Posted: 6/14/2003 11:36:45 PM EDT
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What do you see as the consequence of America having two parallel and in many ways competing school systems: public and private? I went to parochial school for ten out of twelve of the first years of my schooling. I got my notion of history and civics from Our Lady of Fatima and St. Thomas Aquinas schools, and not from the NEA-run public school gulags. Not that all public schools are worse than any private schools, but the shift in core values and let's call it [i]emphasis[/i] is significant. Your thoughts? |
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Quoted: Let's see a side-by-side comparison of results from the latest round of state-mandated assessment exams. Do you have them? I don't, but I'm not talking about exam scores, college admission rates or anything like that. My question is on the values and ideas that the two different school systems impart to their students. Is there an actual difference, and if so, what does that mean for the future of America? |
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I'd say the State isn't interested in having anyone compete with them when it comes training the next generation of Taxpayer Units, er, sorry... CITIZENS. [url]http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=33077[/url] Government agent, cops confront homeschoolers Come to family's house demanding children submit to mandated testing Posted: June 14, 2003 1:00 a.m. Eastern Because the Bryants of Waltham, Mass., are perfectly comfortable with their kids' educational progress, they refuse to subject the children to mandatory testing demanded by their local school district – a six-year stance that culminated in an early-morning standoff with government and law-enforcement officials outside their home. According to a report in the MetroWest Daily News, social workers from the Department of Social Services and police officers confronted the family at 7:45 a.m. Thursday, demanding that George, 15, and Nyssa, 13, complete a standardized test. As they have in the past, the children's parents, George and Kim Bryant, refused to allow their children to go, even though the government now has legal custody of the kids. "There have been threats all along. Most families fall to that bullying by the state and the legal system," George Bryant Sr. told the paper. "But this has been a six-year battle between the Waltham Public Schools and our family over who is in control of the education of our children. In the end, the law of this state will protect us." DSS worker Susan Etscovitz tried to use the fact that the Bryants technically don't have custody of their own children in her plea. "We have legal custody of the children and we will do with them as we see fit," Etscovitz told the Bryants, according to the Daily News. "They are minors and they do what we tell them to do." Four police officers were also at the scene and attempted to coax the Bryants into complying with the DSS worker. One of the law-enforcement officers told the paper: "We will not physically remove the children." According to the report, the Bryants contend that no government entity has the legal right to force their children to take standardized tests, even though DSS workers have threatened to take their children from them. The Waltham Public School's homeschooling policy requires parents to file educational plans and develop a grading system for their home-educated children. The Bryants have refused to do so. "We do not believe in assessing our children based on a number or letter. Their education process is their personal intellectual property," Bryant told the Daily News. "We don't want to take the test. We have taken them before and I don't think they are a fair assessment of what we know," said Nyssa Bryant. "And no one from DSS has ever asked us what we think." DSS made it clear it leaves open the option of removing the children from their home. "No one wants these children to be put in foster homes. The best course of action would be for (the Bryants) to instruct the children to take the test," Etscovitz told the paper. |
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Quoted: This is a no-brainer(no flame intended). The public schools do little if anything to impart a sense of values to the kids. Don't know about private schools. Everyone values something, and those values get passed along or at least revealed through what people say and do. When they're of school age, most kids spend a lot more time at school with their teachers than they do with their parents. With the NEA in charge of curriculum and textbook selection in public schools, what values get revealed there? My intention here isn't to slam public schools, just to question what effect two separate and divergent education systems will have on the country. |
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Quoted: This is a no-brainer(no flame intended). The public schools do little if anything to impart a sense of values to the kids. Don't know about private schools. That is not true at all. The public school imparts values on our kids every day. Just not our values. Values taught to your child in school are that government is good and does good things, man is destroying nature and the earth will be destroyed in about twenty years, guns are bad...so bad that you will be suspended for even pretending to shoot someone with your finger, that all cultures must be respected even if they are antithetical to our way of life, and on and on. I went to Catholic school (Most Precious Blood, great name eh) for the first eight years and public high school. My Catholic education was shitty(outdated texts, 40:1 student/teacher ratio), but I was taught right from wrong. Got a better education in public school but didn't learn much about how to live life. I know many, especially younger, people today who don't steal or do other wrong things for fear of getting caught. There is no internal voice telling them that it is wrong because it hurts others. That is what is really hurting our society. |
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I got my values from my family, not school (public). My oldest is in a private non religious school, FWIW, and I flip off the local NEA HQ every morning on my commute (it's a ritual at this point). The public schools will continue their silly slide towards absurdity, spending more and more time building "self-esteem" and teaching social "values", instead of building real self respect through accomplishments and challenges and developing real skills in the three R's. I believe the bottom line is still parental involvement. I have coworkers whose kids have gone to public schools and have done very well. The parents remain, however, very involved in their kids lives. Others I work with have merely contributed to the supply of worker bees for the C. Montgomery Burns' of the world, and the Democrat Party. I hope this makes sense at 4 am.... I have an Aunt who teaches at a public school. She is not who I want teaching my kid about citizenship, sex ed, morals, or anything of substance. She simply doesn't pack the gear, mentally. Her kids, naturally, went to parochial school. That says it all to me. Tim |
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There will be a wide disparity in the public school systems throughout the country. Here in the littlest state the school systems range from poor to excellent. I imagine they do the same all over. So I think that the effects will be hard to grade on a national level. Locally it will be a lot easier to quantify the differences. The biggest result I would expect is for the public schools to clamor to reduce the quality of the private schools educations by foisting on them the same outrageous drivel they use as indoctrination now-the social agenda CRAP, the self esteem CRAP, the heather has two mommies CRAP. Socialists tend to want to reduce others to their level, rather than to try to climb out of their pit themselves. I guess if everyone is as low as they, their self esteem won't suffer. |
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The same result of having a "parallel" culture in any respect: The decline of the best of America. This nation can not serve two masters - both a rational, well-educated electorate and an irrational, borderline-illiterate electorate. As the proverb says, it will love one and despise the other. However public schools no longer teach love of country, they're taught to despise it - at least the rational, successful side of it. Thus, because of public education, this nation is fast becoming a self-hating, self-destructive nation. A big problem facing America is that the illiterati are growing exponentially (via overbreeding and immigration) while the rational populace dwindles and surrenders out of "compassion and tolerance" for the illiterate hoarde who's swallowing them whole. The illiterati sit on the street corners and front stoops of filthy neighborhoods day-in and day-out lamenting how the clean, educated people don't help them out. The illiterati shuffle and slouch through the streets dressed like bums, cursing and grunting and demanding ever so more from the free public trough. The illiterati fill the high schools with ritalinized mooks gawking at fuckbunny midriffs baring more and more flesh for more and more attention from cow-eyed thugs who don't give a shit about nuthin but'll breed more than you before their third strike puts their room, board and meals on your tab for 20 to life. And so they grow dumber, more dependant, more irresponsible and more hedonistic as they're led by not their stunted, feeble minds nor dwindling, dumbed-down aspirations, but rather by the lowest and most powerful of human drives - primal emotion. And all this would still not destroy America were it not for that fraction of the highly educated (ivory tower elitists) whose incredible ego-driven pride fuels a massive and radical hatred for authority (and what greater authority is there than God, America, family and individual liberty) that pushes them to use the growing illiterati as useful idiots in their pathological need to break down all that America stands for and all the pillars of the greatest society, culture and nation that ever existed that they, in their extreme egotistical self-centeredness can't handle knowing, played absolutely no part in creating. Gee, I guess I kinda rambled there. Well, that's what ya' get when you ask the night shift folk a semi-deep question. [:D] |
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I suspect, extrapolating current trends into the not-too-distant future, that the situation will most likely deteriorate much as the Macallan has described immediately above. Perhaps he and I are too gloomy. But in order for the situation to be changed for the better, a number of [b]major[/b] changes in tax codes, public policy, the law, etc., would have to be implemented soon, before the situation is irredeemably lost. Those changes, although being discussed, are opposed by powerful entrenched groups like the professional public teachers' unions, the liberals and their minions, and more. So, in answer to your original question, the final result of the two coexisting school systems will be that in the future there will be a small minority of literates who will be able to discuss intelligently the decline and fall of their society. |
| I wouldn't send my dog to public school.My son goes to a small Christian school where he recieves a good Christian education,they have discipline so the teacher can teach and there are 9 kids in his class.On his 1st state assessment test (1st grade) he scored 99% reading,97% spelling, 96% math.I attribute that directly to a good Christian education and coming from good stock[:D] |
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Well, this one's easy. Result of Public Schools: 1. indoctrinated idiots 2. an illiteracy rate that increases every year 3. increase in people who can't think for themselves Result of Homeschools/Private Schools: 1. people who value learning and continue throughout life 2. people who learn to think for themselves 3. people who learn to accept responsibility for their actions NMSight's prediction - will have a majority of slovenly idiots who look to and whine to the government to solve all their problems; who go along with everything they are fed while becoming more subservient daily to the official dogma. Contrasted with this will be a minority who are capable of taking care of themselves and their families, operating independently of the majority. These will quite possibly have to liberate the majority at some point in the future and retrain them. NMSight |
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Quoted: Catholic girls are hot. [:D] Whups sorry distracted myself. When I attended parochial school decades ago it was a better education and disciplined school than the public school, but I don't know that the difference in discipline and education was that different than a school in an affluent suburban school in most areas. There were the little uniforms though... [;)] |
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got 3 children who we removed from public schools, placed in private christian school and now will be homeschooled to finish it out. ditto the disparaging remarks about public education and indoctrination as useful idiots. all in all, the education of our children is what we make it. if they're in the public schools, its your choice and you'll have to work to counteract the negative influences. eventually, if the elitists have their way, homeschool will be out or heavily regulated, private schools will just be costly schools and the public education agenda will be mandatory. they do not like affronts to their authority. Vote Vote Vote Vote Vote. and get involved with your local school system if you choose to stay there. |
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Quoted: Again, I didn't ask my question as a way to slam public schools or the education they provide. I just was curious about [red]the thoughts of the board on the outcome of having two separate systems[/red]. They cannot co-exist. The private system must be absorbed, (read destroyed). |
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I don't know if it matters or not. My feeling is that the single greatest problem with education is that government is mandating an increasingly broad and generic educational background in a world where knowledge requirements are becoming increasingly specific. Just as an example, I went to college after high school, and eventually received an associate's degree in engineering. I then left school and got a job because I knew I didn't want to be an engineer, but didn't know what I wanted to study. A few years ago, I decided to go back to work towards a degree in computer science. I found out that although my former degree is good, I may have to take some "remedial" classes to satisfy the new graduation requirements of the state, aka, a fine art and a life science. Fine art? Real useful stuff there. The life science thing really makes me laugh--4 semesters of chemistry, 2 semesters of physics, statics, but I'm not "educated" until I take biology 110. What a joke. Want an idea you'll never see in an election campaign? Mandatory Constitution tests for elected officials. It [red][b]SHOULD[/b][/red] be the law. |