By Joel Turtel
For over fifty years, public-school officials and politicians have
tried one education fad after another. They have all failed.
Children should not be turned into victims and educational guinea
pigs by public-school authorities. Here's why public schools can
waste 12 years of your children’s lives and destroy their love of
learning:
1. These schools teach children to read with the whole-language
method (now called "balanced-reading instruction"), which cripples
children’s ability to read. That is why after 12 years, millions of
graduating high-school students have poor reading skills, and some
students can barely read their own diplomas.
2. Public schools teach the “new” or fuzzy math which can cripple a
child’s ability to do math and destroy their self-confidence. A
child who is afraid of math won’t have the confidence to pursue a
career in science, computers, or engineering, thereby cutting them
off from these rewarding careers.
3. Because these schools can cripple children’s ability to read,
they must force children to read dumbed-down textbooks in English,
History, and many other subjects. These textbooks are geared to the
slowest learners in the class and water-down the subject matter.
These dumbed-down courses therefore waste children’s time.
4. Most “teaching” in public-schools consists of students having to
memorize facts from dumbed-down textbooks, only to regurgitate
these same facts on dumbed-down tests. John Holt, in his book, “How
Children Fail” points out that most students forget the facts they
memorized within a few weeks after the test. So most children learn
little from their classes except how to cram their heads with
useless facts which they soon forget. This goes on for 12
years.
5. Public schools force children to study subjects they hate, can’t
do, will never use in their lives, or which bore them. For example,
many schools force students to study geometry and trigonometry,
French or another foreign language, or world history. Children
should be studying subjects they love and are good at. When they
have to study subjects that bore them, the only thing children
learn is to hate learning.
6. Ben Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Edison, and Mark Twain
all went to a formal “grammar” school for less than two years. All
were home-schooled by their parents or self-taught after they
learned to read. Author John Gatto, in his book “Dumbing Us Down”
said that most children can learn to read, write, and do basic
arithmetic in only 100 hours of intense study. Yet our public
schools keep children locked up for 12 years, yet can barely teach
them to read.
7. Once children learn to read and write well within two years of
intense study, they doesn’t need a public school at all. With their
parents’ help and guidance, they can direct their own studies and
education at home. Over two million children do this right now—it’s
called homeschooling.
8. Public schools are a government-controlled monopoly. Bad schools
don’t close down because compulsory taxes prop them up. Incompetent
or mediocre teachers aren’t fired because tenure laws protect them.
That’s why public schools will never improve and will always waste
children’s precious time.
9. A study by the National Education Commission on Time and
Learning found that middle-school and high-school children spent on
average only about 50 percent of their school day on core
"academic" subjects. The rest of their time is spent on classes
about sex-education, personal safety, family life, consumer
affairs, AIDS and drug prevention, save-the-environment,
multiculturalism studies, "cooperative-learning" projects, study
halls, electives, homeroom, counseling, sports activities, or pep
rallies (high school).
If parents value their children’s time, passion for learning, and
future success in life, then they should consider taking their
children out of public school, permanently.
Parenting Tips
article
About the author:
Joel Turtel is an education policy analyst. He is also the author
of "The Welfare State: No Mercy For The Middle Class." Contact
Information:
Website: http://www.mykidsdeservebetter.com,Email:
lbooksusa@aol.com, Phone: 718-447-7348
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