Date: Tue, 12 Aug 1997 23:37:47 -0800 From: ML Duke <mlduke@concentric.net> To: chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: What Value Public Schools? Message-ID: <33F16449.21862F8B@concentric.net>
next in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Given the many recent posts about public vs private schools, a current series of articles is quite timely. In a comparison of achievement tests between public and home schooled children, the home schoolers outscored their public counterparts by distances ranging from 30 points in Total Language to 87 points in both Total Reading and Complete Battery. On the cover page, home schooled Rebecca Sealfron is highlighted as winner of the 1997 National Spelling Bee. Public schools are a national disaster, and the biggest of these is that the vast majority of public school products under 40 believe that moral absolutes do not exist, and then we wonder why crime is on the steady rise: Everything is relative and anything goes. Including murder. Public schools are no different than any other government program: The War on Poverty creates more of it, The War on Drugs does the same, and even the Paperwork Reduction Act created more government paperwork. On a personal level, I personally took our Daughter out of public school and opted for home teaching when I finally sat up and paid attention to what she did and did not know. In preparation for home schooling, testing revealed that our about to be 11th grader could read at a high 4th/low 5th grade level--and she had been passing with mostly B's with occasional A's and C's. After two years of personal battle, she could read at the near senior level--and even thanked us for it 7 years later. Another star example is that public school students know little or nothing about the time value of money: Ask a few to estimate the actual savings created by paying $50 per month more over the life of a thirty year mortgage. When you have verified the student knows Zip, (Hell, most of them can't count change) ask yourself who benefits from the student not knowing it. Public school students are not taught How to Think, they are taught What to Think and to have "self esteem" that far exceeds their ability, to be good little government socialists (read Carl Marx Communist) and believe the "news" they see on television because it is "official." The majority of people under 40, for example, do not have a clue of what really happened at Ruby Ridge, Waco or Oklahoma City, and there are not one in ten thousand--I estimate--that has even heard of the Maynard Campbell incident in Oregon, much less many other incidents of isolated government murder around the country and the fact that money is routinely arrested and never returned without criminal charges ever being filed against anyone. I would not have a child of mine in public school today--no way, no how and no matter the potential penalty: There is plenty of company in this view as evidenced by the growing numbers of home schooled children throughout the country--but Clinton has plans to put an end to it. He has said "we already know we should start teaching children before they start school," and it is his intention (read the intention of his internationalist/socialist string pullers) that government should control the teaching. Ah but enough is enough. Not to write a book here. Those interested can call 1-800-522-6292 and discover that the entire public school system problem is much older and much worse than the small bit I have covered here. After reading "Pavlov's Children," your view of public schools will (should) never be the same again. And what does all of this have to do with computers? Everything. ML Duke
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?33F16449.21862F8B>