Knox County School Rezoning

This one will stir the pot. There is an uproar going on right now over the rezoning of schools in Knox County to accomodate the new Hardin Valley High School. 3,400 students from Farragut, West, Bearden, Karns, Gibbs, Austin-East, Central, Carter, Fulton, Halls, and Powell are going to be affected.

Let me get this straight…

You had no problem paying for failing public schools before you had children attending them. You will have no problem continuing to pay for these failing schools long after your child has graduated. You have no problem allowing the state/county to decide when your children will go to a failing school. You have no problem allowing the state to decide on the failing curriculum. You have no problem allowing the state to lump your child (an individual) into this failing curriculum that is geared towards the masses. You have no problem with the state using funds (tax money) to support athletic programs instead of actual education. You have no problem with teachers’ unions and tenure which potentially allow incompetent and lazy teachers to continue “educating” your children. You have no problem with teachers “teaching to the test” to achieve high scores on state mandated standardized tests for the purpose of getting a raise instead of teaching your child to reason and think for themselves.

But you do have a problem with the state deciding which of these failing schools your child must attend?

Isn’t lack of choice and control an expected part of socialism? Was the fact that public schools, social security, etc are socialist institutions conveniently left out of the failing public education most of us received?

Sounds to me like we are getting precisely what we deserve for turning so much control over to the state in the first place.

**UPDATE**

I stand corrected.  There are very important angles of this story I haven’t considered.  Luckily, the News Sentinel is on the job.

Education and Money Produce Terrorists

At least it produces more successful ones.

There is enough moral, psychological and sometimes financial payoff from the act of killing many people to offset the economic loss of their death. Therefore, the terrorist manager assigns the most deadly tasks to the highest-caliber people; otherwise, they will not bother. In an awful way, it makes sense, and it seems to be true. Caught and failed suicide bombers are conspicuously less educated than those who carry out their tasks.

The point of the article is that poverty doesn’t drive terrorism.  I’d have to agree with that, but I think it is pretty accurate to say that terrorism is driven by money.  I’m sure that most of the people who do the killing and dying are not motivated by money, but the people at the top almost assuredly are.  Religion is an easy sell to the masses to motivate them to do their bidding.

Tolerance of Smokers

American Thinker has a pretty humorous take on the Left’s tolerance agenda

Perhaps schools should have smoking education courses where students pretend to smoke and can learn a lesson about intolerance and bigotry towards smokers?

Hilarious.

Pulic Education is “Valuable”

At least for some entities it is.  Freedom Daily has the full article.

Sure, a teacher has some leeway to be flexible but imagine what would happen to a public-school teacher who announced to his classes, “What is written in these textbooks is claptrap, lies, and deceptions. I’m going to be teaching you the truth about the nature of the government, government schooling, free markets, individualism, and liberty.”

Well, luckily, because of tenure, it would probably be virtually impossible to fire this teacher.  Of course, it’s also impossible to fire the teachers who teach anything else, or who don’t teach at all.  Worse still are the ones who are teaching something they know nothing about.

I think the major goal of the public school system is definitely indoctrination over education.  At my high school I had to basically demand an education.  I was lucky to have a few really good teachers, one in particular, who were great educators, but I had others who were there to do the absolute minimum, and frequently not even that.

I actually found a way out this when I was in school.  My strategy was to behave just badly enough to get in-school suspension.  This was the “punishment” handed down for doing something that didn’t really warrant suspension–being disruptive in class, arguing with teachers, etc.  Sometimes, I’d just request it–the few teachers that cared and would let me go every now and then, until our principal caught on.

So for “punishment”, I got to sit in a room with the other bad kids, read the assigned lessons for the day and do the homework.  The beauty was that I could complete all of this work before lunch instead of going to class all day and taking work home.  For the rest of the day we were required to sit quietly without talking to one another.  This provided a great opportunity to read whatever books I wanted or work on extra math problems (yeah, I actually did extra ones just for fun–dork).  Not only did I not have to worry about taking work home, but I also got to study whatever I was interested in–that’s education!  I *gasp* chose to learn things!

A New School…Hooray?

The News Sentinel has an article about the new Gibbs Elementary School today–citing it as a great thing for our community.  Uh…okay.

Don’t get me wrong…I’m aware that the people in my community, state, and nation can benefit infinitely by being educated.  I definitely see the social and economic benefits I can personally reap from living in an environment where everyone is educated.  I’ll even go so far to commit my own resources towards the education of the masses.

And because I believe strongly in these things…

I don’t like being FORCED to contribute an education system wraught with inefficiencies.

I don’t like being FORCED to contribute to an education system that is already failing. (See the State published results of its own test–Cs aren’t good enough, especially when you are in control of the test).

I don’t like being FORCED to contribute to an education system that does not allow parents to choose for their children which school/curriculum is best for their child.

I don’t like being FORCED to contribute to a system that is being held hostage by unions.

I don’t like being FORCED to contribute to a system that caters to the meaty part of the bell curve, pushing those who are either gifted or challenged to the middle.

It’s a nice story that fourth graders think their new school is cool, but all the new gyms and big cafeterias in the world do not fix the problems I’ve enumerated.