Public Schools

Our citizenry did a better job of educating themselves before public schools were established.  What does that tell you ?    The public schools did a better job of educating the students before the creation of the Federal Department of Education.  What does that tell you ?   In the early days of rural schools, citizens took up a collection, built a school house and hired a teacher from one of the nearby private colleges, (think Anne of Green Gables Sequel). 

There are several glaring deficiencies in the public schools that can be addressed before we return to borrowing books and studying in our log cabins by candlelight.  They include inadequate content, inaccurate content, irrelevant content and politicization.  Schools have become indoctrination camps and institutions designed to ensure that graduates are not prepared to function as free citizens.  The basic academic skills are not effectively taught to all students.  It’s a “do it yourself” system.  Smart students with smart parents can navigate the system and survive. 

Teaching is now the largest labor union in existence.  It’s become a “jobs program”. Propaganda permeates the system and what was our Constitution and “free economy” is distained. 

Constant fiddling with the structure of government schools will not fix the problem.  There may be some advantages to charter schools, magnet schools and smaller school districts, but in the end, the model has to change.  Too much money has been spent on buildings, with no regard to outcomes.

In the end, our graduates need to find jobs they can do.  Liberals are not alarmed, as they have managed to figure out how to eliminate those jobs.    

The best curriculum model is where the student figures out what he or she needs to learn, and then goes about researching it on-line.  It must involve parents whose job it is to find out what the on-line sites are teaching.  Homeschoolers learn more in half the time Public school students spend in class.  Homeschooled kids are less affected by the current destructive popular culture.  Internet technology has rendered the live lecture and cutting down trees to make books unnecessary. 

Too much time is spent by teachers in public schools on behavioral indoctrination and control.  In the old days, the cure for a bully was to punch him or her in the nose.  This is no longer allowed.  If a kid was weird, he or she would find their own kind.  Now weirdness tolerance is required. 

The basics include reading, writing and applied math.  What you read and write about and do math for should mirror what you should know to function as an adult.  Beyond that, you should know about the different jobs you could do after you graduate, what they pay and what further skills and experience you need to acquire to get these jobs.   Lastly, you need to identify what you love to do and see if you can get a job doing that.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader