Worse Than Ever: Government
Schools After 35 Years
American Thinker,
by
Lawrence M. Ludlow
Original Article
Posted By: Imright,
8/15/2019 7:44:47 AM
As a semi-retired business writer who taught in Detroit 35 years ago, I returned to the classroom because a local high school was unable to replace a Latin teacher who had resigned. I hold an advanced degree in medieval studies and renewed my certification to teach Latin, history, and social studies. Once in class, I witnessed firsthand the politicized atmosphere of today’s factory-style government-monopoly schools. My first exposure to school politics came when I renewed my certification. The 1982 certificate only listed the courses I could teach. In contrast, the 2018 version had a 300-word “Code of Ethics” that
1) Compulsory school attendance is an anachronism. It is a relic of our agrarian past when society rested on the tripod of family, church and school with the latter two acting in loco parentis. As we know, the left have targeted the first two for destruction. Schools were retained and repurposed as indoctrination centers with a special emphasis on cultivating hatred and disdain for family and faith. Adults want school as free babysitting. Schools want kids for ideological purposes and to funnel money to teachers unions. Neither is a rationale for herding the few smart kids into mostly unsupervised classrooms and common areas with thugs, addicts, perverts, criminals, etc. It's well past time to dissolve the huge monstrosities that are ATMs for teachers and tax dollars and establish small, specialized academies. A good student might attend 2-3 of these per day. A bad student should be directed to vocational programs or kicked out entirely. Don't want to learn? Your problem not ours. Hit the bricks.
2) Schools involve parents' kids. Schools are ubiquitous. Schools are a ruse to jack up property taxes in order to be near schools that aren't open-air prisons. Schools often employ otherwise conservative suburbanites who have a financial and emotional stake and will defend bad schools and worse curriculum despite mountains of evidence. They will amplify the kind of depravity they would never teach their own children at home.
Schools are a one-size-fits-all proposition that actually fits no one. They are unfit for purpose and long ago crossed the line between benefit and detriment to society.
16 people like this.
Forgot to close my italics markup after parentis. Apologies.
3 people like this.
Reply 3 - Posted by:
worried 8/15/2019 8:45:24 AM (No. 152770)
I beg to differ on sending a bad student to a vocational program. Having taught in a vocational-technical school, it is no place for dummies. Math, a stumbling block for many kids, is required in every trade. If you want them to become a machine operator, that does not make one a machinest. Because one can draw a straight line doesn't mean one can operate a cad program, or design the inner workings of a space shuttle. Just kick the bad ones out and let them find their own way. Let the students who really want to learn do so without the distractions caused by the "bad kids."
12 people like this.
Reply 4 - Posted by:
Strike3 8/15/2019 8:48:39 AM (No. 152772)
Hand anything over to liberals and the outcome is always a huge, expensive mess. The primary purpose of schools was once to teach. Now it is to funnel money to democrats while creating more democrats. The first indication of the changeover was apparent when the teachers' parking lot lost all of the old Volkswagens and filled up with Cadillac, Volvo, Lexus and Lincoln luxury cars. In my day we could look up to teachers as intelligent, dedicated and helpful. Today's drones are merely placeholders in the system who despise students and parents equally.
9 people like this.
Reply 5 - Posted by:
MickinPhoenix 8/15/2019 8:57:55 AM (No. 152782)
Nothing new here. Since the Department of Education came into being it has been downhill ever since. And will not improve until it is gone forever.......Mick
18 people like this.
Reply 6 - Posted by:
fayebeck 8/15/2019 8:58:53 AM (No. 152783)
It's all the parents fault.
2 people like this.
Reply 7 - Posted by:
Pinkpanther 8/15/2019 9:21:41 AM (No. 152806)
I usually homeschool my 8 kids until high school then send them to a Catholic high school, but we recently moved to a highly rated school district in Texas (and Catholic schools are too expensive) so I decided to put my 8 yr old son and 12 yr old daughter in the public schools this year to get a break. I pulled my 12 yr old daughter out the first day when she came home with papers that had quotes from Michele Obama and Ariana Grande as well as my daughter saying the teachers were pushing an anti-Christian, leftist agenda (they aren’t even trying to hide it). She’s going online now.
9 people like this.
Reply 8 - Posted by:
red1066 8/15/2019 9:26:02 AM (No. 152809)
I've been telling people about this for years. But since schools have become little serfdoms all to their own, it's easy to hide what's going on inside. Add in all the security schools have these days, and any taxpayer who wants to find out anything has to go through the gate keepers that set up the system. School systems and schools feel they don't have to answer to anyone.
6 people like this.
Reply 9 - Posted by:
ZeldaFitzg 8/15/2019 9:46:10 AM (No. 152831)
Five years ago our younger son was completing his Master's degree, which would directly and immediately correlate to advancement in his profession. As an adult, he was completely paying his tuition and expenses. Tuition was outrageous, even to this state school. He did not get a loan to pay this. (We never got loans to pay for education.)
The more outrageous things was that during his studies the university built an outrageously luxurious fitness facility. In upscale amenities it could compete with any private health club / fitness center in the county.
Our son was outraged because, as a fully employed adult, he did not have time to use the facility, an because the facility was paid for largely with his tuition dollars. We see universities right and left building and maintaining buildings superfluous to their rightful mission, and creating and maintaining programs insultingly superfluous to said mission.
I believe that education, as it stands, is not the future of our country. This was true when universal education was put forth generations ago and continued to be true while the schools had a set mission related to basics and continued to follow that mission. Today (slightly off topic) I believe that universal education has failed, since it threw the basics overboard. Give us **good** vocational training for those students who require it for their advancement and happiness, and **good** universities for students who are fit to profit from higher education. I would say re-vamp K-12 entirely, but I can't think of many I would trust to do so.
9 people like this.
Government schools in the US are nothing more than state-supported daycare centers and indoctrination centers for socialist claptrap and revisionist history. They would be the envy of the former German Democratic Republic.
2 people like this.
Reply 11 - Posted by:
Smart11344 8/15/2019 1:56:58 PM (No. 153128)
I graduated from HS in 1962 and that was the last years there was any semblance of who was in charge. Many students have flown over the Cuckoo's Nest and are destroyning the educational system.
2 people like this.
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