15 Ways Public Schools Can Harm Your Kids and Violate your God-given Parental Rights
By Joel Turtel (12/13/06)
Parents, do you really think your local public school is giving your child a decent education? Think again. Public schools, even in "good" suburban neighborhoods, can seriously harm your kids.
Here's a list of 15 ways these schools can hurt you and your children:
1. Public schools can cripple millions of children's ability to read by using the "whole-language" reading-instruction method (now called "balanced literacy instruction").
2. Many public schools spend up to 40 percent of the school day on non-academic subjects that waste children's precious time. The rest of their time is spent on classes such as sex-education, personal safety, drug prevention, consumer affairs, AIDS education, anger management classes, save-the-environment, family life, study halls, multiculturalism, homeroom, electives, counseling, or sports activities.
3. Public schools teach "new" or "fuzzy" math (sometimes called by different names). These instruction methods can cripple children's ability to learn basic arithmetic. Students who fear math are less likely to pursue good careers like computer science and engineering that depend on a love of and competence with math.
4. These schools force children to read dumbed-down textbooks in English, History, and many other subjects, then memorize meaningless facts to pass the next dumbed-down standardized test. The textbooks are often geared to the slowest learners in the class and water-down the subject matter. 12 years of dumbed-down classes based on dumbed-down textbooks therefore waste children's precious time. This is especially true for children who are quick learners, who must endure 12 years of excruciating boredom in public-school classes. In effect, the schools can therefore waste 12 years of your child's life.
5. Public schools force children to study subjects they might hate, can't learn, will never use in their lives, or which bore them. For example, many public schools force students to study a foreign language or geometry. Children learn better when they study subjects that interest them.
6. Author John Gatto, in his book "Dumbing Us Down" said that a child eager to learn can learn to read, write, and do basic arithmetic in about 100 hours. Yet our public schools keep children locked up for 12 years, yet can barely teach millions of kids to read.
7. Public schools force parents to pay heavy school taxes for an inferior, often mind-numbing education for their children.
8. Public schools are a government-controlled near-monopoly. Bad schools don't close down because compulsory taxes prop them up. Incompetent or mediocre teachers aren't fired because tenure laws protect them. That's why public schools will never improve. Public schools never go out of business because, like prisons, they get their customers (your children) by force, and their money (your school taxes) by force.
9. Many public schools subject children to drugs, bullies, violence, and values many parents detest. About every three seconds, an act of violence or bullying is committed against public-school children.
10. Public schools have pressured many parents who have bright, normal children to give their kids potentially dangerous mind-altering drugs to make the bored kids "behave" in class. Millions of allegedly "unruly" kids (mostly boys) line up for Ritalin every day in public schools across America. Methylphenidate (sold as Ritalin) and cocaine are both on the same U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency's "Schedule II" list of potentially-addictive and dangerous drugs.
11. Public schools are compulsory. They therefore violate parents' natural, God-given, and constitutional right to control their childrens' education. Public-school authorities, whose salaries we pay with our taxes, force parents to hand over their children to government employees called teachers and to schools that give an inferior education.
12. When public schools cripple childrens' reading and math abilities, they can destroy childrens' love of learning and self-confidence. This can cripple children's ambitions and desire to go to college. This in turn, can force these children to end up with low-paying jobs for the rest of their lives if and when they graduate high school.
13. Public schools force millions of Christian parents to hand over their children to public schools which are decidedly anti-Christian. For example, many social studies textbooks used in public schools have censored out references to such words as 'family,' 'marriage,' 'religion,' 'fidelity,' etc. Many textbooks today refer to a family simply as people choosing to live together.
14. Public schools force children to witness sometimes shocking or obnoxious sexual material in sex-education classes, without parents' knowledge or consent.
15. The public-school near monopoly and compulsory-attendance laws cripple parents' right and ability to choose a quality, low-cost school in an education free-market that has been squashed by the public-school monopoly.
Parents, to give your children the rich, rewarding education they deserve, consider taking your kids out of public school, permanently. You can take advantage of quality, low-cost education alternatives available to you right now. One great alternative is low-cost, K-12 Internet private schools described in "Public Schools, Public Menace." Many of these schools charge less than $975 a year tuition, and are a great education resource for parents.
Joel Turtel
http://www.mykidsdeservebetter.com/
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