In the article When Republicans win, Children Lose at Nuts and Dolts, the author gets it wrong on two key issues.

Child Labor

State Sen. Jane Cunningham (R-MO) proposed a piece of legislation that would have repealed child labor regulations, and according to the author, this is a reason to celebrate:

There are so many reasons that this is bad policy and so many much better ways to teach children a work ethic.  The reason child labor regulations came to be is because children were exploited.  Employment meant poor working conditions, minimal pay and insane work hours. The absence of regulation as proposed by Senator Cunningham, means that young children could be forced to work instead of going to school.

In terms of teaching children a good work ethic, again, there are much better ways then going back to the days of Oliver Twist. Young children can learn a good work ethic through developing good study habits.  For young children, school should be their job.  If the question is learning the value of a dollar, again, current labor laws make it possible for children to learn this lesson.

Where to begin?  Nothing in a repeal of child labor regulations would there be a mandate for child labor instead of going to school.  In fact, school regulations would keep children in class until age 16 at least.  Who would be doing the forcing?

I’m not sure what century the author lives in, but this isn’t the 1830s.  Today we have fancy new gadgets called computers, where people can create from the comfort of air conditioned homes/offices, papers can be filed, and other menial tasks can be done without resorting to kids working their lives away in a factory.

Let alone the fact that said kids would be making a “living wage”—much more than slave labor or even the wage that they would have received when the labor laws were put into effect.

And just what profession does our author have where he could learn “good work ethic” from studying?

Again, this is just a bunch of bogus arguments to support his position, and the argument that “some kids would work late” and “employers could take advantage” again assumes that we’re going to employ orphans or something, instead of children with parents who could say “Hey Johnny, you’re working too much at this job… you need to reevaluate your priorities.”

Because part of learning responsibility is learning when to say no.

Creation Science

Then our author turns to Texas—specifically a bill that’s meant to protect those that don’t tow the line when it comes to the Darwinian theory of origins.

As a matter of general principle, I agree that people should be protected from discrimination in the work place. This applies to people who’s opinions contradict fact, science and logic.

…

In terms of the effect on education, I’m concerned. It’s one thing to say that you believe in intelligent design, it’s another thing to present it as science.  You can believe in intelligent design all you want, but ultimately this is junk science.   In that sense, Zedler’s law is about something a bit more than protection creationists from discrimination.  It has little to do with opening up avenues of scientific research, or teaching alternative scientific theories to evolution.  It has more to do with legislating that a specific religious doctrine is and must be accepted as valid science.

Here the author is inventing things again.  The law specifically says that a person cannot be fired for holding a certain belief—which has happened and was exposed by the documentary from Ben Stein—Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (aff).

Instead of tackling the issue at hand, the author wrings his hands at other groups that are being discriminated against, and then worries that Evolution might be exposed for the sham it is.

But this is what you get from public school apologists, who are being challenged because schools are failing and the culture at large declining.  They defend the status quo instead of seeking to fix the problem.

Anyone can take a shot at the public school system.  They take in tons of money, have multiple layers of bureaucracy, they pass people that cannot read or write, and then they say the solution is more money.  It’s the definition of insanity.

However, as Chris @ VocoPro commented, we can’t have all parents be homeschoolers—at least, not right away:

And yet not every parent is capable of home schooling. Let’s just call it – there are a whole lot of parents who lack the orientation towards education that is required to home school. (Wouldn’t the majority of American parents rather hold a remote control than hold a math workbook for their kids?)

So the success we are seeing from home schooling students is really about COMMITTED PARENTING and parents oriented toward education more than it is about how kids can learn so much better away from school. That’s an important factor that may not be obvious in the stats you are quoting.

So how do we solve the problem?

Kick the Government Out—Sort of

I would propose that government’s main function in education is the verification that a student passes a certain level of knowledge.  To that end, it should not matter how the child gets that education (homeschooled, public schooled, charter schooled, tutored, etc.)

I would furthermore add that there is no reason that teachers must be unionized, must be put under the same roof, and must be limited to one grade.

We all want our kids to succeed.  We want them well educated—better than that: we want them to be the best they can be.  The problem with the current system is that it puts all kids in a geographic area and at a certain age in the same class together.

This wasn’t always the case.  There were always kids that have been educated by parents, but for those that wanted, they could send their kids to the one room schoolhouse—where kids of multiple ages would learn together.  This had one of the same benefits that homeschooling has: the benefit of having different grades helping the others along and socialization between ages.

One of the problems of the government schools is how centralized they are, and they way that they are structured.  This is the case for bureaucratic administrative purposes as well as teacher utilization.

Free the Teachers

I would propose that all teachers should leave the teachers union and be permitted to set up their own small businesses that would teach students that are not taught at home.  These teachers would be licensed for a certain class size (much like daycare/babysitting) and the evaluations performed on the children could be limiters.

For example, if the teacher has a class size of 10 and 50% of the have below a C average, the teacher would only be permitted to have 5 the next time around.

The teacher would also be able to charge whatever amount they feel the market would bear.  Therefore, a teacher could charge $5,000 a child for the year (in monthly installments or upfront) and if they have 10 kids then they could make $50,000 a year (minus expenses).

Teachers could bind together for multiple offerings (for example, specialties like art, music, gym, etc.), but they would not be permitted to organize like the current system.

Some teachers, therefore, would be able to command more money.

The school district could rent out space to teachers to hold their classes, or they could rent office space.

The school year could be dictated by the teacher.

Pay the Parents

Instead of spending $7,642 a kid, each parent could get an amount—save money and make it $5,000 or change the property/school tax and make it less.  In any case, make it so that no one has to go without schooling, but give (or let parents keep) a certain amount of money to pay for schooling.

And don’t let this be only certain types of schooling—let homeschoolers in as well.

How about set up an education savings account per child, and have the government and family be able to put pre-tax money into it.  Any money not used toward elementary or high school education could be used toward college—but it must be used toward education.

Test Well

The market would bear out what teachers were good and which were not.  It would also allow for the really good ones to make good money and would reward extra work—it would have a built in incentive.

The public would benefit because the restructuring would mean that they wouldn’t have to bus as far, maintain expensive buildings, and deal with union contracts.

They would also benefit with the choices available to them and the ability to choose the place that works for them.  Each child is different and may react better to a different style or teacher.  We need to free them to express their individuality.

But we need testing to make sure that the kids are getting the education we want them to have, and we need systems in place to make sure that our kids are safe.

What do you think?

Why is it that a stay at home mother who pays $1000 or less for a curriculum’s worth of books, $15 to join an area group for sports, recreation and activities, and spends $100 for a sport and then pays school taxes for services that they can’t take advantage of (instead of getting paid by the government) can end up training children that have great academics and are an asset to our community, but New York state can spend $7,642 per pupil with the average teacher salary of $46, 800 and can graduate students that cannot read? [Education Backgrounder]

The thing is, there are multiple problems with our public school system—and few that are able to do anything about it.

Public Schools are Staffed by Unions

The problem with Unions is that they’re out to protect all their members—even the ones that aren’t performing well.  It’s next to impossible to remove Union employees, and it’s hard to hold people accountable for failing our kids when you cannot remove teachers that are a cancer.

The solution that the Unions tout for getting better performance from the children is more money, better teacher/student ratios, and better equipment.  But the equipment is broken, and homeschooling proves that money per student isn’t the answer.

Charter Schools and Homeschoolers Run Rings Around Public Schools

Why is it that homeschoolers and charter schools can do a much better job without the funding that the public schools enjoy.  I mean, think of how unfair this is—every homeschooler pays for his kid to go to public school, even though he cannot join the school’s athletic teams, use their gym, participate in their experiments or field trips.

And yet these homeschoolers are more involved in their communities, they’re more well adjusted, and are being sought after by some bigger colleges as the colleges see the academics of these children.

The problem is that there are fundamental problems at the core of modern schooling.

Some Problems

Here’s a short list of some problems:

• Feminized Curriculum: We now spend much of the time treating the entire class as girls, and medicating the boys to make them like girls.
• Not Recognizing Uniqueness: Each child learns differently.  Homeschoolers can adapt to this, public schools that have multiple kids in a single class can have special ed classes, but often miss those that aren’t really having difficulty.
• Lack of Moral Compass:  No more Bible or Prayer in schools seems like a good thing, until kids stop caring about what they do and whether it’s right or wrong.
• Lack of the Ability to have Meaningful Discipline: Between helicopter parents, the ability to sue for anything, and the concept that the child is innately good, it’s next to impossible to correct deviant behavior.
• Does not reflect real life. Sure, when we were all working in factories, processing people from place to place at the sound of a bell made sense.

And that’s just some of the issues.

Public schooling doesn’t need fixing—it needs a reboot with a better Operating System.  It’s time to invest more in Charter schools and homeschooling—what a way to employ someone from every family!

Where our country and our world is going can easily be seen in what is being taught to our children.  The Roman Catholic’s knew it.  The Marxists knew it.  Plato knew it.  The Pro-Life movement knows it.

What children are taught and who should be doing the teaching is, therefore, a big issue.

What is the Parent’s Role?

There are two dueling schools of thought when it comes to the parent’s role in a child’s life. 

First, there’s the concept that the parent is the primary authority in the child’s life.  The parent holds all responsibility and is also given wide latitude on how to raise the child.

Opposed to that is the idea that society—implemented as “the state”—is the primary authority in the life of a child, and the parents serve mainly as one of many guides or teachers.

The School Wants Credit for the Good, not Responsibility for the Bad

When a child does well, whomever is watching them wants to take credit.  However, when something goes wrong, the finger pointing begins.

You will notice that in all the finger-pointing — the students, the teachers, the administrators — not a digit is aimed at the parents. Their children are accused of hounding a classmate to death and the parents apparently knew nothing. Not only that, they are somehow not expected to know anything. The teachers are supposed to know what’s going on. The principal. Maybe even the school nurse. But the parents? No. They’re off the hook. Not as far as I’m concerned. This tendency to blame teachers or administrators for all that happens in the schools is both unfair and unrealistic. 

The truth is, regardless of whether the school or the state attempts to take away rights of the parents, the parents are still responsible.  God will hold the father personally responsible—but I’d go further and say that the father will also be responsible for shirking his God-given duty to raise his children and giving it to the godless state.

Public Schooling is Woefully Inadequate

I’m not saying this to slight the teachers that are there.  Often their hands are tied as far as discipline goes, they’re given way to complicated a task: trying to educate a group of people that are undisciplined, learn at different paces, with different interests.

This method of schooling is insane, and does not give our children the best.

Furthermore, it’s become only an incubator for meddling by people with agendas with the purpose of shaping the country in the way that they deem fit. 

• Social Studies classes that encourage multiculturalism, pluralism, and the neutering of America’s greatness.
• Science classes that teach as much history as science, claiming to divine the past through experiments in the present and not teaching logic and the scientific method.
• Mathematics that erase logic and deduction.
• English classes with an agenda—whether it’s Farenheit 451 and the ills of censorship, Sarah T and the ills of drinking or any other politically laden text.  There’s only one book a child can’t read in the public school—the Bible.
• Health Classes that instruct “safe” ways to perform risky behaviors that put children in more danger.

And then we leave off good skills like personal budgeting, building a family life that will last, etc.

Time for a Revolution

The number of homeschooled children is growing, and it needs to continue growing until Americans have a true choice.  It needs to grow to the point that it challenges the status quo.  Our homeschooled children already run rings around their public schooled counterparts.

Parents need to realize their responsibility to their kids and take action.

It’s not the first time that a President has addressed public school kids.  When President George W. Bush was in office he addressed public school children from a high school setting, encouraging them to study hard and get good grades.

The message isn’t all bad.  We have sports stars, actors, and other people on the television and in print ads encouraging children to do their best.

So what has everyone so riled up about President Obama addressing children this time?

I believe that it’s the current political climate, the idea that the schools are supposed to be under state/local jurisdiction, and the fact that it is a closed environment.

Political Climate

We live in a very hostile political climate.  Not only is the person that disagrees with you wrong, but they’re threatening to destroy your way of life—or worse, kill you.  They are evil, and you can’t separate the person from the ideology, policies and ideas.

This means that whoever is the President, the opposing party is not going to want that person to speak to children, because it might mean that the child may actually look up to that person/party and question the party out of power.

And to a degree, they have a right to be concerned.  Whereas there’s nothing wrong in respecting the office or having pride in the country, children often don’t have the background to differentiate or weigh different ideas.  It’s easier and simpler to be behind what a parent or President says, so that if the President were to have a good speech in a school setting, then that might transfer into support for him in different speeches in different settings.

I don’t believe that there has to be time for a rebuttal—like some have suggested—but I do believe that if you’re going to have elected leaders address bodies of children like this that you should have different and varied ones.  I would think it would be a great civics lesson if the representatives (local, state and federal) would routinely visit the schools to encourage the students academics.

If it were something that was integrated into the classrooms that attached to a class on politics, then it would make sense, but that would also bring up the juristictional issue.

States and Local Governments are Supposed to Be In Charge

One of the last vestiges of States Rights is the education system.  Though a lot of their power has been eroded, States are supposed to be in charge of education.  Meaning that they control what should be learned, whether there should be stickers in science textbooks, etc.

The federal government has tried to take control of the school in various different ways.  To have the President have the power to interrupt the school day, suggest curriculum to talk about what he’s going to say, and to not have his speech checked means that he’s stepping on a lot of toes.

We’re supposed to judge him by his intent, not by what he actually does.  However, he seems to not understand that people like having authority over their section of the world, and you should treat them with respect.

Closed Environment

The worst part, for me, is that this is a captive audience.  It’s not like there’s an option to get out (though some schools are creating one) and the reasons for leaving such an assembly?  Hard to justify.

I left a few assemblies in my high school days, but I had good reasons—I like to keep my ability to hear, I don’t support the homosexual agenda, and I don’t think I needed any more sex ed, thank-you-very-much.

Those that are not aware of what’s going on can go in and simply hear another personality telling them to study hard.  Not necessarily a bad thing, but something that I can understand parents having problems with.

What do you think?  Is it something that we should just consider the chance for kids to hear from their President, or is it something that he should have avoided?

For the longest time the left has used the education system to attempt to hijack the next generation’s beliefs on numerous social issues.  Using the pulpit of the school teacher’s classroom, the public school system espouses the values of the Secular Humanist, knowing that if they are patient, the seed that they are planting every day will bring forth fruit.

And in most cases it has paid off well for them.

However, there is one sector that they’ve actually lost ground—and that is in the area of abortion.  Younger people consistently poll more pro-life than their parents.  I believe that this is partially because the linkage between pro-choice and feminism isn’t as strong with the current generation as it was with the previous, but I also believe that we can credit some of it to the fact that this generation has been influenced by more teaching about what truly is inside the mother’s womb.

You see, when you have a “comprehensive sex education” you don’t simply have discussion of abstinence and various other types of birth control, you have discussions about abortion.  In order to discuss abortion as an alternative to child bearing, you have to phrase the discussion as saying that it’s a moral choice.

With abstinence based education, the storyline is clear—it’s not that the young lady is just avoiding getting pregnant, it’s that pregnancy represents life.  The focus is on the life inside the woman.

The focus of “comprehensive” is on the girl and her choices.

This is the fundamental struggle, and part of the reason that the pro-choice side is fighting so hard to get abstinence based education out of schools.  They realize they are losing the hearts and minds of the next generation, and they don’t like it.

A program in Greensboro, NC has added a financial incentive to keeping pure– $1 a day for ever day that they keep from getting pregnant.

Brown said she hopes the program, which pays $1 each day to 12-to-18-year-old girls, will keep them from getting pregnant. In addition to remaining pregnancy-free, the girls must also attend weekly meetings.

The program is funded by a four-year grant from the state.

The money is deposited into an interest bearing college fund.  Some recent graduates have earned as much as $2000 toward future schooling.  Nearly 100 percent of the girls who have finished the program have gone on to graduate school.  If a girl drops out or gets pregnant, the money she earned is divided among the others.

This sounds like an interesting idea.  The easiest way to make sure you get the money is making sure you don’t have sex.  The longer you’re not pregnant, the less incentive you have.

It seems to me that, to be truly effective, they would have to start higher than $0, however, because the incentive only truly kicks in the further down the line you are.

Is giving a financial reward for purity a positive thing, or just objectifying the whole thing still?

What’s strange is the parallels between this concept of “it takes a village” to raise children and Plato’s Republic. Two portions of Plato’s Republic I find scary (especially when you consider that Plato is thought to have lived between 427 and 347 BC).

Primary Education of the Guardians: Censorship of Literature

Plato begins to muse about educating the children of his new society. He states that in order to create the perfect society that they will have educate the mind and that they will need both fictitious and non-fictitious stories to do it:

It seems, then, that our first business will be to supervise the making of fables and legends, rejecting all which are unsatisfactory; and we shall induce nurses and mothers to tell their children only those which have approved.

What’s interesting here in our discussion is the current trend that I see to erase some “incorrect things” in our current literature and replace it with “correct” things. It’s no longer “One little, two little, three little Indians…” and other such things. If the state were to be the only place for education, they would be free to be the only source of information, and could easily twist stories and truths to fit their purposes.

Some would even argue that the left-leaning colleges and high schools do just that– that they take and proclaim a message of liberalism and not a balanced presentation and are hoping to influence a generation this way.

The next segment is even more interesting.

Equality of Women

Many centuries before the women’s movement, Plato believed it to be a good thing for men and women to be equal. He stated that men and women should be trained equally for the role of Guardians with one difference from modern feminism: that the standard should be the same for a man and a woman:

We come round, then, to our former position, that there is nothing contrary to nature in giving our Guardians’ wives the same training for mind and body…

Now, for the purpose of producing a woman fit to be a Guardian, we shall not have one education for men and another for women, precisely because the nature to be taken in hand is the same.

Once the distinctive features of womanhood are erased, it becomes easier to erase the concept of family…

Abolition of the Family For the Guardians

Here it is: a law which follows from that principle and all that has gone before, namely that, of these Guardians, no one man and one woman are to set up house together privately: wives are to be held in common by all; so too are the children, and no parent is to know his own child, nor any child his parent.

And what’s the advantage here? If children are taken away from parents, they are taken away from their parent’s ideals, morals, etc. and can be taught that of the state. They can look to the state as their source of morality, as the provider– and they can be molded into the perfect little citizens as long as they aren’t polluted by their parents.

Translate this to Today

If we look at today, we can see that this society that Plato desired really isn’t that far off from what we have in America today. Literature that is not approved is censored. Just take a look at how the Bible is treated in many classrooms around the country. And it’s not the only book. There are approved book lists for book reports, approved topics for papers, approved subjects for artwork.

The sexes continue to war about being equal. They’re encouraged by run away debt and class envy. They believe that it’s normal to have have a certain standard of living and they’re not above having two working parents to have every gadget they can possibly want.

And that leaves who or what to raise the children? If you think about the amount of time the average school aged child gets to see their parents if both work (by my rough calculations with a 10:00 pm bedtime they see their parents for five hours a day if not locked in their room) compared to the amount of time they are impacted by the state and their friends you can see why our society is the way that it is.

You can also see why people like Michael Farris get concerned about Parent’s Rights when looking at the state and its teaching. Homeschooling and Private Schooling provide different avenues for education, and allow for different thought.