EducationNews.org

Karl Priest

In 1940 teachers reported their major problems were talking, gum chewing, noise, running in halls, and cutting in line.  In 1990 the problems were assault, robbery, drug abuse, and pregnancy.  Forty-three percent of teachers now say they spend more time trying to keep order than teaching.  A United States Department of Education 2006 report disclosed that the average is 45 crimes per 1000 students in public schools---and ONLY 28 violent crimes per 1000 students.  School shootings are extreme cases of a grimmer fact---public schools have grown increasingly dangerous. 
 
Just looking at my home state is alarming. A 2005 Associated Press report revealed that during the period of 2000-2004 West Virginia dismissed 41 teachers for sexual misconduct.
 
A Hofstra University professor believes that educator sexual misconduct is "woefully understudied".  The Sexuality Information and Education Council (SIECUS for short) produces lessons for "sex ed" classes known as "Programs That Work".  Parents probably do not know that SIECUS criticizes "abstinence-only-until-marriage" curricula as "based on religious beliefs (that) rely on fear and shame".  SIECUS also complains that these abstinence programs do not view homosexuality as normal.  SIECUS promotes policies, like what we have in West Virginia, where the school can provide birth control without consulting parents.
 
Trying to reform public schools is like putting a finger in a bucket of water.  After the finger is removed the water returns to where it was originally.  In the meantime our children remain in danger zones.  Loving parents would not allow their children to walk through a mine field just because they see some children making it through without getting maimed.  Once the mine explodes it is too late.  It is time for thinking parents to remove their children from the public schools and either homeschool them or place them in private schools. 

A critic of public schools once said, "Humanist taxidermists have done well.  Public schools are hollow shells, a stuffed charade, a glass-eyed cadaver.  They have knowledge without wisdom and facts without truth."

Parents are usually unaware of messages that are conveyed to their children "under the radar".  For example, the Early Childhood Equity Alliance (ECEA), a network of activist educators promotes a teachers guide for teachers of young children (pre-kindergarten) that portrays the Navy's Blue Angels as heartless killers who could bomb innocent American kids.
 
Public schools are operated like prisons with medical sedation, metal detectors, uniformed officers, searches by drug sniffing dogs, and video surveillance. 
 
Totalitarian regimes have always claimed that children belong to them.

"For this reason we have set before ourselves the task of inoculating our youth with the spirit of this community of the people at a very early age…and this Reich will give its youth to no one, but will itself take the youth and give to youth its own education and its own upbringing."  Everyone knows who made that statement.

Public schools are really government schools and the more the government controls of any thing, the less effective it becomes. A monopolistic system of education that is controlled by the State is far more efficient in crushing our liberty than weapons of war. 

We do not need more reform.  We have wasted millions (perhaps billions) of dollars on utopian efforts to reform public schools.  Every president, since the Department of Education was formed, has had a utopian plan to solve the problems raging through the public schools.  History has proven, beyond all reasonable doubt, that pouring money into public schools is crazy.  We merely pay for our own subjugation!
 
The time is now for parents to seek educational freedom by placing their children in home or private schools.
 
Let's rescue our children.
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Karl Priest was a West Virginia educator for 34 years in including four years as a principal. He taught students from kindergarten through ninth grade, mostly as a math specialist, and spent his last nine years as a Junior High and Middle School math teacher. Karl is currently the State Coordinator for Exodus Mandate (http://www.insectman.us/testimony/exodus-mandate.htm#mine).

Published October 14, 2008