The Machine: The Truth Behind Teachers Unions

America's public education system is failing. We're spending more money on education but not getting better results for our children.

That's because the machine that runs the K-12 education system isn't designed to produce better schools. It's designed to produce more money for unions and more donations for politicians.-http://youtu.be/mVyNlJUKgug

video via The Commentator

Should The Public Schools Be Burned To The Ground?

With each passing year, the difference between America's prisons and America's public schools becomes smaller and smaller. As you read the rest of this article, you will be absolutely amazed at some of the crazy things that school children in America are being arrested for. When I was growing up, I don't remember a single police officer ever coming to my school. Discipline was always handled by the teachers and by the principals. But today, there are schools all over the country that have police officers permanently stationed in the halls. Many other schools will call out police officers at the drop of a hat. In the classrooms of America today, if you burp in class, if you spray yourself with perfume or if you doodle on your desk, there is a chance that you will be arrested by the police and hauled out of your school in handcuffs. READ MORE: 19 Crazy Things That School Children Are Being Arrested For In America

They've always been prisons of course, only now more so than ever before. The state-run schools are where the process of indoctrination begins, where the future path of submission to the state-capitalist system and its rulers is laid out and the child is turned from human being into meek little lamb. and easily swayed follower of statist propaganda. The Internet is beginning to change that, however, which is why it is now a main target of the establishment's wrath. If they can't control you (or your thoughts), it makes them very angry.

Monadnock HS Public Officials Attempt Censorship

On Tuesday, December 13th, 2011, a number of individuals visited Monadnock High School in Swanzey, NH (just south of Keene) to do some outreach. While the students were receptive, it was a different story entirely for the just-following-the-rules public officials.




No, you can't hand out pro-freedom flyers, but the publik skools (funded with stolen money- yes TAXATION IS THEFT!) have every right to indoctrinate their prisoners students with statist propaganda.

Don't Believe What Teachers Tell You

Teachers unions say California must not roll back annual increases in public school spending. And they're not too careful about facts when they make that case.

Teachers frequently claim, for example, that California is in either 49th or 50th place among the 50 states in per-pupil spending. In fact, the Golden State is 31st in per-pupil spending.

Teachers also say the Golden State could solve its chronic budget shortfalls by raising tax rates on the rich. But California is already unusually dependent on taxes collected from high earners. This is why revenue collections can drop sharply during recession, while spending -- which has increased 37 percent since 2001 -- continues to grow at rates exceeding inflation and population growth.

We Don't Need No (Public) Education: Sheldon Richman on the Separation of School and State

"Schools, by their very structure, are preparing kids for some sort of authoritarian lifestyle"-Sheldon Richman


Separating School & State: How to Liberate America's Families


The Freeman


Strange how "liberals" are so supportive of public schools, when they are supposed to be against authoritarian structures, isn't it? Well, maybe it's not so strange, considering they love big, centralized government telling a nation of over 300 million people how to live their lives.

Ken Robinson: Schools Kill Creativity

TED









In the past, unions have been a force preventing changes in education, rarely letting things deviate from the norm. In the beginning teachers' unions fought for the rights of a mistreated profession, but more recently have defended the legitimacy of No Child Left Behind, prevented teachers from being accountable for their actions and have tied the hands of government officials and school system administrators.

What are your thoughts on the protests (teachers' in particular) in Wisconsin?

Do unions help or hinder education reform? (from What roles do unions play in education and education reform?

Teachers Unions Explained

A supporter of the teachers unions is questioned about her belief that the unions need more money and power.






A liberal teacher tries to explain about the Wisconsin protests and when asked questions shows what progressives (liberals) are all about.




h/t John Lott

Team Obama Food Police™ Hungry Kids Edition

video via Granny Jan and Jihad Kitty


The Obamas have been obsessed with what your kids are eating …. or not eating, and Michelle Obama has made it her personal mission to federalize your child’s eating habits under the guise of fighting obesity. Of course, the government’s agenda for food is political, and it is driven by the most wealthy and powerful corporate interests that drop the most coins in the assorted bureaucratic tills. Over the last three decades, as the government and its tag-along special interests have ramped up their “war” on fat and fatness, the population has become increasingly more obese and unhealthy while they sustain their shoddy quality of life entrenched in a perpetual pharmaceutical coma, thanks to a multitude of government programs and policies that keep people in the grip of the pharmaceutical-medical-governmental complex for a lifetime. “Gotta have my pills” is more American than any Chevy, baseball game, or apple pie.-Karen De Coster: Obama Obeseonomics

Interview: Teacher of the Year Tracey Bailey

Tracey Bailey, 1993 winner of the National Teacher of the Year & director of education policy at the Association of American Educators, on how teachers unions are destroying American education.



Schiff Radio

Zero Tolerance Policies: Are the Schools Becoming Police States?

Just one more good reason that the god-awful publik skools need to be abolished and why, if you have children, you need to get them out of those hellhole prisons, now!


What we are witnessing, thanks in large part to zero tolerance policies that were intended to make schools safer by discouraging the use of actual drugs and weapons by students, is the criminalization of childish behavior. In fact, as John Whitehead points out in this week's vodcast, things have gotten so bad that it doesn't take much at all to raise the ire of school officials.




Ninth grader Andrew Mikel is merely the latest in a long line of victims whose educations have been senselessly derailed by school administrators lacking in both common sense and compassion. A freshman at Spotsylvania High School in Virginia, Andrew was expelled in December 2010 for shooting a handful of small pellets akin to plastic spit wads at fellow students in the school hallway during lunch period. Although the initial punishment was only for 10 days, the school board later extended it to the rest of the school year. School officials also referred the matter to local law enforcement, which initiated juvenile proceedings for criminal assault against young Andrew.

Andrew is not alone. Nine-year-old Patrick Timoney was sent to the principal’s office and threatened with suspension after school officials discovered that one of his LEGOs was holding a 2-inch toy gun. That particular LEGO, a policeman, was Patrick’s favorite because his father is a retired police officer. David Morales, an 8-year-old Rhode Island student, ran afoul of his school’s zero tolerance policies after he wore a hat to school decorated with an American flag and tiny plastic Army figures in honor of American troops. School officials declared the hat out of bounds because the toy soldiers were carrying miniature guns. A 7-year-old New Jersey boy, described by school officials as “a nice kid” and “a good student,” was reported to the police and charged with possessing an imitation firearm after he brought a toy Nerf-style gun to school. The gun shoots soft ping pong-type balls.

Things have gotten so bad that it doesn’t even take a toy gun to raise the ire of school officials. A high school sophomore was suspended for violating the school’s no-cell-phone policy after he took a call from his father, a master sergeant in the U.S. Army who was serving in Iraq at the time. A 12-year-old New York student was hauled out of school in handcuffs for doodling on her desk with an erasable marker. In Houston, an 8th grader was suspended for wearing rosary beads to school in memory of her grandmother (the school has a zero tolerance policy against the rosary, which the school insists can be interpreted as a sign of gang involvement). Six-year-old Cub Scout Zachary Christie was sentenced to 45 days in reform school after bringing a camping utensil to school that can serve as a fork, knife or spoon. And in Oklahoma, school officials suspended a first grader simply for using his hand to simulate a gun.-Are Our Schools Becoming Police States?: Zero Tolerance Policies

School Is A Prison

via Check Your Premises

The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America

Top Ten "Worst" Layoffs

Well, it's that time of year again. Ya know, when people put together lists of the top ten things of the year, like the top ten movies, top ten...uh, what the hell, I don't know. Here's a link to the top ten layoffs:

2010 was a very terrible year within the economy for several industries and businesses within the U.S. Following closures and cost control plans, so many people during 2010 were left without employment, with layoff rates continuing to rise throughout the year, even with the massive growth in some industries, offset in most cases by further employment loss.

10 Worst Layoffs of 2010


Now, I do have to disagree with designating all of those as "worst"; a few are pretty damn good! For example, let's take a look at # 7 Publik Skools (spelled "public schools" to those that were home or private schooled). Any time more of those taxpayer leeches are eliminated from the blood-sucking public sector workforce, the better off the rest of us are, especially home owners and children. Let me explain. I remember once looking at our property tax bill (yeah, I once owned a house, and I'm still shocked), otherwise known as rent to the government landlord who is the real owner of your "private" property (don't believe it? Try not paying your "property taxes" next year and see how long you "own" your home) and about half of the bill was designated to schools (properly called State Indoctrination and Conformity Centers). Now, I don't have kids, and I don't want to pay for yours, you brought them into this rotten world, so YOU pay the expense of raising and schooling them (though to be truthful, they'd be better off not going to school at all and just staying home building forts and making mud pies in the backyard) or just home school them (don't punish your little darlings by sending them to one the government's child prisons). YOUR CHILDREN ARE NOT MY RESPONSIBILITY! And I would go even further and end the public schools completely. Yeah, that's right, I'm calling for the abolition of all taxpayer supported "schools". Let's free the minds of future generations so we don't have as many brets running around in coming years. Plus, your property taxes will go (way) down too!


Also, # 5 a state university. Close them all, I say!

And # 2, I'm not weeping for any member of statist Big Pharma. You can shove your dangerous drugs and your phony "intellectual property" up your lying capitalist asses!

# 3 Law Firms, oh boo hoo hoo! What was it that Shakespeare wrote? Oh yeah, "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers".

# 9 Courthouses! Oh yeah, we could do with less kangaroo court "justice" presided over by taxpayer parasite black-robed tyrants. Shut them all down!

Gee, that's half of the ten. Let's change the title to the Best/Worst layoffs, what do you say?

"The Cartel" Director Bob Bowdon on Education Reform

Bob Bowdon's new film The Cartel amply documents that waste and fraud in public education. Now playing in select cities, the documentary provokes outrage and action to fix a system that fails precisely the low-income students who most need the benefits of a strong education.

The Cartel

John Stossel: The Real Bully in the Classroom

Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling

The True Cost of Public Education

Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher's Journey Through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling

Baggy Pants: The Real Cause of School Shootings

What we really need is a zero tolerance policy toward the publik skools. Abolish the tax-supported and parasite-run child prisons, and leave baggy pants alone.



The public schools are evil. If you have children, the best thing you can do for them is to keep them away from the psychotic "educators".

Get them out of there!

This morning the local talk radio program was filled with voices concerned about the Dear Leader's President Obama's speech to the school kids. Some parents were saying they were going to keep the kids at home today, while others stated they would tell the little ones that the President's words would be explained to them by Mommy and Daddy when they got home.

I asked myself, why, if these parents are so alarmed by this, do they have their children in the Government Indoctrination Camps public schools in the first place? Do they not want to make the sacrifice necessary to send the kids to private school? Or to take the time and effort to homeschool the precious darlings? If your offspring mean that much to you, maybe it's time to make the sacrifices required to do right by them. But that might mean giving up those shiny new cars sitting in the driveway, the meals out, the big screen TV in the living room, and dozens of other lifestyle choices that send hard-earned dollars spiraling down the rat hole.

I also wonder what these parents think goes on everyday in those stolen money tax supported "schools". The public schools were and are designed to produce obedient, unquestioning slaves.

The state propaganda site Daily Kos, unsurprisingly, can't find the propaganda in the help guide to the speech provided to teachers.

The guide at one point asks: Why is it important that we listen to the President and other elected officials, like the mayor, senators, members of congress, or the governor? Why is what they say important?

To which to Kos writer answers (apparently assuming only partisan Republicans are upset by those words, and would be fine with it if Bush II were still in the White House, which, in the case of Republicans, may be true, but misses the point):

Notice that they don't just say Democratic mayors, senators, members of congress, or the governor. Respect should be had for all elected leaders, this is nothing new. We've been told the same thing for a very very long time.

But as critics of public schools have always said, that is precisely the point! Kids must be taught to honor the state, its officials and its government, and to obey and comply with the edicts of the state and its evil minions. Since both major political parties are essentially branches of the state, it matters not which party is in charge of the proceedings. The almighty state marches on, unhindered in its mission of enslavement.

At least statist shills like the Daily Kos admit that loving Big Brother is indeed what we've been told to do "for a very very long time."

Pennygate

This story (Via Check Your Premises) gives one some hope for the next generation. A group of 29 7th and 8th graders, fed up with only a 30 minute lunch period, protested by using pennies to pay for their $2.00 lunches.

School officials were not impressed and began doling out detention like sloppy Joe's. In all, 29 students received punishment. Administrators told them that what they had done was "disrespectful" not only to cafeteria staff but also to fellow students. (Yet on Friday, many of them brought bag lunches to protest on behalf of the so-called "Readington 29.")

But as news of "Pennygate" began spreading, it soon became clear that this cause was bigger than even a silver dollar. Parents and civil rights advocates, outraged at the school's position, began raising a stink. The story received nationwide coverage.

A couple of pro-government goose steppers gave their two-cents worth in the comments:

I am all for the first amendment, but those rights DO NOT extend past the school house gates. As teachers we have a solemn obligation to protect our students first and educate second. To achieve that we must maintain discipline. What kind of school would it be if kids were running wild and crazy through the halls and calling it a "protest." Teenagers can call this unfair, but it is the price they pay for a free education.

Where does this "teacher" see anything in this story about kids "running wild and crazy through the halls"? Of course any dissent, even of a peaceful nature, cannot be allowed in the public schools, because the whole purpose of the government (fascist) school system is to teach obedience and discourage independent thought. That is the real "price" we as a society are paying for this "free" (I like the way this tax supported leech that calls itself a "teacher" is under the impression that publik skool edukashun is somehow free) service. Of course it is more like an indoctrination, not an education, anyway.

Another jerk left the following comment:

The school caved and it is a disgrace. Stand up for what is right.

That's what those protesting kids were doing, you jackass Big Brother-loving loser!

Here is an explicit statement of the real purpose of state schools, as outlined by some black-robed tyrants in California: "A primary purpose of the educational system is to train school children in good citizenship, patriotism and loyalty to the state".

Loyalty to the state. Sounds very Nazi-like, don't ya think?