Ron Paul Got My Son Detention

[amy31416]

Questioning authority in today's indoctrination camps gets you a trip to detention, as we just saw in this thread.

Even with good parents, public "education" does terrible harm to a student. It would be nice to believe otherwise, but be honest with yourself.

What terrible damage is done by spending 8 hours every day being told what to think, how to behave, and regimented to the point that you're afraid to go to the bathroom without raising your hand. Can that really be corrected by evening and weekend parental involvement? How many parents invest as much time to reverse the indoctrination as the time invested by the trainers?

I better shut up now before I piss off a lot of parents.

I am being honest with myself. A good friend of mine went to public high school with me, her father is a college professor and a really good teacher. I sat in on summer classes with her at the university where he taught. It made a worl of difference in how we "experienced" public school.

She got a partial scholarship to Harvard (didn't end up going there since she had a full scholarship to Bard.) I didn't have as great of parents, but got into Boston College, Carnegie Mellon and several other good schools.

If you learn how to teach yourself and have curiosity about the world, there's no public school that can keep you down. I was fortunate enough to become a "stepchild" in this family. The point being, no matter whether your kid has to go to public school, private, or is home-schooled, it's the parent's responsibility to teach a kid to be an independent thinker.

My experience in public high school sounds a lot different from your version. We owned that place, we did actually learn there (yes, many did not--that was their choice.) I was not afraid to ask to go to the bathroom, ask questions or do anything I wanted to. I had some teachers who were idiots, some who were pretty freaking good.

I think that the problem here is that none of us like the Department of Education, I certainly don't. But that doesn't mean that the past or current system is simply a place where you send children to become "indoctrinated" with the government's latest BS. Perhaps it is now with the "No Child Left Behind" BS. But that ain't my experience.

It is first and foremost the parent's responsibility to teach their child. Paying school taxes does not relieve anyone of that duty. Some people have no other choice than public schools and while it isn't a good system, it's certainly not a manufacturing facility for socialist zombies.

I don't mean to come off as if I'm defending public schools, I'm not. But they sure as hell aren't what people here make them out to be.

P.S. I was in detention on occasion, but it was always because I was being a smart-ass. The Catholic schools around here were much harsher on students who were "mouthy."

 

[acptulsa]

The key, of course, is to teach kids how to ask questions, how to find answers and how to reason things out. My parents (and the better teachers I had) would regularly answer a question with a question, the two main ones being, "What do you think? and, "Where can we find that out?" It does no good to spoon feed people--better to ask a series of semi-leading questions so the logic of each step reinforces the destination.

And this is a good way to spread the revolution message as well. Maybe the only effective way, in fact.

 

[amy31416]

Believe me, I know exactly what you are saying. I had two sons go through the indoctrination of the public school system, and it was a constant battle to reeducate them every day. I had a serious problem though as I was not told what they had been indoctrinated with and thus did not know what reeducation was necessary all of the time.

A parent can only correct what is known to be incorrect and since there is no paper sent home daily as to what was told the student, it is very difficult to correct the indoctrination the student was taught all day.

I'm sure a lot of stuff my sons were taught was not able to be corrected by myself or my wife as we were in the dark as to what they had been told.

The only evidence of "indoctrination" that I saw in a public school was the BS history classes and another class I had called "current issues" (we read USA Today as our course materials.) Yeah, they taught that Abe Lincoln was above reproach and made the American Revolution truly boring. All the other classes, math, computers, biology, chemistry--you can't really change the material much.

Honestly, I think that the crappy history classes had more to do with the teachers being crappy than any attempts to "indoctrinate" anyone. You guys seem to forget that teachers are mostly just the knuckleheaded morons that you went to high school with. They never excelled at anything and took up "education" as a major because it's really not that challenging at most colleges. They aren't smart enough to indoctrinate anyone or be part of a larger scheme. Think about it. Think about the majority of people who go into teaching. Jocks, cheerleaders, people who want to coach a team--they don't necessarily want to teach anything but football, but they have to get a degree to do so--and they end up as a math or history teacher.

There is no grand conspiracy to turn children into socialists. At least not around here. Sorry.

 

[FreeTraveler]

My highschool was a mini-gulag. I was suspended for leading a walkout in response to the Kent State shootings, for having hair that was too long, and for "questioning authority," and tossed off the student newspaper for my "slanted" reporting.

In retrospect, it was a good introduction to adult life. The same 10% of people who could think, the 90% who did as they were told. I could give you a long list of people who were not quite as self-aware as I, who could have been wonderful people if they had the guts to stand up for themselves, or had been taught that authority is not absolute. Today, they are great little sheeple who do as they are told, still think I'm a "rebel" and are sinking fast along with their fellow churchgoers and republicrats.

However, they have material success, nice mortgaged homes, nice financed cars, and by the standards of the "American Dream" would be considered quite successful.

The rare joy comes from a discussion with one of those people who say "hmm, you may have had something right, all those years ago." It's great to finally see a few people waking up, but I fear it's too late for them and for our country.

An educational process would have been about teaching those people "on the fence" to think for themselves. Instead, I saw them indoctrinated with the party line and lose the capability of independent thought.

We who are the exceptions to the rule are not the case for public education. Those who could have been great but were instead beaten down to "get along" prove the case, and the value of the indoctrination camps.

John Taylor Gatto has it right. Don't think that because you were smart enough or lucky enough to overcome your training that the system is benign. The controllers of the system are murderers, as surely as if they had put a bullet through the head of those students, for they have robbed them of their selfhood and replaced it with a false understanding of how the world works.

I am being honest with myself. A good friend of mine went to public high school with me, her father is a college professor and a really good teacher. I sat in on summer classes with her at the university where he taught. It made a worl of difference in how we "experienced" public school.

She got a partial scholarship to Harvard (didn't end up going there since she had a full scholarship to Bard.) I didn't have as great of parents, but got into Boston College, Carnegie Mellon and several other good schools.

If you learn how to teach yourself and have curiosity about the world, there's no public school that can keep you down. I was fortunate enough to become a "stepchild" in this family. The point being, no matter whether your kid has to go to public school, private, or is home-schooled, it's the parent's responsibility to teach a kid to be an independent thinker.

My experience in public high school sounds a lot different from your version. We owned that place, we did actually learn there (yes, many did not--that was their choice.) I was not afraid to ask to go to the bathroom, ask questions or do anything I wanted to. I had some teachers who were idiots, some who were pretty freaking good.

I think that the problem here is that none of us like the Department of Education, I certainly don't. But that doesn't mean that the past or current system is simply a place where you send children to become "indoctrinated" with the government's latest BS. Perhaps it is now with the "No Child Left Behind" BS. But that ain't my experience.

It is first and foremost the parent's responsibility to teach their child. Paying school taxes does not relieve anyone of that duty. Some people have no other choice than public schools and while it isn't a good system, it's certainly not a manufacturing facility for socialist zombies.

I don't mean to come off as if I'm defending public schools, I'm not. But they sure as hell aren't what people here make them out to be.

 

[Dr.3D]

The only evidence of "indoctrination" that I saw in a public school was the BS history classes and another class I had called "current issues" (we read USA Today as our course materials.) Yeah, they taught that Abe Lincoln was above reproach and made the American Revolution truly boring. All the other classes, math, computers, biology, chemistry--you can't really change the material much.

Honestly, I think that the crappy history classes had more to do with the teachers being crappy than any attempts to "indoctrinate" anyone. You guys seem to forget that teachers are mostly just the knuckleheaded morons that you went to high school with. They never excelled at anything and took up "education" as a major because it's really not that challenging at most colleges. They aren't smart enough to indoctrinate anyone or be part of a larger scheme. Think about it. Think about the majority of people who go into teaching. Jocks, cheerleaders, people who want to coach a team--they don't necessarily want to teach anything but football, but they have to get a degree to do so--and they end up as a math or history teacher.

There is no grand conspiracy to turn children into socialists. At least not around here. Sorry.

When I was in school, I had my challenges with the so called science instructors.
One of them told the class the seasons were caused by the Earth being closer to the Sun in the summer months and farther away in the winter months.

I asked him if he really meant the 23.5 degree of the Earth's rotation axis with respect to the plane of the ecliptic was responsible for the seasons. He told everybody I was incorrect and that it was all about how close the Earth was to the Sun on its elliptical orbit around the Sun. I challenged him with that and asked why the Earth is actually closer to the Sun in the Northern Hemisphere in the Winter months. Needless to say, I was dismissed from class and sent down to the office for discipline.

There were numerous episodes like the one I just described.

 

[acptulsa]

There is no grand conspiracy to turn children into socialists. At least not around here. Sorry.

And yet only the worst textbooks are selected for history classes, and though people passionate about their field can be found who wish to share that with young people in literature, math and every science, somehow only coaches can be found who are willing to teach history. And with those textbooks and those restrictions, it isn't surprising.

I love history. I tell stories from history and all the time people tell me, "That's so interesting! I was terrible at history. I always found it so boring!" It seems to me that those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it, and that the powers that be don't want history to be interesting enough for us to learn from it because they want us to keep repeating it. That really does appear to me to be the pattern, whatever or whomever is behind it...

 

[amy31416]

And yet only the worst textbooks are selected for history classes, and though people passionate about their field can be found who wish to share that with young people in literature, math and every science, somehow only coaches can be found who are willing to teach history. And with those textbooks and those restrictions, it isn't surprising.

I love history. I tell stories from history and all the time people tell me, "That's so interesting! I was terrible at history. I always found it so boring!" It seems to me that those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it, and that the powers that be don't want history to be interesting enough for us to learn from it because they want us to keep repeating it. That really does appear to me to be the pattern, whatever or whomever is behind it...

I agree about the textbooks--quite crappy. I always read on my own for entertainment though. But yeah, history teachers always seem to be the coaches the majority of the time. And one thing I will concede is that my education in history is crap because of it (aside from WWII, I educated myself on that because of my interest in science.)

So, we need major reform in history education. I used to work with this Mormon guy who was very much into historical re-enactments and I thought that he was pretty weird at first, but one day when we were working on a particularly boring study, I asked him about it and he started telling me some really interesting stories. History is very important, and it's unfortunately left to the biggest boobs to teach. So what do we do about it?

 

[amy31416]

Robert Heinlein makes a great point once again:



History you already know about. Let's talk about math.

In a comparison of a 1973 algebra textbook and a 1998 "contemporary mathematics" textbook, Williamson Evers and Paul Clopton found a dramatic change in topics. In the 1973 book, for example, the index for the letter "F" included "factors, factoring, fallacies, finite decimal, finite set, formulas, fractions, and functions." In the 1998 book, the index listed "families (in poverty data), fast food nutrition data, fat in fast food, feasibility study, feeding tours, ferris wheel, fish, fishing, flags, flight, floor plan, flower beds, food, football, Ford Mustang, franchises, and fund-raising carnival."

Language pretty well speaks for itself. Just look at postings on forums across the net. You can generally (generally, I said) tell the age of the poster by their use of the language.

Textbooks are written for the boards that approve them. If TPTB wanted honest textbooks that really taught the subjects, they would be written.

You're right, it's not intentional. Nothing to see here. Move along.

Well, I can't speak to that specific case, when I took algebra, trig, calculus, etc. I can't say that I recall anything about flowers, football or Fords. I do recall asymptotes, sine, cosine, tangent, secant, parabolas, approaching infinity, null values, x, y, z, proofs, if-then statements, graphs, vectors, word problems about trains or cars travelling a certain speed and meeting with other trains or cars travelling different speeds--things like that.

I think that we just had some very different experiences. I'm in my 30's, so I don't know how different things are now or how different they were. I also don't know how things are different in education in different geographical areas.

 

[FreeTraveler]

I think that we just had some very different experiences. I'm in my 30's, so I don't know how different things are now or how different they were. I also don't know how things are different in education in different geographical areas.

I'm in my mid-50's, and it seems that today's graduates get 20% of the factual knowledge I got, but LOTS more training on politically correct positions.

In my day, only history and social studies had been completely subverted. My english and math education was fairly apolitical. Consequently, most of my problems were with history and social studies teachers.

 

[acptulsa]

I'm in my mid-50's, and it seems that today's graduates get 20% of the factual knowledge I got, but LOTS more training on politically correct positions.

In my day, only history and social studies had been completely subverted. My english and math education was fairly apolitical. Consequently, most of my problems were with history and social studies teachers.

I'm halfway in between you two and my experience is much the same. Starting in the 'fifties, it seems like America went nuts over taking science and math extremely seriously, presumably over the Cold War. I don't know if they still had "Air Raid Drills" when you went to school, Amy, but I sure did plenty of them. Of course, after watching a tornado from my front porch one sunny afternoon, I never minded, really. In any case, somehow it seems the corporate interests have either lost all interest in science and math or they are simply perpetuating the class system by ensuring that non-private school pupils never get a chance no matter what field they choose. Bleah...

 

[amy31416]

I'm halfway in between you two and my experience is much the same. Starting in the 'fifties, it seems like America went nuts over taking science and math extremely seriously, presumably over the Cold War. I don't know if they still had "Air Raid Drills" when you went to school, Amy, but I sure did plenty of them. Of course, after watching a tornado from my front porch one sunny afternoon, I never minded, really. In any case, somehow it seems the corporate interests have either lost all interest in science and math or they are simply perpetuating the class system by ensuring that non-private school pupils never get a chance no matter what field they choose. Bleah...

Nope, never experienced an air raid drill.

One thing I do know about education, and I'm speaking about the college-level--I know that getting a degree in chemistry was much more difficult in the 50's than it is now. I read through one of my professor's thesis and it was much more disciplined back in the day. You had to memorize the periodic table, use slide rules, make your own glassware--things like that.

I never memorized the periodic table, but I did teach myself to use a slide rule and I do know how to blow glass...but it's much different now. I have a degree in it, magna cum laude, and I really feel like I didn't have to work all that hard for it, though I did learn a lot--I could have learned a lot more.

 

[acptulsa]

I read through one of my professor's thesis and it was much more disciplined back in the day. You had to memorize the periodic table, use slide rules, make your own glassware--things like that.

Of course, much of this is due to necessity. Pocket calculators and the 'net make many things that used to be necessary unnecessary. Of course, if imagination is more important than knowledge as Einstein said, this is partly good and partly bad. It's good in that it allows one to concentrate on what's important, bad in that it isn't as good at teaching the fundamentals and teaching people how to think (as you taught yourself logarhythms, Amy), and it allows almost anyone whose parents can afford ever-more-expensive higher education to have these jobs whether they're the best minds for them or not. Thus my comment about the class system--and, of course, the "dumbing down of America".

 

[jmdrake]

A teacher at my son's school didn't realize Ron Paul was still in the race before super Tuesday. The two main papers here in Nashville ran dishonest information on their editorial pages that made it look like Dr. Paul had dropped out. One had a cartoon showing everyone who had dropped out and included Dr. Paul. Another left Dr. Paul out of its "candidates comparison" sheet even though we had just bought over $5,000 worth of advertising with them. Anyway I told her he was running and explained his positions. I also gave her a Ron Paul DVD. I ended up winning her vote.

How does that old song go?

Teach...your children's teachers well...

Regards,

John M. Drake

 

[acptulsa]

Lord knows we're getting all these so-called "sheeple" from somewhere. And the public school systems certainly have been the subject of diminished expectations--more in my lifetime than I can express. From that or those of which/whom little is expected, little is accomplished...

 

[jmdrake]

Lord knows we're getting all these so-called "sheeple" from somewhere. And the public school systems certainly have been the subject of diminished expectations--more in my lifetime than I can express. From that or those of which/whom little is expected, little is accomplished...

For the record my sons go to a parochial school. But then again maybe that's why the teacher was willing to listen to the truth about Dr. Paul. Actually I did use a religious angle to reach her pointing out that Dr. Paul was the only candidate to have taken a position against the RealID act. (Some folks are worried about the whole "mark of the beast" angle on that.)

Regards,

John M. Drake

 

[acptulsa]

I guess the bottom line is, teach someone what to think and they'll vote for you. Teach someone how to think and they'll vote for Ron Paul. Can't have that, can we?

 

[brandon]

In a comparison of a 1973 algebra textbook and a 1998 "contemporarary mathematics" textbook, Williamson Evers and Paul Clopton found a dramatic change in topics. In the 1973 book, for example, the index for the letter "F" included "factors, factoring, fallacies, finite decimal, finite set, formulas, fractions, and functions." In the 1998 book, the index listed "families (in poverty data), fast food nutrition data, fat in fast food, feasibility study, feeding tours, ferris wheel, fish, fishing, flags, flight, floor plan, flower beds, food, football, Ford Mustang, franchises, and fund-raising carnival."

Why would one compare an Algebra text book to a "contempory math" textbook? They are totally different things. Why not compare an algebra book from 1973 to an algebra book from 1998.

I have an algebra textbook from 2006, and here is the F index

"Factor, factor group, factor ring, Feit-Thompson theorem, Fermat Prime, Fermat's last theorem, Fermat's little theorem, Field, finite-demensional vector space, first isomorphism theory, fixed field, function, fundamental theorom of...(algebra, arithmetic, cyclic groups, field theory, finite abelian groups, galois theory, group homomorphisms, ring homomorphisms.)"


I think the problem with public school math education is that it is generally taught by someone with a B.A. in education.

 

[amy31416]

Lord knows we're getting all these so-called "sheeple" from somewhere. And the public school systems certainly have been the subject of diminished expectations--more in my lifetime than I can express. From that or those of which/whom little is expected, little is accomplished...

My point is that "sheeple" come from all walks of life. They are not necessarily a product of a public school, neocons, socialists or any other source. Maybe it's a product of environment, genetics or both. I don't know.

The diversity of this group defies the notion that all "sheeple" are a product of public schools, churches or any one particular institution. We are all born individuals, all of us think we are unique, but few of us actually are. Myself included.

 

[acptulsa]

The diversity of this group defies the notion that all "sheeple" are a product of public schools, churches or any one particular institution.

An excellent point, and an interesting phenomenon--and thank God for it!

 

[amy31416]

An excellent point, and an interesting phenomenon--and thank God for it!

Yeah, I'm thankful for it as well--despite the fact that I get cranky with people here every once in a while. I give all of us props for thinking outside the box.

That does not include you trolls, you know who you are you ratfink bastards.