More and more in the general culture, parents are becoming less and less involved in their children’s education – or so it seems or so we are led to believe. So therefore, we are to leave Government Legislation the Media Education to "the professionals". Nonsense – more and more I keep understanding why we need to keep the attitude of "hey, you work for us!" and not the other way around or to allow them to lead us by the nose. More and more, we are expected to take what they say as gospel and just allow them to do what we believe to be the right thing. However, it seems to be the case that every time I go to yet another site, there is another story of how our Educational system is not educating, but it is subverting the nation’s traditional value system. This line from Ann Marie’s post nailed it:
The outcome may require a student to alter their value system.
Anti-Patriotic:
A most blatant example is that the Pledge of Allegiance is seen as being offensive (to someone) and should not be said by students:
So they went to the school, PS29, to change that. After spirited meetings with parents, teachers, and an “educational unit for kids,” the principal agreed to have the Pledge broadcast over the school’s loud speaker “for the first time in years.”
But here‘s what’s interesting. In New York, reciting the Pledge daily in schools is the law. The principal, then, isn’t doing anything revolutionary — she‘s just complying with what’s been mandated since just after 9/11.
Others, however, aren’t. The Daily News called 10 New York-area schools asking if they recite the Pledge regularly. Only half do.
"Only half do." At the risk of being labeled jingoistic, I found the idea that not saying the Pledge is absolutely amazing (on the idea of befuddling): "I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of American, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all". Foundational issues, foundational philosophy. Is it that much to ask that citizens support the country we live in? Is that YOUR value?
Extra:
Red Skeltonhas a great take on the Pledge that is a must read.
Anti-capitalistic and Pro-Marxist:
There is no way that Marxism and socialism is congruent with the Founders’ vision. Yet, more and more, the liberal socialism that is in the Ivory Towers of colleges and universities, pushed by the Boomer hippie generation, is migrating do the high, middle, and elementary school levels. How many of you parents understand that Johnny and Janie’s teachers hate the system that 1) pays YOUR salaries and 2) uses your taxpayer dollars to teach your children that hatred? Is that your value system? Did our veterans fight and give their all fighting totalitarian countries just so that we would end up being one anyways? What is it that your teachers are teaching your children – do you REALLY know or are you assuming?
More background here. And don’t forget this from the Unions:
“High school is too late” to educate students about unions and workers, says Shuler, the daughter of union parents in Oregon who joined the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers as an activist and organizer after college. “We need to get into the elementary schools.”
Collectivism – it isn’t just…
And now, we know why – 
A funny thing happened on the way to the ‘off-hand comment’ on the Merrimack TEA facebook page. I was accused of not using "real and accurate data" and that my "rhetoric was not doing anyone any good."
There are plenty of towns like mine trying to figure out where they can cut costs. But every conversation seems to end at cutting education or safety services. While I find it hard to believe that there is nothing else in a budget you can trim, I think I have come up with a reasonable compromise (if not just for the sake of our own rhetorical amusement) that can cut at least a little bit of money from the budget without affecting staffing or resources.
In a front page story from the Wednesday Union Leader the group AIDS Services for the Monadnock Region has run into trouble.