The Destruction of our Resources-Children.
Doc #029.0.0.2.0 # 3 >>>>Disclaimer: This document may be used as you
will except: If you change anything in the text, remove my name and other
Ident. You may use it without my identification also if you wish...I only
ask that people read it and think...think...think. Sources/Ref's if not in
the text will be found on the last page of Doc 000.0.0.1 and 000.0.6.
CLMsr.<<<<
We have a Constitution and our Bill of Rights (the first 10 amendments) that
makes us free. Right? Then visit:
http://www.trimonline.org http://www.getusout.org
http://www.thenewamerican.com http://www.givemeliberty.org
http://nca.mybravenet.com http://www.jbs.org
Then take a look at these sites: http://www.dixierising.com
http://www.dixienet.org http://www.palmetto.org
http://www.southerncaucus.org http://www.spofga.org
Teachers Unions............. Lying Teachers' Unions by Thomas Sowell Oct.
12, 2000. Pls visit: http://nca.mybravenet.com
Many people hear only one side of the story of our public schools, because
only the teachers' unions have both the incentives and the millions of
dollars required to produce sustained advertising campaigns about education.
These campaigns intensify during an election year, so you can expect to hear
more slick propaganda than usual from the unions this year.
These unions have fought bitterly against the testing of teachers or
students to assess how the public schools are doing. The reason is simple:
Such tests have repeatedly revealed the gross ignorance and incompetence of
many teachers and the resulting failure of American students to come up to
the standards in other countries, including some Third World countries.
However, now that tests have been mandated by law in many states and are
strongly supported by public opinion, the teachers' unions have come up with
a new spin. They claim that they have no objections to testing students, but
just want to have "standards" worked out first. What are these mysterious
"standards" that have yet to be developed? People have been testing math and
English for centuries.
What the teachers' unions really want is to be able to put all sorts of
non-academic mush into the tests, so as to reduce the failure rate and evade
the need to teach academic skills. Instead, they want to be able to continue
using the students as guinea pigs for social engineering fads and using
classrooms as indoctrination centers for political correctness.
A recent statistic in Time magazine showed that American students spend
about as many hours in school annually as students in England, France and
Germany. But the number of hours that American students spend on serious
subjects like history, science and math is only about half what the students
in these other countries spend on these kinds of subjects.
Is it any wonder that our students have consistently been outperformed on
international tests, not only by students in these three countries, but even
by students from poor countries like Slovenia and Thailand? When teachers'
union ads come on the TV screen, with some saccharine-sweet spokesperson
emoting about how much they are "concerned" about children and about
education, ask yourself: Where were all these concerned people when our
schools were being systematically dumbed down over the past generation?
With American parents and voters increasingly concerned about the actual
outcomes of the kind of education provided in our public schools, the
education establishment in general and the teachers' unions in particular
have responded verbally, rather than by teaching the basics. If the public
is concerned about outcomes, then the education establishment's answer is to
create the phrase "outcomes-based education" - with the outcomes being
defined in mushy, non-academic terms.
You want accountability? Then they will use the word "accountability" over
and over again - all the while continuing to keep the schools and the
teachers immune from any adverse consequences for failure. Indeed, every
failure is used as a reason why more money is needed. The teachers' unions
and the politicians beholden to them for campaign contributions and votes,
like Al Gore - call this "investing" in the education of our young people.
It makes a blank check for failure sound noble.
The supreme chutzpah of the teachers' unions is their claim that voucher
schools are not "accountable" because there are no education establishment
bureaucrats micro-managing them or snarling them in red tape. Is your local
grocery store unaccountable because there are no bureaucrats telling them
how much detergent to sell or what kinds of cheese to stock? On the
contrary, it is accountable to you, because you will take your business
elsewhere if they don't do their job right. That is precisely the kind of
accountability that voucher schools have - and that public schools do not
have.
Another scare tactic of the teachers' unions is to claim that vouchers will
require more money, draining money not only from the public schools but also
from police and fire departments. In reality, vouchers never pay as much as
the public schools spend per pupil. When students leave the public schools,
the total costs of education go down, not up. But lies are the norm in
propaganda.
Unfortunately, years of dumbed-down education may have left many people
without the intellectual equipment to see through the self-serving
propaganda of the teachers' unions.
Thomas Sowell grew up in Harlem, served in the Korean War, graduated magna
cum laude from Harvard University, earned a master's in economics from
Columbia University and a doctorate in economics from the University of
Chicago. His books cover topics ranging from economics to judicial activism.
He is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.
"Formal education carried on subversively, can be in the forefront of
building a new moral order... it provides some measure of the physical and
social isolation necessary for the incubation process." (Roberta T. Ash;
"Durkheim's Moral Education Reconsidered: Toward the Creation of a
Counterculture". In SCHOOL REVIEW, November, 971, p. 132)
NOTE The Following: Received 2026, 21 October 2000. Some editing done to
remove the teachers name, state, and county for that person's protection.
CLMsr.
[The following comments I can personally vouch for due to the honesty &
integrity of the source being known by me to be absolute without doubt.
Chester L McWhorter Sr].
"Dear Chet:
Of course I cannot support every view endorsed by NEA or even XXXXXX (XXXXXX
Co. Ed. Assoc.). However, I do take issue with mandated testing as it
exists. It is not an issue of accountability, but one of fairness to both
teacher and student. All Teachers must follow a guideline set up by their
state board of education. Some call their guidelines benchmarks or
outcomes. We have XXXX's- XXXXX XXX XX. They basically spell out what
skills a child is to be taught at each grade level. Our lesson plans are
periodically checked to verify that they correspond with the appropriate
XXXX's for our grade level. (My students have Individualized Education
Programs, and that's another ball of wax). Lesson plans must also include
how we will check for mastery and that we are re-teaching when and where
necessary. If these are not up to par - or if our students' grades are low
(which could suggest poor teaching) we face consequences- poor evaluations,
assignment of a mentor, termination, etc. Keeping in mind that the state
sets instructional guidelines, the county adopts our text books (which may
or may not fit a child's learning style, but are always politically correct)
(not at all suggesting that is a good thing), let's add the testing. The
tests used are developed [by] one of many accepted groups of individuals
somewhere in Test Heaven. Neither the state nor the county has input into
the development of these tests. The same company produces the same test for
kids in three other states [names deleted for protection of writer]...
Often, our students are tested on skills to which they have had little
exposure. Often, I have students who struggle trying to decode a word such
as Juanito or Chaniqua. They are not typical names in our area. Some
students don't realize that those words are names of people without using
context clues. If we don't standardize the test and the curriculum - we
aren't "on the same page", so to speak. As it is now, we spend a few weeks
trying to expose the students to the skills that will be on the test, test
taking strategies, etc. to get decent scores. Imagine the frustration of a
teacher with a student who is just about to master double-digit subtraction,
but you have to give him a crash course in division, animal classification,
map reading, etc. Imagine the frustration and confusion of the poor child!
They start testing these children in Kindergarten. Imagine being the
Kindergarten teacher who has to be accountable for the test scores of
students you have only known for a few months. Johnny has an older brother,
a stay at home Mom, a Dad with a good job, nice home, proper nutrition and
medical care, walked into your classroom knowing how to write the names of
his immediate family along with his address and phone number. Tommy's
living in a house with seven other people (or in one case in our area, an
old school bus) Mom isn't sure who Dad happens to be, she works at night to
make ends meet and hasn't had the time to teach Tommy his alphabet, proper
social skills, or his colors when he signed up for class. Tommy may need
glasses or have any assortment of problems that go unnoticed until he hits
our door. Susan's Dad may have moved his family to our area two weeks
before the test. The test sees all three of these children as equal. If
they are not all on Johnny's level at test time- is it really the teacher's
fault?
I can give lots of reasons that many teachers would like the testing
stopped, but I'll ask you to consider only one other. What do you think
they do with these scores besides monitor teacher ability? Does "Jobs to
Work" sound familiar? They start very early trying to get us to direct
these children into little pigeon holes. In first grade, teachers are told
to look back at the MRT (Kindergarten level test) to get an idea of a
child's potential. I'm sorry, that is just unfair!"
So there we have it direct from a teacher of many years experience.
School to Work is a program whereby the US Dept of Education issues tests
which are to be administered to each child when that child reaches the age
of 12 yrs. These tests and scores will be used by the US Dept of Education
to direct the remainder of that child's educational development into the
career field that the US Dept of Education in collaboration with the US Dept
of Labor, wishes the student to be placed, regardless of what the graduate
student wants, the only jobs that will be open to that now ex-student will
be the job(s) the US Dept of Labor has now decided on! Well, where are we
now? You say sounds like communism to me! How about that!
Of Significant Interest: Dihydrogen monoxide - good example of ""bad""
chemical from the ''net.
A freshman at Eagle Rock Junior High won 1st Prize at the Greater Idaho
Falls Science Fair on April 26. He was attempting to show how conditioned
we have become to alarmists practicing junk science and spreading fear of
everything in our environment.
In his project, the student urged people to sign a petition demanding the
strict control or total elimination of the chemical dihydrogen monoxide.
This chemical is known to: cause excessive sweating and vomiting, be a major
component in acid rain, cause severe burns in its gaseous state be lethal if
accidentally inhaled, contribute to erosion , decrease effectiveness of
automobile brakes, exist in tumors of terminal cancer patients.
The student asked 50 people if they supported a ban of the chemical. The
results: 43 - Yes, ban this chemical. 6 - Not sure. 1 - No.
The individual who declined to support the ban knew that dihydrogen
monoxide was water. The title of his prize winning project was, "How
Gullible Are We?" He feels the conclusion is obvious.
Teachers Union: No Charters, No Way, No How. "The bulk of charter school
research shows that a) charters are serving at-risk students far better than
traditional public schools, and b) parents in charter schools are immensely
satisfied with their choice. The Ohio Federation of Teachers has an answer
for that: 'Students are being exploited ... and parents are being deceived.'
That's the rationale for OFT's lawsuit charging that Ohio's charter school
law is illegal. The OFT was joined by the usual round of education
establishment suspects, among them the Ohio School Boards Association and
several big city unions - all of whom appear to fear the growth of Ohio's 70
charter schools and the impact those schools might have on the traditional
public school system. " ... The battle is less over what's best for kids
than over what's best for the education establishment. Nothing points that
out more clearly than a confidential Pennsylvania State Education
Association report which proposed strategies for unionizing charter
teachers, noting 'If we lose our grip on the labor supply to the education
industry, we will bargain from a position of weakness,' and 'If we want to
maintain our influence, our ability to do ANYTHING, we must make sure that
education remains a unionized industry.' Little is in the report about kids
or learning - it's all about power and control -and that says more about
school employee union priorities than all of the advertising the NEA can
buy."
- The Center for Education Reform, 5/15/01
"The time has come to recognize the United Nations for the anti-American,
anti-freedom organization it has become. The time has come for us to cut off
all financial help, withdraw as a member, and ask the United Nations to find
a headquarters location outside the United States that is more in keeping
with the philosophy of the majority of voting members, someplace like Peking
or Moscow." U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater.
A
Chester L McWhorter Sr, 504 N. Brighton Rd, Lecanto, Occupied Florida. C.S.A
34461. Ph: 352-344-9073. Fax: Same. E-mail: robertthebruce@naturecoast.net
029.0.0.2.0 # 3 End..
FSI, Deo Vindice. Ditat Deus...(For Southern Independence, God Will
Vindicate. God Enriches.)
"I do verily believe that a single, consolidated government would become the
most corrupt government on earth." Thomas Jefferson to Gideon Granger, 1800.
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the
argument of tyrants, it is the creed of slaves." William Pitt speech to the
House of Commons.
"You shall have one world government, whether or not you like it, by consent
or by conquest." Former FDR aide, James Warburg CFR/TC, in testimony before
the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 17 Feb 1950.