Please wake up and start working to ELIMINATE the "PUBLIC SCHOOLS" rather than reforming them. Public schools are an artifact of the 17th century - the colonies (which were theocratic dictatorships) instituted them in the 1640s under the mistaken idea that the schools, like the government, would always be under the control of the church. Instead they created a monster that is controlled by whatever funds it. Most of the money your school district receives doesn’t come from district parents; the main sources are the state and federal governments. Even the local property taxes mostly don’t come from district parents, and that relatively small funding is unconditional and therefore exerts no influence on school policy. So parents have no leverage. Public schools are socialist entities; they get your money up front and unconditionally. It doesn’t matter how much they succeed or fail – they get the money anyway. The time you will waste trying to fix a system that cannot be fixed could instead be directed into helping your own children. Public schools, like communist governments, destroy the private marketplace for education by funneling people's education money into the state. Imagine what education could be like if you had five or ten commercial education companies vying for your dollars. Stop trying to influence your neighbors and your district. Start doing what is actually in your power to do: GET YOUR KIDS OUT. https://www.publicschoolexit.com/
John...excellent recap of a strategy to fix our K-12 Education System. The State Boards of Education (SBOE) are the power and gatekeepers of our Education System. They approve things that are very important...curriculum, books, tests, etc. There are only about 500 people that fill these chairs...some appointed and some elected. My guess is that most of these people are good people. However, with all due respects to this group, my view is that many have not been paying attention and don’t actually know the details of what they’ve approved. Thus, a corrupted curriculum has become the deaf to national standard. Your good work in North Carolina, effectively using your seven steps, demonstrates that America’s Education System can be fixed. Getting the Scientific Method into the curriculum is a great first step. Obviously adding Critical Thinking is an important next step followed by eliminating the ideological biases which are throughout the curriculum.
We have several bills in the House addressing the various dimensions of the education curriculum problem. We also have reasonable control of the Dept of Education, at least at the top level. The bills are very slow to pass and a "follow the money" approach to understanding why isn't turning up much we didn't already suspect. It's not enough to sway legislators even if exposed. But the real problem is textbooks. We can get some textbooks that include all the right information. The publisher is right in our county. But, it is overtly Christian, which I am for, but it makes it difficult to adopt at the state level. I don't think the county boards or the statewide charter school board will "buy" those books. To sum: we need new textbooks. Especially, we need new textbooks that use the experience of the Covid-19 era throughout as a explicit example of the consequence of lack of critical thinking skills and an understanding of the scientific method. Chicken or egg. I believe the textbooks need to be there so that the parents can lobby for them. What do you think?
Education Game-Changer Followup
Please wake up and start working to ELIMINATE the "PUBLIC SCHOOLS" rather than reforming them. Public schools are an artifact of the 17th century - the colonies (which were theocratic dictatorships) instituted them in the 1640s under the mistaken idea that the schools, like the government, would always be under the control of the church. Instead they created a monster that is controlled by whatever funds it. Most of the money your school district receives doesn’t come from district parents; the main sources are the state and federal governments. Even the local property taxes mostly don’t come from district parents, and that relatively small funding is unconditional and therefore exerts no influence on school policy. So parents have no leverage. Public schools are socialist entities; they get your money up front and unconditionally. It doesn’t matter how much they succeed or fail – they get the money anyway. The time you will waste trying to fix a system that cannot be fixed could instead be directed into helping your own children. Public schools, like communist governments, destroy the private marketplace for education by funneling people's education money into the state. Imagine what education could be like if you had five or ten commercial education companies vying for your dollars. Stop trying to influence your neighbors and your district. Start doing what is actually in your power to do: GET YOUR KIDS OUT. https://www.publicschoolexit.com/
I’m all over this. Thank you for taking time to address this important issue.
John...excellent recap of a strategy to fix our K-12 Education System. The State Boards of Education (SBOE) are the power and gatekeepers of our Education System. They approve things that are very important...curriculum, books, tests, etc. There are only about 500 people that fill these chairs...some appointed and some elected. My guess is that most of these people are good people. However, with all due respects to this group, my view is that many have not been paying attention and don’t actually know the details of what they’ve approved. Thus, a corrupted curriculum has become the deaf to national standard. Your good work in North Carolina, effectively using your seven steps, demonstrates that America’s Education System can be fixed. Getting the Scientific Method into the curriculum is a great first step. Obviously adding Critical Thinking is an important next step followed by eliminating the ideological biases which are throughout the curriculum.
We have several bills in the House addressing the various dimensions of the education curriculum problem. We also have reasonable control of the Dept of Education, at least at the top level. The bills are very slow to pass and a "follow the money" approach to understanding why isn't turning up much we didn't already suspect. It's not enough to sway legislators even if exposed. But the real problem is textbooks. We can get some textbooks that include all the right information. The publisher is right in our county. But, it is overtly Christian, which I am for, but it makes it difficult to adopt at the state level. I don't think the county boards or the statewide charter school board will "buy" those books. To sum: we need new textbooks. Especially, we need new textbooks that use the experience of the Covid-19 era throughout as a explicit example of the consequence of lack of critical thinking skills and an understanding of the scientific method. Chicken or egg. I believe the textbooks need to be there so that the parents can lobby for them. What do you think?