Reviews by Hubie Goode: Education, Capitalism, Competition, Schools, Learning, Public Schools, Monopolies

Stupid, Capitalism 
and Education

part 4

It has been reported that teachers in New York City can be paid somewhere in the amount of 60 to 70 thousand dollars. For a nine month job, that’s not too shabby. But if you ask teachers they will tell you they work hard enough to be paid 85 to 90 thousand. And why not? Indeed they are given a huge responsibility for bringing up the next generation of our society. NYC teachers also have a pension plan with a government guarantee of an 8.25 per cent return. They are not taxed and the teachers also get ten days per year sick leave.

In the national sense, however, most teachers do make less. Most of the K-12 teachers make around 45 grand a year, but they only work nine months a year. For three months they receive paychecks and are free to do as they please every day. They make more than a chemist and computer programmer on an hourly wage basis.

But just imagine a free market of education. Parents would demand a bigger share of that government spending of $250,000 per classroom for great educators for their kids. Demand would make the value of teachers go even higher, and they could challenge entertainers and athletes for outrageous salaries.

How Much Money Does it Take?

 

Are they really underpaid? Why would you keep teaching if other opportunities arose that you could succeed at and make more money with. Are there that many sacrificial heroes in teaching? Do they all have Machiavellian type paradigms as they spend their own money to see to it that their kids have books and pencils? If teachers were paid too little, then they would never be able to retain teachers, we would have shortages all over the country. But statistics prove other wise. Many schools have multiple applications for each available position. At charter schools, teachers often make about 15-20 percent more than the government public school counterparts. One size fits all contracts reward bad teachers and punish good teachers. It’s a crying shame is what it is.

The Truth About Home schooling

A growing number of parents fed up with public schools are opting for home schooling their kids. The numbers are still comparatively low, but they make headway every year.

The argument of course, is that socialization suffers in the home schooled child. But a lot of that is just assumptions of those who march in lock step with the establishment. School is where you are supposed to pay attention to the teacher, not have concerns over your classmates and their presence around you.

Home schooled kids have about four hours a day of real school. The rest of they day, usually spent trapped in the school system of regimented daily routines, can be spent for all the social involvement one needs. And that social involvement can be controlled. There is no need to remind parents of the horror that many kids go through as they step from a social environment of the home, where they are loved and accepted (hopefully) to an environment of neurotics and ego insecure strangers.

Everyone knows how puberty can ruin a perfectly sweet and good kid, why subject them to a society of children all being effected? As an added note, just keep in mind the success of Asian children as they practice a common theme for themselves on the way to school achievement. They often get together with friends to actually do the study and homework, and this is a trait that has made many an Asian child a top performer. They don’t struggle with the social paradigms of “giving into the man” if they are a good student, and the results have us all looking for doctors and lawyers and professionals from all walks of life who are Asian. Not because they are Asian, but because of the stand they take on studying throughout their scholastic careers.

It’s a statistical fact that home schooled kids consistently score 15-20 percent higher than kids in a school system setting. They also score higher on the ACT, about 10 percent higher. Schools held at homes have  freedom and love of the learning experience that has until now been crushed by the regimen of the system, and it shows in the results.

The “great thinkers” of the late 1800’s and early 1900’s  who wanted to create a society of piece meal workers who only knew how to repeat the same job over and over until the day they die, have sent us all into a hell no one could ever have foreseen. Home schooling is re-awakening the human spirit that was crushed with industrial maneuvering over the scholastic lives of America’s children. Only with the continual destruction of a system meant to enslave our kids can we see the true benefits of doing away with a system that has made our kids stupid all in the name of big money men who wanted to socially engineer their own workforce.

Voucher anyone?

But what if we gave parents education vouchers? One of these could be as much as $5,000 a year and would be attached to the child so that the parent could send the child to the best school that they could choose.

Critics say that these could destroy public education. (And your point is?......) Public schools would then be overrun with nothing but problem kids and this would turn them into public detention centers and they would not longer be schools. Sure, money would disappear from the system with a big sucking sound you could hear all across America.

This would in turn force the government to make long needed changes to maintain their own position as a school and not a detention center. What would they do? I think that perhaps they have no clue what would happen then. Just keep your kids in our unproductive system, it’s the good kids and the involved parents that keep them the way they are, for without them, the bad kids and uninvolved parents would have no leg to stand on. Remember, teachers and kids who give a dam are punished and the converse are kept afloat. It’s the American school system way. 

The school system in Milwaukee has actually tried the voucher system and the results proved that students everywhere did a better job, those who were pulled out of the public school and also those who remained. The public schools were forced to try harder and be more competent as the money went in other directions, and the kids improved in their performance.

Amazingly, organizations like “People for the American Way” have actually filed lawsuits over the voucher program, stating that it violates the separation of church and state. They say this because lots of parents with vouchers send their kids to religious schools. This was a huge threat, since most schools who are not government schools are indeed religious organizations. However, the ruling was that as long as parents chose those schools and as long as the government did not force them to go to those schools, then the violation was not present. The U.S Supreme court agreed.

Allowing for school choice is nothing new. The G.I. bill sent over 2 million soldiers to college after World War II and some of those colleges were the likes of Notre Dame and Bringham Young. Soldiers could choose whatever school they wanted. American colleges were sparked by the competition for government money from vouchers and in the end result, American colleges are now sought after institutions all over the world. 

more on this next time