Dr. Randy White, Superintendent, John Nelson Darby Academy
The Public School monopoly, which is tightly controlled by the educational establishment composed of teachers’ unions, textbook sellers (the world’s best exploitation industry), and the educational academia (which is largely atheist, socialist, and totally influenced by Deweyism), is constantly telling legislators and the public that more money is needed in order to fix the problems in the education system. And legislators and the public are constantly forking over the cold-hard cash. The public is then rewarded with nothing but dismal results and a growing workforce of uneducated, unthinking, unproductive minions.
For example, take the Albuquerque (NM) Public School system. It has a $1.34 Billion (yes, that is a B) budget. With these billions, it is assigned the task of educating about 95,000 students with 6,500 teachers in 139 schools. This amounts to almost $16,000 PER STUDENT in expenditures. Yet the APS is cutting programs and crying for more money ad nauseam. And the results of the spending? According to the State Department of Education, 89 of the 139 schools (64%) received a “D” or “F” ranking. Not a single high school in APS had a 50% proficiency in math (in a state that is filled with scientists working in the best laboratories in the world). New Mexico as a state ranked 49th in education.
It’s time for somebody to say, “Money isn’t the issue.”
What’s Wrong?
Why are public schools in so many locations doing such an unequivocally lousy job in education? The answer is simple and can be stated in one word: indoctrination.
Listen carefully: if you want your children to be free from indoctrination, do not send them to public schools.
The public school system in America is one sociological experiment after another. It includes indoctrinating children about origins, shaping current politics by teaching fake-history, and molding the worldview of boys and girls who shouldn’t be called boys and girls because DNA doesn’t matter anymore. In a word, public schools have become an indoctrination machine, at taxpayer expense. Come to think of it, who cares what the financial expense is; the REAL expense is the loss of an effective and thinking society.
As counterintuitive as it may seem, the best thing parents can do in order to avoid the indoctrination of their children is to use private and Christian education.
But isn’t Christian education all about indoctrination?
Actually, No. Absolutely not!
Christian education, more than anything offered in America today, is about verifiable facts: scientific facts, mathematical facts, grammatical facts, and historical facts. A solid Christian education is not afraid of the facts. If a Biblical worldview cannot stand up to archaeology, history, and science, then such a worldview doesn’t deserve to exist. And the same is true of Darwinianism, Marxism, Deweyism, Freudism, and all the other “isms” taught today.
It’s not about the money.
Public school education costs far more per pupil than private school education, and yet private school education is far more successful.
Instead of throwing more money at the problem, I think we ought to throw more brains at the problem. What American public education needs is for the public to say, “Stop the game, quit the experiment, and start educating our children.” The public should insist that American boys and girls be taught “reading, writing, and arithmetic,” the three fundamentals to logic, problem-solving, and to a successful future.
In fact, I’m convinced that New Mexico public schools could quickly go from 49th to 1st if they would simply do the following in their K-5th grades:
- Immediately cancel all classes and lessons on sociology, philosophy, worldview, and origins.
- Immediately reject the Common Core “standards” that have been adopted with vigor in New Mexico schools.
- These “standards” are content free and focus on a skill set.
- The problem with this is that skills are built on content.
- Spend 40% of the classroom time for grades K-5 in language basics.
- Teach phonics
- Teach parts of speech and sentence structure
- Teach Latin
- Teach word etymology
- Immediately reject all reading curriculum that focuses on storytelling and analysis. These segments of learning are filled with political and social propaganda.
- Spend 30% of the classroom time for grades K-5 in mathematics.
- Teach math facts by rote for quick recall.
- Develop a superior and quick ability to add, subtract, multiply, and divide.
- Spend 20% of the classroom time for grades K-5 teaching basic history and science.
- Spend 10% of the classroom time teaching children to read music (because of the logic, ratio, and science that is inherent in music).
If lower education would insist on “just the facts, ma’am,” then it would build a foundation for logic and rhetoric in the 6-12 grades.
It Won’t Happen.
Since it will be a cold day in a hot place before the public school system changes its ideology, I would suggest that most parents find alternatives to the failing system. Find online or in-person educational alternatives that are far more effective and make the switch. Quit going down the path of least resistance, which is a path that is indoctrinating your children to worldly thinking that ignores basic facts.
If we can help, please let us know.
Lots of folks are wondering what the hell happened to their schools. And their children’s innocence. And their education.
That’s legitimate stuff because that already-bad reform has been made even more ridiculous by some shady actors who care little about education … and even less about children.
These reform-posers are a sloppy crowd. Cock-sure ideologues taking advantage of the reform momentum to peddle their biased junk. These are suspect characters … disguised as legitimate educators. Which they’re not.
They let loose their mayhem … and some disturbing weirdness bubbles up. And alarms sound off … especially among frustrated parents already deep in this reform idiocy… like the hair-pulling math, the close reading madness, the loss of recess, and the imbecilic testing. It puts parents and schools at odds. And now odd is now all over the place.
This nation is on a dysfunctional odyssey … and we’ve become more and more polarized … fractured over race and healthcare and wealth … and borders and bathrooms.
It’s even leeching into the schools … helped along by these zealots who politicize classrooms. Many have become skilled puppeteers … dangling and yanking kids… because they can’t resist.
It’s a helluva cultural tornado … made more intense by a long, hot election season that seems to never subside. Which brings us to this moment.
It’s hot in America this winter.
And these fiery times have supplied new arrogance to those who insist on the superiority of their own biases … and who demand that everyone … every student … join their intolerant jamboree under their perverted sense of tolerance.
It’s all unfolding at light-speed. And it’s all subsidized by you. Whether you like it or not. And lots don’t.
And so the climate-changers are banning books.
The Black Lives Matter crowd is infusing classrooms with week-long tirades about American injustice.
The immigration controversy has halloweened schools into hosting Hajib Day.
And a pair of windmill-charging teacher-kneelers on Long Island … auditioning for the Saul Alinsky Newcomer Award …. took a knee during the inaugural Pledge of Allegiance … in front of their classes. In a bold display of … prejudice.
That’s not brave stuff. That’s cheesy manipulation.
The issue isn’t so much the topics. The issue is the bias.The one-sidedness of it all. And the fact that kids are captive audiences. Confined. At the mercy of some adults who’ve lost their own balance.
____ right … schools should be sanctuaries … but not for the same reasons as these imposters of impartiality suggest.
Schools should be sanctuaries where young minds question. Listen. Discuss. Debate. Think.
They’re not designed for indoctrination. Nor for single-sided arguments. Or for mind-bending.
Lots of activist-educators are demanding that America be altered, remodeled, rejuvenated, redirected … and most especially … cured. But only if those cures pass their muster. And they’re using their classrooms … and our sons and daughters … to champion their remedies.
Unfair. Unethical. Unwise.
Schools should never be ideological incubators. That’s not their mission … nor is that part of the compact with those who fund and support public education.
Public schools are not pipelines to the activist major leagues. They’re not breeding grounds for cultural jihadis. They’re institutions of fair examination and equitable consideration of all ideas … not just some.
This isn’t a slam against daring thinking. But it is a slam against teachers who betray their classroom posture of neutrality to favor this or that point of view.
It’s a teacher’s obligation to guide youngsters to discover their own truths … not to pour them a glass of Kool-Aid.
Denis Ian
Welcome to your public school of the future … where children are bar-coded and the curriculum down-loaded to spying tablets that measure your youngsters’ blood pressure, eye dilations, and perspiration levels … as they key in responses to questions authored by basement gnomes who last saw sunlight and heard giggles when they accidentally opened a window.
Teachers will be interchangeable technicians who will receive prompts of what to say and when to say it.
They will see to incessant data collecting that will enable some far-away, algorithmic svengali to predict the likely career route of this and that child.
Even very great public schools will eventually collapse under the weight of interference and over-management. They, too, will be suffocated.
That is our current course in education … in America.
And parents will revolt. And they will resume regency over the education of their children.
And no government effort will have the power to stop the stampede to common sense … and the return to authentic education.
There is always redemption.
Parents will flee public education for a not-so-new phenomena: classical, private schools that will promise traditional instruction and humanistic inquiry.
And soon we’ll find ourselves in a thrilling educational renaissance … because all things worthwhile come full circle. Always.
These “new” schools will become the national rage. They will be found everywhere … in various sizes and configurations, but with very similar philosophies.
Each will feature traditional mathematics … shunning the current nonsense that has turned a half-generation into jittered guessers who most always select the answer they think least likely to be right … because that sort of weirdness has become rewarded.
Proper writing, speaking, and discussion skills will be paramount efforts in these schools. And there will be absolute devotion to the classics rather than the current rage of favoring junk literature because it waxes some politically correct trend … or validates some shabby cultural behaviors.
Reading will again become a national passion. And it will be cool to be smart.
Social studies instruction will be founded in both civics and actual historical accuracy.
Politically correct revisionism will be addressed as a cultural spasm that usually substitutes as counterfeit intellectualism … because it’s almost always shrouded in goopy language that camouflages the truth. Plaintive sincerity will no longer be the most admired aspect of debate. Volume will never triumph in any exchange.
Constitutional literacy will be mandatory.
The social justice industry will join ebonics as artful efforts to avoid the truth. The new private schools will go to extraordinary lengths to expose fraud ideologies where ever they might arise. Social justice gargoyles will be snake-oiled … and exposed as the frauds they are.
Proper decorum will be as important as any intellectual exercise. Adults will be addressed with proper salutations once again … and slang will be the hallmark not of rebels, but of lazy poseurs. A society is healthier for such small customs.
The arts will again be artful rather than jarring.
And they will be of substance and not so much flaunt … as that usually indicates a paucity of talent … be it in art, poetry, music, dance, film, or other such creative undertakings.
Teachers will not only command classes as their pedagogical instincts suggest, they will let loose their creative instruction techniques … and different learners will find the ideal match for their learning style. Teachers will again be the central force in education. And the profession will recover and become a favored career that will attract the best of the best.
Foreign languages and different cultures will be attended to … but no effort will supercede the understanding of the American culture and its achievements … and its importance to world stability and prosperity. There will be no embarrassment or apologies for America’s preeminence. Greatness will never again be sin.
Schools will cultivate a culture of discovery … and even relish individualism. These private institutions will allow for differing maturity of different talents … and provide opportunities for all sorts of genius.
Conformity will be mostly associated with civil decorum rather than with thought or expression. Learning occurs best in an atmosphere of order.
These schools will, of course, offer athletics and artistic endeavors such as drama, performance, and illustration opportunities. And they will be as valued as any other efforts.
The sciences will be revered. And they will always be explained in the human context … so that it tempers our temptations.
And there will, indeed, be attention to the whole child … as a complete human being capable of extraordinary achievements and noble behaviors.
Schools will once again become fond memories for one’s entire life … valued as the character and intellectual constructors of lives well lived.
They will flourish as the public school system spirals toward the educational bottom … not because they are underfunded, but because they are tortured by fraud intellectuals, polluted by social justice junkies, economically raped by software sellers and testing scammers.
And all of this mayhem will be captained by know-nothing politicians and bottom-line entrepreneurs who will devastate the public schools until their entire worth is exhausted.
Then … and only then … might there be a resurrection.
Denis Ian