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Education
By:
Karen Johnson
Most Americans realize that something is seriously wrong with the public school system. When I served in the Arizona State Senate and the Senate President appointed me to Chair the Education Committee, I nearly cried. It was not my first choice! I told the Senate President that my plea to parents today would be, “Get your children out of the public schools and home-school if at all possible. Otherwise, find an excellent (there are a few) private or charter school for them.”
Concerned parents who take the time to review their children’s textbooks and assignments know the extent of the academic and moral devastation that afflicts our public schools. Our tax dollars at work! A planned and definite dumbing down and conditioning process has been and still is taking place in our public schools.
For instance, “Johnny” has difficulty reading because the proven phonics method that has been used to teach reading for thousands of years has been discarded in favor of the disastrous look-say/whole language method.
Also, the state is attempting to displace the family by acquiring even more control over what is taught and then consolidating government education and labor policies. An important aspect of a well-rounded education is learning about God and His laws. But once the “progressives” invaded the education arena and began inculcating socialism into our children, mention of God and religion became taboo.
Many so-called education “experts” openly advocate imposing curriculum standards on content that parents find offensive, such as the exclusion of phonics in reading instruction as mentioned previously, clear political propaganda in literature and social studies, “fuzzy” math which leaves children without any calculation or arithmetic skills, and the twisting of history to fit a politically correct mold. Further, the heavy government mandates on school curriculum have led to outrageous cheating scandals where teachers and administrators change test papers in order to raise their students’ scores so that the teachers and schools avoid penalties.
We need more school choice in Arizona and throughout the country, allowing parents to choose the school and/or the curriculum they want for their children. We need a free market in education. The Federal Department of Education needs to be abolished!!!!
Children will never be adequately educated under a system run by bureaucrats doling out money with the teachers unions (the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers) deciding how to spend the money in the classroom. The NEA and the AFT have extraordinarily large sums of money (millions) extracted from their members to lobby for policies they want enacted by Congress, state legislatures, and school boards. They also use this money to elect their favorite political candidates.
It is no secret that the people who control the public schools are at war against our nation’s history, culture, and achievements. State boards of education need to correct the many textbook myths and lies about our national heritage and achievements. We are raising a generation of people who are historically illiterate. Thomas Jefferson said: “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, it expects what never was and never will be.”
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