need to give serious consideration to the possibility that you have willingly surrendered them to a system that was designed, and is being operated to this day, to see that all but the very brightest are passed through the system to become simple obedient Americans, ready to spend their lives working  menial 9 to 5 jobs while obediently paying their taxes and remaining subservient to the all-powerful Federal Government of the United States. Deep down I know you recognize the truth.
      The problem with many Americans is that they will quickly agree that the education system in our government schools is horribly broken, even beyond repair - except for one, the one your child attends. Your child's school is doing great, right? One Gallop poll showed that 3/4 of Americans are happy with their child's government school. As Stossel pointed out in his special, these parents - and this may include you - just don't know any better.
      Also, there is no greater sign of our delusion than those insipid MY CHILD IS AN HONOR STUDENT AT _________________ SCHOOL bumper stickers. How sad. Wake up people and smell the ignorance. You may as well put a MY CHILD CAN TIE HIS SHOES bumper sticker on your minivan.
      As things get progressively worse in the government schools, administrators and education "experts" are working hard to come up with newer and more innovative ways to fix things. Try out a few of these "ideas" and see if you think they are going to help:
     In one government school system, teachers have been instructed to stop using red ink to grade papers. Red, after all, is an angry color. Our children have a negative reaction when they see the color red on their papers. we have o sensitive to their little egos.
     Some schools have stopped using the grading system altogether. No more A, B, C, D, or F. Why? Because you should never want to tell a child they are failing. Too much for their self-esteem. Never mind that when this child goes out into the private sector, his boss will have no trouble telling him about his failure- which he is certain to have if no one ever challenged him to improve his work.
     One school system was so determined to get rid of the negative consequences of grading with letters that they went to grading with geometric shapes.! Now that is an incredible advancement in educational theory....Look mom I made all triangles on my report card!!!! Think of the pride young men and women across the country will have when they can say "I never got a single square on my report card." Should be impressive on a resume.
     The state of Florida actually grades its government schools. If a school is extremely pathetic, they can receive an "F". Yet, the self-esteem team can still make a positive out of a failure. Several years ago, an Orlando school received an "F" for the previous year's effort. When the children showed up for the following year, the teachers and administrators were all wearing T-shirts emblazoned with "F is for Fantastic!" Imagine if your child brought home a report card with all "F's" and to have them tell you it meant FANTASTIC.
     Agreed then: our government schools are failures at educating. But you have to admit they have done a fantastic job when it comes to political indoctrination. And much, if not most, of their efforts in this direction have been leftist-inspired. Look at it this way. If your child attends a Catholic school, you can expect they will be taught that Catholicism is the way to go. Same thing if they attend a Jewish school or a Baptist school. Then, why, shouldn't you expect your children to be taught the infallibility of the government while attending a government school? As a government operation, your local public school comes to praise government, not to discredit it!
     Check out your child's textbooks and see how the Bill of Rights is being presented. Harcourt Brace, a major publisher of textbooks, published a social studies "activity book" that had one page addressing the Bill of Rights. What an eye opener to our Bill of Rights that one page is.
     Now break out your copy of the U.S. Constitution and let's do some comparisons. Take our 2nd Amendment for instance, a quick glance will show you that the 2nd Amendment protects our right to keep and bear arms. "The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed," it says simply and directly. So how does the Harcourt Brace textbook present that fact? Like this: "The Second Amendment says that states may enlist citizens for a trained militia [army] and provide and train them with weapons." A complete perversion - and politically correct at that - of what the 2nd Amendment actually says. It never mentions "the right of the people....," just a quietly vague reference to the government providing weapons to the army. Can this be viewed in any other way than a blatant attempt at indoctrination? It's clearly an attempt to disabuse these young minds of the idea that the 2nd Amendment has anything to do with our individual right to own firearms. Is this the kind of education you want for your children?
     How about the 10th Amendment? This was written to to limit the power of the federal government. It reads: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people." But that is not how Harcourt Brace writes it. This is indoctrination at its worst: "The Tenth Amendment says that any powers not given to the federal government may be passed on to the state governments and the people."
     "Passed on?" Where does it say "pass on" in the Tenth Amendment? You can't "pass on" something you don't have, and the 10th Amendment clearly states that these powers are "reserved by" the states and the people, not to "pass on" to them. That is a huge difference and written by someone who obviously has an agenda. Step right up folk, the government schools are preaching the doctrine of an omnipotent government!
     Now let me introduce you to a couple of men that you won't hear about in a government school, Marx and Engels, who in 1948 wrote a little tome called The Communist Manifesto. Somewhere in its many pages Marx and Engels actually list ten things they felt were necessary to clear the way for a Communist society. Several items are very interesting, but the one I am looking at is number ten. "FREE EDUCATION FOR ALL CHILDREN IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS" Marx and Engels knew that the fastest way to bring about a change in the basic structure of society would be to seize control of the hearts and souls of just one generation. Take one generation, destroy their love of true freedom, instill in them a reverence for government and a rejection of the concept of individuality, and you are on the way. That, more than anything else, may accurately describe the role of our government schools today.
     If there is an upside, the problem can also be fixed in a single generation. The fix? Competition. End the government monopoly on education and give the free market a chance. Like when UPS came on the scene, how long did it take you to stop using the U.S. Postal Service and shipping packages with UPS? Our government is a case study in bad motives and bad results. And the answer to both is competition - in the form of school choice.
      Have you ever noticed how many government school teachers send their own children to private schools? These teachers are in these schools everyday. They know how bad they are, and they are willing to sacrifice to save their own children. The answer to the problem of our failing schools is not in spending more money, hiring more teachers, or tweaking the curriculum. the answer is to be found in freedom. The freedom of parents to choose how their money is spent to educate their children.
      As noted earlier, many European schools out perform the United States government schools. To add insult to injury, those schools are outperforming our schools while spending less money per child to do it. How are they doing this? One of the biggest differences between here and Europe is that the money follows the student, not vice verse. European parents have a choice as to where they send their children to school. Once that decision is made and the child is enrolled, the government sends the money. In America, your child is basically assigned to a school based  on your home address. That is where the money has been sent, therefor, that is where your child goes.
     So, the first thing that needs to happen is we need to put government schools into competition amongst themselves. Allow parents to compare the schools within a certain geographical area, then they can decide on the right one for their child. Once the child is enrolled, then the money can be sent to the school. Yes, the teacher unions will raise hell over this, let them yell. But, parents need some sort of choice they feel will be best for their child's education.
     Next, we need to involve private free enterprise. Don't give the parents the choice of only sending their child to a government school, but, also, give them the option of a privately owned school. This is what is commonly known as a school voucher system, and it is the worst nightmare for the teacher's unions.
     There are many complaints about the lack of parental involvement in their children's education. What can be expected? The government assigns the children to a school without consulting the parents, with no consideration of the parents wishes. Then the government creates a curriculum and grading system which the parents have no control over. How can a parent be encouraged to get involved in a system in which it does not matter what they want for their children.? If a parent is wanted to be involved, then give them a choice in the education of their children. Put their child's responsibility back into the parents hands. Let the parents compare private schools to government schools by looking at performance scores. The parents would be able to trade notes on the local schools amongst themselves as to which schools offer the better services, teachers, and administrators.
      Most parents do not know how much better their school systems could be. Competition could bring innovations that we can only dream of today. With the school voucher and school choice programs, a whole now industry could be built up around the education of children. Parents would look back and wonder why they had ever left the education of their children in the hands of the government. The opponents of school choice and vouchers are afraid that the best students would leave the government schools, perhaps causing the closing of some government schools. If one government school has to close its doors because it can't compete, then that means there are other schools that ARE doing the job and attracting students. The empty school would more than likely be leased or purchased by private operators and used as the campus of another private school venture.
     There are many private schools in nearly every community across America that do a better job at educating children than the local government schools, on less money per student also. Poor parents want the best for their children just like any one else. Actually, poor parents may be more motivated than well-to-do parents, since they have every reason to make sure their children receive the education they never got. These parents will create a demand for quality education that private entrepreneurs will be more than happy to address.
     Under this plan the government schools will be in there competing for these vouchers, along with everyone else. If the government wants to compete they should compete. If all kinds of schools, public, private, parochial, are all fighting to fill the desks, it can only be healthy for the student body. The way for the government schools to win the students is to offer a superior product. Yet, as of today, this is not the attitude at play today. The last thing the union's want is competition.
     Remember, these are government employees, no different from garbage collectors or airport security screeners. They are concerned with job security and not job quality. The late Albert Shanker, former president of the American Federation of Teachers, certainly felt that way, stating, "When schoolchildren start paying union dues, that's when I'll start representing the interests of schoolchildren." Shanker was considered one of America's top educators. Shanker had also toyed with Communism in his earlier years, but rejected it as impractical. Shanker stated, "I knew that the Socialist party was not going to elect a president of the United States, but you had the Democratic Party which was more liberal and stood for at least some of the things socialism stood for. So the thing to do was to operate within the Democratic Party."
     There is one thing we could do , easily and inexpensively, to improve the quality of the education system in America almost instantly - REDUCE the power of the teacher's unions. These unions are dedicated to the concept that the government should be in charge of educating the masses. If you want to look for yourself, Google the words "American Federation of Teachers" or "National Association of Educators" and study their agendas. A vast majority of the resolutions presented at the teacher union conventions concern the opposition of the school voucher programs and the private competition to the government school systems.
     In Florida, a few years ago, the state attempted to implement a voucher system. It was called the "A-Plus" school accountability program. The state began grading the government schools. If a school got an "F" grading two years in a row, the students were offered a voucher they could use to find a better school, public or private. This meant the government school teachers had to perform. If they failed to perform they could lose students. thus, they could lose jobs. But, as we all know, when you are employed by the government, you are not supposed to have to compete with private enterprise or fear losing your job. So, the Florida teachers union filed a lawsuit, and they won, in the Florida Supreme Court. They were successful in ending the voucher system in the state.
     We live in a free enterprise system in America. Each and everyone of us has had to compete throughout our lives, in one way or another. We compete for the better jobs. We compete for clients. We compete for recognition. We even compete for mates. Then along comes the government school teachers to tell us that competition does not belong in our children's education. I know there are dedicated teachers out there, I know a few personally, but they are vastly outnumbered. In Florida, four of the recent winners of teacher of the year award praised the "A-Plus" accountability program. These teachers knew that the program worked. Gains were being seen in test scores. The number of students reading at and above grade level went up. The gains put Florida above the national average. Then the union stepped in and halted the entire program.
     So, who are these teachers and where do they come from? If you take a look at all the students who enroll in college to pursue a degree in education, you will find, as a group, their SAT scores are among the lowest in the country. What about Graduate school? No better! As a group, they score the lowest on the GRE. Now, check this out, government schools are the only schools in America that require a certification to teach. A private school can hire anyone they wish to teach any subject. This almost insures that your child will be in a class being taught by a teacher who is knowledgeable in the subject they teach. Isn't that a more reasonable approach to educating your children?
     I believe the easiest way to turn this country around is by educating its citizens, and the best way to do this is by an educational system that stresses excellence through open and free market competition. If it causes a few government teachers their job, then they probably weren't doing their job anyway. The schools aren't there to offer them permanent employment, but are there to educate the children.
     We know that the schools need to teach the basics like basic math and reading, but what else should be taught to make good citizens:
     Let's teach that America is NOT a democracy. Never have been, were never meant to be, and never should be. Teachers need to explore the Federalist Papers with the students. Explain to them why the founding fathers abhorred the idea of a democracy. Learn why the word democracy never appeared in a presidential state of the union address until Woodrow Wilson.
     Students should be taught that the founding fathers wanted most of the governing done as close to home as possible. Why a letter to a local politician will carry more weight than a letter to a Congressman in Washington.
     Teach that it's absurd to believe that when the Bill of Rights was added to our Constitution, it was decided that nine of the amendments should protect basic rights the people already held, while one amendment, the Second, should grant rights to the government.
     Show that the government of Uganda has official representation in Washington, D. C., but the state of Utah does not.
    Teach that our Constitution sought to severely limit the powers of the federal government, and that these limitations are being largely ignored today. This is what happens when you consider the Constitution to be a "living document."
     Teach the aspiring jocks in the class that their chances of ever reaching professional level are less than one in a thousand. But if they commit themselves to becoming a successful businessman, doctor, or lawyer, it is nearly certain they will succeed.
     Teach that there are three keys to preventing poverty: Stay in school, don't get pregnant, and take any job they can get until a better job opens up to them.
     And the number one lesson that should be taught is that despite the problems that exist both here and abroad, there is not now, nor has there ever been, any country that has done so much to foster the spirit of human freedom and to offer every person a chance, if they choose, to use their talents and willingness to work hard to achieve great things.