All in the Family featured the curmudgeonly Archie Bunker. Archie was television’s most famous grouch, blunt, blustering, straightforward and untouched by the PC crowd. He was the archetype of the conservative male. Michael desprately tried to reeducate him, but he persisted in his breviloquence.



Looking back at the last 40 years, we realize: ARCHIE WAS RIGHT!

5/02/2014

Hating Boys

It's no secret that I regard Fred Reed as one of the most enlightened reprobates spewing forth electrons from his keyboard today.  A link to his work is over on the right side of the links column. Fred has a unique way of hitting the nail on the head, over and over again.  If you want to know why the education system in this country is as bad as it is and why things are only getting worse, listen to Freed.
The two lowest-scoring careers are education, overwhelmingly female, and public administration. Thus we have morons, administered by slightly worse morons, trying to teach boys who, at the high end, are so much smarter than the teachers as to constitute another species.
He's right.  Boys don't belong in todays public schools.  No child does.  Public schooling is an insidious form of child abuse.  It wasn't always that way, but it is now.  I witnessed the fall of public education first hand as a student.  As I've followed the news stories over the last 30 years or so, it's only gotten worse.

Fred makes a good point over all about intelligence, performance and failure.  A smart kid will get bored in classroom.  A teacher doesn't want bored kids.  Bored kids act up.  Bored kids find stuff that won't make them bored.  Bored kids are a problem.  Bored kids get extra attention.  Extra attention adds stress.  Stress produces side effects that can be very harmful.

Using a roomful of little boys and girls to validate a middle-aged women's emotional needs isn't teaching, its cruel and unusual punishment.

My own educational career was extraordinarily lackluster.  It started out well enough in a small country school.  It went down hill after that.  My dad moved us to a big city for his job.  I had a horrible year that first year in the city.  Over the course of my career, I was double promoted, held back, sent to prison a boarding facility, ended up in one of finest private schools any ware, got kicked out for moral violations, did one last year in public school, was told despite all A's except French, I wasn't going to be allowed to graduate, told the school to F off I had a scholarship for college, and became a high-school drop out.  Along the way I was diagnosed as dyslexic, was sent to remedial class, took honors and advanced classes, narrowly avoided MENSA, CLEP'd out of economics in college, and managed to get an AA, BA, and MBA.  My LSAT's were good enough to get me into most law schools, but I decided not to go.  When I wrote my dissertation proposal for my Ph'd application to CSTU the men on the dissertation committee were impressed enough to suggest I do the work at one of their alma mater's.  I was intrigued but the $270,000 price tag was too steep.  Eventually I dropped the whole idea of a Ph'd.

I guess all of that is a long winded way of saying,  I've run the gambit of American education, including an invitation to attend an ivy league school. I've come to the conclusion that public school sucks and you can learn what you want on your own

4 comments:

  1. Susan4:05 PM

    As far as I am concerned, the worst part of public school now is that you are offering your precious child up as a tasty sacrifice to some pervert teacher. It is a real roulette wheel now, because unless you have chatted them up, or know them from church, you just can't tell which one is the perv anymore.

    Not trying to scare you and the Mrs., but there are some sickos out there. There are many reasons why teachers put their own kids into the private system instead of the public. They know exactly who is doing what.

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  2. My sister is a public school teacher by education. She even has advanced credentials that earn her significantly more money. She stays home. She home schools.

    We home school as well. We do that even though I can get my son into a school where I know the principle and can have a reasonably good shot at getting the best teachers. Its not worth it. I'll keep working a peon night job till my kids are out of the house if that's what I have to do to keep theme at home for their education.

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  3. Susan6:10 PM

    It did not occur to me until about 5 years ago that the passage in the OT regarding training up your child in the way they should go... could also apply to home schooling and that there is no age limit mentioned in that passage.

    I whole heartedly support anyone who wants to home school. If parents put their child's welfare ahead of the usual "what would other people say" nonsense, there would be so many homeschoolers that the Feds would be forced to sit up and pay attention.

    You are doing for yours what I wish I could have done for mine. We supplemented of course, but I would do homeschooling in a heartbeat now. When your priority is your child and their welfare, nothing is peon when it comes to their welfare. Some of the best memories I have of my parents from that time involve creativity with limited finances. That is almost a whole comment someday in and of itself.

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  4. Res Ipsa8:29 PM

    Susan,

    Thank you. That was very kind of you to say.

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