What should kids learn in school?
It will come as no surprise to those who’ve read my previous blogs on our education system that I think it stinks, a Prussian military invention that has produced a fearful nation of non-readers and non-thinkers. Pouring more money into more of the same will only make things worse. We need to totally rethink what an education should be, and whether government should have any role at all in providing it. We need diversity in education, not all be stamped out like sub-standard parts on a Chinese assembly line.
Our schools do not teach us how to grow, preserve and safely handle food, the most important thing anyone can learn. Our schools do not teach us how to eat properly, what to eat and what to avoid. It is ruining our health. The information is out there but it isn’t being passed along.
Our schools do not teach anything about the law, an amazing fact considering we’re a country founded on law.
Our kids are not taught how to diagnose illness. Africans were taught that with a yes/no chart and could diagnose as well as 99% of American physicians after three months of practice.
Our schools do not teach us how to build or fix things electrical or mechanical, so remain ignorant of such things in an electro-mechanical world.
Our schools do not teach the practical aspect of ethics. No person can rise above the level of his own character.
What the teacher’s union IS allowed to teach is very strictly dictated by competition, so nothing one can earn a living with is allowed to be taught. Of course, the real point of our education system is to act as babysitters, while parents, both of them, are working at mostly boring and irrelevant jobs, working twice the hours necessary just to feed an overblown military/welfare/police/prison state that doesn’t even resemble what our founding fathers imagined.
It isn’t the state’s responsibility to educate your children; it’s a parent’s responsibility. The whole point of an education is to teach people the art of providing for themselves. Does that sound even remotely like what public education does? No wonder the kids and teachers hate it.
All the other candidates in this governor race say education is their top priority but all just want to spend more doing the same thing, digging us deeper into this trench. Delegating someone else the responsibility for educating your children is like having another guy take your wife on her honeymoon. Some things you must just do for yourself.
http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html
You’ve got the position across a lot better than I ever could, many thanks!
You’re welcome. Half the state budget of $53 billion goes to “public education.” We should be educating the state, not the other way around. Be sure to read Reform School? on the right under Issues. Quite eye opening.
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I’ve been reading over your posts and find myself agreeing with most of what you have to say. We part company on this education issue. Part of the failure of the public education system is parents who fail to deliver educated children to the public schools in the first place. They apparently think they can park their toddlers in front of the television and the kids will get educated later. This does not work out so well, as it squanders some of their best learning years.
There is no reason to expect that these same parents will suddenly get responsible if the government gets out of the business of education.
On the other hand, I see the majority of parents who currently take on home schooling do so in order to protect their children from dangerous thought like real science and history.
Public education certainly deserves much of your disdain, but relying on parents to educate their children is wishful thinking.
Glenna,
I certainly don’t have a good answer to this conundrum. Clearly what we have isn’t working nearly so well as what other countries have devised, most other countries in fact. I’ll never get over my public education although I’ve tried these past decades. Maybe some people should never learn to read as one forgets how to remember when one does. It would be nice if some of us had a memory, maybe most of us. I’m open to nearly any suggestion.
Mr. Wilson, I discovered you several months ago while researching Oregon’s politics, preparing myself for moving out there a few months from now. Reading your posts is like a dream; not only do I stand by most of your positions already, but you deliver with such a great personality! I will be proud to vote for you come November.
In addition to being the best source of current information about laws and regulations, school support groups can help you meet a lot of people at once and can tell you about local activities. Support groups often have newsletters and meetings and sometimes organize field trips, sports teams, writing clubs, book discussion groups, whatever appeals to the families involved.
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Most honorable Jerry Wilson,
As you well know I first contacted you when you threw your cowboy hat in the Oregon Governor’s Race for 2010.
My interest was to find a candidate that has a strong sense of what America needs and how to achieve it with many clear details.
Your the only candidate we have found that gets an A + for all your thoughts of how to start to be proud to be an American to stop doing business as usual.
After working for well over four years on just one program called, Truly Reforming Law Enforcement, (readers please Google the program) to stop police brutality and save the many millions of lost tax payers money to pay for litigation instead of better funding all police bureaus. We were thrilled to learn that you support our work and will assist us to get in place as it is Oregon Law Senate Bill 111 Police Use Of Deadly Physical Force as of July 1, 2010.
As you also know we are sending out thousands of emails every week to every possible Oregonian to vote for you as you are
the change we are all starving for.
We welcome contacts from the public to work with us to make great history together.
Your loyal fellow servant of WE THE PEOPLE,
Jerry Atlansky-Founder/Chairperson
Oregon State Police-Independent Citizens Review Board
Portland, Oregon 97213
jmatlansky@gmail.com 24/365
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