A lady asked Dr. Franklin Well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy. A republic replied the Doctor if you can keep it.
Doctor James McHenry, a delegate to the Constitutional Convention from Maryland. The quote is excerpted from his diary. The lady referred to was Elizabeth Powel. She was a daughter of a mayor of Philadelphia and the wife of another mayor of Philadelphia. She would live to 1830, the Republic kept during her long life (She was born in 1742.).
How we will keep it is very much in question. My sons attend the South Fayette School District, a school district that has won multiple awards for innovation and excellence. Those awards and $5.00 will get you an overpriced cup of coffee at an overhyped national chain.
My sixth grade son has had almost no history taught to him at all. There was a little bit about Columbus, undoubtedly written bty Howard Zinn, that made my wife go apoplectic. She wanted to go Buford Pusser on the school administration.
No US history, and no Pennsylvania history. What a joke. William Penn was a commoner who received a land grant from the English king. The Declaration of Independence, Valley Forge, the Yankee-Pennonite Wars, the Mason Dixon Line, the Constitution, the French & Indian War, the Whiskey Rebellion, Gettysburg, the massive growth of manufacturing and innovation in Pittsburgh, the Pennsylvania Railroad……nothing is taught at all. Education is a FRAUD.
They put some of their course offerings up here
https://www.southfayette.org/cms/lib/PA01001917/Centricity/Domain/36/program_of_studies.pdf
They introduce foreign languages without any prerequisites. Can the students reliably diagram a sentence in English?
They introduce ‘technology education’. I can see computer classes to help them use those machines as tools, but they’re building mock-up robots.
They have a fuzzy course called STEAM which looks like filler
They list ‘Physical Education’ as a ‘course’ when it’s properly an activity undertaken between courses.
They have four music listings. Again, music is an activity and an extracurricular. (It’s also a waste of time in the manner it is taught. Why not replace classroom instruction with rationed slots of tutorials and small group instruction in specific instruments?)
‘Health / aquatics’. This sort of thing was taught by gym teachers at one time. The sex stuff is an appropriation of parental prerogatives. The drugs and tobacco stuff is (one might wager) too ineffective to be worth the time. The first aid and lifesaving stuff can be allocated to gym time.
‘Family and Consumer Science’ (See Thomas Sowell on this point. A great many teachers would rather fritter away their time on ‘non-academic mush’)
ESOL. OK, but not in regular schools. In dedicated programs run by county-level boards. It might be useful for said programs to rent space from regular schools, but the programs in question would not be supervised by the principal.
Art. Again, arts-and-crafts is an activity.
‘Learning support’. Again, tracking and county-level special services districts, please.
‘Science’. Save it for secondary school, for those students choosing an academic course. With proper tracking, some students would have tested out and assigned to junior high schools for students on an accelerated program.
‘Social studies’. I.e. badly focused shizz. That includes the historical component (‘ancient, medieval’ blah blah when they don’t know the history of the town in which they live).
Mathematics. OK, if tracking employed
‘Language arts’. ditto.
A proper elementary program would have tracks and focus on basic education – literacy and numeracy. (The former having the ultimate goal of teaching youngsters to read and write grammatical English, the latter to master elementary algebra). When a certain level of mastery is achieved, you introduce a third subject – history / geography / civics – with a strict focus on the U.S. and Canada. The last is for civic purposes, but the students will mostly frustrate those purposes by forgetting all of it. Liberal education (e.g. medieval history) is properly reserved for secondary schooling, and only for those students who select an academic course.
What they’re up to makes sense if you figure that the function of schools is to provide employment for the people who work in them. I think that’s usually the case in the education sector..
Art, you nailed it. My 11 year old has no recess. He has to remain in the same seat for the entire lunch period. The sixth grade eats lunch at 12:30. Not the administrators. He has 13 teachers. I am looking to move him out next year.
My 11 year old has no recess. He has to remain in the same seat for the entire lunch period.
Recess is unstructured. That irritates the world’s petty nags.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal…”
God created all things and keeps them in existence.
“And for the support of this Declaration with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence…”
Divine Providence is the Holy Spirit, the third Person of God WHO sanctifies and continues to sanctify all creation, especially mankind.
“My 11 year old has no recess. He has to remain in the same seat for the entire lunch period.”
Time to sue for cruel and unusual punishment, for making children sick and causing irreparable harm to their health. My son had to sue when the teachers refused to allow the students to use the restrooms.
Abuse of power goes a long way.
I wouldn’t dare sue if my 11yo son was kept in a chair by his teacher – I’d be sleeping on the couch 😏
Thanks be to God that we still manage to swing homeschooling, despite Bidenomics. I know many are in financial places where they can’t, but many others only think they can’t. The things you sacrifice to help your children may be the easiest things to sacrifice.
As to history, my brood has all watched an animated series called Liberty’s Kids. It is a good, lively drama set in the American Revolution. It’s not perfect, but does not have anything that you’ll have to counteract later – which places it miles ahead of most school curricula.
Looking back on what I wrote five years ago….my oldest son is aporoaching 17. He is in his second year of home schooling…but it is not going well. He has at least four behavioral disorders. At least two of them have bad school experiences as contributors.
He has repeatedly stolen from me but that is another bad story.
As what I post (under my own name) gets monitored from work, I don’t get involved in political discussions.
My youngest is approaching 13. I fill him in on what school misses. He is in the Fedetation of North American Explorers, plays hockey and is a well adjusted kid (so far). However, if I hear of bullying, the ax handle rests in the shed…ready to fill the role of Buford Pusser
Happy Constitution Day to all (certainly the Google communists won’t mention it).
Penguins Fan-
We got a daughter through homeschooling, start to finish, but we never sent her to school. I’ve heard it’s harder when you need to convince them to stop going.
In the other hand, if they already don’t want to go, that’s inertia you can use in your favor. Everything takes so much less time when you’re not learning in a group that you can also use the carrot of additional free time.
Some try to replicate the classroom experience at home, but I suggest against that. The beauty of homeschooling is largely in the freedom to tailor things you *your* kid instead of to some mythical “average kid”. Who cares if he needs to practice slap shots between math and English. Helps them to build time management too. (Slowly… LOL)