My blog is called Musing By Rebecca for a reason. It is all about the things that are important and interesting to me. Sometimes I am focused on a pretty narrow issue (like health and wellness) and at other times I deviate for a period of time onto other issues like travel, politics, liberty, education, and personal development. All my blog posts are meant to inspire thought and conversation. Today’s blog post is one of those brief deviations from my norm.
The education of our kids has been a lifelong passion for me. So much so that when my kids were young and we lived in a school system in rural Indiana that wasn’t up to the standards that I felt my kids needed, I chose to homeschool my kids. Then, when I moved to another school district that provided a higher quality education I placed my kids back into the school environment until one day when my son, who was a freshman in high school at the time, came to me and specifically asked me to homeschool him for the remainder of his high school, which I did despite being a single parent at the time. I took my parental responsibilities extremely serious. I chose to make personal sacrifices to ensure my kids received a solid educational foundation based on their individual needs at the time. Were my choices perfect? Probably not, but it was my right and my responsibility as their parent to make those decisions.
I found this recently published opinion piece very interesting.
I went to the actual Fordham Institute report that was cited and read through that report as well.
I have said this many times in the past, but this report further supported my observation that it is immensely interesting and disturbing that some of the very places (like Madison and Milwaukee, both in Wisconsin) who scream the loudest about racial equity (equal outcomes) are in fact some of THE worst “offenders” of promoting policies which actually encourage and ensure UN-equal outcomes. It’s sad, infuriating, and unbelievable that we have allowed the very offenders to blame everyone else for the problems they, with our implicit approval, have created.
We need ALL our kids to receive a high quality, in-person, factually based, ideologically neutral, equal and free education. They are the future leaders, movers and shakers of our country and the world. If they cannot do simple math, write legibly, read and comprehend complex writings, understand the past and how it relates to the present and future, or even utilize critical thinking, then their generation is doomed to a life of dependence and servitude. Are we, as a society, willing to give up on and hand our kids over to such a bleak and destructive future?
A strong, well educated, independent and large middle class is the very foundation for the stability, growth and prosperity of a society, especially a Constitutional Republic like the United States of America where officials are elected as representatives of the people and are supposed to govern according to existing constitutional laws which limit the government’s power over citizens. Politics in this country (on both sides of the aisle) over the past 50+ decades has slowly but surely eroded and shrunk our once dynamic and robust middle class. It has increased the size and power of the wealthy, who then use government to gain more and more control over the populace with handouts in the guise of social assistance programs, which only further dramatically increases the size and dependency of the poor. As the poor become more and more dependent on the handouts, they then vote for politicians who will take more and more from the middle class and transfer it to the poor. This results in the slow but steady depletion of the middle class and the exponential growth of a dependent poor, which in turn gives more power to the wealthy. A vicious yet predictable cycle.
“Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”
Unknown Author
Education is the cornerstone for building healthy and successful individuals as well as a stable and strong middle class, which in turn holds in check the evolution of despotic powers of the wealthy. We have been apathetic about what our kids have been being taught for far too long. We are now seeing first hand the results of OUR apathy.
It took decades to get where we are today. It took decades for the powers that be, well meaning or not, to infiltrate and destroy the worlds greatest educational system. It will take an unwavering dedication and focus to restore our broken education system.
Some food for thought on ways to restore our broken educational system include:
- Get rid of the federal department of education. With its implementation, we saw the erosion of our education system begin. The stronger it has become, the worse our educational system has become. It is also antithetical to local control and parental rights for directing the education of their children.
- Return to the true foundations of education that made our nation one of, if not the, best in the world. Reading, writing, literature, arithmetic, history, civics, science, health and nutrition, life skills, the arts, music, and various apprenticeships for trades.
- Demand and implement actual accountability of our schools for obtaining real results. Quit throwing more and more money at a broken system and demand RESULTS before more money is given.
- Quit allowing teachers unions to become so powerful that they hold our kids and parents hostage when the unions don’t get what they want. Unions are for ensuring that teachers are paid a fair wage, receive decent benefits, and work in safe environments. They are not supposed to be so powerful that they can dictate policy and decide what our kids are taught or even if our kids are taught.
- The school room is not the place for social activism. It is a place where kids should learn a foundation of common knowledge upon which they can build their future adult life. It is a place where it should be safe to explore a variety of ever changing interests without having someone with an agenda or ideology indoctrinate them into their way of thinking or believing. It is a playground for exploring creativity. It is a place where no matter your race, ethnicity, religion, political persuasion, socioeconomic status, or gender you are treated with respect and receive EQUAL opportunity and quality of education.
- Parents should absolutely never relinquish their rights where the education of their children is concerned. We see the results today of parents apathetically trusting a system to do the right thing where their children are concerned, while either not monitoring or allowing the system to monitor itself. That is foolish. It is like allowing the proverbial fox to guard the hen house.
Musings By Rebecca 