Monday, April 02, 2007

Government education: Road to hell?

Good intentions will surely be the downfall of individual liberty and personal freedom. The greatest motivation that mankind has to abandon the principles of freedom is simply being afraid. And, fear plays right into the hands of legislators that use good intentions, whether quite sincere or merely conjured, to usurp individual freedoms and parley them into collective power. The consequences of this exchange is a bloated beast called Bureaucracy controlled by a tyrant, or group of tyrants, that seek to enslave the masses for their own good. In other words, Freedom dies. Remember my personal credo, “More government ALWAYS translates into Less freedom.” In no area is this more evident than the realm of government education.

Education is only one of the areas where good intentions have proven less than sufficient to cure the ills of society. It was with the very best of intentions that legislators decided to take upon themselves the responsibility of providing a free education to every child in America. Has a nobler thought ever been conceived in human mind than the desire to see America’s offspring properly prepared to face an ever-changing world? However, the consequence of such feel-good philosophy is a false sense of security, born in the supposition that the State can do something, anything, better than the individual. Freedom is relinquished willingly for nothing more than a promise that government can provide something to individuals that the individuals themselves cannot procure on their own. And the children suffer the most.

The worst consequence of passing responsibility of educating young minds from personal to collective is the task is botched so horribly. Some children are educated quite well in a state-supported system but most barely receive an average level of education. And, far too many fall through the expansive cracks of society that are the floorboards of a bloated bureaucracy grown so large it has become impossible to keep track of everyone. The result of all the good intentions of providing adequate education to children is a twelve-year factory system that produces more than its fair share of functional illiterates. Why do you think the majority of congressmen/women have their children in private institutions? These children are not trained to take charge of governing themselves; but rather, they are almost programmed to be willing taxpayers that obey a ruling elite. Seems we have been there before and it required armed revolution to free an oppressed people. Sound familiar?

So, which is better? Giving your precious children to the State and expecting something you are not likely to receive; or, taking back the responsibility of educating your own young, making sure YOU are satisfied that your loved ones are properly equipped to face the cold, cruel world? Nothing as important as educating a child should be left to government agencies that only have a mandate to provide minimal education to the children whose minds they are charged with filling. The State has no incentive to educate children other than to ensure the perpetuation of governmental power. Willing subjects are much easier to rule, after all. By giving into the good intentions of supposedly well-meaning elected representatives we allow the State to churn out generation after generation of willing slaves that will worship at the altar of the false-deity Security, and believe the lie that the State can provide them their necessities. The consequences again are just too great to ignore. Slavery is unacceptable even if it is of the subtle sort!

When we allow the responsibility of educating our beautiful children to be assumed by the State, we contribute to the agonizingly slow death of Freedom by allowing the government to control the path of each new generation. Good intentions have created a system that takes in free individuals and renders dependent servants of them. Good intentions that have allowed our children to be poorly educated.

There are no easy answers to all of life’s problems, but we should not allow that to become sufficient reason for believing the lie that the State can handle any problem better than individuals. There is simple no evidence to support the claim. We must stop allowing good intentions to be used to justify every great debacle while ignoring the cost in taxpayer’s dollars and human lives. We must learn from our mistakes and start thinking more about the consequences before we allow ourselves to be swept away by the tsunami caused by the sudden social shifts born in good intentions. Perhaps there is no truer adage than the one that cautions: “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

Source






Ancient history dropped in Britain

The teaching of Ancient History in schools is to become, well, ancient history. The only examination board offering an A level in the subject is to drop it in favour of a new Classical Civilisation qualification. Boris Johnson, the Tory higher education spokesman and president of the Joint Association of Classical Teachers (JACT), criticised the OCR exam board for its “demented” decision to replace “a tough, rewarding, crunchy” subject with a softer option. “You can’t just subsume the study of Ancient History into the study of Classical Civilisation. You might as well say that you can learn English history through the study of English language and literature. If we lose Ancient History A level, we lose yet another battle in the general dumbing-down of Britain,” he said.

David Tristram, head of The Kingswood School in Corby, Northamptonshire and chair of the JACT council, described the move as “disgraceful”. “Cicero once said that not to know what took place before you were born is to remain forever a child. The cradle of democracy was Greece, and Western civilisation developed out of the Roman and Greek civilisations — their study is crucial to our own culture and civilisation,” he said.

Graham Able, head of Dulwich College, said that the move reinforced his own decision to opt out of the entire A-level system in favour of the new PreU examination. “Ancient History is a bona fide academic subject in its own right whereas Classical Civilisation tends to be a watered-down version with less historical rigour.”

The Ancient History syllabus covers 21 different aspects and eras of ancient Greek and Roman history, such as the conflict of Greece and Persia in 499BC to 479BC and the reign of Nero. Under the Classical Civilisation A level, history will be dealt with in units, such as “Romano-British society and history as depicted in the literary and archaeological record”.

The move by the OCR exam board follows a revival of interest in ancient history, the result of movie blockbusters such as 300,about the battle of Thermo-pylae , as well as books and TV programmes including the BBC’s Rome.Peter Jones, of the National Coordinating Committee for Classics, said that it made no sense to axe the subject when numbers studying it at AS and A2 level since 2000 had risen by 300 per cent.

Tony Little, Head Master of Eton College, cautioned against a more general trend to “whittle away” valuable periods from the study of history in secondary school: “The notion that history has to be mid-20th century and exclusively focused on the Nazis seems to undervalue history as a subject.”

An OCR spokesman denied watering down the subject. “Similar content to that in Ancient History is covered. In addition, there is a new ethos, which requires candidates to study sources in their historical and cultural context,” he said. New specifications for Classics are published as part of broader changes to A levels, designed to make them more testing for the brightest teenagers from next year.

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"


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