Tea Party Candidate: Abolish Public Schools

Tea Party candidate David Harmer, who is running as a Republican for the U.S. House of Representatives in California's 11th District, thinks the nation's public education system should more closely resemble the way it looked in 1825. In other words, Harmer would abolish public schools altogether.

source


This my friends, is why we cannot let the Tea Party members into the White House. These people really do want their country back...back in the stone age.

Move America forward and keep it out of the hands of these lunatics.

reply to post by SeventhSeal


In 1825 education was more local which allowed for teachers, parents and students to collaborate to make things work better for them. When it was localized it allowed for the teachers to not be subjugated to national restrictions which destroyed the artistic spirit of almost every student since Department of Education was enacted.

While I am not advocating either you pay or you don't get an education, even our founding fathers believed in universal education, it should be run by the local community for the local community. Have teachers talk with the parents and the students and have the principle to run the school. This will allow teachers to put passion into teaching and remove the oppressive laws currently enforced which doesn't allow teachers and students to properly communicate.

It would be best if the parents had the choice in their child's education. When you want to know what education is best do you consult a bureaucrat or a teacher?

First, I love your signature

In the article, Harmer is quoted as saying:

To attain quantum leaps in educational quality and opportunity, however, we need to separate school and state entirely. Government should exit the business of running and funding schools. This is no utopian ideal; it's the way things worked through the first century of American nationhood, when literacy levels among all classes, at least outside the South, matched or exceeded those prevailing now, and when public discourse and even tabloid content was pitched at what today would be considered a college-level audience.

I'm not at all sure why he would think that literacy levels matched or exceeded the levels now. Plus, the article goes on to poopoo all over that little tidbit using "Figures provided by the U.S. Department of Commerce and the Census Bureau". So....yeah.

It's no secret that the schools are a heaping pile of failure, but if the government doesn't pay for schools then who will? Harmer doesn't say, though I'd be very interested in hearing where he thinks such large amounts of money would come from.

Originally posted by Misoir
reply to post by SeventhSeal

 

When you want to know what education is best do you consult a bureaucrat or a teacher?

edit on 10/17/2010 by Misoir because: (no reason given)

Pretty much the same thing anymore thanks to the teachers union. I think we'd be better off getting rid of the teachers union as a first step in making things right.

reply to post by Alora


In the 19th Century school did not cost, it was done as a form of charity. People would donate their time to teach students and the school building would be donated to the local community or built by the local community. It is not a utopian idea because it did work.

In the 19th century people volunteered to do lots of things such as police, firefighters, teachers, etc... So why today must it be a government job wasting tax payer dollars when it was more effective and less corrupt when left to the citizens to give over some of their time to invest in their future and/or their community?

the money that would be saved --busing--fuel-salaries--taxes--insurance--trillions of dollars, keep them home and use the net to learn.

reply to post by SeventhSeal


The Public Schools have been in rapid decline for decades now. Zero tolerance policies have turned children into criminals. Are children have been turned into PC, Green, Zombies, yet they don't know the first thing about how to balance a check book. They spend an entire month each year, on Martin Luther King, but know nothing about John Brown. The Public Schools are intrenched with radical leftist, who have learned everything they know, from a far more radical leftist professor away at college. Public Schools really don't serve to educate are children, they are a means to a End... to get the young on board with the plan. So yes, Public Schools are a complete joke... and If somebody has a better plan to educate our Children, I would at least hear him out, before I throw stones...

reply to post by adifferentbreed


I'm sure you'd advocate for teachers being underpaid and overworked.

Even with unions, they're still underpaid and overworked. The administrators and principals get all the money.

reply to post by Target Earth


Why do you capitalize so many letters? Didn't you go to a public school?

If public schools are so radical and leftist, how come they produce so many conservatives? I always thought that liberal folks only homeschooled their kids or sent them to expensive private schools?

The US public school system is the most expensive and least effective system in the world. The return on investment is abysmal. Of course this is what happens when government puts their hands into the personal lives of 300+million people.

The individuals that advocate doing away with federal controls on the education system don't want to do away with schools. They want to do away with the federal government and special interests stranglehold on our kids education and our nations future.

How is the government going to keep the population subdued if the kids go learning real meaningful skills and start thinking outside of the propaganda?

reply to post by Misoir


Exactly people need to become self suntanning in every category grow food for their kids, educated their kids, teach their kids skills. I don't know why weaklings fear freedom and self suntanning people.

Public education is the bedrock of democracy.

Totally
Exempt of
Aptitude

Sorry to tell you OP but in 1825 the education system wasn't really in the "stone age."

People who went to school were generally better educated and more articulate than the average High School graduate of today.

For a simple and quick proof of this you can look at the letters of soldiers from that period in time. Here; I'll even help:
www.elpalacio.org...
www.iaw.com...


I will agree that literacy rates have gone up from that time to this. This is shown by this statistical chart:
nces.ed.gov...

However, the type of work people do has changed. A large reason for the pervading illiteracy in the United States throughout history has been because children were needed at home to work on the farm. In the early 20th century, however, there was a massive shift. Children were made to work in factories and now children aren't made to work at all. There would be no excuse for a child not to attend school in this day and age. Last of the Mohicans was a very popular novel and considered easy to read in 1840. Have you read an uncut version?

I very, very strongly suggest you read this essay:
www.spinninglobe.net...

It was written by John Taylor Gatto who was the New York State Teacher of the Year in 1991 and has been named NYC teacher of the year 3 times.
en.wikipedia.org...

Please, please read that essay.

reply to post by Alora


I'm curious as to why so many people blame the teachers, administration, and government for failing schools. Very rarely do I hear any blame placed on the parents and students. Why is this?

As a public school teacher, I could tell you many horror stories about the lives that my students lead, but I am bound by confidentiality and a respect for the privacy of my students. Many nights I come home and weep over the sorrows that I encounter. But guess what? I love those kids and am determined to help them to see the potential within themselves and work to reach it. There is joy in my work, and I wish that others could see just a small glimpse of what goes on in my classroom everyday, and in hundreds of classrooms across the country. It's not all bad!

reply to post by The Sword

I am a product of the public school system, and I came out of It. a liberal, who leans toward Socialism, who believed the writings of Howard Zinn and Noam Chompsky. In my late 20's I woke up... Conservatives, they make a lot more sense then, the Liberals... It is just common sense.

reply to post by SeventhSeal

The stone age was much, much better than the current "stoned age"...dude...

reply to post by Target Earth


Must be the power of the internet that helped you "wake up" (sic).

I'm all for balance and sometimes, I feel that fiscal conservatism is a good idea as long as it doesn't involve slash-and-burn tactics with social programs.

reply to post by SeventhSeal

This my friends, is why we cannot let the Tea Party members into the White House. These people really do want their country back...back in the stone age.

The belief that the 19th century in America was the stone age is a fairly revealing problem with public education in the United States today. Before the 19th century, (and it is unfortunate indeed this needs to be explained), there was the 18th century, marked by The Age of Enlightment, and the much more distinctly American Age of Reson, that drove the Revolution for Independence, produced the great thinkers and philosophers that exemplify documents such as The Declaration of Independence, and The Bill of Rights, to name just a few "stone age" products of that era.

Few people "educated" by the compulsory public schools that government holds a monopoly on today, can even tell you who uttered the famous words:

"I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"

Let alone even know they are famous words. The public schools of today are more indoctrination centers than bastions of enlightenment and tools for young minds to expand their minds:

Over the past several decades, America's public schools have increasingly adopted the mindset that students have no rights, and school officials have not been reticent about communicating this message to young people. Indeed, this totalitarian outlook has been reinforced by an educational curriculum so focused on preparing students to enter the machinery of the corporate state that there is little time left over for the things they really need to learn such as what their rights are, how to exercise them, and the duties and responsibilities of citizenship. As a result, the majority of students today have little knowledge of the freedoms enshrined in the Constitution and, specifically, in the Bill of Rights.

What's worse:

For example, a national survey of high school students reveals that only 2% can identify the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court; 35% know that "we the people" are the first three words of the U.S. Constitution; 1.8% know that James Madison is considered the father of the U.S. Constitution; and 25% know that the Fifth Amendment protects against double jeopardy and self incrimination, among other legal rights.

Public educators do not fare much better in understanding and implementing the Constitution in the classroom. A study conducted by the University of Connecticut found that while public educators seem to support First Amendment rights in principle, they are reluctant to apply such rights in the schools. Consequently, the few students who do know and exercise their rights are forced to deal with school officials who, more often than not, refuse to respect those rights.

www.rutherford.org...

Far too many people today erroneously refer to the Constitution in terms of "separation of church and state" ignorant of the fact that this phrase is not in the Constitution but was written by Thomas Jefferson in a letter to the Danbury Baptists Association. The 1st Amendments Establishment Clause prohibits the federal government from establishing any religion, but makes no mention of a separation of church and state.

Far too many people today refer to the Bill of Rights as being those rights granted to people by the Constitution, seemingly ignorant of the express language of the 9th Amendment.

Article after article in the media today reports of horror stories where the U.S. public schools have so failed their students, that 75 Percent of Oklahoma School Students Can't Name the First President of The United States, the Minnesota State Bar Association has taken a page out in Facebook to make people aware that nearly two thirds of Americans cannot name any of the nine Supreme Court Justices,and the American Civic Literacy Organization reports that:

Many Americans with bachelor’s degrees cannot answer the most basic questions about our nation’s history and founding documents. Many cannot name all three branches of government or major guarantees of the Bill of Rights.

www.americancivicliteracy.org...

Drop out rates in public schools across the nation are increasing at alarming rates as graduation rates continue to plummet.

The public school systems in the United States are in clear disrepair, and the compulsory laws that lead to the overcrowding of these public schools are not in line with other industrialized nations with a far better record of education. States and courts are endeavoring to make it more difficult for parents to home school their children, and both parental rights, as well as students rights are disregarded as being not relevant while the bureaucracy of the state continues to grow at the expense of education.

Stone age indeed.

reply to post by The Sword


I do try to hold on to the belief in the need for social programs... I just see them getting abused so much, that I have lost all faith in them. I'm 35 now and in some area's I still am somewhat Liberal.. and Social issues that is the one... I just wished they worked.....

reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux


Good post man.

The great thing is that you wont get through to most people. People want to believe they are well educated when indeed they aren't.

I consider myself somewhat intelligent, but certainly not "well educated." I'm working on it. My real education only started after high school.