Wednesday, December 13, 2006

all your children are belong to us

Dom has some scary revelations of the ideology the public schools are indoctrinating the kids of Massachusetts.  The one line of their slogan gives me the creeps,“These kids are our kids.”
 
On one hand it makes me thankful we live in Idaho.  But on the other, that line of thinking, as Dom puts it "That they must 'educate' children over the parents’ objections because they know what’s best for the kids and for society." pervades even the relatively good elementary schools of Idaho.  They aren't shoving homosexuality down the grade-schoolers throats.  That can wait until middle school and high school. 
 
But the "our kids" theme pervades most of what they do.  Take for example, the recent intense focus on the 3 Rs during the Christmas season.  (yes I know it isn't Christmas yet and it is actually Advent, but consider the target audience.)  The first R we should focus on is mateRialism.  Two items were included in this subject. 
 
The first one stated that the class was going to sponsor a needy family.  A noble claim I guess, but not exactly what I send my child to school for.  Sponsoring needy families is best handled by the local churches and other quasi-Christian entities.   So we considered this request and looked at the "wish list" was for the family.  The two children actually submitted what kind of presents they wanted.  Seemed a bit odd for a "needy" family, but I suspended judgment.  That is until I saw the "bratz" doll on the list.  And no mention of good books, sort of a glaring omission considering one of the original Rs was Reading.
 
Then the school offered a "store" for the child to shop for his parents.  Insinuating that the parents couldn't handle this task I guess.  We of course didn't send any money, but we heard from another parent that tried that approach and the teacher gave her kid money so she wouldn't feel left out.  Just stare at the screen and repeat,“These kids are our kids.” 
 
On to the next R.  spRelling.  Mistakes happen, I can deal with that.  But this bites right at the source.  We have our blind child in public school to learn Braille.  Braille is difficult, the resources are expensive and it is very time consuming.  The public school has the teachers, the aides and the resources to do a good job.  Or so that was the promise.  But I would doubt that promise when our son has to point out spelling mistakes in his homework.  And not just any homework, but Spelling.  Four or five mistakes on one spelling lesson? 
 
So forgive us for feeling that the school doesn't seem to care about education when they send leaflet after leaflet home touting the goody-goody "all your children are belong to us" activities and they can't get his spelling words spelled right.

1 comment:

Leticia said...

But that's been the stated goal of eduation since John Dewey at the turn of the twentieth century, indoctrination. That's why homeschooling is illegal in Germany; it was made so by Adolph Hitler who said, "give me one generation of schoolchildren, and I'll have the whole society". And the rest is history.