ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, July 27, 1996 TAG: 9607290084
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BOB ANDERSON
IN RESPONSE to Thomas M. Sherman's July 11 letter to the editor, ``Measure schools' success by communities' needs met'': This is a typically socialistic grand-sounding pseudo-challenge by an apologist for an expensive, failed public-school system. This apologist counters your May 28 editorial, ``Is the VEA scared of change?'' Aside from the resounding "yes" to the editorial, not much more needs be said.
Sherman churlishly laments that schools haven't eliminated teen smoking and haven't ensured that all children receive adequate health care. Strange, but I thought that parents were responsible adjudicators of both. With true socialistic verve, he wants public institutions to ensure living wages, and prevent drug addiction and alcoholism in students' homes. Do we also wipe the noses of parents who were educated in the philosophy of socialist educators who think as Sherman does?
Schools, in expanding their empire, budgets and habitues' income, absolutely must assume the role of parents. And according to Sherman, should - in the true socialist manner - elbow the parent out of the way. Are parents only a necessity in breeding? With today's technology, this can be done artificially. The schools, knowing better than anyone else, must be permitted to educate students to believe in the socialist womb-to-tomb philosophy.
It seems that education degrees massed into a school system create an omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent body answerable only to an ``education''-educated and thereby superior being. They all think spending of taxes by them for every problem created by their own system-produced population is the answer.
Those parents who fail to supply schools with progeny, fully ready to be educated, were themselves the product of these omnipotent educators who were themselves produced by Olympian education institutions. The institutions deify those who by virtue of an education can claim all-seeing-eye powers. How nice to have someone self-qualified and eager to assume total control over all humanity in its formative years. When the product doesn't quite measure up, they collectively opine that for another few billion to expand their bureaucracy and apply newer and wilder theories, they will surely rectify all of societies' problems.
If the minions of the National Education Association will let us have an opinion about the system that belongs to us, we unlettered owners and tax supporters of the system insist that a measure of a school's success is the quality of students produced. That is, we expect graduating students to be prepared adequately to fill next year's jobs, not last century's jobs.
Students must have a modicum of cultural awareness in the arts and certainly foreign languages such as English. They will know a little of common courtesy and citizenship - if necessary, at the expense of their own self-esteem. They will be aware the Earth revolves around the sun, not them. They should be able to extend their education - formally or informally - by being able to read, write and do simple math. This meets communities' needs when buttressed by ethics and morality. A vague "meet communities' needs" is claptrap with a Ph.D.
We have led the world for decades mainly with people educated before our current debacle. Our leadership is successfully challenged by some students - largely not native, but energetic and driven enough to endure the rigors of scientific endeavors. There are good students, no thanks to the NEA. But the masses under the bell-shaped curve are needed to let us, as a nation, survive. These, neither handicapped nor exceptional students, are too frequently unsuccessful. And this because they're undernourished by the educationally smug bureaucracy that fails to observe what is easily seen by all but them.
Testing, as a measure of performance, is pooh-poohed by the perspective-challenged educational system because, among other things, it doesn't measure those whose culture isn't represented in the testing.
Educrats say we must not let the little angels' self-esteem be crushed by experiencing failure, or else they may retire from this highly competitive life at an early age. As if many ill-prepared don't already retire from competition for their sustenance by dropping out or being graduated with diplomas they can't read.
Smoke and mirrors, semantics, new names for previous education failures are stock in trade of properly trained educrats. "Open classes" anyone? ``New math," mainstreaming - or is it now called team teaching?
Successful schools yield to common sense, not more gobbledygook. When will NEA members see the light? When they act as professionals, not trade unionists?
I will happily pay the cost of a successful system, whatever the cost may be. And I believe current funds will do the job if managed by sensible, intelligent, practical people who haven't been bitten by the humbug of the educational bureaucracy.
Bob Anderson of Blacksburg is a retired professional engineer.
IN RESPONSE to Thomas M. Sherman's July 11 letter to the editor, ``Measure schools' success by communities' needs met'': This is a typically socialistic grand-sounding pseudo-challenge by an apologist for an expensive, failed public-school system. This apologist counters your May 28 editorial, ``Is the VEA scared of change?'' Aside from the resounding "yes" to the editorial, not much more needs be said.
Sherman churlishly laments that schools haven't eliminated teen smoking and haven't ensured that all children receive adequate health care. Strange, but I thought that parents were responsible adjudicators of both. With true socialistic verve, he wants public institutions to ensure living wages, and prevent drug addiction and alcoholism in students' homes. Do we also wipe the noses of parents who were educated in the philosophy of socialist educators who think as Sherman does?
Schools, in expanding their empire, budgets and habitues' income, absolutely must assume the role of parents. And according to Sherman, should - in the true socialist manner - elbow the parent out of the way. Are parents only a necessity in breeding? With today's technology, this can be done artificially. The schools, knowing better than anyone else, must be permitted to educate students to believe in the socialist womb-to-tomb philosophy.
It seems that education degrees massed into a school system create an omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent body answerable only to an ``education''-educated and thereby superior being. They all think spending of taxes by them for every problem created by their own system-produced population is the answer.
Those parents who fail to supply schools with progeny, fully ready to be educated, were themselves the product of these omnipotent educators who were themselves produced by Olympian education institutions. The institutions deify those who by virtue of an education can claim all-seeing-eye powers. How nice to have someone self-qualified and eager to assume total control over all humanity in its formative years. When the product doesn't quite measure up, they collectively opine that for another few billion to expand their bureaucracy and apply newer and wilder theories, they will surely rectify all of societies' problems.
If the minions of the National Education Association will let us have an opinion about the system that belongs to us, we unlettered owners and tax supporters of the system insist that a measure of a school's success is the quality of students produced. That is, we expect graduating students to be prepared adequately to fill next year's jobs, not last century's jobs.
Students must have a modicum of cultural awareness in the arts and certainly foreign languages such as English. They will know a little of common courtesy and citizenship - if necessary, at the expense of their own self-esteem. They will be aware the Earth revolves around the sun, not them. They should be able to extend their education - formally or informally - by being able to read, write and do simple math. This meets communities' needs when buttressed by ethics and morality. A vague "meet communities' needs" is claptrap with a Ph.D.
We have led the world for decades mainly with people educated before our current debacle. Our leadership is successfully challenged by students - largely not native, but energetic and driven enough to endure the rigors of scientific endeavors. There are good students, no thanks to the NEA. But the masses under the bell-shaped curve are needed to let us, as a nation, survive. These, neither handicapped nor exceptional students, are too frequently unsuccessful. And this because they're undernourished by the educationally smug bureaucracy that fails to observe what is easily seen by all but them.
Testing, as a measure of performance, is pooh-poohed by the perspective-challenged educational system because, among other things, it doesn't measure those whose culture isn't represented in the testing.
Educrats say we must not let the little angels' self-esteem be crushed by experiencing failure, or else they may retire from this highly competitive life at an early age. As if many ill-prepared don't already retire from competition for their sustenance by dropping out or being graduated with diplomas they can't read.
Smoke and mirrors, semantics, new names for previous education failures are stock in trade of properly trained educrats. "Open classes" anyone? ``New math," mainstreaming - or is it now called team teaching?
Successful schools yield to common sense, not more gobbledygook. When will NEA members see the light? When they act as professionals, not trade unionists.
I will happily pay the cost of a successful system, whatever the cost may be. And I believe current funds will do the job if managed by sensible, intelligent, practical people who haven't been bitten by the humbug of the educational bureaucracy.
Bob Anderson of Blacksburg is a retired professional engineer.
LENGTH: Long : 163 linesby CNB