I have never been to Fallujah or been hunted by Nazis, but I did go to public school in New York. I spent many days fearing for my life, and have vowed that when I bring children into the world, I will never despise my own flesh and blood enough to send them to public school.
Somewhere out there are positive contributions to society by today’s public schools. Then again, somewhere out there in San Francisco are republicans. This is what society refers to as aberrations. Public schools have destroyed my religious community, and they will not rest until every child has committed suicide or been murdered. Of course “No child is left behind,” is code for “screw the children, let ’em die.” America is killing our children one public school at a time.
https://tygrrrrexpress.com/2007/03/destroying-the-jewish-people-one-schoolteacher-at-a-time/
Harsh? Only if one ignores that the greatest evils in society are found in public schools.
My friend works at “Ignite Learning,” but all the software in the world will only work if the people operating the software actually can ignite learning. Give parents the software, and who knows what brilliance could flourish?
http://www.ignitelearning.com/
As for the evils in public schools, kids do not get hooked on drugs at home. They get drugs at school. Why don’t schools simply ban drug dealers from being on school grounds? For the same reason we can’t simply ban terrorists from blowing up buildings. Bad people do not listen, even if you ask really nicely and say pretty please. The solution to drug dealers is to treat them like the terrorists they are and just kill them.
Unfortunately, students and criminals (often redundant) are the only people allowed to have guns in school. Technically they are not allowed, but laws without enforcement are meaningless. So unarmed teachers are held hostage by students with violent tendencies.
My parents were teachers for 30 years in inner city neighborhoods. My father even won a teacher of the year award. To show their appreciation, one student pulled a knife on my father. My dad disarmed the kid, kept him at bay, and made sure he did not kill anyone. As a reward, my dad was brought in to be questioned by school authorities due to concern that the boy with the knife may have been hurt. If my dad had a gun, he could have immediately had the kid get on the ground, and waited for the police to arrive. Even better would have been if the kid would have continued with the knife, at which point my dad could have shot him in self defense and spared the world a future adult criminal. Harsh? Tell that to the people with fathers unlucky enough to defend themselves as ably as my dad. They are in the morgue.
In addition to drugs and guns, schools are integrated. This a tragedy. They should be segregated immediately. No, not by race…by intellect. Let’s not be politically correct. Forcing the smart kids to go to school with dumb kids does nothing but torture the smart kids. When I say “dumb,” I am not referring to kids with legitimate learning disabilities. I am referring to students that simply go to school for the purpose of not learning. The dumb kids should just be put in a steel cage. When Michael Vick engaged in dogfighting, he received a prison sentence. Had he used dumb kids instead of dogs, many people would be recommending he run for President. My father told me that when I got to college I would be around kids as bright as me, if not brighter. I remarked that first I had to live long enough to get to college.
If drugs and guns do not get the students, then the child molesters known as teachers can finish them off. How do these people get hired? Do applications for teachers require anything besides a commitment to atheism and a love for all things recyclable? No, not all teachers are child molesters. My parents were not. However, the inability of schools to weed these people out in a timely manner is a disgrace.
Assuming the kids do not get shot, stabbed, drugged out, or raped, there is always the torture to be received at the hands of bullies. Folks, getting a “tittie-twister” or a “wet willie” will not kill children. However, getting beaten to a bloody pulp will. In addition, most school principals are qualified to be either gutter rats or State Department employees. At this point I should apologize to the gutter rats. Principals see everything in terms of moral equivalence. I can picture a fistfight between a Palestinian homicide bomber and a Jewish student trying to defend himself. He succeeds in taking away the bomb, and then both students are suspended for fighting. In public schools, on the rare occasions a student being attacked actually fights back, both the defender and the bully are suspended. Children are actually taught that if they are abused by a bully, they should inform a teacher or principal. Has this ever worked? Does anyone understand why students have no faith that the system can protect them? Public schools are prisons, and the way to survive is for the potential victims to get in good with the toughs, at any price.
Assuming the children live through the day, their brains are turned to mush by the curriculum. As vital as it is to learn whether or not “Heather has two mommies,” perhaps more time should be spent on multiplication tables. Some would say we can do both, but this is just not happening. American children rank near the bottom of most categories. Schools experiment with nonsense such as “Outcome-Based Education,” “Ebonics,” and “Self-esteem” sessions. God forbid…oh wait, we cannot say that in schools, even though we forbid God…we actually stop the liberal activism and just stick with English (a language similar to Spanish except that it isn’t), spelling and mathematics.
There have been good teachers, and they were punished for being good. James Escalante is the legend that the movie “Stand and Deliver” was based on. He was criticized for teaching advanced calculus to inner city junior high school Hispanic kids. Guess what? He taught it anyway, and they learned it. They ended up smarter than those around them. Joe Clark, lionized in the Morgan Freeman movie “Lean on Me,” brought a baseball bat to school. He turned East Side High in New Jersey around. He was fired because the powers that be were more concerned about lawsuits from parents of children that were bustouts from the day they entered the world.
Good teachers are also punished by being given the worst students, because they can handle them. Bad teachers, who cannot be fired short of publicly financing Al Queda (and even then the unions would argue that union dues protect teachers for this exact reason), get rewarded with the best students, who they then drive into the ground.
Even good teachers are handicapped because they have no say over the curriculum. Creativity is not to be tolerated, and lesson plans must conform to the statist mommy and daddy state that run the system. Some kids actually start out by wanting to learn more, but the system will not allow for this.
So what is the solution to the problem of the public schools? The answer is to give up. Get the Federal Government out of the education business. The system is a colossal failure, and like a condemned building in the Bronx, needs to be imploded.
Forcing students to go to school prolongs the inevitable. Rather than having bullies stealing lunch boxes, by letting them come and go as they please, perhaps they will try and steal a lunch box from an adult on the street, and face the consequences. Some will say this is just a way of letting people die. No, it is forcing parents to know where their children are, and let them discipline their own children as necessary. Schools should not be a place for parents to drop their problems off. As for parents who abuse their kids, that should not be the problem of the other kids.
One solution is religious schools. Parochial schools simply produce better results on every level. Yes, they have problems, but those problems are the exception, not the rule. Atheists may complain (what a surprise) that this is discriminatory. No, discriminatory is forcing God fearing students to go to public schools. In the same way “White flight” from neighborhoods is not racism, religious students fleeing public schools is not bigotry. If atheists believe that God has no place in public schools, give them the d@mn public schools. Just do not force the religious students to be stuck learning atheism. Atheists may claim that this “separate but equal” approach is biased because religious students will get a better education. If anything, that proves the very point of how awful public schools are!
Another solution is home schooling. In today’s world of internet commerce, more and more people are working from their home. Conferences can be done without air travel. People conduct deals in their pajamas. Yes, the results from home schooling are solid. Some would say that home schooling deprives students from the “school experience,” as if guns, drugs and beatings build character.
How many Kip Kinkel’s or Columbines need to occur before people realize that every aspect of public education is broken? No, I am not blaming society for what these deranged, and yes evil, kids did. I am saying that there was no way to protect the other students who went to school assuming they would learn, and live.
Without revealing too much, I pretended to “snap” in 12th grade. I pulled a Hamlet and pretended to be crazy. I had had enough, and was again, not sure I would live to see college. I had it easy compared to kids today, and thankfully I was never overweight or speech-impaired. Those kids get treated in a manner that would make the ACLU shut up about waterboarding. Come to think of it, it would be nice if the ACLU spent less time defending terrorists and more time saving young kids from the education system.
Anyway, after getting suspended for fighting (I can identify with the dogs Michael Vick had, I was that glazed and crazed), I still had to take my classes. The teachers came to my home. They were in shock. They were expecting a thug. I mean, how often does an honors student get suspended? They found a bright young kid eager to learn. My dad cooked up steaks for the professors and me, and I devoured the material. I learned about “The Iliad,” which is still my favorite book to this day. I got to stay up late and discovered the joy of David Letterman, who I still watch 17 years later. I even did my homework, which I never did in school.
My closest friends stuck by me, and tried to convince the principal to reinstate me. I am still friends with those guys today. The only problem was I did not want to go back. Nevertheless, when I returned, nobody messed with me anymore. Some kids even said, “that guy’s crazy, just leave him alone. He might kill you.” Is this what it takes for a powerless person to get power? Why should it get to that point? Can’t principals or teachers do something?
No. They can’t. I did what I had to do to survive.
My father once apologized for my experience. He told me that if he had known how awful my school days were, he would have home schooled me. I do not blame my parents. They honestly did not know. Why did I not tell them? I don’t know. Some blame parents for missing signs, but I was secretive. There was no way they could have known. My friends knew, and we were all in it together. Our friendship got us through the tough times.
My desire to eliminate the public schools is not based on vengeance. It is based on saving the lives of future children from a personal hell that dwarfs anything I had to deal with.
Politicians cannot fix the problem. Prosecutors that stare down the mob fear teachers’ unions. Union dues are used for political purposes, which is code for enacting a left wing curriculum that is politically correct but academically inept. Corrupt union thugs allow bad teachers to have lifetime job security, while principals claim the wonders of diversity and multiculturalism as the screams of students begging not to die go unheard. In a cruel irony, military recruiters are banned from many schools. I can see why schools would not want to have soldiers on campus giving students a chance to learn how to defend America and themselves. I mean, who wants to have a kid end up in a war zone in Iraq when they can be perfectly safe in a war zone in a New York school. At least in Iraq the soldiers are attempting to improve the quality of life. Oh yeah, and the attempts are more successful.
Shut down all public schools. We have lost. Liberals are willing to surrender in Iraq and give up on the war on drugs. The one thing worth giving up, they keep fighting for. Why?
I refuse to believe liberals wake up and plot ways to destroy children. I just cannot fathom that they actually could feel this way. Assuming they don’t, they need to accept that the destruction is occurring, and it must be stopped. The Constitution gives us life and liberty. Forget the pursuit of happiness, let’s start with life and liberty.
Waiting for liberals to understand this is like trying to teach a pig to sing. It wastes time and annoys the pig. Conservative republicans need to do their part, especially those that claim to be pro-life. Save lives, remove your kids from public schools, and reduce the population in these kiddie jails by half. That way the children of conservatives will grow up to be smarter, happier, God fearing…heck, they will be alive.
I pray for decent students everywhere. I hear your cries for help. Unlike the people running the public education system, I actually understand, and care.
eric
Black Tygrrrr wrote;
Shut down all public schools. We have lost. Liberals are willing to surrender in Iraq and give up on the war on drugs. The one thing worth giving up, they keep fighting for. Why?
Heres why.
Our earth is getting hotter every minute and the only way we can stop it is to stop burning Styrofoam,” wrote an elementary student named Catherine Mitchell. She went on to say: “I’m also too young to die, might I add, so stop burning the Earth.” (Catherine’s textbooks, you see, had told her that the “thinning ozone layer” and “global warming” were threatening her life. Forget the fact that the greenhouse effect and the so-called ‘hole’ in the ozone have little to do with each other, or that burning Styrofoam has little to do with either one. The important thing to realize is that young Catherine wrote this almost twenty years ago.
I can’t even resond to this one. You have my sympathies, Tygrrrr. But you in no way have any agreement with me whatsoever about this post.
Oh, and Ignite! Learning is a Bush family scam.
JMJ
Thank God for kids like Catherine Mitchell. Did she have it all worked out? No, but give her a break. She was in elementary school!
I wrote my master’s thesis many years ago on the political theology of Thomas Jefferson and I asked my youngest boy, who was in elementary school at the time, if he knew who Thomas Jefferson was and he said, “Isn’t he the dead president?” Well, he didn’t have American history quite worked out, either, but like any good parent we used it as a time to do a little more education about Jefferson and he came out all right.
Micky2, you might someday just have to face the fact — not opinion, but fact — that you’re not always going to be right.
and eric, my friend, are you having a bad day or just trying to jump start a conversation here?
Greg said;
Micky2, you might someday just have to face the fact — not opinion, but fact — that you’re not always going to be right.
Look guys.
As of the last debate I thought we could keep thing intellectual.
With statements like the one Greg just put out is a wonder we ever get anywhere.
So please Greg, where did I say I was right and not invite a contrasting opinion ?
I simply gave an example of why I thought Eric was right.
And for the life of me why would I ever argue or debate a point if I did not think I was right ?
I mean really !
And if I may address the point with Gregs permission to think I’m right, its this.
Katherine is just an example of the leftist indoctrination I believe kids are subjected to by the public “government run schools”
And Greg, please Greg.
When have you proven me wrong ?
Your conclusions about the public school system are right on. Though I didn’t have as torturous of a time as you in school, it was still a tough place to be. I regret not learning what I should have learned in school. And seeing all the high school graduates that can’t even spell sickens me.
Throwing more money at a broken system makes no sense. Bureaucrats in Washington are supposed to care about your kids? Not on your life! Let’s get back to either small community run schools, private schools, religious schools, or homeschooling.
[…] Click here to read it. The author makes some excellent points. […]
Ha ! This goes way back Eric.
I remember in 66 I was told by my fourth grade teacher during arts and crafts that there was no such thing as a black rose. I had sketched one with a pencil.
I recieved no grade for my masterpiece.
I would give anything to see again the ass chewing my mother gave that teacher.
We were not able to afford full time private schooling, but thank God for the summers I did get private schooling.
I learned more in 2 months during the summer than I ever did in a whole year at public schools.
I didn’t know there were black roses either until just a week or two ago when Abby got a dozen of them on NCIS :)
I didn’t know that there were people that didn’t know there were black roses. ;)
JMJ
They’re out there.
Hey, my social studies teacher was explaining how cars in those days were being designed in the shape of a coke bottle on its side.
So he drew a picture of a coke bottle on its side on the chalk board.
This was in 7th grade..
We used to steal the coke bottles out of peoples garages and yards and get a nickel a piece.
I’ve been recycling for about 40 years I guess
An empty six pack was a soda a candy bar and change.
Now that’s funny! Illegal recycling! LOL!
JMJ
Which public school did you go to? I went to a public school in New York City, except a specialized one, for “smart kids” — just like you want it to be. You had to take an admissions exam to get in. There a few schools like that in New York City now – used to be just three, but now there are 6 or 7. My experience was smooth — being smart in that school was something you were praised for, and bullies weren’t anywhere to be found. So at least in NYC, smart kids have a way to go.
I learned in public school. I learned no one will protect you. I learned even teachers are afraid of the evil that young men are capable of. I learned that if you fight back, you create a scene and become the problem.
First I learned to fight anyway. Then I learned to fight effectively. To never show fear, never back down, never give in.
If you are going to be a sheep, all you can do is graze and wait for the wolves. Be a sheepdog.
Semper Fidelis,
ASM826
Hey guys, I went from school to school, many times over, all around the NYC area. It was hard being the eldest brother in a constantly mobile scenario. As difficult as all that was, I can’t find a logical reason to support privatization. It seems to me that privatization would only exacerbate the problems addressed here. Am I wrong? How?
JMJ
“Good teachers are also punished by being given the worst students, because they can handle them.”
Like my wife, although she doesn’t quite look on it as punishment, and she turns many of them around. But how long will she continue to accept the worst students when her pay starts being based on her students’ test scores?
I do not know how to exchange links, but here is a link to check. I read about the judgment in the Alabama suit three weeks before we invaded Iraq. I said to myself,” Self, gasoline is fixin’ to go up, ’cause they ain’t payin’ for that outa’ their money.”
http://www.endgame.org/exxon.html
I just found your article and I am truly moved by it. I share your same concerns about public education. We now homeschool our children but didn’t always. The short time my oldest son was in public school (elementary) he was abused by other students, ignored by teachers, insulted and degraded by a school principal, bullied, etc. all before the age of 10. Sadly in every case school official played dumb and pretended as though nothing ever happened. Our son is extremely smart, articulate and I’d say brilliant but somehow the Kentucky school district (principal) diagnosed him as autistic) as if she were qualified. They then downgraded it to ADHD when we informed them that he was an honor roll student when we lived in Michigan. Our son actually tutored some of the kids that went to this Kentucky school. We later found out that another Michigan family who had moved to our area experienced the same thing. This mom told us that the principal said her son was autistic. It was also discovered that this is a common trend in this school district to get extra funds for kids with special needs. How low down and dirty is that.
Hello again Tygrrrexpress,
I have an excerpt from your blog that points readers back to your site to read the rest. I would like to possibly call on you in the future to perhaps elaborate on your public school experiences. I spoke with a few others about your blog and they were deeply moved. I really appreciated your response as I feel that same way about race relations. I have experienced racism from both sides, white and black. I tend to ignore it and see it for what it is. A waste of time.
Thanks again