How to Fix Education

There’s no substitute for parental involvement

HINT: You can’t fix it with more money or more bureaucrats.  The only way is to get the parents involved. When I was a child, attending Logan Elementary School in Willmette, IL, my fellow students and I were sent home for lunch every day for an hour.  The school expected our parents to give us a meal of whatever they thought was appropriate and send us back in the afternoon.  It was the responsibility of the family to see to it that our needs were met.

What a change from today when some schools can replace a home packed lunch if the “school lunch inspectors” deem it to be outside USDA standards.

“No child left behind” will go down in history as one of the greatest academic failures ever because it was based upon several false presumptions.  One of those presumptions was that schools could be forced to do a better job of educating if we had more testing.

More testing won’t fix the underlying problems.    One of the societal factors schools face stems from less parental involvement in the lives of their children.  While it is true that many domestic failures are driving the academic failures, schools cannot be expected to solve everyone’s problems.  The lines started blurring when the social engineers assumed that since most parents are failing, they needed to correct the situation by requiring the schools to take on more parental duties.

Allowing our government to continue growing bigger will eventually make our schools more closely resemble public orphanages, and parental involvement will be minimized even further.

Limited government begins with understanding personal responsibility.

When we enrolled our child in a private school, the parent handbook made it clear that it is the primary duty of the parents to educate their children, and the school is there to help us with our obligation.  If all schools approached education from this perspective, we would see better outcomes.

If we approach our public schools with no restraint for growing government bigger, there will never be an end to the intrusion into our lives or the ever inflating costs to all parties.

A Little Bit of Humor…

After being interviewed by the school administration, the prospective teacher said:

‘Let me see if I’ve got this right.

You want me to go into that room with all those kids, correct their disruptive behavior, observe them for signs of abuse, monitor their dress habits, censor their T-shirt messages, and instill in them a love for learning…

You want me to check their backpacks for weapons, wage war on drugs and sexually transmitted diseases, and raise their sense of self esteem and personal pride…

You want me to teach them patriotism and good citizenship, sportsmanship and fair play, and how to register to vote, balance a checkbook, and apply for a job…

You want me to check their heads for lice, recognize signs of antisocial behavior, and make sure that they all pass the final exams. ‘You also want me to provide them with an equal education regardless of their handicaps, and communicate regularly with their parents in English, Spanish or any other language, by letter, telephone, newsletter, and report card…

You want me to do all this with a piece of chalk, a blackboard, a bulletin board, a few books, a big smile, and a starting salary that qualifies me for food stamps…

You want me to do all this and then you tell me ….
I CAN’T PRAY?’…