By Joel Turtel

November 18, 2006

NewsWithViews.com

One reason public schools get away with educational failure, year after year, is because they are run by left-leaning politicians and school officials who passionately believe that government should control your children's mind, values, and future. As the great English writer C. S. Lewis (of Chronicles of Narnia) wrote, "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. Those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

Public-school socialist true-believers often fall into this category --- for over a 150 years, education "progressive" so-called experts have been tormenting our children with public schools, allegedly for our children's benefit. Like all fascist, socialist, or communist true-believers, these people absolutely believe that they know what is best for your children, and seek to ram their beliefs down parents' throats.

From the 1840s to the 1930s, public-school "progressive" activists like Horace Mann and John Dewey worked to create a public-school system like the one they admired in Prussia (Germany). Mann and Dewey considered public education a religion, with a holy mission to mold children and society. Simply teaching children to read, write, and do math was too commonplace a goal for them. Mann and Dewey wanted the schools to have total control over children's lives. This meant removing parents' influence over their children. Mann put it this way: "We who are engaged in the sacred cause of education are entitled to look upon all parents as having given hostages to our cause."

Dewey had a socialist utopian vision for America and he wanted the common schools to achieve his vision. To create a government-dominated socialist America, public schools had to mold generations of children into the habit of obedience. In his "Pedagogic Creed" of 1897, Dewey wrote, "Every teacher should realize he is a social servant set apart for the maintenance of the proper social order and the securing of the right social growth. . ."

By the early twentieth century, public schools had expanded their functions into areas undreamed of in the 1850s. Schools took on the role of social agencies, with nurses, social centers, playgrounds, school showers, kindergartens, and "Americanization" programs for immigrants. Public schools became a major agency for social control.

Unfortunately, today's public schools are fulfilling Mann's and Dewey's "government- knows-best" vision with a vengeance. There is hardly any area of children's lives that school authorities now don't push to control. Politicians and public-school apologists in many states are now pushing programs that would make kindergarten compulsory. Yes, they now want to literally take 3 and 4-year old children from their mother's arms and stick them in public-school nursery-classrooms.

Public schools also now spend billions of dollars for psychological counseling, school-lunch programs, mandatory drug-testing, parent welfare-outreach programs, special-education classes, bilingual classes, early-childhood programs, drug and sex education classes, as well as programs for millions of "at-risk" or "special-needs" children.

This government-knows-best philosophy is the deepest reason why public schools get away with educational murder and can never be fixed. Public-school apologists believe that government bureaucrats and school authorities should dictate your children's education and the values they are taught. By implication, they believe that parents are an annoyance at best. More often, they believe that parents are a danger to their children's "proper" education and the values children "ought" to be taught by government employees.

To turn your children into dumbed-down, obedient little citizens and multiculturalist "citizens of the world," public-school authorities have to keep an iron grip on your children's minds and values. That is why public-school true believers will never voluntarily give up control over our children. They see themselves as noble idealists who know what is "best" for your children. That is why these socialist-fascist-minded "idealists" have contempt for your parental rights.

In the recent Congressional elections, the police-state chickens are coming home to roost. The majority of 18 to 25 year-olds, graduates of our socialist-indoctrinating public schools, voted for Democrats. These are the children who spent 12 years in public schools that systematically insult traditional American ideals and values. These are the schools that preach the multicultural trash that all cultures' values are "equal," and that American values of individual rights, economic liberty, and limited government are "selfish" or arrogant.

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    The government recently calculated the cost of raising a child

    from birth to 18 and came up with...

                   $160,140 for a middle income family.

    Talk about sticker shock!

    That doesn't even touch college.  

    But $160,140 isn't so bad if you break it down.

    It translates into:  

                     $8,896.66 a year,

                                    $741.38 a month, or 

                                                    $171.08 a week. 
    That's a mere $24.24 a day! Just over a dollar an hour.  Still, you might think the best financial advice is don't have children if you want to be "rich." Actually, it is just the  opposite.

   What do you get  for your $160,140? .... Naming rights; first, middle, and last!  Glimpses of God every day.  Giggles under the covers every night.  More love than your heart can hold.  Butterfly kisses and Velcro hugs. Endless wonder over rocks, ants, clouds, and warm cookies.  A hand to hold usually covered with jelly or chocolate.  A partner for blowing bubbles, flying kites.  Someone to laugh yourself silly with; no matter what the boss said or how your stocks performed that day.

   For $160,140, you never have to grow up. You get to: finger-paint, play hide-and-seek, catch lightning bugs, and never stop believing in Santa Claus. You have an excuse to: keep reading the Adventures of Piglet and Pooh, watching Saturday morning cartoons, going to Disney movies, and wishing on stars. You get to frame rainbows, hearts, and flowers under refrigerator magnets and collect spray painted noodle wreaths for Christmas, hand prints set in clay for Mother's Day, and cards with backward letters for Father's Day.  

   For $160,140, there is no greater bang for your buck. You get to be a hero just for: retrieving a Frisbee off the garage roof, taking the training wheels off a bike, removing a splinter, filling a wading pool, coaxing a wad of gum out of bangs, and coaching a baseball team that never wins but always gets treated to ice cream regardless. You get a front row seat to history to witness the:  first step, first word, first bra, first date, and first time behind the wheel. You get to be immortal. You get another branch added to your family tree, and if you're lucky, a long list of limbs in your obituary called grandchildren and great grandchildren.  You get an education in psychology, nursing, criminal justice, communications, and human sexuality that no college can match. In the eyes of a child, you rank right up there under God. You have all the power to heal a boo-boo, scare away the monsters under the bed, patch a broken heart, police a slumber party, ground them forever, and love them without limits. And, one day they will like you!!!  

That is quite a deal for the price!!!!!!!  

Be thankful for your children & grandchildren!!!!

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Someday when my children are old enough to understand the logic that motivates a parent, I will tell them, as my Mean Mom told me:

I loved you enough… to ask where you were going, with whom, and what time you would be home.  

I loved you enough… to be silent and let you discover that your new best friend was a creep.  I loved you enough to stand over you for two hours while you cleaned your room, a job that should have taken 15 minutes. 

I loved you enough… to let you see anger, disappointment, and tears in my eyes. Children must learn that their parents are not perfect.

I loved you enough… to let you assume the responsibility for your actions even when the penalties were so harsh they almost broke my heart. 

However, most of all: I loved you enough… to say NO when I knew you would hate me for it.  Those were the most difficult battles of all. I am glad I won them, because in the end you won, too. 

And… someday when your children are old enough to understand the logic that motivates parents, you will tell them. 

Was your Mom mean? I know mine was. I had the meanest mother in the whole world!

While other kids ate candy for breakfast, I had to have cereal, eggs, and toast.

When others had a Pepsi and a Twinkie for lunch, I had to eat sandwiches.

And, you can guess mother fixed a dinner that was different from what other kids had, too.  Mother insisted on knowing where I were at all times. You would think I was a convict in a prison.

She had to know who my friends were, and what I were doing with them.

She insisted that if I said I would be gone for an hour, I would be gone for an hour or less.  

I am ashamed to admit it, but she had the nerve to break the Child Labor Laws by making me work. I had to wash the dishes, make the beds, and learn to cook, vacuum the floor, do laundry, and empty the trash and all sorts of cruel jobs. I think she would lie awake at night thinking of more things for me to do.  

She always insisted on me telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

By the time, I was a teenager, she could read my mind and had eyes in the back of her head. Then, life was tough!

Mother would not let my friend’s just honk the horn when they drove up. They had to come up to the door so she could meet them. While everyone else could date when they were 12 or 13, I had to wait until I was 16. 

Because of my mother, I missed out on lots of things other kids experienced. I have never been caught shoplifting, vandalizing other’s property or ever arrested for any crime. It was all her fault. 

Now that I have left home, and I am all educated & an honest adult. I am doing my best to be a mean parent just like Mom was. 

I think that is what's wrong with the world today.  It just does not have enough mean moms!

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When a child busts a lip, and after seeing she's okay, you round up some Scotch tape to capture some blood and look at it under the microscope.

You find dead animals and actually consider saving them to dissect later.

Your children never, ever leave the "why?" stage.

You look at every room in your home to try and imagine how to squeeze in another bookshelf.

You turn your china cabinet into book shelves.

When your teenager decides to take one community college course, and comes home and asks you why the teacher wrote "At" on his paper. (A+)

You ask for, and get, a copier instead of a diamond tennis bracelet for your wedding anniversary.

Your kids think reading history is best accomplished while lying on the floor with their head resting on the side of their patient dog.

Your husband can walk in at the end of a long day and tell how the science experiment went just by looking at the house.

You never have to drive your child's forgotten lunch to school.

Your child will never suffer the embarrassment of group showers after PE.

The only debate about the school lunch program is whose turn it is to cook.

You never have to face the dilemma of whether to take your child's side or the teacher's side in a dispute at school.

If your child gets drugs at school, it's probably Tylenol.

Your neighbors think you are insane.

Your kids learn new vocabulary from their extensive collection of "Calvin & Hobbes" books.

Your formal dining room now has a computer, copy machine, and many book shelves and there are educational posters and maps all over the walls.

You have meal worms growing in a container....on purpose.

If you get caught talking to yourself, you can claim you're having a PTA meeting.

Talking out loud to yourself is a parent/teacher conference.

You take off for a teacher in-service day because the principal needs clean underwear.

You can't make it through a movie without pointing out the historical inaccuracies.

You step on math manipulatives on your pre-dawn stumble to the bathroom.

The teacher gets to kiss the principal in the faculty lounge and no one gossips.

Your honor student can actually read the bumper sticker that you put on your car.

If your child claims that the dog ate his homework, you can ask the dog.

Someday your children will consider you to be a miracle-working expert and will turn to you for advice.

Your kids refer to the neighbor kids as "government school inmates."

You can't make it through the grocery produce department without asking your preschooler the name and color of every vegetable.

You can't put your produce in your cart without asking your older student to estimate its weight and verify its accuracy.

You live in a one-house schoolroom.

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  I was just browsing the homeschool blog's yesturday.  I started doing this so as to gather more info on homeschooling; being a newbie this year.  Matter of fact I have found methods of schooling that work so well we use them everyday!  But the blog I found yesturday touched my heart!  http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/SHMILYtime/  

I know all of you are as busy as I am but this site has a wealth of info for us as "Women" not just "Mommy", not just "Teacher" but, as the "Helpmeet to Our Husbands".

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