Public Schools on Trial

                Public Schools on Trial

                                                Published in Marietta Daily Journal June 19, 2016

I’m trying hard to hold on, but it’s getting more difficult every year.

 So many insanities are promoted, if not required.   An insider and defender for 5 decades, I’m moving closer to abandoning my post.  It’s simply getting too difficult to defend public schools.

            The reason I hold on is I admire the good people who are doing their best to make things work, personal friends like state school superintendent Richard Woods and state school board member from Cobb County, Scott Johnson.

            I’m holding on because of state senator Lindsey Tippins who, as chairman of the Senate Education Committee, can be counted on to propose practical measures.  My great friend, school board member Randy Scamihorn helps me hold on.  Like Woods and Tippins, he has little use for rose-colored glasses and faces education and the world realistically.  The same is true of school board chairman Susan Thayer, of my unforgettable former student and school board member David Chastain, and of the respected Marietta superintendent, Emily Lembeck.

            All of these educational leaders have tough minds, good hearts, and steady hands.  Add to their names all of our tireless classroom teachers and you have an impressive list of troops.

            Why, then, are public schools so besieged?  Why has one critic described public education as “a sinking ship that won’t sink or sail either”?   A little history of my discouragement follows.

            Until 1965 when the federal government became deeply involved in education, it could be said that America did not have an educational system.  Such was not and is not constitutional.  America had 50 educational systems.  Effective localism ruled the day until federal aid to education and Jimmy Carter’s new Department of Education changed everything.

            Initially the federal department was a paper tiger, a mere money-dispensing mechanism like its predecessor, Health, Education and Welfare.  Eventually it began flexing its muscles, leading to more and more federal involvement.  Now, education is Bureaucratic City.  Between parent/child/teacher and the feds, there are at least 10 governmental entities with fingers in the pie.  Local school board decisions are driven by federal funding and regulations to such degree that school boards are, in effect, agents of the federal government.

            Recall President Bush and No Child Left Behind (with its testing craze) and President Obama’s directive that all schools must allow boys in the girls’ restroom (one of the insanities referenced above). 

            Compare this picture to the private school scene that doesn’t have to worry – yet – about the long arm of the Justice Department, constant curriculum change, restroom issues, suffocating testing requirements, and presidential directives that violate parents’ beliefs and common sense.  Compare it to the much safer homeschooling scene which is growing 7 times faster than public school enrollment.

            All I need to teach your child English is your child.  Teachers of other subjects would need some hardware, but you get my point that complication breeds complication.  Learning isn’t aided by federal regulations.  It’s hindered.    

  Schools have become the hub station for societal transformers.  Obama’s restroom directive is but a start.  The so called LGBT community is emboldened and will be knocking on the schoolhouse door again.

The human dimension of learning decreases yearly.  Testing and the overuse of technology are dehumanizing everything.  Preach technology all you want, but its misuse/overuse is diminishing students’ eye ball to eye ball communication skills. Screens and the absence of human interaction at school are taking their toll.  The word zombies comes to mind.

Since 2014 the federal Department of Education has been investigating school districts to sue or withhold federal funds wherever there is no “racial equality” in punishment for misconduct.  Too many black students and too few white students are being suspended, say the feds.  This potentially affects even good performing schools like Cobb County’s.

Despite the creation beliefs of Isaac Newton, former NASA head Wernher von Braun and over 500 Ph.D. science professors in America, evolutionary theory is the dogma in science classrooms.  This violates your beliefs?  Tough.

The task assigned to schools is absolutely daunting.  Teachers are having to parent instead of teach.  No wonder, when 71% of black children are born out of wedlock and 29% of white children.   We now have a culture too far out of control for teachers to teach its children.

Unless my friends can pull me back fast, I’m ready to say let those 10 governmental entities have their schools and do what they want.  There are still some of us who desire standards in manners, language, and conduct.  Dare I add dress?  Private schools and home schoolers attend to these matters.  

 Public education’s monopoly must end.  Its faltering status is no fault of teachers.  It’s the fault of absentee parents, a coarsening culture, and Bureaucratic City for whom teachers work.

Roger Hines

6/15/16