Public Education

Education happens one kid at a time.  Parents and teachers are the only folks qualified ensure that each student is progressing well.  Parents and teachers know this on a day to day basis.  They communicate and adjust their strategies to get the kids back on track.  Summer tutoring is often necessary and helpful. Principals need to encourage teachers and parents to focus on the kids. 

State legislatures are not helpful.  Mandates that distract from “individual kid centered education” need to be removed.  Government tends to micro-manage schools to become ineffective and too expansive. The “one size fits all” approach to education is not helpful.

The Federal government is not helpful.  Turning course content over to bureaucracies with ideological political motives is a violation of students’ rights.  They are not in class to receive political indoctrination.  What students read and write about should be grounded in facts, not ideologically driven indoctrination goals.  History does need to be taught to include the realities of each period to include how people made their living and what tools they had to use. Classical literature that gives insight to human behavior is useful.

We don’t need multi-million dollar buildings to be torn down and replaced every 20 years.  We need to restore K through 8 elementary schools and drop the middle school idea.  We don’t need minimum enrollment rules at each school.  Neighborhood schools need to be able to expand and contract with the demographic cycles. 

Schools need to teach the basics of reading, writing and math first.  Each student should be allowed to progress at his or her own pace.  Parents need to hire tutors to help students catch up and stay ahead.  The best education is self-education.  Students learn faster when they can pick the topics they are interested in and research these on the internet.

Text books have been politicized to the point of being useless and harmful.  Homeschoolers use Wikipedia to get more accurate information to avoid the ideological brain-washing you get with text books.    

Non-English speaking students need to be in their own schools and not enrolled in public schools until they can function. The same is true for kids with severe limitations.

Students should be grouped into classes according to ability. Advanced students should be in advanced classes.  Slow students should be in slow classes.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader