Wednesday, November 30, 2005

Government education: Road to hell?

Good intentions will surely be the downfall of individual liberty and personal freedom. The greatest motivation that mankind has to abandon the principles of freedom is simply being afraid. And, fear plays right into the hands of legislators that use good intentions, whether quite sincere or merely conjured, to usurp individual freedoms and parley them into collective power. The consequences of this exchange is a bloated beast called Bureaucracy controlled by a tyrant, or group of tyrants, that seek to enslave the masses for their own good. In other words, Freedom dies. Remember my personal credo, “More government ALWAYS translates into Less freedom.” In no area is this more evident than the realm of government education.

Education is only one of the areas where good intentions have proven less than sufficient to cure the ills of society. It was with the very best of intentions that legislators decided to take upon themselves the responsibility of providing a free education to every child in America. Has a nobler thought ever been conceived in human mind than the desire to see America’s offspring properly prepared to face an ever-changing world? However, the consequence of such feel-good philosophy is a false sense of security, born in the supposition that the State can do something, anything, better than the individual. Freedom is relinquished willingly for nothing more than a promise that government can provide something to individuals that the individuals themselves cannot procure on their own. And the children suffer the most.

The worst consequence of passing responsibility of educating young minds from personal to collective is the task is botched so horribly. Some children are educated quite well in a state-supported system but most barely receive an average level of education. And, far too many fall through the expansive cracks of society that are the floorboards of a bloated bureaucracy grown so large it has become impossible to keep track of everyone. The result of all the good intentions of providing adequate education to children is a twelve-year factory system that produces more than its fair share of functional illiterates. Why do you think the majority of congressmen/women have their children in private institutions? These children are not trained to take charge of governing themselves; but rather, they are almost programmed to be willing taxpayers that obey a ruling elite. Seems we have been there before and it required armed revolution to free an oppressed people. Sound familiar?

So, which is better? Giving your precious children to the State and expecting something you are not likely to receive; or, taking back the responsibility of educating your own young, making sure YOU are satisfied that your loved ones are properly equipped to face the cold, cruel world? Nothing as important as educating a child should be left to government agencies that only have a mandate to provide minimal education to the children whose minds they are charged with filling. The State has no incentive to educate children other than to ensure the perpetuation of governmental power. Willing subjects are much easier to rule, after all. By giving into the good intentions of supposedly well-meaning elected representatives we allow the State to churn out generation after generation of willing slaves that will worship at the altar of the false-deity Security, and believe the lie that the State can provide them their necessities. The consequences again are just too great to ignore. Slavery is unacceptable even if it is of the subtle sort!

When we allow the responsibility of educating our beautiful children to be assumed by the State, we contribute to the agonizingly slow death of Freedom by allowing the government to control the path of each new generation. Good intentions have created a system that takes in free individuals and renders dependent servants of them. Good intentions that have allowed our children to be poorly educated.

There are no easy answers to all of life’s problems, but we should not allow that to become sufficient reason for believing the lie that the State can handle any problem better than individuals. There is simply no evidence to support the claim. We must stop allowing good intentions to be used to justify every great debacle while ignoring the cost in taxpayer’s dollars and human lives. We must learn from our mistakes and start thinking more about the consequences before we allow ourselves to be swept away by the tsunami caused by the sudden social shifts born in good intentions. Perhaps there is no truer adage than the one that cautions: “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”


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Chicago Mayor Loves Socialist Education

For years now Richard Daley, Mayor of Chicago has enjoyed a growing reputation among the political Leftists in this country. He has been one of the leading local and national proponents of "victim disarmament" (he calls it gun control). Daley's rationale seems to be that if only the honest people would all just turn in their firearms then the gangbangers would not have to worry about shooting them when they committed robbery or mayhem because they would all know that none of the honest people had anything left to defened themselves with. Cuts down on the murder rate, you know.

I doubt if Mr. Daley really expects the gang members to dutifully fork over their illegal firearms, but then, again, he seeems more interested in keeping honest folks disarmed than he is in taking illegal weapons away from gang members. But, then, this is a mindset quite in keeping with the socialist worldview.

And Mr. Daley continues to demonstrate his socialist proclivities in other areas. A while back, he vacationed in Red China, and while there he took a look at the Red Chinese educational system--which, by the way, he was really impressed with. It seems the Reds keep their children in government schools for 250 days a year--mostly all year, and that really appealed to Daley. Mayor Daley would like to do the same thing in Chicago--make the kids go for 250 days a year, all year. Writer Jack Duggan, commenting about this on LewRockwell.com has noted: "Daley somehow thinks that six days of mediocrity would be much better than five days of mediocrity. And he wants to extend from 180 days per year to the Communists' 250. It seems the plan is to force kids to become good and obedient little robot socialists. Just imagine, publik skool not only for 6 days a week, but for longer hours each day, and then for 12 months a year. Sobering, isn't it?" Frightening would be a more apt description!

Of course the Chicago Teachers Union would be in support of such a program. And the teachers would have to get a hefty pay raise because of all those extra hours, but, then, most of them also suffer from a socialist world view as does Daley and so they are more than happy to go along. Anything to increase the amount of propaganda they can force down the kids' throats under the guise of "quality education." Duggan has it right--the aim is to create obedient little socialist robots.

And for the teachers to get more money, why, naturally the property taxes would have to be raised, but, hey, isn't that a small price to pay for getting your kid thoroughly brainwashed, er, I mean "educated"?

We should ask these folks if they know anything or are willing to discuss the real foundations of the government school system in this country. If we do they will probably speak in glowing terms about Horace Mann, the "father of the common schools." What they won't tell you is that Horace Mann was a Unitarian (one who did not accept the Deity of Jesus Christ) and that part of the reason Mann was so hot to establish statist education in New England, where he lived, was that he saw it as something to oppose the Christian schools in his area. In other words, public, or government education was a reaction against Christian education.

Another strong proponent of government schooling was Karl Marx, who advocated, in his "Communist Manifesto" that "Free education for all children in public schools" should be the order of the day. So, with the endorsement of Unitarians and Communists, our government school system has become the order of the day, and our kids have suffered under this monstrosity since the 1830s.

Mr. Duggan has stated that: "The irony of this situation is that most publik skool teachers are themselves graduates of the same system. They can't spell much better than their students. so the students will grow up dumb and dumber and not able to get a decent-paying job..." And, no doubt, those graduating from the teacher's colleges will get a diploma that reads: "Last weak I culdnt even spell teecher--now I are one."

Let us hope that someone in Chicago can find some way to get Mr. Daley's educational desires deep-sixed. If not, I can see this becoming a pilot program for government schools all across the country. Government education already has too many hours per day to brainwash children. They don't need more. Actually what we really need is for a growing number of parents to remove their children from the government schools and to begin to teach them at home, where they can get some real education rather than the cunningly devised socialist fables they are fed in government indoctrination centers we call public schools.

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"


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