The demise of public education
American Thinker,
by
David L. Rosenthal
Original Article
Posted By: Imright,
8/20/2019 6:08:16 AM
One may believe that those in charge of public education are qualified to administer the task of educating America's youth. One may believe they have the best interests of society at heart. And one may believe they are doing the best they could do, given the conditions under which they have to work. Abundant evidence, however, points to the conclusion that none of those beliefs is valid. Public education has become an institutionalized form of child abuse. Rather than being a tool used to prepare children to become productive adults, public education is being used to indoctrinate them to believe what powerful interest groups wish them
Reply 1 - Posted by:
F15 Gork 8/20/2019 6:34:13 AM (No. 156874)
Not a day goes by that my wife doesn’t take a knee and give thanks to God that her 35+ years of teaching are now in her rear view window. Teaching and journalism share one thing in common - neither are performing their primary mission anymore.
55 people like this.
Reply 2 - Posted by:
Paperpuncher 8/20/2019 7:11:13 AM (No. 156900)
The answer is yes. School vouchers work.
22 people like this.
Reply 3 - Posted by:
Rinktum 8/20/2019 7:16:51 AM (No. 156904)
There are still good public schools in this country but they are being taken over by progressive ideology. Small town schools have not changed all that much but we do see recently graduated teachers who have been hired that are open to the progressive ideology they received in college. Many parents who move to small towns bring progressive thinking with them and as time goes by our little schools are being fundamentally changed. The charm and traditional values which drew them here are now under attack by these same left leaning parents. Education is under attack because progressives know it is the first place where they can have real influence.
We must be our children’s advocates. We have to be involved and vocal. There is still a deep swath of people who hold to traditional values in this country and we must let our voices and opinions be heard. We cannot leave the field of ideas to progressives. They offer nothing but toxic rhetoric that is harmful to children. Pay attention to who is on your school board. Make your presence and concerns known. Don’t give up the fight. Our children are worth it.
34 people like this.
Reply 4 - Posted by:
udanja99 8/20/2019 8:01:06 AM (No. 156943)
Precisely why we sent our daughter to an all girls Catholic school for 8 years.
23 people like this.
Reply 5 - Posted by:
Laotzu 8/20/2019 8:08:31 AM (No. 156954)
Was watching back-to-school coverage on the local morning news yesterday. At one elementary school in a Mountain West suburb the principal reported 40% ESL student body, and new offerings of "yoga and restorative programs." #WhyJohnnyCan'tRead
22 people like this.
Reply 6 - Posted by:
LC Chihuahua 8/20/2019 8:11:34 AM (No. 156960)
A friend of mine home schools her son. One thing she found out was how many teachers actually have their own children home schooled. They don't think well of public education either.
I had 12 years of catholic school. There are two reasons for this. The first is to get a religious education. The other is to get away from the kids with behavior problems. I remember two kids that were transferred to public schools after getting into trouble.
20 people like this.
Reply 7 - Posted by:
BarryNo 8/20/2019 8:20:26 AM (No. 156978)
As the lefty activists infiltrate churches across America, the quality of education slumps, as the parochial schools surrender to their heretical agenda. Unless we do something, the only result of a US education will be dumb, or dumber.
17 people like this.
Reply 8 - Posted by:
VietVet68 8/20/2019 8:31:31 AM (No. 156992)
I went to Catholic school until the 5th grade when I moved and started attending a public school. One noteworthy thing I discovered is that I was academically ahead of my public school friends in every subject. There's certainly something to be said for parochial schools.
28 people like this.
Reply 9 - Posted by:
GO3 8/20/2019 8:50:42 AM (No. 157008)
Revoke all truancy laws and allow school choice across the board. If home schooling is the answer or parochial schools are the solution so be it. The surviving public schools will eventually have better students and better teachers. It's called competition.
12 people like this.
Reply 10 - Posted by:
Dodge Boy 8/20/2019 8:51:24 AM (No. 157009)
My niece who married a farmer and now raising two kids in Fort Morgan, Colorado reports that the Fort Morgan public schools now teach with English as a SECOND language with both Somali and Spanish as the primary languages in which teaching is conducted. And the kids are receiving a steady diet of progressive ideology in the language arts and history classes. Gang activity is a significant problem now in Fort Morgan. The local white kids are the target. All of this is happening in what was once a sleepy little farming town where the local sugar beet plant and a cheese processing plant gladly employ these Somalis and illegals. And the school principals can't understand why parents have pulled their kids out of Fort Morgan's schools in favor of nearby alternatives where English is still spoken.
21 people like this.
Reply 11 - Posted by:
fayebeck 8/20/2019 8:53:45 AM (No. 157015)
#1 does your wife think she's a failure and have regrets about participating in the destroying kids lives? Or is she just thankful that she's collecting a "well earned" pension?
1 person likes this.
Reply 12 - Posted by:
worried 8/20/2019 9:08:34 AM (No. 157032)
#11, not all teachers are pushing the liberal line. There are a number out there who don't want a socialist state. You just don't hear about them, as the media won't say so, and many have to be careful that some administrators don't catch on to what they teach. There is one area of education where most teachers are conservatives. That is vocational/technical schools, where most teachers come from industry and know what it's like to work in the real world.
21 people like this.
Reply 13 - Posted by:
walcb 8/20/2019 9:11:57 AM (No. 157035)
My grandkids attend a rural school in Illinois. The education has been good but now with the state mandated teaching of LBGTQ-Z way of life being desirable that is about to change I fear. The teachers I hope will work around the mandate.
9 people like this.
Reply 14 - Posted by:
fayebeck 8/20/2019 9:17:56 AM (No. 157040)
I never said ALL teachers.
3 people like this.
Reply 15 - Posted by:
jacksin5 8/20/2019 9:26:22 AM (No. 157047)
Don't bother sending your kids to charter schools which are receiving their funding from the school district. The School Boards and Teachers Unions are insisting that along with your above average kid, the Districts are using them as dumping grounds for children with behavioral issues and special needs kids.
Private, Parorchial, or Home Schooling are the only alternatives that will get your child an Education, rather than Indoctrination.
18 people like this.
Reply 16 - Posted by:
Strike3 8/20/2019 9:35:44 AM (No. 157057)
Good teachers that are permitted by the system to teach is what is needed. I suspect that our esteemed institutions of higher learning no longer produce such a thing. We have women whose primary lesson is the promotion of women. We get blacks who teach fictional history and racism. We get men who teach young boys that it's okay to be a little girl if that's what you "feel." We get middle class folks who teach envy and hatred of the "rich." Is there another John Taylor Gatto out there? I doubt it.
8 people like this.
Reply 17 - Posted by:
Lawsy0 8/20/2019 9:59:50 AM (No. 157091)
Unions killed education. Pure and simple. Period, paragraph, end of report!
20 people like this.
Reply 18 - Posted by:
LadyHen 8/20/2019 10:20:32 AM (No. 157138)
We home school. We will continue to home school as long as the Good Lord allows us.
Our eldest, who has never known anything but home school, "graduates" this year and will go into an electrician apprenticeship program. He is looking forward to it. We are thrilled. One grandma who has not been supportive of any of our schooling choices ( former teacher) openly said that since he is smart, he SHOULD be going to college. Her snobbish "intellectual" disdain for blue collar work has always grated on me. Before we could say anything in reply, son's admittedly sarcastic rebuttal to her was "Because obviously who would want a smart electrician?" She was flummoxed by our pup showing his teeth. Gotta admit, our smart young man made me smile!
Home schooling is hard.... but worth it.
19 people like this.
Reply 19 - Posted by:
Arby 8/20/2019 10:26:27 AM (No. 157149)
There are some good public schools in this country but I'd still move heaven and earth to get my kids into private schools. And I would never teach in public schools.
9 people like this.
Reply 20 - Posted by:
Judy W. 8/20/2019 10:53:07 AM (No. 157188)
A few other causes of the public (and much private) education cesspool:
Obama's good buddy Bill Ayres has had a tremendous influence on the curricula many schools use.
The schools of education, especially the prestigious ones like Columbia, have long been hotbeds of radicalization. A few decades ago Rita Kramer wrote Ed School Follies: The Miseducation of America's Teachers. It is one of the most eye-opening books I have ever read.
Even well-intention, conservative educators are often terminally naive. Somehow Howard Zinn's disgusting communist American history book has been adopted in many high schools as the textbook from which students learn that the United States is irredeemably evil. As far as I know there hasn't been much opposition from either teachers or parents.
9 people like this.
Reply 21 - Posted by:
weejun 8/20/2019 11:52:22 AM (No. 157271)
FTA: "Unless this trend is reversed, unless Americans demand restoration of integrity to public education, unless indoctrination in destructive, deranged ideologies is eradicated from public schools, nothing else done in the cause of liberty will have lasting impact..."
I would say we are already there.
9 people like this.
I was fortunate to have received a first-class education in a Catholic School, at the hands of the Sisters of St Joseph. However, I hear too often of the Catholic schools succumbing to the pressures of the world and failing in their mission to educate our children both intellectually and morally. This is a shame. May the Lord cleanse our schools and restore the standards that once existed.
6 people like this.
Reply 23 - Posted by:
raphaela 8/20/2019 8:06:37 PM (No. 157548)
I sent my son to a Lutheran parochial school K-8. The last two years I had to get a weekend job to pay the tuition but it was worth it. I've never regretted the expense and it did run about 5000/year. He went to a public high school 9-12th. Took Latin all four years with an amazing teacher. Took many AP classes and was praised many times by his professors. In fact, one teacher actually sent me a card prior to his HS graduation and wrote how highly she thought of his character and abilities (a teacher I had never met or knew about). One other professor told me that my son "always gave tremendous (in fact in one case actually life changing) feedback to others for their work, while being very hard on his own." So there are still some good teachers out there. Just not as many as there used to be. My son did not have his head turned in college either. He has his own mind. I would never send young children to public schools.
0 people like this.
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