The Change in American Education Accelerated in Recent Decades

"You trust me with those educators?"

quercuscontramalum (http://quercuscontramalum.myopenid.com/) has left a new comment on your post "Turning People into Sheeple":

PUBLIC SCHOOL -- CURE FOR MENTAL ILLNESS: "The watershed moment when modern schooling swept all competition from the field was the passage of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in 1965 (ESEA)...opening the door to a full palette of 'interventions' by psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, agencies, and various specialists. All were invited to use the schoolhouse as a satellite office -- in urban ghettos, as a primary office. Now it was the law.

"Along the way to this milestone, important way stations were reached...The strand I've shown is only one of many in the tapestry. The psychological goals of this project and the quality of mind in back of them are caught fairly in the keynote address to the 1973 Childhood International Education Seminar in Boulder, CO, delivered by Harvard psychiatrist Chester M. Pierce. this quote appears to have been edited out of printed transcripts of the talk, but was reported by newspapers in actual attendance:

"'Every child in America entering school at the age of five is mentally ill because he comes to school with certain allegiances to our founding fathers, toward our elected officials, toward his parents, toward a believe in a supernatural being, and toward the sovereignty of this nation as a separate entity. It's up to you as teachers to make all these sick children well--by creating the international child of the future.'"

The Underground History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto,

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quercuscontramalum (http://quercuscontramalum.myopenid.com/) has left a new comment on your post "Turning People into Sheeple":

http://voxday.blogspot.com/2013/01/fueling-death-cycle.html

"Smarter educators will start thinking about how to update a 19th Century product to suit 21st Century realities. Less-smart educators will hunker down and fight change tooth and nail. Who will win out in the end? Well, how many 19th Century business models do you see flourishing, here in the 21st?"

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GJ - I am working on a post about public school violence. The material above is directly related to that.

Good Insights about Homeschooling

California is on the right.

California:
I had the pleasure of knowing one of the pioneers of homeschooling if not THE pioneer.   She paved the way for many when home schools were not legal in many states, homeschooled her four children while residing in several different states, and was instrumental in writing legislation to make homeschooling legal in some of them.  She wrote about home schooling and other education issues through the years, and was recognized for her efforts on a Video for TV in Texas some years ago.  Pioneers such as Virginia (Ginny) Baker should be thanked for their efforts and example.   

[Reference to Ginny Baker here.]

One of the  things Ginny and serious education watchers consistently warned  homeschoolers was the importance of their accepting not one penny of government money even indirectly, no co operative arrangements with the local public schools or charter school arrangements, or use of any cyber curricula which is underwritten by government grants to the supplier.  What government funds, even indirectly, government controls, and eventually home schooling will be forced to comply with government curricula standards if government funding is in the picture.

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GJ - California is always educating me about these topics. I remember my mother, a public school teacher, warning people about the federal government "helping" with money. She said, "They say no strings, but there are always strings."

Now people simply accept the federal government dictating everything to us and running roughshod over the states.

An Evangelical looked at us like we were Mr. and Mrs. Moses for homeschooling 30 years ago. We saw nothing but benefits from homeschooling and got nothing but hostility about it.

When I met one "conservative" LCMS DP and mentioned homeschooling, he said, "We just got rid of one of them." Sure enough, one LCMS pastor was kicked out for homeschooling, even though he promised to enroll his child in LCMS parochial school.

The same DP said our son was the only person he knew who could recite the Master Mason's oath by heart. (That was one of his projects, to study the Masonic Lodge.)

The parochial school (now baby-sitting) business is going to oppose anything robbing them of cash. Money pays for teachers, principals, consultants, pastor-faculty, teachers' colleges, and more. Even better, a parochial system keeps people out, serving as a guild. 

Charter schools are just another form of the federal government controlled school system. And how well is that working?

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rlschultz has left a new comment on your post "Good Insights about Homeschooling":

Pastor Jackson, your mother was certainly correct about funding from the federal government. When your mother was a public school teacher, they were almost always under local control from the school board. My grandfather served on the school board in 1930's. He certainly was not an educational professional. He did not even have the benefit of a high school education. Here is what Wikipedia says about the Federal DOE:

"Upgrading Education to cabinet level status in 1979 was opposed by many in the Republican Party, who saw the department as unconstitutional, arguing that the Constitution doesn't mention education, and deemed it an unnecessary and illegal federal bureaucratic intrusion into local affairs. However many liberals and Democrats see the department as constitutional under the Commerce Clause, and that the funding role of the Department is constitutional under the Taxing and Spending Clause. The National Education Association supported the bill, while the American Federation of Teachers opposed it."

It certainly did not stop with the local public schools. When Lutheran schools accept the filthy lucre under "school choice" and charter schools are sold as "free market", the funding source and the control is the same. 

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GJ - Historic St. John Lutheran Church in Milwaukee, under SP John Brenner, would not take a dime in government money. The end began when parochial schools decided they needed tax money. With that they got government meddling in everything. And the "poor" school becomes every more dependent on the tax-money-donor, who giveth and taketh away. The school that lives from the tax collector will also die from the tax collector, when budgets shift.

However, many churchmen enjoy having their trotters in the government trough, because they get their share and more - so they think. Their god is the belly, and they are very pious in that way.

Turning People into Sheeple

An education used to be a classical education,
so students knew the foundation of Western Civilization.

quercuscontramalum (http://quercuscontramalum.myopenid.com/) has left a new comment on your post "Homeschooling Is Easier Now":

MUSINGS ON PUBLIC EDUCTION (sic) #3: "In the U.S. Steel company town of Gary, Indiana, Superintendent William A. Wirt, a former student of John Dewey's at the University of Chicago, was busy testing a radical school innovation called the Gary Plan, soon to be sprung on the national scene...in which school subjects were departmentalized; this required movement of students from room to room on a regular basis so that all building spaces were in constant use. Bells would ring and just as with Pavlov's salivating dog, children would shift out of their seats and lurtch toward yet another class.

"In this way children could be exposed to many nonacademic socialization experiences and much scientifically engineered physical activity...a curriculum apart from the so-called basic subjects, which by this time were being looked upon as an actual menace to long-range social goals...[The Gary Plan's] noteworthy economical feature, rigorously scheduling a student body twice as large as before into the same space and time, earned it the informal name 'platoon school.'

Early in 1914, the Federal Bureau of Education...strongly endorsed Wirt's system. This led to one of the most dramatic and least-known events in twentieth-century school history. In New York City, a spontaneous rebellion occurred on the part of the students and parents against extension of the Gary Plan to their own city. While the revolt had only short-lived effects, it highlights the demoralization of private life occasioned by passing methods of industry off as education."

--John Taylor Gatto, The Underground History of American Education

Homeschooling Is Easier Now

The public school teacher was offended that we took LI out of school
to visit three Lincoln sites, the Patton Tank Museum at Ft. Knox,
the site of Tillich's burial, and Trappist, KY, where Merton lived.
I had public school teachers who took entire classes
to Chicago and Springfield for similar experiences.

 rlschultz has left a new comment on your post "We Homeschooled 30 Years Ago": 

Homeschooling is easier to do now than what is was 30 years ago. The homeschooling movement has been quietly increasing the number of students for decades now. The movement is decentralized, as opposed to some overbearing state departments of education. There is a local home school association in our area. 

They function more like a mutual benefit society or a farmers' co-operative. Yet, they have field trips, extra-curricular sports, fine arts programs, etc. Textbooks and other teaching materials are easy to obtain from other parents or from the Internet. 

Paul Holmer, Yale, was our favorite person there.
When we visited, we looked up Holmer and Roland Bainton.

My wife home schools our special needs son because we had no other viable alternative. She does not have a teaching degree, but only a diploma from a small town high school. She is able to incorporate our son's therapies into learning without being hindered by the structure of the classroom. Lutheran elementary schools are morphing into academies, following the Babtist model. The area Lutheran high schools are getting very pricey. There is an over emphasis upon sports and outreach. Some schools now take students through the government funded "choice" programs. For children, the best lessons are always learned at home. 

There is a direct relationship between learning skills and homeschooling.

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GJ - I found three or four groups of homeschoolers on Facebook, with at least 100,000 "likes" among them. There are many supporting entities now, just as Mr. Schultz wrote. One local college has low-cost classes and group activities for homeschoolers. The college president said, "They are our best students in college."

Many American students do not get this fact - those digital devices they love so much have localized the job market. Workers can take jobs away from them while still living in India, China, or S. Korea. 

Constant learning is needed to keep up. One computer science major said to LI, "Why do we have to learn another computer language? I already know one." And some were shocked to find out there was another operating system than Windows. Knowing the second one (Unix) was the key to getting the job.

The Last Radicals - NR / Digital Articles - National Review Online

Photo credit: Liz Copeland.

The Last Radicals - NR / Digital Articles - National Review Online:

There is exactly one authentically radical social movement of any real significance in the United States, and it is not Occupy, the Tea Party, or the Ron Paul faction. It is homeschoolers, who, by the simple act of instructing their children at home, pose an intellectual, moral, and political challenge to the government-monopoly schools, which are one of our most fundamental institutions and one of our most dysfunctional. Like all radical movements, homeschoolers drive the establishment bats.

'via Blog this'

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GJ - I usually ignore National Review, for many reasons. However, this author makes a good point.

We home-schooled about 30 years ago and loved it. People wondered about how that could possibly work out. I suggested that most wealthy people had their children tutored at home, that Alexander the Great was educated that way. Alex did well, and so did our son.

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Pastor emeritus Nathan Bickel has left a new comment on your post "The Last Radicals - NR / Digital Articles - Nation...":

Ichabod -

Wonderful feline pic! Looks just like our domestic shorthair!

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GJ - Liz is a childhood friend of the family. My mother and her mother taught in the same gradeschool, Garfield. I grew up among teachers and teachers' kids, went to PTA meetings for the desserts, studied in the school library during teachers' meetings. The Jackson kids went to school early, walking to Garfield with mom. It was more like a forced march in the military.

Liz is a very talented nature photographer, and she is a retired teacher.

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rlschultz has left a new comment on your post "The Last Radicals - NR / Digital Articles - Nation...":

Thank you for posting this. We were placed into a position where my wife is now home schooling our autistic son. There is a very active home schooling association near us, which draws from a large geographical area. Our son's former senior behavioral therapist, now a public school teacher, could not grasp the home schooling concept. She kept inferring that their is no regulation in place to deal with "deadbeat parents" who homeschool their children. I countered that with the suggestion that there are many deadbeat parents who send their children to public schools, which are highly regulated. It seems that homeschooling is done by parents who are willing to take on tremendous sacrifice because they love the children that the Lord has blessed them with.

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GJ - I was homeschooled in a sense. My mother made sure I grew up with a library of books for all ages, subscribing to several different book clubs for youth. My father was very interested in politics and read in that area all the time. I attended many extra educational events, sometimes voluntarily.

My argument for homeschooling is - the teachers love their children, which is often not the case in the public system. There are head-cases in parochial schools too. Our son's teachers in two parochial schools were 50% - half of them terrific, half of them awful. I interviewed potential teachers for an area Christian school - dumber than rocks. I asked, "Who is C. S. Lewis?" Anger erupted - "Why do I need to know that?"

I am not surprised at the therapist's reaction, above. Homeschooling is a major threat to our socialist educational system, which is no better under the banner of charter schools. "Where the money is, there will the apostates be gathered." - The Gospel of Mark Jeske, 3:14.

Homeschooling means tailoring the education to the individual student and spending far more hours in education. We ran our effort seven days a week, all year, by request. Some results: fluency in Latin and Greek, a beginning in Hebrew. At least 100 significant books were read, such as the Iliad and the Odyssey. It also creates priceless moments.

I would dismantle 90% of the educational system and give the tax money back to the parents. The recipients could then spend the money exactly as they wished. No govmint charter schools. No requirement for a phony, bad education.