MrF, some of the smartest and best-educated people I've ever met were home-schooled.

Home-schooling is the traditional way--and it has been for centuries. Schools as we know them today are really a product of the Middle Ages. With the technonology available today, having to go to a crowded classroom presided over by a leftist asshole who typically graduated near the bottom of his class, becomes an even more absurd waste of time and money.

The people of earlier generations generally had a better education in high school than students now get in college. That's why the kid is better off being tutored at home by grandma or grandpa (while mommy and daddy rabbit to bring home the tiny paychecks paid out by corporate kings working on their next hundred million dollar golden parachute). But even people of my generation are smarter and better-educated than the typical teacher, so lots of mommies and daddies are up to the job, too.

But let me get to the main point. If the schools don't soon show some serious improvement, more and more parents WILL home school their kids, whether the government likes it or not. Now government thug types (the kind afraid to show their faces--didn't Jeff Cooper have some good stuff on this particularly ugly behavior on the part of the Feds?) might try to break down the door and arrest the defiant home schoolers, but I doubt it--these boys (and amusingly, increasingly girls) more often than not need a small army to arrest just one person, so I doubt that they've got the manpower (or is that personpower?, lol) for the job.

The politics of home-schooling won't go away.

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"Tough guys, he said, time to place your bets."--Charles Simic

Sorry about the late reply.

This is basically drivel on several grounds.

1. Traditional does not mean good. I know, I know, your a conservative Luddite who wants to go back to the gold standard because it is the "traditional way!" Modern Monetary theory be damned! What were the literacy rates in fifteenth century England? You claim that kids were better educated in the past. I took calculus my junior year of high school. In my dad's time, that course was not seen until year one of college at the earliest.

2. Most school topics are apolitical. Again, I knew that my calc teacher was a liberal, we used to talk politics after class. But this had nothing to do with what was being taught. When a given subject must be necessarily partisan, (ie, The Spanish Civil War, the American Civil War,) I would hope that the students examine the historical evidence, and make cogent arguments. Simply presenting both sides and claiming "balance" if pseudo-intellectualism at its finest. Oh, and for what its worth, most high school history courses take a fairly right-wing perspective. America is always in the right, and always has good intentions.

3. Our schools are broken. But there are tons of success stories out there of innovative reformers who have turned schools around in some of the poorest neighborhoods in the country. Deep sixing our entire educative system because its just "too hard" to educate kids in a cop out, and just plain not true.

MrF, I want to post a longer answer to your earlier post, but time is not my friend right now. So three short shots at your latest post.

1. Traditional does not mean good. Neither, however, is "innovative."

2. Most school topics are apolitical? More like they are content free. "Simply presenting both sides" is actually the fallacy of false alternatives. As far as "most high school history courses take a fairly right-wing perspective" is not my experience; most courses I taught in the high schools were simply drivel.

3. Our schools broken? Agreed. "Tons of success stories"? Please name five.

Ed? I knew you wanted a monarchy, but the gold standard too? I don't remember you mentioning that one.

Aw, come on now, Inky, please DO read the article, (and, please let me know what you think about it!)


Chess Fan

MrF, you misunderstand me on a few key points.

Nowhere have I said that I'm a conservative Luddite who wants to go back to the gold standard. Yeah, I know Byron made a great speech defending the framemakers and all that, and of course I'm always prone to taking the side of the underdog (and why not? I'm an underdog, myself!), but I am definitely pro-technology and it has helped much more than it has hurt. I just don't worship it, that's all. Sometimes older IS better, but no, unlike Miniver Cheevy, I don't sigh for those lost ages of tooth decay, filthy, unwashed bodies, weevils in the hardtack, and bedbugs in the multi-layered underclothes.

Another thing: I don't claim, I KNOW that kids were better educated in the past--but notice in my last post that you're referring to, that I didn't extend that past all the way back to 15th century England! Where in hell did you come up with that?

Most school topics ARE apolitical. However, that doesn't mean that they're taught that way.

I have never said that "deep sixing" the entire education system is the road to improvement. You must not have read, or have understood if you did read, my big post on what I'd do to improve the system. The main thing I don't like is the influence of leftists on the system. They have way too much influence on it, and that influence is used to promote a political agenda at the expense of imparting information of real educational value.

You admit that our schools are broken. That implies that they were once whole. Tell me the last good decade for our schools before they become broken. WHEN is the key word; when do you think the damage occurred? Once we agree upon the when, then we can discuss the who and the why.

As for success stories, define "success" and then give me the stories, and I'll tell you if I agree.

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"Tough guys, he said, time to place your bets."--Charles Simic

If you really believe this self-serving bull, then I don't see any point in continuing to discuss this topic with you. Yes, most teachers believe that the Democratic party better represents what they perceive to be their best interests. This is a long way off from schools becoming re-education centers for the left to promote is agenda. Knowing how kids act, I reckon that if teachers tried to get kids to vote for democrats, they would do just the opposite!



Sorry about not putting these up in my original post, but I was waiting for someone who unexpectedly arrived early when I was last posting.

1. Jeff Canada's school out in Harlem

2. Michelle Rhee's modest yet tangible progress out in DC. (which unfortunately will probably be reversed by the new mayor)

3. The New York City schools modest yet tangible turnaround under Joel Klein.

I'll name more after you guys bother to research and comment these on. No offense meant Ed

No offense? Oh come now. We all know what the "F" in "MrF" REALLY means!

RE: Jeff Canada and Joel Klein (lumped together because they are both in New York City). How is Canada succeeding in Harlem? By promoting charter schools and undercutting the power of teachers' unions and, much more importantly, bypassing the educational bureaucracy. I saw Joel Klein on PBS Newshour last night, and he was asked about his success. He cited the greater increase in parental choice in schools. Again, he undercut the power structure. Up above in our earlier exchange, I advocated giving the money directly to the parents for the exact same reason. Give the parents, not the state, the power to make these choices.

You note that Michelle Rhee's work is about to be undone by the new mayor of Washington D.C. That highlights the problem. Public schools are loci of power. I can attest that in Arizona nearly two-thirds of the state legislative seats go uncontested because they are gerrymandered. Yet those seats are well-paid (about $25,000 for a 90 day legislative session). School board seats pay nothing, yet every year there are dozens of candidates for very few seats. I think the reason for that is the lust for power in the hearts of many.

That is my root complaint. What will happen now that Joel Klein moves on? What will happen in D.C.? Those that have power will F*CK those that don't have power. Who doesn't have power? Parents, taxpayers, and children. It isn't the teachers' unions that I blame the most; it is the educational empires of politicians and bureaucrats. Those people will continue to do what they want for the simple reason that they can.

It is the State more than anything else that is the obstacle to better education. Money is power. Give that power to the parents. Give it to them directly. That will work. Nothing else.

RE: the gold standard. It has its virtues and its problems. Right now our fiat money is backed by the gross aggregate of American economic output. The $4 trillion is debt held by China, Japan and the U.A.E. must one day be paid back in American goods. If we switch to the gold standard we will simply substitute gold for our economic production.

The drawback to gold is that it is in limited supply, and, frankly, not everyone wants it. I think I'd rather have farmland than gold. On the other hand if we continue to de-industrialize we may wind up forced to back our money with gold because we have nothing else.

Ed, I've finally caught up on the recent post reading. Kudos for your excellent posts on both this thread and the Education thread. You are substantive where I am passionate, and accurate where I am, at most, only generally correct. Your contributions are much appreciated.

MrF, please try to engage with me on this one. You started with the "schools are broken" part of it; I extended that with a key question, which I ask again: What was the last good decade for our schools before they became broken? Until you can answer that question, I remain willing to continue the discussion with you, but am unable to do so until you've done your part to keep the discussion going. It's like a game of tennis. I've lobbed the ball in your court and until you hit it back to me, I can't hit the ball. At least, not your ball...

Until you return the serve...Let me point out a recurrent thread in the grammar schools and high schools. You say that overwhelming leftist influence is "self-serving bull". Ok, let me run with that a bit. Logically, if the right had the overwhelming influence, we'd see cases of teachers being dismissed or administratively disciplined for doing things that the right disapproved of, such as, but of course not limited to: reading Marxist textbooks, discussing communism favorably in the classroom, or attacking religious doctrines and concepts. If these things happen, and I'm sure that in a small number of schools, they do, they don't make the news. Instead, a great number of schools use a textbook called I, Rigoberta Menchu, which is basically a series of lies. She recalls a childhood that didn't really happen the way she portrayed it in her book. When these lies were exposed, one teacher who clung to the book for use in his classroom basically said, Oh, well, admittedly she lies a lot, but the book still has great instructive value. There are many examples of teachers openly preaching on behalf of Marxism, yet they are not dismissed. And many of these teachers do so while teaching subjects that have nothing to do with politics. David Horowitz has written about such incidents extensively. You either believe his evidence or not, and I believe it; it only extends and confirms what I saw during my high school and college years. Finally, there have been many cases of teachers fired for wearing a small crucifix while in the classroom, to give only one example of the anti-religious mania which has pervaded the left from the beginning. Note that their opposition to religion is quite different from mine, which is based on a lack of scientific and intellectually defensible evidence for such key religious concepts as an omniscient and omnipotent deity (and for any deity at all, I hasten to add), and life after death in a "heaven". Their opposition is based on not wanting any religious competition, since their attitude towards politics is thoroughly suffused with the spirit of religion. I will not deal too much with what students have suffered at the hands of leftist teachers and administrators, except to say that there are numerous examples of students being disciplined for holding their hands like guns while playing, for drawing pictures of our flag, of soldiers in uniform holding rifles, etc. There's no way you can tell me that right-wingers in the schools would ever disapprove of students being patriotic or pro-military. And what about all those campuses where the administrators are against the military doing recruitment? Do you imagine that the right-wingers would ever be against military recruitment of students?

If you bother to make an argument as to how leftist influence on our schools is not what I say it is, I will certainly read it, and comment on it fairly and as dispassionately as I can, but you will find yourself cruelly handicapped by a lack of facts with which to make your case.

The leftists follow the Leninist model when it comes to their attack on the schools. "Give me the schools and soon I can dispense with the parents." Or something like that. They structure the schools in such a way that the kids will be as much unlike their parents as possible. The parents, with few exceptions, believe in themselves and therefore want their kids to be as much like them as possible. Between these two groups, the leftist teachers and the (non-leftist) parents, there can be no compromise. But as much as I censure the leftist teachers, I have to reserve even harsher words for the parents. Far too many parents attend to their jobs and their marriages first, and their kids second or not at all. They don't spend enough time making sure that their kids get a good education.

This is why I agree with most, but not all, of Ed's suggestions. Giving the money directly to the parents is surely no instant panacea.

Politically speaking, I can't see how anyone not harboring either an extreme right- or left-wing agenda could ever be against one simple remedy for the awful condition of our schools. Let the federal government create a test which, insofar as it is possible, minimizes political criteria, and which emphasizes mastery of the factual basis of the subject matter. Let this test be available to any college graduate with a 4-year degree. If the candidate passes the test, he then proceeds to a 6-mos or 1-yr probationary period in which he teaches in the classroom while being supervised by several experienced teachers on a rotating basis. If the majority of these teachers indicate that they think the student is ready to join the profession on a full-time basis, then he's in. After that, he should have to pass more tests, on a regular basis, say every 2 to 3 years, to ensure that he has not only not let the knowledge he began with degrade, but he has kept up with whatever new knowledge (of the subject he teaches) which has accrued.

What we must avoid is a continuance of what we have now, which is a system designed to protect those in power, who have every incentive, and practically no disincentive, to ensure that only people like them are conducted into, and retained by, the educational establishment.

If something can be structured that does not leave a teacher credential candidate at the mercy of the personal, and almost always, leftist political, opinions of the person interviewing him, then the first real step towards improvement of the education system will have been accomplished.

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"Tough guys, he said, time to place your bets."--Charles Simic