Comments on: Public schools dying under the weight of teacher’s unions

By: Bookworm

Bookworm — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 02:30:28 +0000

I never, never, never stop talking to my kids about my values. In some ways, I view them as a necessary counterweight to the teachers' propaganda. My kids are the ones who will politely challenge the teachers in class, or will leave the class advising their peers that there are other ways to think.

By: edge of the sandbox

edge of the sandbox — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 20:04:08 +0000

My kindergartener was recently lectured during the recess about the righteousness of the plastic bag ban. I don’t know where that came from — the union, the PTA or whatever. We told our daughter that she’s in school to learn reading, writing and math, and everything else is just someone’s opinion.
We have a few very good Asian “tiger” teachers in our school district. Unfortunately, this being the East Bay I can’t place too much hope on school choice. Parents here are not very interested in academics. They prefer that their children were taught gardening. I guess I just have to partially homeschool.

By: Beth

Beth — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 14:29:18 +0000

lee–you mention Weekly Reader which brought to mind one of the many, many gripes we had with ‘box school’ prior to homeschooling our children and that is SCHOLASTIC, Inc. The environmental and political bologna that we are currently dealing with are dished out to students on a daily basis in almost every subject. These slick little brochure-type publications have great pictures, plenty of one-liners and then a nice little quiz at the end to make sure the student understand completely what they are supposed to think and say. Any number of animals and their habitats are featured each week and how we bad humans are destroying them–let’s talk about ways to save them! Or how about the interview with the 12 year old girl from Mexico who abhorred the thought of moving to America because the gun violence was so terrible! She would be afraid of getting killed! (This issue was about five years ago.)
And where does this tie into the teachers? Well, Scholastic is the teacher’s best friend! They have these glossy hand-outs for all grades pre-K-8 and so that takes at least one class period a week. AND THEN the kids can order books from various Scholastic Book magazines and the teacher can get free books for their classrooms.
Add to the Scholastic time all the safety drills, the anti-bullying assemblies, the community action bs and such, the students don’t have to endure much schooling at all. Doesn’t take much more than a degree in herd management to lead in the classroom these days.
As an end note, one of which I am loathe to add but I think it’s fair….our kids were in a Catholic school.

By: lee

lee — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 13:20:05 +0000

One more thing about growing up where I did, and when I did is that most of the teachers were people who actually went to school because they WANTED to TEACH. They didn’t just fall into a major. I think that makes a HUGE difference as to the caliber of teacher.

I think that was more true in general when those people went to college anyhow–the fifties and early sixties. Partying was far less prevalent on campuses. There were curfews, no “overnight guests.”

But I do think Scott the Badger’s mom is right about many students coming out of ED schools now… Add to that the fact that ED schools are crazy bastions of progressivism… Oy! Our schools are a MESS!

By: lee

lee — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 13:14:37 +0000

My earlier comment under “Pro Second Amendment” is also applicable here (My comment regarding the “conspiracy” of schools to “leftify” our children.)

http://www.bookwormroom.com/2013/02/10/pro-second-amendment-supporters-dying-conspiracy-or-coincidence/

I am about the same age as Bookworm. I grew up in the rural Midwest. While my parents were not farmers, we did live in a farming community. A very conservative farming community.

It was a very small school district. There was a union, but you wouldn’t know it. I know there had to be because something had to connect them with the State Teachers Association. Because that meant retirement benefits and “professional development.”

We were lucky kids. While there were a lot of not very good teachers (and they lasted mostly because they were hometowners who came back to teach), there were very few actively BAD teachers. Most actively bad ones did not last more than one school year. There were a couple close to retirement, and I think they were tolerated more because of a respect for the elderly, and their years of service. I think we were lucky because the farmers would not tolerate actively BAD teachers. (The also did not tolerate their own children behaving badly and being disrespectful.)

And while for the most part my teachers didn’t do so much “brainwashing” (As I wrote about earlier), there still was some.

I do recall being taught, or at least led to believe, that the Republican party and the Democratic party had “switched” views from one hundred years earlier. I know we did do something for the first Earth Day. (I made a cute little thing out of felt.) And My Weekly Reader gave my dad conniptions. (I do not remember what about.) When I went off to college, I was pretty conservative–I did vote for Reagan.

College, on the other hand, had me turning a sharp left…

(Thank goodness I was too lazy to do much voting during my left-leaning years. I don’t have to feel quite as guilty about electing Bill, since I didn’t actually vote for him either time. I didn’t really start voting again until my re-rightward turn…)

By: Ymarsakar

Ymarsakar — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 13:01:26 +0000

One of the problems I see a lot with looking at things in a personal perspective that it takes personal behavior into account too much, while over looking external factors such as evil, corruption, and profiting organizations.

A lot of people do not or refuse to believe the Leftist alliance is evil or is composed of evil people with evil goals, merely because they say that all the bad stuff comes from irresponsible or non disciplined people. That if we deal, individually, with those problems, as a society, things will get better.

Things will not get better, however, for evil’s entropy prevents any such “solution”.

The individuals who fall into this pit most often are the engineers and the problem fixers, those who aren’t interested in politics but just want to get the job done. Eventually, under a regime of evil, they end up working to fix the problems of the tyrants. At times, they may defect like German atomic bomb physicists in WWII. Then they proceed to solve problems for other people, who are responsible for worrying about how to actually stop and kill humans.

In the end, creators, producers, are either on the side of good or on the side of evil. That eternal truth will never disappear.

By: Bookworm Room » Feminist, leftist propaganda in the public school classroom

Bookworm Room » Feminist, leftist propaganda in the public school classroom — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 12:31:29 +0000

[...] today, while my kids were still at school, I wrote about the way in which unions pushed a Leftist agenda into the classroom. I should not have been surprised, therefore, when Little Bookworm came home from high school and [...]

By: SCOTTtheBADGER

SCOTTtheBADGER — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 08:10:44 +0000

My Mom was a teacher for 40 years, and she believed that the ED Departments are the big problem in education. The ED Degree has become very easy to obtain, so the students that have spent the first two years at college slacking and partying, when suddenly confronted with having to select a major, decide that an ED Degree will allow them to continue to slack off, yet wind up with a good paying jobs afterwards. The infusion of ED grads then insures that the teacher’s unions will always have full membership, as the union will keep the incompetent employed.

By: Ymarsakar

Ymarsakar — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 22:18:22 +0000

Vouchers are only appropriate for those with a future, like Obama’s children or Clinton’s children. They are not for the peons working to death in the factories of God.

By: Ymarsakar

Ymarsakar — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 22:17:05 +0000

When people elect a mad dog as leader, the tree rots from the top down.

When people think evil will allow them to flourish, they soon come to realize what entropy truly meant.

They are the enemy. And if people get offended because their loved ones are in a death cult, that’s not really our issue to resolve.