More public school *Grrrrrrrrr*!

[KBCraig]

More public school idiocy...

We allowed our daughter to enter 9th grade at the local high school, and are regretting it after one week. Mary called this evening and said she and Sarah were about to go shopping, and needed to pick up some school supplies. Guess what's on her official "school supplies" list? A TI-84 Plus Silver Edition graphing calculator! It's available locally at $130-140, but even at Amazon it's $119!

We have no intention of buying it, of course. Not for a kid who plans to promptly forget every bit of math or science that is temporarily forced into her head. She's very artistic, poetic, a great eye for photography... but no interest in nor talent for the hard sciences.

And I'm especially not buying it just because some bureaucrat says I have to. I'd buy her a laptop and a copy of Mathematica first.

While I was fuming, it dawned on me why they want to standardize calculators: it's so they can teach keystrokes instead of algebra. And because it's probably the only thing the teacher knows.

Both Sarah and the school were on probation, with the alternative being homeschooling. This great experiment might be drawing to a close.



Kevin

[Michael Fisher]

I agree.  Calculators don't help you learn math.  I created a graphing calculator program in pascal in the 10th grade and my teacher just gave me a blank stare when I told him about it.  This coming from the guy who said I would fail if I skipped trigonometry.

Those who teach 150 people per day really can't think too much about one person.  I think anyone can teach and anyone can learn, and this system only holds us down and hurts us in the end.

[Lloyd Danforth]

From 'Liberty'  Sept. 2005, Terra Incognita:

The United Kingdom
Advance in educational terminology, reported inThe Scotsman

The Profesional Association of Teachers (PAT) has recommended at their annual conference that the schools discontinue the use of the word 'fail' in favor of the concept of "deferred success"

[polyanarch]

There is no such thing as "public school."

As Michael Badnarik says, "Community does not exist" as it is a concept -not a thing.  It does not have rights and it does not have schools.  This is just like the concept of furniture not being a "thing" like a sofa or a chair. Those are "things", but Furniture is only a concept of something which you put inside your house to "furnish" it -it has no individual reality in and of itself.

"Society and Public" do not exist in the way that there can be "public schools."  The real name for these Schools that do unfortunately exist is government schools  They are no more effective, or sanitary, as the so-called "public restrooms" that the government puts out there as a "public service."  And they compare in quality to private and home bathrooms as do "public schools" do to private and home schooling.

Sending your child to a government school is a mistake.  Don't let your kid be brainwashed by government teachers.  If you want her to learn something useful and not become a government-brainwashed zombie keep them far away.  And if they do go, make sure they wash their hands and brains out really well when they get home.

[Michael Fisher]

Exactly.

Beautiful post.  Well, not beautiful, with all the talk of government bathrooms, but a good analogy.