The other day we directed you to an article in Brussels Journal that details how the Socialist Utopian state of Belgium is using intrusive laws to dictate UN values to individuals who want to home-school their children. As it turns out, the forced intrusion of socialist/UN values into homes is more widespread than it originally appeared:
For over fifteen years we have been struggeling here in Switzerland and the situation is getting worse. The whole battle is about the non-declared statist ideology. Whoever has a different opinion than the states’ bureaucrats is publicly denounced as intolerant, reactionary, traditionalist or whatever, while the bureaucrats force their illogical, misleading and hidden socialist views. Unfortunately the press is mostly on their side.
More @ Celestial Junk
Update from the Comments ~ Postscript says:
Socialism is as much a religion as Christianity or any other mode of philosophical thought. The liberal-left would like to have us believe that they hold no philosophy on life, only a pure and uninfluenced centrist thought (ha, ha, ha).
Critical thinking is a key foundation to ‘free’ thought, but we will never escape from our own philosophies. It is an innate human quality to communicate through our own world view. In this way, I have no problem with schools that are exclusively Christian, Secularist or whatever. If you can find the bodies to support the type of doctrine you preach – then (for the most part) so be it. The problem comes when the State says, “This is what you must do. This is what you must teach. Your children must attend.” I believe for the Socialists and liberal-left, they fear the concept of those with conservative viewpoints forming centers of education because they know the majority of the worldview is to the Right, like it or not. It (Conservatism) is the view that many do not live up to, but they want for their children.
More from the Comments: By Me No Dhimmi
The victim (word used correctly) parents were well-educated. The father trained as a lawyer; the mother is a former university lecturer. We would need, of course, to have all the bio info forwarded to our resident arbiter, David Brown, to make sure that their alma maters weren’t 2nd or 3rd or 4th rate, but let’s take it as read for the moment, that they are well-educated, pending David Brown’s analysis and report to the appropriate ministries.
The home school population, albeit small, has doubled in a short period of time, suggesting to David Brown, our resident arbiter, that the parents have gone mad.
The “authorities” are naturally worried about career stability, not about children. It need not be debated that they aren’t the slightest bit concerned about the children, tho’ it has to be admitted that they are quite expert at using the spectre of “children at risk” to advance their agendas (a kind of ideological child pornography it always seems to me).
A certificate is required to be signed by the parents containing the laughably vague phrase “respecting … the fundamental human rights and the cultural values of the child itself and of others”. Read that vacant, vacuous phrase again and gasp! Orwellian doesn’t quite cover it.
Here’s the thing: the inspectors will make the decision as to the level of compliance to that vague bureauspeak. If they sign two reports the home-schooling is banned and the parents are subject to criminal prosecution if they don’t comply.
I have some experience with securities regulation (the receiving end). In BC, a new act was proposed containing all kinds of clauses with phrases like “what a reasonable person would expect”. We need not spent a lot of time wondering who the “reasonable” party would be in a dispute. The “authorities” thought (and even stated so in public) that the narrow tightly worded rules allowed bad characters to do bad stuff while still being technically compliant. They were pushing for the easy, lazy route: make the rules so general that they could simply decide that anything they didn’t like was non-compliant.
Now that’s “scary” (word used correctly).
If there’s one lesson in all of this, it’s that parents should teach their kids to ASK QUESTIONS.
Question teachers.
Question texbooks.
Question “guest speakers”.
It may make the kids a bit more difficult (when they start to question parents) but the long-term benefits are significant.
Using Carl Sagan’s Balonie Meter for Political discussion can be brutal as it was meant as a scientific tool. But, it does make for some self-reflection. Here are some its points:
Wherever possible there must be independent confirmation of the “facts.”
Encourage substantive debate on the evidence by knowledgeable proponents of all points of view.
Arguments from authority carry little weight — “authorities” have made mistakes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Perhaps a better way to say it is that in science there are no authorities; at most, there are experts.
Spin more than one hypothesis. If there’s something to be explained, think of all the different ways in which it could be explained. Then think of tests by which you might systematically disprove each of the alternatives. What survives, the hypothesis that resists disproof in this Darwinian selection among “multiple working hypotheses,” has a much better chance of being the right answer than if you had simply run with the first idea that caught your fancy.*
Try not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because it’s yours. It’s only a way station in the pursuit of knowledge. Ask yourself why you like the idea. Compare it fairly with the alternatives. See if you can find reasons for rejecting it. If you don’t, others will.
Quantify. If whatever it is you’re explaining has some measure, some numerical quantity attached to it, you’ll be much better able to discriminate among competing hypotheses.
What is vague and qualitative is open to many explanations. Of course there are truths to be sought in the many qualitative issues we are obliged to confront, but finding them is more challenging.
If there’s a chain of argument, every link in the chain must work (including the premise) — not just most of them.
Occam’s Razor. This convenient rule-of-thumb urges us when faced with two hypotheses that explain the data equally well to choose the simpler.
Always ask whether the hypothesis can be, at least in principle, falsified. Propositions that are untestable, unfalsifiable are not worth much.
David, when will you implement thought processes that are “clear, precise, and purposeful”? There’s only one option? And that is to bang one’s head against what has proven to be the very thick brick wall of public education? I have so many relatives in the public education system that, knowing how shockingly indoctrinated they are in the socialist agenda and spirit of entitlement, I’m amazed you achieved such spectacular results.
Yet again, this comment may be telling: “a high school teacher once told me I wasn’t their to learn facts but to learn how to think.” So was it your high school teacher that taught you how to think? I think we’ve all figured out the answer to that question.
Rob R,
You can now add spelling to the list…Indiana has one ‘n’.
Don’t care much for Peyton Manning in the blue and white or for 45 calibre handguns but a malt liquor beverage sure sounds good right about now.
Dave,
I agree with you totally. Public schools do not teach critical thinking. However, there are plenty of home school curriculae that do, and I am going to use them. I was never taught critical thinking (doesn’t show at all;) LOL. My husband was by his parents and by doing a lot of reading as a teen.
I don’t know where in SW On you are, but where I am, I was told by more than one high school teacher that even though I could support my theories in basic research papers, they were not acceptable because it wasn’t what they had taught the class. I seriously had to go to the guidance department and eventually to the school board because of the way 2 teachers treated me. I was not encouraged to develop an open mind unless it was pro status quo. Keep in mind, I was agnostic, liberal and eager to learn from them, and held them up as high standards to emulate. You don’t understand unless you have been there.
I was forced to take a test alone in a room with my high school English teacher, who talked about nothing but casual sex. I am not kidding. I was told by the school that it was okay because he couldn’t fail me as I was in the gifted program and too many questions would be raised as to why a student with an A average suddenly failed. There were people in my class who had not handed in all of their assignments, had missed too many classes and tests to merit exemption from the final, but this teacher actually stood in front of the class and said that he was making the decision solely on the basis of who he thought should have to take it. There was one other girl who had to take the private exam as well. When the guidance department looked as his books, he had falsified the grade book to make it look like deserved to. We were able to prove he was lying because we had kept all of our papers. We were told that didn’t matter because he had the right to force anyone he wanted to take the exam. No one was in the room with me as a 16 year old girl with a pervert teacher giving her a private exam. I will not subject my daughters to that. I did fight the system. The system didn’t change.
If I seem a little upset with the public school system, maybe you can forgive me just a little.
On a related note:
RE: “Critical Thinking”
many educational institutions, especially unversities define “critical” thinking differently than we do. Whereas the traditional definition might be “analysis derived from critical and rational examination of relevant facts”, for example, many academics define it as “ideas that come from “critical” perspectives”.
So for, example, a student that mindlessly parrots Maude Barlow might be lauded for “critical thinking” even if they have engaged in no actual thought. Likewise, anyone who expresses a view that is not from a “critical” (i.e. leftist) perspective might be criticized for not “thinking critically”, even if they have given the issue significant rational analysis.
Dave,
I agree with you totally. Public schools do not teach critical thinking. However, there are plenty of home school curriculae that do, and I am going to use them. I was never taught critical thinking (doesn’t show at all;) LOL. My husband was by his parents and by doing a lot of reading as a teen.
I don’t know where in SW On you are, but where I am, I was told by more than one high school teacher that even though I could support my theories in basic research papers, they were not acceptable because it wasn’t what they had taught the class. I seriously had to go to the guidance department and eventually to the school board because of the way 2 teachers treated me. I was not encouraged to develop an open mind unless it was pro status quo. Keep in mind, I was agnostic, liberal and eager to learn from them, and held them up as high standards to emulate. You don’t understand unless you have been there.
I was forced to take a test alone in a room with my high school English teacher, who talked about nothing but casual sex. I am not kidding. I was told by the school that it was okay because he couldn’t fail me as I was in the gifted program and too many questions would be raised as to why a student with an A average suddenly failed. There were people in my class who had not handed in all of their assignments, had missed too many classes and tests to merit exemption from the final, but this teacher actually stood in front of the class and said that he was making the decision solely on the basis of who he thought should have to take it. There was one other girl who had to take the private exam as well. When the guidance department looked as his books, he had falsified the grade book to make it look like deserved to. We were able to prove he was lying because we had kept all of our papers. We were told that didn’t matter because he had the right to force anyone he wanted to take the exam. No one was in the room with me as a 16 year old girl with a pervert teacher giving her a private exam. I will not subject my daughters to that. I did fight the system. The system didn’t change.
If I seem a little upset with the public school system, maybe you can forgive me just a little.
Fair enough, David Brown. In the interest of the free market of ideas, kindergarten style, you won’t object, then to a curriculum for your children subtly permeated with the ideas of, say, David Duke?
GM makes a good point on “critical” thinking. “Critical Theory” is a neo-Marxist movement from the mid-20th century that purported to critically examine the implicit ideological underpinnings of Western thought. Stuff like the “violence” and “patriarchy” of the syllogism come out of this intellectual movement. “Critical” has in large part come to mean left-wing or deconstructionist and thus “critical thinking” means anti-capitlist and anti-Western (i.e., Greco-Judeo-Christian) rationalism.
Now I’m a Nietzschean who believes Godel’s incompleteness theorem was the most profound intellectual event of the 20th century (a deep blow to Rationalist pretension), but the “Critical” movement is hardly critical in a profound sense beyond using a tool (stress, “a” tool) of critical thinking to undermine a political opponent and then to disregard it entirely when promoting its own political agenda. There are no fixed rules of critical thinking–there are heuristics that evolve as thinking and the range of experience evolve.
In passing, I love the irony of quoting Sagan for the insight that “Arguments from authority carry little weight…”
David Brown is getting far too much attention from the rest of you. He is a mentally defective liberal and you are down to his level by arguing with him.
It’s like when you argue with a small child about why he cannot have more ice cream. It’s better to be the adult and simply tell him to go shut up and go out a play in yard.
An d by the way .. I think Belgium is spelled C-a-n-a-d-a
Liberalism IS a mental disorder! You all must know that by now.
Occam’s Carbuncle,
I don’t think there’s anything subtle about David Duke. Asking me ‘kindergarten style’ is OK by me…any style will do.
Hypothetically speaking, let’s say he was teacher at my kids school. I would be OK with it until I found out he was America’s number 1 racist, that would be the 1st day of classes. Then I would call other parents of children in my child’s class and find out what they knew and wanted to do about it. Then it’s meeting time with the principal and notify school inspectors. If the principal and inspectors said David Duke stays I would go back to the other parents and a very large group would descend on Queens Park.
My kids would still go to that school but be kept in the loop as well as be warned not to listen to the ravings of a lunatic.
It’s precisely these adversities that build character. Running away only keeps these anal pores in positions of power.
John,
Your children must love you dearly.
Public schools are impregnated with the socialist agenda – pc censorship, muti-culti victim reverence and moral equivalencies. It is the common threads running through today’s insipid textbooks. Who really thinks third graders need required exposure to “Heather Has Two Mommies”? Text books provide little original literature. History books have been sanitized to fit the socialist’s agenda. Even science has become politicized. And don’t forget the monopolistic, agenda driven, teacher’s union that keeps this debacle in play.
The Dems with their heavy union contributions outright refuse to let the poor, the most vulnerable, off their plantation by rejecting a voucher system.
Most college freshmen are subjected to some lame “sensitivity” orientation so that victim-hood can be firmly organized at the start. If you are white you get assigned oppressor status with four years of defensive posturing ahead of you. Fat chance of finding in the humanities or social sciences a professor that isn’t pandering the lefty screed. That’s been well documented. (Check out frontpagemagazine.com which carefully documents the education fiasco.) Women’s studies, ethnic studies? transgender studies?……what garbage, please, let’s not even go there.
It is going to be a long hard road, if ever, to turn this mess around.
Occam’s Carbuncle,
I don’t think there’s anything subtle about David Duke. Asking me ‘kindergarten style’ is OK by me…any style will do.
Hypothetically speaking, let’s say he was teacher at my kids school. I would be OK with it until I found out he was America’s number 1 racist, that would be the 1st day of classes. Then I would call other parents of children in my child’s class and find out what they knew and wanted to do about it. Then it’s meeting time with the principal and notify school inspectors. If the principal and inspectors said David Duke stays I would go back to the other parents and a very large group would descend on Queens Park.
My kids would still go to that school but be kept in the loop as well as be warned not to listen to the ravings of a lunatic.
It’s precisely these adversities that build character. Running away only keeps these anal pores in positions of power.
Well said John!
murray – I agree with you about ‘critical theory’. It has nothing to do with thought and analysis; it is simply a critique of western philosophy from a deconstructionist perspective, a cultural relativist perspective, one that rejects universals. It’s old style nominalism. But, since it rejects reason, it locates itself within some a priori, near-mystic essentialism (Derrida’s Writing, for example). I cannot stand it.
But critical theory is not the same as critical thinking. Critical thinking operates within the assumption that our species has the capacity for reason, a capacity to infer causal relations, a capacity to hypothesize – and a requirement for testing of these assumptions. That’s because critical thinking requires that the ‘output’ or interpretation is reasonably similar to the ‘input’ of data stimuli. It admits that there is an objective reality.
So, if I hear a whistle (input) the output ought to be reasonably close to that input (it’s a train), and I should not assume that it’s a sign of Aliens Coming.
I think critical thinking, as Debris Trail has outlined, is absolutely vital. It is rarely taught in our educational systems. Students don’t learn basic syllogisms, don’t learn the difference between a general rule and a specific event, don’t learn to critique statistical fallacies, don’t learn basic fallacies of emotion, ambiguity, learn nothing about the different relations between cause and effect and so on. I’ve always had students tell me how important they found these basic tools for them, to use in other classes.
As for Godel’s incompleteness – I’m not sure why you consider it a ‘deep blow to Rationalism’. Perhaps I’m not understanding your terms. I consider Godel’s theory a statement of the difference between a universal and a particular, with the concept that the universal can never be fully articulated. Why is this a blow to Rationalism? Or do you mean, a blow to the view that, eventually, mankind would be able to know everything about anything?
“Who really thinks third graders need required exposure to “Heather has two mommies”?
Who indeed.
Indoctrination like that only serves to justify the adult gay lifestyle and has nothing to do with objectively developing a child’s mind. Why should a young child living in a heterosexual household have to deal with that confusion? What value is that kind of ‘education’ to a child?
That sums up the problem perfectly.
Steve D,
“a sensitive ‘red tory'” is also known as a Liberal. The PCs split mainly because they became the same as the Liberal party. A loss of any ideology, the same power for powers sake.
Only you know what your daughter is like but if you have raised her as you say, she will only be a critical thinker despite your best efforts. You lie, misrepresent, make vacuous statements and yet seem to actually believe most of what you spew. How could she go wrong?
enough
Well said FREE!
Tell your kids to shut up and go play in the back yard (presumably by themselves).
That’ll learn them.
Here’s how a mentally disordered liberal would do it…Give them ice cream until their so sick of it they never ask for it again. Then take them to the park and push them on the swing spending quality time while playing with them.
Dave,
I agree with you totally. Public schools do not teach critical thinking. However, there are plenty of home school curriculae that do, and I am going to use them. I was never taught critical thinking (doesn’t show at all;) LOL. My husband was by his parents and by doing a lot of reading as a teen.
I don’t know where in SW On you are, but where I am, I was told by more than one high school teacher that even though I could support my theories in basic research papers, they were not acceptable because it wasn’t what they had taught the class. I seriously had to go to the guidance department and eventually to the school board because of the way 2 teachers treated me. I was not encouraged to develop an open mind unless it was pro status quo. Keep in mind, I was agnostic, liberal and eager to learn from them, and held them up as high standards to emulate. You don’t understand unless you have been there.
I was forced to take a test alone in a room with my high school English teacher, who talked about nothing but casual sex. I am not kidding. I was told by the school that it was okay because he couldn’t fail me as I was in the gifted program and too many questions would be raised as to why a student with an A average suddenly failed. There were people in my class who had not handed in all of their assignments, had missed too many classes and tests to merit exemption from the final, but this teacher actually stood in front of the class and said that he was making the decision solely on the basis of who he thought should have to take it. There was one other girl who had to take the private exam as well. When the guidance department looked as his books, he had falsified the grade book to make it look like we deserved to write. We were able to prove he was lying because we had kept all of our papers. We were told that didn’t matter because he had the right to force anyone he wanted to take the exam. No one was in the room with me as a 16 year old girl with a pervert teacher giving her a private exam. I will not subject my daughters to that. I did fight the system. The system didn’t change.
If I seem a little upset with the public school system, maybe you can forgive me just a little.
Irwin,
That’s the first thing you’ve said I agree with.
While the gay lifestyle is here to stay and is OK by me it has no place in the education of small children.
The pro-gay lobby is going to bring back violence on the gay community because we have had enough.
No group in Canada or the USA is MORE ideologically driven then the extreme right wing. While they consistenly accuse the left of being ideologues, it is time to set the record straight on this. The right wing operates with a well developed set of enshrined falsehoods. The recent merging of the christian right with the mainstream right has resulted in electoral success, but the false aspects of the overall ideology will facilitate collapse in due course. Persons who are afflicted with right wing total self centredness generally do very poorly in elected positions because they feel entitled to do, say and take whatever they want because of their predispositon to ‘self’. Case in point is the Grant Devine Conservative government and the Mulroney Conservative government. (Time will tell if the Harper Conservative government will be as corrupt as most other right wing administrations).
Communism: Man’s Second Oldest Faith: “Ye shall be as gods.”
Excerpt:
“It is not new. It is, in fact, man’s second oldest faith. Its promise was whispered in the first days of the Creation under the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil: “Ye shall be as gods.” It is the great alternative faith of mankind. Like all great faiths, its force derives from a simple vision. Other ages have had great visions. They have always been different versions of the same vision: the vision of God and man’s relationship to God. The Communist vision is the vision of Man without God.” Whittaker Chambers. …-
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/hiss/chambersletter.html
leftdog:
Where do you come up with this crap? Again, this is how the Left spews the garbage that comes continually out of their trap.
The NDP in Saskatchewan have decimated the province. People keep leaving despite their hype of the ‘booming economy’. Why? Because people realize that socialism does not work and is full of sh*t. They boast of jobs, but fail to tell the media (the media also fails to report) that the jobs they boast of are minimum wage.
I also love this one, “Persons who are afflicted with right wing total self centredness…”. If the Leftist ideology isn’t the most self-centred worldview I don’t know what is. BTW, if you’re going to voice your failures of the Conservative state, let me point you toward the Socialist failures of the USSR, North Korea and too many others to post. Right now in Saskatchewan the only two groups that apparently matter are the unions and the NDP. Anyone else can leave the province, and they are. If you want to witness an experiment in your Leftist viewpoint, watch Saskatchewan for the next few years if it continues to be run by the NDP – we will be the Third World in Canada.
leftdog,
You have GOT to be kidding! Right wingers are predisposed to corruption? We just turfed the most corrupt government this country has ever seen and they were far from right wing.
And the “extreme right wing” is more ideologically driven than anyone else? This would infer that they are more ideological than the extreme left wing. Get a grip. Admittedly, extremists on either side are dangerous but which side is it that has a utopian dream of socialism, even though it has been proven not to work time after time after time?
Let me help you. To answer that last question, find out how many poor Americans drown each year in homemade rafts, whilst trying to escape to Cuba.
Bovine dolt
Leftdog, I read your post twice to try to determine the point you are trying to make. I think your point is:
1.The right has an ideology that is based on falsehoods.
2. Those falseholds result in the right winning power but eventually losing once people become aware of the falsehoods.
In order to support your position you might want to set out what the ideology of the right is and what are the falsehoods that the ideology is based on. Otherwise it’s difficult to make nay sort of rationale response to your post.
Postscript – why was it that 16 Conservative Members of the Saskatchewan Legislature were found GUILTY and convicted for breach of trust and fraud??? The billions they spent in the strategic bankrupting of Saskatchewan was a crime that everyone understands except for the extreme right wing (as you have just demonstrated). Devine’s scorched earth policy was indended to drive the provincial debt up to a level consistent with the value of the crown corporations – with the intention of forcing the incoming NDP government to be forced to liquidate the crown assets. Shame on you and all Saskatchewan right wingers who took part in this crime and the subsequent denial of it!
postscript
The trouble with the socialists is that they depend on the capitalists to willingly and freely pay a living wage. This does not compute for the capitalist.. unless of course he absolutely has to. Then he will pay well but then assumes he actually owns your life.
penny – I fully agree with you. No child needs the ‘two mommies’ bit. They need to learn to respect the roles of both mothers and fathers.
And, how right you are – the funding agencies in Canada only fund this postmodern rubbish of the left. It’s almost impossible to get humanities and social science research funds for basic foundational work, i.e, work that critiques the basic theorems in the humanities and social sciences. After all, the left considers that there is only one way to think – the pc way. And, it’s impossible to fund anything that is not part of this morass of women’s themes, minorities as victims, big business as oppressors, and so on.
Rob R. slight correction for you – the most corrupt government in Canada was the 16 Convicted Members of the Saskatchewan Conservative Government of Grant Devine. No other government in Canadian history ever had 16 ELECTED Members found guilty of breach of trust and fraud. Liberals are bad – Conservatives have been worse!
Paul from Vancouver – here is an example of right wing falsehoods just posted in the last few threads, Rob R stated above “leftdog,You have GOT to be kidding! Right wingers are predisposed to corruption? We just turfed the most corrupt government this country has ever seen and they were far from right wing.”
That is false – the most corrupt government was a Conservative Government in Saskatchewan (where 16 Tory MLA’s were found guilty) as I point out a posting or two back. The Conservative party was SO discredited by the scandal – they changed their name to the Saskatchewan Party and their leader is a former Ministerial Assistant to one of the convicted Cabinet ministers. That is the kind of ‘falsehood’ I am accusing the right of perpetrating.
“because they feel entitled to do, say and take whatever they want because of their predispositon to ‘self’.”
leftdog, you forgot to mention the worst of them all, the Chretien / Martin Liberal government from the previous thirteen years. According to you, they must be the mother of all right-wing ideological governments.
John, very much OT, but could you please tell me how to bold print when sending it to SDA? I have tried by writing my post in Word, then cutting and pasting it, with bolded and italicized letters, but they always come up unbolded and unitalicized when I push Post.
Any suggestions, gratefully received. Thanks!
I agree with your views on David Brown. He’s welcome to his naive and Utopian opinions, of course, but he’s taking up entirely too much of this thread.
Go out to play, David.
Occam, I was thinking exactly the same thing. Would these left critical thinkers take it a little more seriously if a teacher was teaching racism? How about if, in 3rd grade, they had an anti-abortionist guest speaker in school? How about someone teaching that pedophilia is okay? Would you calmly state that people should not be worried or are taking it a little too seriously?
Believe me, this socialist dogma has been preached in school for many many years. In Grade 12, I had a very socialist teacher. Being a critical thinker and a bit of a rebel, I wrote a paper on the Benefits of Capitalism. Needless to say, as an A student throughout my school years, I received an F for the paper. I learned my lesson and spouted her dogma back to her. That was grade 12 however younger children do not have the skills yet to form their own opinion.
The scary part? Not only is home schooling being challenged now… the liberals want them in their daycare and out of the home to “prepare” them.
Socialism is a belief system (or religion if you prefer that term) as is secular humanisn. Public school teachers normally preach one or the other. They don’t usually succeed at inculcating the mass of students with their values because in a public school system there are enough peers for students to be horizontally socialized and accept whatever their peers accept.
We home schooled two daughters. One of the benefits of home schooling is vertical socialization. Sure that also means that they tend to be disproportionally influenced by the parents when compared to publicly schooled children, but it gave us an opportunity to teach them some critical thinking skills and to develop a resistance to peer pressure. The younger of the two just graduated with distinction in Civil Engineering and forms her own opinions on most matters. The elder is less academically oriented but certainly competent in her endeavours. I doubt that the public school system could have done better than we (mostly my wife) did.
Never forget that the model for the public school system is based on a 19th century Prussian model of maintaining order in the classroom and that the proponents of public schooling in North America claimed that it would pay for itself by emptying the prisons. Sounds like the claims of the gun registry being virtually self supporting. Centuries come and go but liberal’s tactics don’t change much.
Literacy rates in New England prior to public schooling being introduced were higher than they are today (or at least twenty-two years ago when I last saw the stats – I doubt they’ve improved).
The design of the public school curriculum denies the learning and social difference between boys and girls. The system is primarily organized to protect school teachers from evaluation of their effectiveness in educating as the customers expect and has its own end goal of developing the next generation of school teachers. Other than those few flaws I could see myself supporting it.
Interesting to see some stats on literacy rates.
I wonder if there are any worthwhile data on Home schooled VS. Public as applies to Comprehension and competence in major areas like language, math, science, history…….
Lots of anecdotal opinion I’m sure but any REAL FACTS?
As for Belgium…pityfull, a nation that has subgugated itself to mindless bureaucracy.
I’ll bet Layton would LOVE it there.
Paul A, I salute you. I too raised daughters and now have grandsons. Anything having to do with the laws of physics have the little guys entranced, where my girls could have cared less. I’m viewing life now with the small hunter’s perspective rather than the gatherers. It’s different and definately hard wired.
The design of the public school curriculum denies the learning and social difference between boys and girls.
As Larry Summers learned when he crossed the Feminazis on campus by suggesting, God forbid, that male and female brain wiring may be different for math. Science appears to support that, but not the feminist dogma. So, he lost.
But, then Harvard gave a “moral equivalence” scholarship to a semi-illiterate and unrepentant ex-Taliban thug. The same feminist faculty morons never opened their hypocritical mouths in protest over that. Are these hags stupid and repulsive? Are they the classic Useful Idiots of the left? You bet.
What’s sad are the people that can’t avoid the public schools. As I’ve said before, the Dems will never let the poor off their plantation. Sickening.
David re: “Give them ice cream until their so sick of it they never ask for it again”
A friend’s father caught him and his cousin smoking when they were children. The father took them both into the basement wine room, handed them each a twisted, strong, Italian cigar and said “So, you want to be men? Then smoke a man’s smoke. Here. Here’s some wine to go with it. Have another cigar. Some more wine?”
It wasn’t long before both youngsters were out on the lawn puking their guts out. I don’t know about his cousin, but my friend hasn’t smoked since and he is in his seventies.
THE BRUSSELS PIECE ABOUT HOMESCHOOLING: The things that hit me hardest were:
The victim (word used correctly) parents were well-educated. The father trained as a lawyer; the mother is a former university lecturer. We would need, of course, to have all the bio info forwarded to our resident arbiter, David Brown, to make sure that their alma maters weren’t 2nd or 3rd or 4th rate, but let’s take it as read for the moment, that they are well-educated, pending David Brown’s analysis and report to the appropriate ministries.
The home school population, albeit small, has doubled in a short period of time, suggesting to David Brown, our resident arbiter, that the parents have gone mad.
The “authorities” are naturally worried about career stability, not about children. It need not be debated that they aren’t the slightest bit concerned about the children, tho’ it has to be admitted that they are quite expert at using the spectre of “children at risk” to advance their agendas (a kind of ideological child pornography it always seems to me).
A certificate is required to be signed by the parents containing the laughably vague phrase “respecting … the fundamental human rights and the cultural values of the child itself and of others”. Read that vacant, vacuous phrase again and gasp! Orwellian doesn’t quite cover it.
Here’s the thing: the inspectors will make the decision as to the level of compliance to that vague bureauspeak. If they sign two reports the home-schooling is banned and the parents are subject to criminal prosecution if they don’t comply.
I have some experience with securities regulation (the receiving end). In BC, a new act was proposed containing all kinds of clauses with phrases like “what a reasonable person would expect”. We need not spent a lot of time wondering who the “reasonable” party would be in a dispute. The “authorities” thought (and even stated so in public) that the narrow tightly worded rules allowed bad characters to do bad stuff while still being technically compliant. They were pushing for the easy, lazy route: make the rules so general that they could simply decide that anything they didn’t like was non-compliant.
Now that’s “scary” (word used correctly).
leftdog:
Actually, shame on you and rest of your ilk who continue to live in ‘la la land’ while Saskatchewan tumbles toward poverty. If we didn’t luck out and have oil revenue for the past couple years, we’d be in a very bad place right now.
BTW, guess who set up a majority of the oil wells in Saskatchewan? Grant Devine. Guess who dismantled a good number of them and continue to force business out of the province? The NDP.
In Saskatchewan right now the NDP has committed scandal after scandal, yet they remain in government. The ‘potato’ fiasco, dealings with Minds-Eye, money lost on the Meadow Lake Pulp Mill, highways, the list goes on and on. Now, how would a government stay in power despite this record? Because they are Socialists and they pander to the Union vote and the philosophy of special interests. The largest single employed entity in Saskatchewan is the provincial crowns and government (i.e. unionized employees). Are you starting to make the connection? Is it any wonder we are going down the toilet? You talk of corruption; the current actions of the NDP government are the epitome of corruption as it robs the entire province of a future.
Now, try to follow the rest of this post. I’m going to try and coax this debate back to the original topic of education and critical thinking. To do this, I’m going to start at a very elementary level so the Leftists can understand a thing we Conservatives like to call ‘logic’.
Apart from corrupt governments, which I will make no apologies for, Socialism is a well known failure. Unless you have been living in a box your entire life I need not expound formally on all the historical references which prove that point. On the other hand, Capitalism (the ‘Free Market’) and Democracy are quite well established as effective modes of economy and nationalism. I refer to the comment about you perhaps living in a box if this tidbit does not ring valid and true to you. Furthermore, it is not a stretch to say that Socialism is diametrically opposed to Capitalism. It is also not a stretch for me to equate the Conservative ideology much more closely with the tenants of Capitalism and Democracy.
As a logical thinker, I can separate a corrupt government from a valid and effective mode of governing. Socialism, as stated above, is not a valid or effective mode of government. Conservatism, on the other hand, *IS* valid and effective (again, see above). The success of the Liberals and NDP has been to steal the policy of the Conservative and pander to special interests. They stand for nothing, but effectively appease everything. The problem is that their appeasement lasts only for a time and then they have to change their philosophy again. If you think that the current modality of Liberalism is here to stay, I would like to place a wager on that. There was a time when Liberals in Canada had principles – I think that time has long past.
In regards to the education, the Socialist appeasement makes itself known there as well and there are many examples of how that works in our Canadian schools.
Calgary Clipper has his/her/it’s head up his/her/it’s ass. My kids go to one of the schools referenced and there’s no religion involved. It’s strictly readin’ ritin’ and rithmatic all the way. In fact, these folks have the school set up such that by the time my kids graduate grade 12 they’ll have already completed most of the 1st year university courses. That’s why parents like me are sending our kids to charter schools. We wan’t them to get an education. We don’t wan’t the focus to be on caring and sharing and feelings and all that psycobabble garbage that goes with public schools. If we were after religion we would have sent our kids to a Catholic School…
PostScript,
I agree with you. Want to know who else agrees with you? Why no other than the ex-Chretienite, Warren Kinsella. Here’s a line from his post of today:
“Conservatives’ ideology is their ideology: tax cuts, law and order, and so on. That kind of stuff. The Liberal ideology is, to be blunt, winning”
Ain’t that the truth, Warren
3w.warrenkinsella.com/musings.htm
Much earlier in this thread, David Brown suggests that “A Christian [teacher] might say, how awful [sic: There should be a comma here] those poor dears are going straight to hell and will never see the face of God.”
What a load of codswallop! I’ve been a teacher (and a Christian) for over three decades and, re my students–lots of barbarian behaviour there–this cliched nonsense has never crossed my mind.
David Brown’s full of hot air. If he were in my class, I’d tell him to cool it.
Leftdog:
Grant-D’-swine was about as conservative as Ralph Klein. Ol’ Ralph’s more liberal than most members of the federal Liberal party… D’Swine’s pillaging was just another example of socialist “entitlement” in action. I grew up in that era and it’s the reason that I moved to AB…
The corruption under the Devine government pales in comparison to that under the Chretien/Martin governments. The differences were obviously in the monetary amounts involved, and the fact that the old provincial conservatives hadn’t the reach and influence (or perhaps the gall) to taint the justice system, unlike the Fiberals (Federal Liberals) who managed to corrupt just about everything they ever touched. Unlike the Devine saga, the whole story of the Federal Liberals’ corruption is not yet revealed.
I woulnt be so sympathetic to home schoolers if the public educators simply diid their friggin job.
last january I paid a visit to the local public education main headquarters and finally got to see one of the bigshots.
I quizzed him for a good 2 hours on 3 topics: teacher’s pet policy, bullying and mostly on current curricula. ie, has anything changed since my days of interminable discection of the iambic pentameter. (thats all I remember, just the term, I seem to be suffering some sort of loss of memory brought on by the horrific conditions at the time)
anyway, I suggested and enquired if such things as ALL the ins and outs of buying a car were discussed. EVERYTHING you need to know to make the 2nd biggest investment of the average canadian. financing alternatives, sizing up needs vs budget, background checks on the dealership and specific models, assessing the condition of a particular unit, negotiation techniques ‘learn to walk away’. etc etc et fukin CETERA.
why do we have to still use the plunge-them-into-the-deep-end method of learning lifes lessons when we can be turning out enlightened UNGULLIBLE citizenry by the thousands? SCHOOL ie the public edukashun sisdem is the place where you have them all at once.
other topics included: what do you do with a newborn that just wont shut up.
its been crying for 4 hours now, what do you do?
this was never covered in my day.
thats why shaken baby syndrome was discovered.
do edukatoors cover this sensitive topic in high schools sose that when the urge to procreate asserts itself, teething is not a problem?
etc etc
NONE of this was EVER covered a single time in all my 5 years of high school. EVER.
fortunately I married a consumate negotiator with truly remarkable maternal instinct.
screw the socialist gubbamint thugs trying to perpetuate their communistic view of ‘education’ ie brainwashing the youngsters.
we need more that a vast herd of clucking lock step sycophants to hand the country over to.
to all the leftists out there:
the basic unadulterated hard blunt cold reality is . . .
socialism is counter to human nature.
the altruistic bent you feel is NOT shared by the vast majority of your fellow citizens of the planet.
you need something closer to ‘enlightened self interest’
ie, make sure the other bloke has at least some of the pie sose they dont rise up as in 1917 or even 1776 for that matter. if ya gets waaaaay too greedy the gauno is sure to hit the fan and there will be casualties.
that said, free enterprise rewards and encourages thrift and is the vital central and inescapable key to the success of free choice in a democracy (they go hand in hand) the ability to utilize some part of your wealth plus a business idea to generate more wealth. and others witness the process and join in.
centuries pass and democracies hold the record for prosperity.
not the friggin anachronistic communism of lenin and mao and pol pot or kim jung il. blech. what an atrocious pattern they set.
its true.
we could have used some communism in the 17th century to wipe out the aristocratic monarchists plaguing the globe. they were too late in 1917. the best that can be said is they defeated the nazis but that was 60 years ago.
socialism siply defies human nature, ie the primacy of self interest.
instead it profers ideology over common sense. and the results are predictable. waste waste waste and more waste. there is utterly no incentive to seek or utilize efficiencies because the socio- political- economic structure punishes it instead of rewarding it.
the chinese meanwhile have the brutality of communism in the government coupled with unfettered capitalism in the economy. the worst of both worlds, so dont look to them for any great new economic social model.
ciao !!!
p.s. my brother-in-law is a PHD economist. we’ve had occassional conversations on this topic.
‘Great sympathy for home schoolers though my husband and I home schooled for only three months, when the public school our second daughter went to (‘couldn’t afford private school, and there wasn’t one near where we lived) refused to acknowledge that she was having difficulties learning. She couldn’t read and she was in grade three; their prognosis? She’ll grow out of it. Yeah, sure. They’d been saying that since kindergarten.
She was also having recurring bowel problems, because of surgery she’d had for a bowel obstruction a few years before, so because the school wouldn’t help us help our daughter we pulled her out of class.
If I had not stayed at home at that point, no doubt she would have fallen totally through the cracks. The school said that her problem is that she needed “a safe place” in which to learn which, presumably, meant our house wasn’t a safe place, as it goes without saying that their ‘open, tolerant, diverse’ environment in the school was OBVIOUSLY a safe place for our daughter to learn. EXCEPT for one salient fact: She couldn’t read and she was eight years old!!!
We and friends home schooled her and at the end of week three (that’s when the school loses their grant if a student has been away that long), they tried to get her back, for just half a day, to watch a video with her class: “We really miss her and the children in the class would like to see her.” What a crock. They were about to lose their grant. She stayed home.
My husband and I were then summoned by the principal, VP, special ed teacher, classroom teacher AND the “attendance counsellor,” aka the truancy officer. A friend in another board, a principal, told me that we had better be very careful how we handled this situation, as in some situations children are actually taken away from their parents.
That’s when my Irish gets up, when I’m backed, injudiciously, against the wall. 3:00 a.m., I sit bolt upright in bed and say, “That’s it; they’re not going to do this to K_________.” That’s what made me so angry. As Me No Dhimmi points out, the educational “authorities” (sic) “aren’t the slightest bit concerned about the children,” though they talk a good line: “How can we make the school a safe place for K_______ to come back to school?” I’d love to have said, “Get rid of the femi-Nazi principal and special ed teacher,” but restrained myself. I simply put together a seven-page report on K______, medical reports, academic reports, outside assessments of her need for remedial help, etc., and handed one to each person at this meeting, where my husband and I were definitely under severe scrutiny and, if the school had its way, were to be put in the position of “neglectful parents.”
Fortunately, the attendance counsellor/truancy officer put two and two together and came to the correct conclusion: Far from our being neglectful, the school admin. and teachers came across as totally incompetent, with egg all over their faces, and we were able to get our daughter the remedial help she needed.
Aside from the stress of having an unwell child, who was under the care of a GP and two paediatricians at the time, we had to deal with a rabid school admin. who would gladly have seen our daughter drag from grade to grade without the literacy skills she needed to succeed in every subject. It was a painful and eye-opening experience, and deeply frightening, to see how cavalierly and uncaringly they were willing to sacrifice my daughter’s education on the altar of their left/lib/fem orthodoxies. Or, maybe it’s just that they were lazy, and with so many other problems, just didn’t feel like helping her. Whatever their twisted reasons, they ended up backing down in the face of our detailed documentation of their negligence and giving in to all of our requests. K____ is now going into second year university.
There’s a real nastiness, because it is ideologically fuelled, to public education’s opposition to home schoolers. Totally aside from the grants they lose when parents decide to home school, the public education system and all those who support it, are contemptuous of the mindset that asserts that families can better educate their children than over-paid, fat-cat, uncaring, “expert” educrats. To assert that families are superior to the State in any delivery system is total anathema to these edu-Nazis.
Me No Dhimmi,
I can only guess you call me the resident arbiter out of sarcasm and to place me on a brittle pedestal so that I can be easily knocked down.
Just because the home school population has doubled doesn’t give it any more credibility.
“Authorities”, yes are rightfully concerned about career stability as anyone in that position would be. Aren’t you? I’m certain as well though that it goes well beyond personal selfishness and that they truly have the best interests of the children in mind. To think otherwise is paranoid.
Some type of certificate does have to be signed, otherwise all types of vagaries could ensue. If you think some clauses of the certificate are ‘vaucous’ then have them struck out with your lawyer present or challenge them in a court of law. I’m sure the ‘authorities’ would prefer a well written certificate as it would make their job easier.
You have to admit that some parents could abuse the home schooling situation so a system of checks and balances has to be in place to prevent this.
The key word is in your 2nd from last paragraph and it is “reasonable”. Not in your context but in mine.
A reasonable person that thinks things through and acts in a communicative pleasant manner will almost always get their way. High strung combative paranoid individuals have an uphill battle no matter what the challenge.