I’m a Paraeducator in an elementary school, and I am in the minority at my school...only 7 of us are unvaxxed. And I am the only one who is vocal there about the vax and mask mandates.
The parents have no idea what goes on here and if they did, I honestly don’t know if they’d do anything.
I went to my principal last week about the constant “mask shaming” of the kids. She legit looked at me and asked “What’s mask shaming?” 🤦🏼♀️ I said...the constant yelling at the kids with: “Where’s your mask?”, “Pull up your mask!”, “Your mask is dirty!”...and even putting kids in time out for not wearing their masks “appropriately”.
I then reminded her of the beautiful collage of Self-Portraits in our hallway. The collage that saddens me greatly every time I walk by. The collage of Self-Portraits that show the masked faces of all but a handful who drew themselves without a mask. THIS is how our children “see” themselves, and it is heartbreaking.
In France, I find I can't go to some hospitals because I don't have the ridiculous 'passe sanitaire'. Time to bring the whole circus down, not just education, but the so called 'Health' systems, 'Social' systems, the lot.
There was a time when teaching was a calling. It didn't pay well and most of the people who went into teaching did so out of a love for children. The low pay was balanced by lots of time off which resulted in working 35 weeks out of the year (approx. 170 days). This was quite different from most other types of work where people worked at least 45 weeks a year (approx. 225 days).
To "improve" education and recruit "better qualified" teachers money was thrown at the "problem." Salaries were increased again and again. The result was that many of those recruited no longer saw it as a calling but as a pretty decent paying job with lots of time off, early retirement compared to most other types of work, and tremendous job security. The result was an overall decrease in the quality of education. The solution to that was to increase pay further and to pay for teachers to acquire Master's degrees and to pay the holders of those degrees even more pay. This resulted in a further overall decrease in the overall quality of education. To fix this there are still those who insist that the solution is more money.
None of this is to say that teachers should not be paid a decent living salary but it is to say that throwing more money at the problem of low quality education is not the solution or at least not the sole or primary solution.
Then there is the credentialing process. Many people who are experts in their fields are "not qualified" to teach because they don't have a teaching degree. For example a successful artist who has had their art displayed in many galleries is not qualified to teach an art class. A person who started a small business and grew it into 20 locations is not qualified to teach a business class. A carpenter with 20 years of experience is not qualified to teach a wood shop class. An accomplished author is not qualified to teach an english composition class. The teaching credential from a college is required. This isn't based on what is best for kids. It's based on the teacher programs at colleges guarding their turf and insuring a continous flow of customers for their programs.
All of the above is just part of the problem with elementary and secondary education. The problems with the college system are also numerous. The whole system is based on guarding turf. Experience counts for nothing. However like elementary and secondary education the quality of college education has decreased for similar reasons. The costs have increased while the quality has decreased.
I think the solution at the elementary and secondary levels is school choice. Unions and politicos being opposed to that is just evidence of their agenda not being what is in the best interests of children. If they deliver quality education they would have nothing to fear from competition.
The nature of bureaucracies is that over time the primary purpose becomes the continuance and perpetuation of the bureaucracy.
The authoritarian educational institutions, health care systems, and employers have done us a favor by liberating all of the ethical, talented critical thinkers who value freedom and humanity. This will cause the collapse of Establishment organizations while we erect thriving parallel educational, health care, and business services.
All the leading publications for, you know, the smart people have been running articles for several years now portraying children as irritants and impediments to the "fulfilled" life. They're at most lifestyle accessories but not, you know, who you'd die for...
I gave birth at 40 and thought I was a fully-formed human being by then. Not hardly; not even begun. Parenthood makes you reach your full potential, for good or ill. It's a horrifying landscape out there at the moment, with the folks with authority and reach being the worst at it...
We homeschooled. Best decision ever and this was before. (Our youngest graduated 9 years ago.) not only do kids get a better education, they are well rounded, have a lot less teen angst overall, and have a lot more experiences (travel, field trips, volunteering, jobs, etc). Our state has a lot of homeschoolers and has been homeschool friendly, but we get zero for our tax dollars - can’t use school facilities, libraries, participate in sports. So there are homeschool leagues for the major sports, the public library, and coops to do science labs. People innovate and make it work.
Dr. Pam Popper did an extended and phenomenally positive interview with Dr. Joe Mercola on his channel (e.g. Rumble). Part of the interview was devoted to this school problem, its extent, the years of breakdown prior to the lockdown, the calls for reform that never happened. Popper describes solutions that her community and others around the nation are implementing. First step is to remove children from the toxic environments. If enough do this, the mandates stop and the schools collapse. She describes a case where a mask mandate was quickly retired when no children showed up for school. But more importantly, the quality of the educational experiences and its impact has many silver linings and opportunities as she describes in detail. Elsewhere in the interview she talks pragmatic strategies for making change, and the great progress her organization and community group is making in collaboration with Tom Renz on legal challenges. Her story about backing Ohio down from a second lockdown is instructive.
Back in May I stood in front of my local school board (I worked for this school district for five years as a para and quit because of masking children. Both of my children attended their schools. They are being educated in an alternative way right now) and railed on them for masking children. I was called a right wing conspiracy theorist in social media, local newspapers. Nothing changed. Children are still be masked, separated and being conditioned to believe they are walking disease. The school boards are useless. They parrot what the local health department tells them and if they dare defy the mandates the school funding will be pulled. It’s tyranny! But parents are not backing down. They are organizing and planning. Stay tuned.
I taught math at a middle-tier, private university for 35 years. I taught a course that had a large number of math-ed students. They were known to be the weakest students we had. The math-ed department (not the math department). felt it was not necessary for them to understand fractions, and objected to their being forced to learn them. Their feeling was we should just "let it go. They'll learn fractions when they are in the classrooms and have to teach them". One excellent adjunct faculty member was let go because she continued to insist they learn fractions in order to pass.
Having helped create a charter school I will tell you in for a hard slog. The entrenchments of the administrators of our educational system is frightening. I have met many home schooled children in the past nine years and that is the hope of the future.
Pull your kids out of government schools now, you cannot afford to wait for school choice initiatives or change. Yes, we should push for them but in the mean time we need to starve the beast and for heaven's sake protect our children. Even if those in charge of your local school district or school aren't lunatics themselves, I can guarantee they are gutless cowards. They will go along with the lunatic left in every demand because their worst fear is that someone will call them racists, homophobic, etc. They will willingly sacrifice your children to help ensure no one calls them names. They are government bureaucrats at heart, and their biggest concern is keeping their head down.
Seriously, you cannot wait on this. Do whatever it takes to get them out, if that means a second mortgage on your home, working overtime, or raiding your 401k then that's what you need to do. You risk losing your children to the non-stop indoctrination and may *never* get them back. We almost waited too long but it looks like we got ours out just in time (though our older one is still touch and go at this point). Yes, we had to change our lifestyle to afford it but these are our kids we are talking about.
Do not wait and start looking into options now. Our kids ended up at a small jr/sr high school run by the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod that is absolutely fantastic. We are Christian though not Lutheran, but they LCMS is conservative and very traditional. It's also has the second largest parochial school system in the US. This may not be best solution for everyone but it was literally an answer to our prayers. It was a huge change for our kids from a big suburban school district, but they adapted quickly and really enjoy it.
Yes, we need to fight for school choice and also must go on the offense at school board meetings. But change takes time and in the meantime your kids will be subjected to relentless indoctrination and peer pressure to conform. Don't wait, get them out now. Every day they spend in government schools is a day spent indoctrinating them with values directly at odds with yours.
Don't forget we just found out this week that the NSBA letter to the DoJ was only at the request of the Brandon White House, used as a pretext to come after "uppity" parents who dared object.
That the NSBA is imploding as a result could not be a more perfect example of Karma in action.
Although we have many choices among colleges for our kids, they are in such lockstep with one another, so it’s just as bad or even worse than public education. The “better” the school in historical rankings, the more carefully captured it is in all respects. Duke and Stanford, for instance, are among the most oppressive Zero-Covid and woke idiocracies on the planet.
100% agree. In the meantime, I recommend supporting HSLDA. They're not going to listen to us as long as a majority of our kids are enrolled in the schools they have, so we need to make sure everyone retains the right to homeschool.
I’m a Paraeducator in an elementary school, and I am in the minority at my school...only 7 of us are unvaxxed. And I am the only one who is vocal there about the vax and mask mandates.
The parents have no idea what goes on here and if they did, I honestly don’t know if they’d do anything.
I went to my principal last week about the constant “mask shaming” of the kids. She legit looked at me and asked “What’s mask shaming?” 🤦🏼♀️ I said...the constant yelling at the kids with: “Where’s your mask?”, “Pull up your mask!”, “Your mask is dirty!”...and even putting kids in time out for not wearing their masks “appropriately”.
I then reminded her of the beautiful collage of Self-Portraits in our hallway. The collage that saddens me greatly every time I walk by. The collage of Self-Portraits that show the masked faces of all but a handful who drew themselves without a mask. THIS is how our children “see” themselves, and it is heartbreaking.
In France, I find I can't go to some hospitals because I don't have the ridiculous 'passe sanitaire'. Time to bring the whole circus down, not just education, but the so called 'Health' systems, 'Social' systems, the lot.
There was a time when teaching was a calling. It didn't pay well and most of the people who went into teaching did so out of a love for children. The low pay was balanced by lots of time off which resulted in working 35 weeks out of the year (approx. 170 days). This was quite different from most other types of work where people worked at least 45 weeks a year (approx. 225 days).
To "improve" education and recruit "better qualified" teachers money was thrown at the "problem." Salaries were increased again and again. The result was that many of those recruited no longer saw it as a calling but as a pretty decent paying job with lots of time off, early retirement compared to most other types of work, and tremendous job security. The result was an overall decrease in the quality of education. The solution to that was to increase pay further and to pay for teachers to acquire Master's degrees and to pay the holders of those degrees even more pay. This resulted in a further overall decrease in the overall quality of education. To fix this there are still those who insist that the solution is more money.
None of this is to say that teachers should not be paid a decent living salary but it is to say that throwing more money at the problem of low quality education is not the solution or at least not the sole or primary solution.
Then there is the credentialing process. Many people who are experts in their fields are "not qualified" to teach because they don't have a teaching degree. For example a successful artist who has had their art displayed in many galleries is not qualified to teach an art class. A person who started a small business and grew it into 20 locations is not qualified to teach a business class. A carpenter with 20 years of experience is not qualified to teach a wood shop class. An accomplished author is not qualified to teach an english composition class. The teaching credential from a college is required. This isn't based on what is best for kids. It's based on the teacher programs at colleges guarding their turf and insuring a continous flow of customers for their programs.
All of the above is just part of the problem with elementary and secondary education. The problems with the college system are also numerous. The whole system is based on guarding turf. Experience counts for nothing. However like elementary and secondary education the quality of college education has decreased for similar reasons. The costs have increased while the quality has decreased.
I think the solution at the elementary and secondary levels is school choice. Unions and politicos being opposed to that is just evidence of their agenda not being what is in the best interests of children. If they deliver quality education they would have nothing to fear from competition.
The nature of bureaucracies is that over time the primary purpose becomes the continuance and perpetuation of the bureaucracy.
I posted this comment elsewhere (https://tobyrogers.substack.com/p/thinking-points-memo-jan-15-2022), but it is so apropos to this post, I’ll repeat it here:
The authoritarian educational institutions, health care systems, and employers have done us a favor by liberating all of the ethical, talented critical thinkers who value freedom and humanity. This will cause the collapse of Establishment organizations while we erect thriving parallel educational, health care, and business services.
All the leading publications for, you know, the smart people have been running articles for several years now portraying children as irritants and impediments to the "fulfilled" life. They're at most lifestyle accessories but not, you know, who you'd die for...
I gave birth at 40 and thought I was a fully-formed human being by then. Not hardly; not even begun. Parenthood makes you reach your full potential, for good or ill. It's a horrifying landscape out there at the moment, with the folks with authority and reach being the worst at it...
We homeschooled. Best decision ever and this was before. (Our youngest graduated 9 years ago.) not only do kids get a better education, they are well rounded, have a lot less teen angst overall, and have a lot more experiences (travel, field trips, volunteering, jobs, etc). Our state has a lot of homeschoolers and has been homeschool friendly, but we get zero for our tax dollars - can’t use school facilities, libraries, participate in sports. So there are homeschool leagues for the major sports, the public library, and coops to do science labs. People innovate and make it work.
Dr. Pam Popper did an extended and phenomenally positive interview with Dr. Joe Mercola on his channel (e.g. Rumble). Part of the interview was devoted to this school problem, its extent, the years of breakdown prior to the lockdown, the calls for reform that never happened. Popper describes solutions that her community and others around the nation are implementing. First step is to remove children from the toxic environments. If enough do this, the mandates stop and the schools collapse. She describes a case where a mask mandate was quickly retired when no children showed up for school. But more importantly, the quality of the educational experiences and its impact has many silver linings and opportunities as she describes in detail. Elsewhere in the interview she talks pragmatic strategies for making change, and the great progress her organization and community group is making in collaboration with Tom Renz on legal challenges. Her story about backing Ohio down from a second lockdown is instructive.
Back in May I stood in front of my local school board (I worked for this school district for five years as a para and quit because of masking children. Both of my children attended their schools. They are being educated in an alternative way right now) and railed on them for masking children. I was called a right wing conspiracy theorist in social media, local newspapers. Nothing changed. Children are still be masked, separated and being conditioned to believe they are walking disease. The school boards are useless. They parrot what the local health department tells them and if they dare defy the mandates the school funding will be pulled. It’s tyranny! But parents are not backing down. They are organizing and planning. Stay tuned.
I taught math at a middle-tier, private university for 35 years. I taught a course that had a large number of math-ed students. They were known to be the weakest students we had. The math-ed department (not the math department). felt it was not necessary for them to understand fractions, and objected to their being forced to learn them. Their feeling was we should just "let it go. They'll learn fractions when they are in the classrooms and have to teach them". One excellent adjunct faculty member was let go because she continued to insist they learn fractions in order to pass.
Having helped create a charter school I will tell you in for a hard slog. The entrenchments of the administrators of our educational system is frightening. I have met many home schooled children in the past nine years and that is the hope of the future.
The support for school choice/anti CTU sentiment is the highest I’ve seen in the 15 years I’ve been in Chicago…
Pull your kids out of government schools now, you cannot afford to wait for school choice initiatives or change. Yes, we should push for them but in the mean time we need to starve the beast and for heaven's sake protect our children. Even if those in charge of your local school district or school aren't lunatics themselves, I can guarantee they are gutless cowards. They will go along with the lunatic left in every demand because their worst fear is that someone will call them racists, homophobic, etc. They will willingly sacrifice your children to help ensure no one calls them names. They are government bureaucrats at heart, and their biggest concern is keeping their head down.
Seriously, you cannot wait on this. Do whatever it takes to get them out, if that means a second mortgage on your home, working overtime, or raiding your 401k then that's what you need to do. You risk losing your children to the non-stop indoctrination and may *never* get them back. We almost waited too long but it looks like we got ours out just in time (though our older one is still touch and go at this point). Yes, we had to change our lifestyle to afford it but these are our kids we are talking about.
Do not wait and start looking into options now. Our kids ended up at a small jr/sr high school run by the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod that is absolutely fantastic. We are Christian though not Lutheran, but they LCMS is conservative and very traditional. It's also has the second largest parochial school system in the US. This may not be best solution for everyone but it was literally an answer to our prayers. It was a huge change for our kids from a big suburban school district, but they adapted quickly and really enjoy it.
Yes, we need to fight for school choice and also must go on the offense at school board meetings. But change takes time and in the meantime your kids will be subjected to relentless indoctrination and peer pressure to conform. Don't wait, get them out now. Every day they spend in government schools is a day spent indoctrinating them with values directly at odds with yours.
Don't forget we just found out this week that the NSBA letter to the DoJ was only at the request of the Brandon White House, used as a pretext to come after "uppity" parents who dared object.
That the NSBA is imploding as a result could not be a more perfect example of Karma in action.
The NEA wrote up the infection control/reopening plan for after lockdown, hence the kids eating alone, the plexiglass boxes, the masks, etc. and the CDC accepted it with zero editorial input. The collusion between the teachers' union and government bureaucracy is evident. This stole and destroyed developmental milestones and learning in children, "because we had to keep the teachers safe" ---remember this??? https://www.mystateline.com/news/state-news/chicago-teachers-union-leader-who-vacationed-while-claiming-its-unsafe-to-return-to-school-apologizes/
The Dept of Education, CDC, heck the FBI and Dept of Energy must all be shuttered as they have caused more harms to the people than 9/11.
Although we have many choices among colleges for our kids, they are in such lockstep with one another, so it’s just as bad or even worse than public education. The “better” the school in historical rankings, the more carefully captured it is in all respects. Duke and Stanford, for instance, are among the most oppressive Zero-Covid and woke idiocracies on the planet.
100% agree. In the meantime, I recommend supporting HSLDA. They're not going to listen to us as long as a majority of our kids are enrolled in the schools they have, so we need to make sure everyone retains the right to homeschool.