A Good Christian Raisin’ and a Eighth Grade Education
There’s a cool event going on at the Nashville Zoo next Thursday for those in the midstate area. The 2008 Friedman Legacy Event is a free event presented by the Tennessee Center for Policy Research in support of homeschool, charter school, and private school rights. They’re even providing chaperones so that your kids can have fun at the zoo instead of sitting through all that boring talking!
The event is named in honor of Milton Friedman–more details are available on their site.
From the NYT
“Imagine schools that are open all day and offer after-school and evening recreational activities, child care and preschool, tutoring and homework assistance,†the speech reads. “Schools that include dental, medical and counseling clinics.â€
I’ll get around to imagining that just as soon as I’m finished imagining schools that do what they’re supposed to actually do–educate. Right now, I’m not able to do much beyond imagining.
Going to the Mat has similar thoughts.
Since the mid-60s we have asked more and more of our schools to help close some socially worrisome gap, that the schools have forgotten how to do their basic mission–educating kids. Adding more “social missions” to the schools is not going to improve schools.
Last month I posted about a proposal in Nebraska that would mandate testing to homeschooling families. Today, thanks to Reason, I read an article in the LA Times stating that homeschooling has been ruled illegal by a California appellate court.
“Parents do not have a constitutional right to home school their children,” wrote Justice H. Walter Croskey in a Feb. 28 opinion signed by the two other members of the district court.
Hold on. WHAT?! Excuse me? Did I read that correctly? They don’t have the constitutional right? Pause for a second to digest that.
You know who loves this ruling, right?
Teachers union officials will also be closely monitoring the appeal. A.J. Duffy, president of United Teachers Los Angeles, said he agrees with the ruling.
“What’s best for a child is to be taught by a credentialed teacher,” he said.
Credentialed by the State, right? No conflict of interest there. Relax Teachers Union people. Good teachers have been in demand since ancient times, way before unions. They’ll always be in demand and are in no danger of ever being out of work.
Notice something I’m not discussing here is religion, which the Times article mentions frequently. It’s almost as if they’re trying to make this a religious issue, which it obviously isn’t. It just so happens that many people homeschool their children for religious reasons, but that’s not the only reason.
This will surely be overturned, but is it something the State would be willing to take to the limit. Are they willing to line up tanks outside of someone’s home and threaten them with bullets for refusing to send their kids to gov’ment indoctrination camps schools?
California, if you’re still wondering why the rest of the country unfairly labels you a bunch of crazies…
Unlike everyone else, I slacked off and waited until 2008 was officially here to do my review. 2007 was my first year of full on blogging. I’d messed around here and there with different blogs before, but 2007 was the year I drank the Kool Aid and went at it for real. I’ll keep this list confined to what occurred on this blog. You’ve probably guessed by now that I’m somewhat guarded about the personal life. Enough about me…here are my thoughts on my 10 most notable posts of 2007:
Ron Paul’s Presidential Run
At times it seemed to me that Ron Paul news was taking over this blog. On one hand I feel like I need to apologize for that, but on the other hand, it’s my blog and that’s what I was interested in. Luckily, I wasn’t the only one who was excited by Dr. Paul’s message, and I hopefully played a small part in helping him get elected. More on that later this year, as I have some thoughts on what is realistic, and what is for the best.
Knox County Scandals
There were more in 2007 than I can even count. That makes you wonder how much stuff is going on that we haven’t even heard about yet. Last week I saw a t-shirt that read, “Miami: A sunny place for shady people.” Knox County seems to have the market cornered on shadiness this year.
Steroids in Sports (and Non-Sports)
My bottom line–WHO CARES? Next topic.
People Getting Nekkid and Almost Nekkid
I got a ton of traffic this year writing articles about Vanessa Hudgens, along with a couple of articles about the Inskip teacher who had arguably inappropriate photos on MySpace. I don’t really care who gets naked and takes photos of it, I just wonder how people can do that and not retain ALL digital copies of the material. Idiots.
Barbie Cummings and the Highway Patrol
This was just a funny local story that ended up causing me to exceed my bandwidth when it went national and I ended up ranking #3 on Google for “Barbie Cummings Blog”. Since then, Ms. Cummings life has apparently changed dramatically, much for the better. How do I know that? I’m resourceful, and it didn’t take much digging anyway. Nevertheless, it seems like she wants to leave that part of her life behind her, so I think it’s time this story finally died and went away, never to be mentioned here again.
Tennessee Smoking Ban
Thank you to our state’s elected leaders for writing and enforcing personal choice laws on private property. If you really want to look out for me and mine, stop wasting our tax dollars on this crap. Next thing you know we’re going to have to provide health care for people who would’ve otherwise died if you’d not spent millions trying to keep them from smoking.
Buddies Blogging
Some people I know IRL also started blogs this year. It’s funny that you can go months or years without talking or emailing with someone, and this medium puts you in the position to “converse” with them every day. Even when it isn’t dialog, you read what they write and they read what you write. Very cool. Not to mention the countless other blogs I’ve begun to read that I never would have learned about if I’d not started blogging for real this year.
The War On Education
Also known as the public school system. I feel like I don’t spend enough time or energy talking about this because I think it’s the number one problem facing our country. Solutions are anything but clear and simple, but one thing I’m very excited about for this coming year is that I’ve got an idea that may help a little, at least for individuals. I’m finishing up some other projects, and then I’m going at it full force.
Blogging About Blogging
As I said, 2007 was my first year blogging full throttle, and boy did I learn a lot. I posted a ton of stuff about monetizing, driving traffic, building networks, linking to other people, and I’m sure lots of other stuff that annoys people. I can’t help it…my interest is peaked. Another project I want to tackle for this year is keeping that stuff off of this site and directing it to a different blog that is dedicated to that subject.
The One I Wish Was More Popular
Just a couple of weeks ago I wrote a post about The Wire. I really wished more people watched this show, especially the season that starts next week which will address the media. I’ve had several great conversations with people who watch The Wire, and I’d love to bring more of them to this venue. In fact, I think I’m going to, despite the fact that most people don’t know about the show. At least I’ll have the bragging rights that a couple of people heard about it from me when they are finally turned on to it.
Taylor the Teacher makes some good points about our education system…
If schools are for parenting, dietary management, public safety, sex ed, driver’s ed, football, lifelong memories, values, morals AND learning, that changes the equation significantly.
If schools are about learning only when learning doesn’t confict with the culture war, get in anyone’s political path, or become too expensive, then the equation is even more drastically changed.
If they are about all of those things plus learning, but we’re going to keep saying they’re about learning, schools are a farce.
But learning still rocks.
The political issues aside, I think the biggest problem lies in kids’ attitude toward school in general. Many see school as all of things Taylor mentioned besides learning. Many more view the completion of their 12 year sentence in the public indoctrination education system as the sum of education of their lives. After that, they’ve “finished”.
Where does this attitude come from? My guess is either their parents, or the schools themselves, who have to tout themselves as the end all beat all of intellectual development in order to justify their place in our communities. Winning football games seems to go a long way in being considered a quality school as well.
Taylor is right. Learning does rock. And learning starts at birth and ends at death. The 12 years between ages 6 and 18 are just a small piece of a real education.
The Washington Times has a breakdown of where the $21,992 collected per household goes. By the way, the federal government will spend $24,106 per household. I don’t know how you do your budget in your house, but that doesn’t add up at mine.
Here’s a quick list of where the money goes, with some commentary on where it would go if I were king, errr, in charge:
