Topic - Education

About: judge orders homeschoolers
into government education

I am doing analysis from the point of view of being! The realm of human existence has having, doing & being of which being is more of the soul & spirit. I regard being as the fundamental principle & guidance for the other two.

~*~

I am beginning with items in the news by extracting & analyzing things which cause me to pause & wonder what in the nature of the Being of this country & the World is such that that which stirs up emotion & the desire for political change causes me to want a new charter & being for some facet of society & transformation in political-economic-laws of it all.

My analysis of this piece is that we as a people are being that the government has the solution to everything & in particular the education, values & morals of our children. If this keeps up, our children will cease to be our children any more &, like communist countries of today, governments will evolve which exist because they oppose dissent. I am sad when I contemplate such. Freedom (Liberty) in the realm of what I think & can think must be independent of government. We will become the machinery of government in a few generations if this is what we move toward.

Keep your comments civil & crisp, please!

Comments

Seth says

One thing i think we need to acknowledge, whether we like it or not, is that life has gotten more complex. Things are not so easy and clear to figure out as they were at the beginning of the 20th century. The question that i would like to put to you is whether a single individual is as much in control of their life as they were back then in the good old days where your concept of Liberty was developed? Can individuals still fix their own lives? You might want to take this thought problem seriously ... me thinks it goes to the heart of your item here.

Mark de LA says

seth 2008-03-03 09:04:04 9413

This might become the subject of another node but I will comment here. One assumption in your emphasized sentence is that something needs a fix. Indeed, you pointed to individual lives. I am pointing to relationships & interactions between individuals & groups of people. The human physical body is one of the most complex items there is & that does not rule out Liberty. I am looking to discover how individuals can transform their interactions in politics, economics, justice etc. such that they become more free. I usually start with a thought experiment about the Golden Rule - viz. you might imagine (however impractical) how things might be if everyone thinks, feels & acts according to the Golden Rule. It is practical on the individual level but not at a governmental level. Not everybody will think & behave the same. However in some domains & in some arenas you might be able to negotiate or find a group of people who for the sake of some common good are willing to try out the idea for a limited amount of time. Lives are the domain of individuals & for the most part absolutely free to experience whatever their owner chooses; subject to experiencing also the consequences of their owner's choices. (freedom of the soul).

Mark de LA says

If this article is true (also from WND) then laws forbidding teaching communism in schools in California will be struck down by SB 1322 (calif).

source: ... Worse yet, the group said, "the bill would also strike the law that prohibits a teacher giving instruction in a school or on public school property from teaching communism with the intent to indoctrinate or to inculcate in the mind of any pupil a preference for communism," CRI said.

...

Seth says

I think there is a difference between teaching communism and teaching about communism. We might want to discourage the former and allow the latter. You can substitute any ism for the word "communism" salva veritate.

Mark de LA says

Seth 2008-03-05 05:36:53 9413

I think the "intent to indoctrinate" makes it less about & more like it. This may be a tempest in a teapot, WND likes to do that sometimes on it's pet projects like home schooling & Christianity. That's why I left in the "if it's true" clause. I brought this up as a disturbing direction the public schools are moving toward, i.e. indoctrination. Global warming indoctrination is another disturbing direction. In the U.K. there is a law that says you must provide the alternatives to Gore's movie when you teach it for balance because of all the scientific errors in the movie. If you did not study too close RS's Threefold Commonwealth you might assume it was communism. Having the state determine an absolute curriculum can give rise to extremist governments & theocracies.

Seth says

M 2008-03-05 06:56:28 9413

Having the state determine an absolute curriculum can give rise to extremist governments & theocracies.

In the US system the local school board with guidance from the state government chooses the curriculum and the textbooks. Teachers who depart from that curriculum or do not teach from the books are frequently disciplined. Are you proposing a different system? Is the school board merely to choose the teachers and let them loose on our kids to teach whatever ideas they believe? Are we to give control to the individual teacher ... or what ?

Mark de LA says

Seth 2008-03-05 08:21:35 9413

M 2008-03-05 06:56:28 9413

Having the state determine an absolute curriculum can give rise to extremist governments & theocracies.

The school board is an instrument of the state! And, states in order to get federal money have to behave as the federal government (Congress) dictates . Furthermore, the teachers are mostly part of the teacher's union which has it's own agenda & self interest at stake. I see no independence here at all. Schools should be privatized & independent of the government just like religion is. The schools should police themselves like a professional society does to insure that the freedom to think is preserved for the students & the basic tools & choices needed by the students are available.

Seth says

A private education might be a good idea. To get there from here you need to solve some knarley problems. One pops up very fast: How do you provide an education to children when their parents cannot afford (or choose not to afford) to pay for it themselves?

Mark de LA says

Seth 2008-03-06 08:31:10 9413

Vouchers! Instead of wasting money on a failed public school system, take that same amount of money & spend it with the private sector. The only thing I would change in that system is remove the double taxation. I.e. the public sector doesn't get the same amount of money they always have while getting the benefit of lower head count.

Mark de LA says

In California the education system is moving in the wrong direction. See this article.

source: ...

"A primary purpose of the educational system is to train school children in good citizenship, patriotism and loyalty to the state and the nation as a means of protecting the public welfare," the judge wrote, quoting from a 1961 case on a similar issue.

...What ever happened to reading, writing, arithmetic & science? Maybe a little education on civics & economics would be better than indoctrination into the system.

Naturally, the Union was pleased with the ruling since that further solidifies their monopoly on the education of your children! They are also against vouchers for the same reason.

Mark de LA says

And now in Minnesota a public school that teaches Islam!

http://kstp.com/article/stories/S407036.shtml?cat=1

What kind of educator can't figure out how to use the flagpole & is still qualified to educate children ?

Also see:

http://www.startribune.com/local/17402659.html

http://kstp.com/article/stories/S407036.shtml?cat=1

The google newsfeed is here.

The funny thing is if a Public School was located on Christian church grounds & shared buildings with a charity that promoted Christian values & conducted prayers during the school day etc. The ACLU would have eaten them for lunch by now & the media would have had an ecstacy of orgasms excoriating them in the news. Ho hum....

Seth says

source: M above
And now in Minnesota a public school that teaches Islam!

Seems to me that if you have the voucher system which you propose above, then you would deligated such things as what is taught (Islam, Christianity, of secular) to the local school. Isn't that just what appears to have happened in this case?

Mark de LA says

seth 2008-04-10 11:50:15 9413

source: M above
And now in Minnesota a public school that teaches Islam!

Seems to me that if you have the voucher system which you propose above, then you would delegated such things as what is taught (Islam, Christianity, of secular) to the local school. Isn't that just what appears to have happened in this case?

That's the argument from the teacher's Union. I don't necessarily buy into it. Vouchers, when they have been discussed, usually have some restrictions & criteria for accreditation. I don't like education dictated by the state or religions. Private schools are private & can teach anything the parents want to have taught if they are not paid for by my tax $$. Whether graduation from such a school leads to acceptance to college or other schools should depend upon how much standard learning happened: e.g. reading, writing, arithmetic, science & in today's world - government & economics!

Seth says

source: M above
Private schools are private & can teach anything the parents want to have taught

Yep that's my point. In this case the parents are Muslems. If there are restrictions on public money from vouchers, then that is the control by the state that you abhoar. If you have a completely private system, then your leave out the poor and/or are dependant on the adgenda of charatable organizatios. It is not an easy act to balance.

Mark de LA says

seth 2008-04-10 13:24:52 9413

source: M above
Private schools are private & can teach anything the parents want to have taught

Yep that's my point. In this case the parents are Muslims. If there are restrictions on public money from vouchers, then that is the control by the state that you abhor. If you have a completely private system, then your leave out the poor and/or are dependant on the agenda of charitable organizations. It is not an easy act to balance.

There should be accreditation & there should perhaps be parental review boards or some kind of oversight such that the children are not taught to have sex with each other as the prime inducement to attendance.

The problem with the Muslim madrases is that they are not being assimilated & are contributing to the Balkinisation of the country. We don't want to produce a country like Yugoslavia which breaks apart because there is no longer any common thread amongst the inhabitants.

Mark de LA says

Another school in Houston Texas forces children to watch an Islamic indoctrination:

source: ... A public school principal in Texas who arranged for an Islamic instruction presentation for students by an organization whose leaders have been linked to terror groups apparently arranged for that indoctrination after being told not to by her district's superintendent, parents have told WND.

...

I wonder how fast the ACLU would have descended upon the school if it had been a Christian indoctrination?

Mark de LA says

...& now some students in Texas are required to learn Arabic.

Source: ... Some Students at Mansfield ISD schools could soon be learning Arabic as a required language. The school district wants students at select schools to take Arabic language and culture classes as part of a federally funded grant.

The Foreign Language Assistance Program (FLAP) grant was awarded to Mansfield ISD last summer by the U.S. Department of Education.

...

How can the department of Education require this?

Topic - Education

About: judge orders homeschoolers
into government education

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Topic - Education

About: judge orders homeschoolersinto government education

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About: judge orders homeschoolers
into government education