Friday, April 13, 2007

DEMOCRATS HATE CHOICE

In case parents choose a Christian alternative rather than the prevailing school religion of amoral Leftism. I am an atheist but I sent my son to a Catholic school because I thought that an exposure to Christian traditions would be beneficial

The new Democratic Governor of Ohio, Ted Strickland, has the Republican-dominated statehouse in an uproar over his proposal to eliminate funding for private “charter schools” in the state budget. The Ohio budget has previously allowed children in poor performing public school districts to apply for state funds to be directed to a private charter school on their behalf. Even Christian schools have been able to compete with public schools for state funds to educate children.

The argument for charter schools is convincing: many charter schools have a proven superiority over public schools intellectually and financially. In short, you get a higher quality education for less state money. Introducing competition into public education can only be good for the children and for the taxpayers. The argument against charter schools is as follows: granting state funds for private Christian schools is a violation of the separation of church and state. It also takes desperately needed funds away from the public school systems where the funds are needed the most: in poor-performing districts.

In short, the introduction of private charter schools into the public education field of competition is good for the taxpayers and the students, whereas maintaining the monopoly of government-controlled public education over the state treasury is good for the teacher’s unions. We know where Ted Strickland’s loyalties lie.

The problem with the deterioration of public education is not a financial problem. Our nation spends more per child for public education than any other civilized society and we are ranking dead last among industrialized nations in science and math. I live in Zanesville, Ohio, and the cost of Zanesville’s public education system is twice the average cost of a private school in Ohio ($9200 annually per child in Zanesville versus $4500 annually per child in an Ohio private school). Even public school superintendents wouldn’t freely give their own money for a Zanesville public school for their own children if they had the choice. The problem with public education is not a lack of funds; it is who is doing the spending of it.

Parents love their children more than child development experts and state bureaucrats and have the God-given responsibility for the education of their own children. Parents would never have taken prayer, the Ten Commandments, and phonics out of school. Parents would never have brought condoms, atheism, acceptance of homosexuality, and “outcome-based education” into school - only bureaucrats could be so impervious to common sense. The cost, efficiency, and quality of the education of future generations will drastically improve if parents are at the helm. If we want to do what is best for the education of Ohio’s children and the rights of their over-taxed parents, we must break the state’s monopoly over public funds for public education. Parents must be free to educate their own children as they wish, without state interference and without state coercion of their wealth for a public education system to which they would not give willingly if they had the choice.

There are two million home-educated children and 5.9 million children educated in private school. Many of them have been dissuaded from the public education system because of the deteriorating intellectual quality. Others fear that evil company will corrupt the good morals of their children, as the Bible warns in I Corinthians 15:33. Others have withdrawn their children from the government-controlled education system because of moral objections to the curriculum and the prevailing moral standards in public schools.

Most parents, I have discovered, are woefully ignorant of the deteriorating moral conditions of public education. Government schools have become more and more captive to the leftist agenda of the socialists, homosexuals, feminists, earth-worshipers, and atheists. Public schools have become pulpits of humanism and liberal dogma. Science classes continue to propagate the myth of atheistic macroevolution in spite of the plethora of damning evidence against it. The federal courts have consistently upheld the government’s right to teach children, without parental permission or oversight, to accept homosexuality and practice “safe sex” like “mutual masturbation” and anal sex with a condom.

It was not always this way. Before 1962, prayers were prayed and the Bible regularly read in public schools. Congress approved the first publishing of Bibles in the U.S. in 1782, “a neat edition of the Holy Scriptures for the use of schools.” McGuffey’s Reader, the mainstay of public education from 1836 to 1920, primarily consisted of prayers to God, Scriptural references, and religious instruction to abstain from sin. One of our first educational bureaucrats, Noah Webster, said, “Education is useless without God and the Bible.” This sentiment is almost universal in the first generation of public schools in the United States. The anti-Christian sway of public education has been recent – only in the last thirty years has our nation abandoned the Bible as the basis of morality and adopted a counterfeit standard of atheistic humanism.

It is frequently repeated that teaching religion in schools violates the constitutional wall of separation between church and state. When Thomas Jefferson penned those infamous words “separation of church and state”, he did so in a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association in response to their concern that the Federal government would sponsor a particular denomination as the English government had done with the Anglican church and as the states had done with their preferred Christian denomination. Jefferson assured them that the federal government would not hinder the free practice of their religion. The same time that Jefferson wrote those words, however, he was superintendent of the school district of Columbia, and can you guess what the only required textbook was for all classes? The Holy Bible!

Thomas Jefferson said, “Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.” In his endorsement of a separation of church and state, he never intended to imply that the public schools should not endorse and teach Christianity, but that the state would not hinder the free practice of religion. The separation of church and state, as it commonly taught, is a myth that has been fostered to preserve the government’s monopoly over the corrupt public education establishment, at the expense of our children’s minds and souls, and at the expense of the taxpayers’ wealth.

Source






APPALLING BRITISH IDIOCY

Schools should not “over discipline” persistently unruly pupils for fear of alienating them and should instead hand out praise five times more often than punishments, the Government has said. New guidance on school discipline published yesterday cautions teachers against repeatedly praising only “the same good pupils”, suggesting that rewards also be given to persistent miscreants who show an improvement in behaviour, however small. It cites research recommending a “rewards/sanctions ratio of at least 5:1”. Rewards might include “good news” postcards sent home, “special privileges” or “prizes”. “Striking the right balance between rewarding pupils with consistently good behaviour and those achieving substantial improvement in their behaviour is important. This can help improve relations with parents who have become tired of receiving letters and phone calls when things go wrong,” the guidance states.

It also advises teachers to take account of pupils’ race and culture when telling them off, suggesting that they go easy on those insubordinate youngsters for whom being “loud” or “overfamiliar” may be a cultural norm or “social style”. Teachers should understand the importance of showing respect to children from racial or religious backgrounds for whom public humiliation is seen as particularly shameful. In these cases, staff should not use language that might humiliate youngsters in front of their friends.

In other areas the guidance advocates a tougher approach, encouraging teachers to give Saturday and after-school detention and to punish pupils who make false allegations against teachers. It has been published to accompany new legal powers enabling teachers to use “reasonable force” to restrain violent children, confiscate mobile phones and punish pupils for poor behaviour on their way to and from school.

But critics described the guidance as “soft”, stating that most teachers already knew how to use positive reinforcement techniques. The document coincided yesterday with a threat of strikes by the National Union of Teachers unless schools speed up the process for expelling violent or abusive pupils.

David Willetts, the Shadow Education Secretary, said that the new guidance could be resented by pupils if it implied that bad behaviour brought rewards. He said that if school children could see badly behaved pupils being praised “then the school’s policy would lose all credibility”.

Alan Smithers, Professor of Education at the University of Buckingham, said the move could encourage perverse behaviour. “Children and parents will be quick to pick up on false praise. That simply devalues the use of encouraging words. The key thing is that it has to be honest feedback. As a soft approach it won’t work because children and their parents will soon pick up that it’s false. “If you reward the children who have been poorly behaved for behaving well you might actually be getting children who have been perfectly happy behaving well to behave badly in order to pick up the rewards.”

Robert Whelan, deputy director of the thinktank Civitas, said: “The idea that teachers have to take account of a child’s ethnicity when disciplining them is racist. It’s telling teachers they have to treat children differently according to their skin colour.”

Source

***************************

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"


For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

***************************

No comments: