Your Children's Education example essay topic

Educated men are as much superior to uneducated men as the living are to the dead. -Aristotle, 384-322 B.C. Background " In order to fully understand how America's schools got off track, it is important to evaluate the road they " ve traveled. In the early days of American education, the three "Rs' of learning were often accompanied by a fourth: Religion. Religion was the backbone of the school system. And, interestingly enough, there was no conflict between church and state, because the state was not involved in the schools. In fact, government funded schools - such as those we have today - were virtually unheard of until the 1840's.

Schools were market-driven, so parents were free to decide what kind of education best suited their child (Who Will Teach The Children? )". The result of this academically focused curriculum resulted in an educated and independent populace, which ultimately led America to greatness". Americas greatness [has traditionally] stemmed from three unique factors: 1. The Bill of Rights, which managed to keep the U.S. government relatively small for its first hundred years.

2. A respect for voluntary association, allowing each individual to make his own decisions - rather than allowing politicians to force their beliefs and tastes upon the individual. 3. The free market, which brought us the greatest prosperity the world has ever known. Unfortunately, all three of these factors have been diminished greatly over the past hundred years or so.

Today, America is coasting on its past success - and offers nothing that can't be found in many countries of the world (Browne 7)". How did this happen? Although there have been many factors that have "contributed to America's decline [the] most important by far is government schooling (Browne 7)."In 1818, the real push for public education began. And it all started in Boston, Massachusetts, when a committee found that 90 percent of the city's children attended school, public school advocates seized the opportunity to focus on the disadvantaged 10 percent. Ignoring both the fact that Boston had eight different charities providing primary education to the poor and the fact that the committee recommend [ed] that public primary schools NOT be established, advocates went on to wage a campaign for public schools. Public school advocates argued that if these institutions were not established, these children would surely become tomorrow's criminals...

What the public school advocates sparked in Boston almost 170 years ago has grown into an all-consuming federal bureaucracy today... And what does this bureaucracy have to show for its 16 years of work: Although the Department of education has consumed over $328 billion, American education is worse off that it's ever been (Who Will Teach the Children)". Based on the fact that the government now controls our public schools "why should we expect teachers [who are] employed by the government to show our children the importance of limiting government? Why should we expect children forced by law to go to school to see the importance of voluntary association? And finally, why should we expect teachers who work for a monopoly institution to teach our children how the free market works (Browne)?"The United States had become engaged in a war. Not one fought with guns and tanks, but one "fought using psychological methods... [its] a different, more deadly war than any in which our country has ever been involved; a war about which the average American hasn't the foggiest idea...

The reason Americans do not understand this war is because it has been fought in secret-in the schools of our nation, targeting our children who are captive in classrooms. The wagers of this war are using very sophisticated and effective tools: [they include]. Hegelian Dialectic (common ground, consensus and compromise). Gradualism (two steps forward; one step backward). Semantic deception (redefining terms to get agreement without Understanding) (Iserbyt xvii)". The goal being to shift education from a focus on academics to a focus on values education.

The purpose being: . to use schools to change America from a free, individual nation to a socialist, global 'state,' just one of many socialist states which will be subservient to the United Nations Charter, not the United States Constitution. to brainwash our children, starting at birth, to reject individualism in favor of Collectivism. to reject high academic standards in favor of OBE / ISO 1400/9000 Egalitarianism. to reject truth and absolutes in favor of tolerance, situational ethics and consensus. to reject American values in favor of internationalist values (globalism). to reflect freedom to choose one's career in favor of the totalitarian K-12 school-to-work/ [Out based Education] OBE, aptly named 'limited learning for lifelong labor,' coordinated through United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (Iserbyt xix)". These facts have been detailed in government documents revealing the government's real purpose in education the nation's children. The truth of the matter is that "Government can't reform education (Browne 7)". How can we expect those who created the problem to provide a solution? What's happening to American education? There is "irrefutable proof, in the education change agents' own words, of deliberate, malicious intent to achieve behavioral changes in students / parents /society, which have nothing to do with commonly understood educational objectives (Iserbyt xiv)".

The purpose of the change agents is based on socialization not learning". Anyone interested in the truth will be shocked by the way American social engineers have systematically gone about destroying the intellect of millions of American children for the purpose of leading the American people into a socialist world government controlled by behavioral and social scientists (Blumenfeld xi)."The internationalist change agents must abolish local control in order to restructure our schools from academics to global workforce training. Funding of education with the property tax allows local control, but it also enables the change agents and teachers' unions to create higher and higher school budgets paid for with higher taxes, thus infuriating homeowners. Eventually, property owners accept the change agents' radical proposal to reduce their property taxes by transferring education funding from the local property tax to the state income tax. Thus, the change agents accomplish their ultimate goal; the transfer of funding of education from the local level to the state level. When this transfer occurs it increases state / federal control and funding, leading to the federal / internationalist goal of implementing global workforce training through the schools (Iserbyt xv )".

Unfortunately, "private, Christian and home schools are all neatly tied into the reform web via computer technology, data banking, assessment testing and, ultimately, the intention to use rewards and penalties to enforce compliance to the 'transformed's ystem of education in this country (Iserbyt xxvii)". How have they accomplished this? "The social engineers use a deliberately created education "crisis" to move their agenda forward by offering radical reforms that are sold to the public as fixing the crisis-which they never do. The new reforms simply set the stage for the next crisis, which provides the pretext for the next move forward. This is the dialectical process at work, a process our behavioral engineers have learned to use very effectively (Blumenfeld xi)". Another way that the change agents have been able to implement their strategy has been though an "in-service training session entitled 'Innovations in Education'... [which] taught teachers and administrators how to 'sneak in' controversial methods of teaching and 'innovative' programs.

' These controversial, 'innovative' programs included health education, sex education, drug and alcohol education, death education, critical thinking education, etc... The controversial school programs are the only ones that have the word 'education' attached to them (Iserbyt xvi)!" Where are we today? "Today, chaos reigns inside the schoolhouse, Old-fashioned morals, respect, disciplines and hard work are alien concepts in many classrooms. Feelings have replaced facts. Academics have fallen by the wayside. Schools seethe with rebellion.

Values clarification, sex education, outcome-based education, global education, death education, conflict resolution, multiculturalism, suicide education, and self-esteem lessons have elbowed their way to the head of the class. Intelligent students, force-fed a steady diet of 'dum bed down' curricula, are dying from academic anemia, While pretending to give our children tools for forging a future, in reality we are providing them with shovels for digging their own graves... The shovel we use most often in 'dumb ing down' education is the current 'self-esteem' philosophy. Developing high self-esteem has become a national pastime. Educators are concerned that higher standards and strict discipline will frustrate students and bruise their egos. Low self-esteem, they say, is the root cause of poor academic performance and even violent behavior...

There is almost no evidence of a tie between a failure to learn and low self-esteem. In fact, the California Task Force on Self-Esteem, after spending $735,000 on research, admitted, 'One of the most disappointing aspects... is how low the association between self-esteem and its consequences are in research to date... ' By teaching children that making an effort is unimportant, teachers (and parents) instruct students in the fine art of laziness... Furthermore, techniques used to boost self-esteem often hurt children more than they help (Bush)". Many consider the main problem with the education system to be the "lack of accountability" of the schools, but this is not so (Thompson). The real cause of the lack of quality in our education system stems from the adoption of concepts such as whole-math and whole-language.

These approaches to teaching mathematics and reading have lead to the "dumb ing-down" of the school systems. Based on a type of "progressive-educational theory" called "constructivism", both whole-math and whole-language attempt to allow children a more flexible ("fuzzy") way of learning (Thompson). Proponents of the constructivist approach claim, "all knowledge is arbitrarily constructed" (Thompson). They claim that there are no real right or wrong answers, and that there are only certain basic skills that should be taught, including reasoning and "problem-solving". Their focus is allowing the students to "guess-and-check" or experiment rather than learn and memorize basic facts or laws. This style also allows teachers to administer group tests, if they decide to test at all.

The main idea behind this type of teaching is to allow students to "discover" knowledge on their own, with little or no guidance from teachers, who do not like the idea of "telling" (or teaching) children anything (Bill Bennet Heritage Foundation). The "New Math" or whole-math is a style of teaching mathematics that is based on this constructivist approach. Originally designed by the National council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) in 1989, the Standards documents were released promoting their theories. These theories include the idea that teachers must "foster a conceptual understanding of math" (Thompson). One way to "foster" this understanding in students is to ask them questions like, "If math were a col or, it would be, because " (Thompson). Teachers that prefer this style also utilize textbooks that include colorful stories and pictures, most of which omit mathematics completely.

Another whole math program asked sixth-graders the following question: "I've just checked out a library book that is 1,344 pages long! The book is due in three weeks. How many pages will I need to read a day to finish the book in time?" Using the whole-math approach, teachers assigned students to groups and required them to design their own techniques or simply guess in an attempt to solve the problem, rather than asking students to solve the problem the proper way by use of long division (1,344 pages divided by 21 days). Students were told that their own random techniques were just as valuable as the logically proven principles of long division. Students were also told to vote, rather than to reason individually (Thompson). It is no wonder that today most college freshmen take remedial math courses, and American universities award the majority of their mathematics Ph. D.'s to foreign nationals (Thompson).

Mathematics, like any other field, must be mastered by first acquiring the basic knowledge followed by learning more advanced skills. It is necessary for young children to first learn the standard algorithms (including the methods for adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing) as well as the four forms of numbers (integers, fractions, decimals, and percents). These basics are essential in order to provide a foundation upon which higher levels of mathematical knowledge can be built (Thompson). Like whole-math, the whole-language technique of teaching children to read is also based on the constructivist approach. This approach is one far less rigid when compared to the traditional Phonetic reading approach.

The traditional way of teaching children to read was developed in the 19th century and was based on the idea that it is necessary to break down words into their smallest components (letters) before learning larger and more complex components such as sounds, words, and sentences. This theory of reading is the basis for all successful reading programs throughout the education system (Curtis). The whole-language approach focuses on the flow and meaning of words while allowing students to relate language to their own lives and cultures, but does not stress accuracy or correctness. A child who is taught by a teacher who uses this style may receive high marks for "overall language use", even if he or she has misspelled many words (Curtis).

The fact that these new techniques for teaching children mathematics and reading have been adopted without any real evidence to support their success is the main issue at hand. The NCTM stated that it was basing its model for creating standards on that of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), yet the FDA would never approve the use of a drug and later propose a pilot study to determine whether the drug helps or harms those taking it (Carnine). The Research Advisory Committee of the NCTM expressed its distaste for quantitative research when it stated, "The question 'Is Curriculum A better than Curriculum B?' is not a good research question, because it is not readily answerable" (Carnine). The problem with this statement is that this question is exactly the type of question that teachers, parents, and the public would like to see answered by those in education (Carnine). Because most involved in education have not adopted the use of real scientific research to identify effective teaching methods, many have been fooled into accepting the findings of researchers utilizing descriptive or qualitative research methods. Research similar to studies conducted by other organizations, including the FDA, are virtually unheard of in the field of education.

Qualitative research can help in understanding a complex problem or formulating a hypothesis, but it can not provide reliable data on whether a treatment or technique is effective or not (Carnine). If there is a way to improve the educational system, it is through more complex evaluation of the current educational approaches in use. Why should anyone care? There has been a "gradual transformation of our once academically successful education system into one devoted to training children to become compliant human resources to be used by government and industry for their own purposes. This is how fascist-socialist societies train their children to become servants of their government masters. The successful implementation of this new philosophy of education will spell the end of the American dream of individual freedom and opportunity...

What is so mind-boggling is that the American people themselves through their own taxes are financing all of this. In other words, the American people are underwriting the destruction of their own freedom and way of life by lavishly financing through federal grants the very social scientists who are undermining our national sovereignty and preparing our children to become the dum bed-down vassals of the new world order (Blumenfeld xi)."Our children continue to be at risk in America's schools. They are at risk academically because of such programs as whole language, new math, mastery learning, direct instruction, Skinner ian operant conditioning, all of which have created huge learning problems that inevitably lead to what is commonly known as Attention Deficit Disorder and the drugging of four million children with the powerful drug Ritalin (Blumenfeld xii)". People who are trained "-not educated- by such educational techniques will be fearful of taking principled, sometimes controversial, stands when called for because these people will have been programmed to speak up only if a positive reward or response in forthcoming. The price of freedom has often been paid with pain and loneliness...

America's transition from a sovereign constitutional republic to a socialist democracy [will] not come about through warfare (bullets and tanks) but through the implementation and installation of the 'system' in all areas of government-federal, state and local, The brainwashing for acceptance of the 'system's' control would take place in the school-through indoctrination and the use of behavior modification, which comes under so many labels: the most recent labels being Outcome-Based Education, values clarification, which was later renamed 'critical thinking,' which regardless of the label-is nothing but pure, unadulterated destruction of absolute values of right and wrong upon which stable and free societies depend and upon which our nation was founded (Iserbyt xv)". Classroom Expectations "Too many public schools are leaving our kids intellectually starved, providing them a junk food curriculum in place of rigorous academic preparation (Regnier, 11)."Although students may earn appropriate grades for what is expected in a class, in too many schools those expectations are dreadfully low (Regnier, 2)". Unfortunately, when it comes around to taking the tests that test their knowledge, the truth all comes out. Grade inflation has become a huge issue in the education system. In the American educational environment, self-esteem is greatly encouraged over academic excellence.

This puts immense pressure on schools to demonstrate student success. The proportion of "A" students taking the SAT exam has been increasing since 1991, but the SAT scores are declining (Regnier, 5). When comparing the U.S. with the rest of the world, the National Science Foundation says, "The U.S. curriculum is a mile wide and an inch deep (Regnier, 8) ". From an international perspective, U.S. students are well below average. U.S. students do not tend to spend as much time studying. The international average is 2.6 hours per day, and U.S. students are only spending about 1.7 hours per day on homework and studying. U.S. students also spend more time earning money in non-instruction-related jobs.

(Regnier, 2) Should parents be involved? What is the definition of parent involvement? Parent involvement has a very broad definition. Attending school functions, taking advantage of parent-teacher conferences, providing encouragement, monitoring homework, and modeling desired behaviors are all ways in which parents can be involved in their child's learning process. (Cotton & Wikelund, 2) Schools play an important part in determining their level of parent involvement. It has been shown that those schools that have the most successful parent involvement are those that offer a variety of ways for the parents to get involved (Cotton & Wikelund, 4).

Schools must show parents that their involvement is meaningful. The traditional method of yearly parent-teacher conferences has proven to not be enough. The director of the National Network of Partnership Schools, Joyce Epstein, uses six types of programs that schools can use to build strong parent involvement: 1. Schools can assist families with parenting and child rearing skills 2. Schools can communicate with families about school programs and student progress and needs 3. Schools can work to improve recruitment, training, and schedules to involve families as volunteers in school activities 4.

Schools can encourage families to be involved in learning activities at home 5. Schools can include parents as participants in important school decisions 6. Schools can coordinate with businesses and agencies to provided resources and services for families, students, and the community (Education Week) There are specific populations of students whose socioeconomic status puts them At an educational disadvantage. Studies show that low-income and minority parents are not as active in their child's education. Some of the reasons for this are: 1.

Lack of time or energy (due to long hours of heavy physical labor) 2. Embarrassment or shyness about one's own educational level or linguistic abilities 3. Lack of understanding or information about the structure of the school and accepted communication channels 4. Perceived lack of welcome by teachers and administrators 5. Teachers and administrators' assumptions of parents' disinterest or inability to help with children's schooling (Cotton & Wikelund, 6) Disadvantaged children overall have the most to gain from parent involvement. Offering parenting classes can be a big help for students.

It can help the parents understand the content of the homework that their students will be bringing home. How to proceed -blueprint for action The ultimate question is who has the right to impart their values to our children, parents or the bureaucrats that run public education? Only one reform will improve education: Get government completely out of education - and repeal the property taxes that pay for government schools. Then you will control your children's education (Browne 8)". An agency that is working towards this goal is the Alliance for Separation of School and State. "Most Americans believe that if a child can read, write and compute at a reasonably proficient level, he will be able to do just about anything he wishes, enabling him to control his destiny to the extent that God allows (remain free)...

Providing basic educational proficiencies is not and should not be an expensive proposition-it becomes obvious that it is only a radical agenda, the purpose of which is to change values and attitudes (brainwash), that is the costly agenda (Iserbyt x )."There will always be hope for freedom if [we as Americans continue to] cherish the concept of 'free will'; if [we] believe that human beings are special, not animals, and that they have intellects, souls, and consciences (Iserbyt xv).".