A response on education

Richard Cottingham February 7 at 3:01pm Report

By what standard do you measure and find that our schools have become "...so dysfunctional."? perhaps it is by the measure of the communities that almost universally underfund public schools. Perhaps it is by the measure of mindless standardized tests that measure memory rather than learning. Perhaps it is by the corporate regbressionists who want to transfer billions in taxpayer school funding to corporate segregated "charter schools".

If you measure public education by the productivity, the creativity, the resourcesfulness, the perseptiveness and the imaginitiveness of the American people, most of whom were educated in public schools I do not think you will find that schools are dysfunctional at all!

It is my guess that you are mindlessly parroting the regressive Republican rhetoric that you have heard from Limbaugh or Beck or Palin. Keep in mind that these obstructionist Regressives want to take America back to the days of segregated schools, wild west gun contgrol, laissez faire business regulation, robber baron economics, and Horatio Alger fantasy opportunity.

There is all this talk about making the government smaller. What naivte! When our government is so small that it cannot function we will still be governed. We will be governed by corporations accountable only to shareholders and not to the people.

As Horatio Alger I did head west in my youth to the wild west where I whore a pistol on my hip or in my pocket for ten years. The public school to where I was quarantined for eight years of my life before I set off on a journey to quantify my thought process through a popper education labeled me as a slow learner in third grade with a scoring of 138 in IQ. (My last testing at university I scored a 156 with no effort put forward.) This public school was the first in the nation to receive the "Academic Award for Excellence" yet I was beaten up by a teacher called stupid on a daily basis by another, had a piece of tape placed around my desk which they called my cage and yet they never identified my learning disability. By chance one of my mothers students had seen a paper I had written and noted that I was Dyslexic as was her son, I was immediately tested and the results confirmed. I spent the last three years in boarding school where in the stead of producing papers from the encyclopedia we were required to have five to seven sources for each work. There was no "red lining" as work submitted had to be correct grammatically, in its punctuation and no errors in spelling. I have seen both good and poor education in my life, but when we started to see how preverbal sausage is currently being made it has raised my ire to levels I had yet to experience. We knew that our son would present with ADHD and as providence opened a path back east just after the birth of our son we seized the opportunity. As our son started his education in a school rated "excellent" small 'e' the difficulties arose. By the end of the second year his schooling had degenerated to the point that the teacher, principal, and the school psychologist were wanting to hold him back. There was no discipline at school and spankings were recommended by his teacher on at least a weekly bases for his actions in class. The situation was untenable with the school telling us to medicate him, and after we fell to pressure and had him tested, something they refused to do in complete disregard for the law, he was medicated. This brought on a whole new side to the coin as he developed extreme side affects to the medication threatening to harm hims self. It reminded me of the ten years that I had as well been medicated and the doctor rightfully pulled the prescription and told us that from my medical history and adverse reactions as well as those experienced by my son that there was no alternative. As providence interceded again my mother had read an ad from Summit Academy and and we interviewed the school. It has been an amazing journey, our son is moving ahead by over a year in his studies, and the school operates with a third less funding per student than the lowest cost public school in the state. There are a maximum of fifteen students and two teachers in every class vs. the thirty to one ratio of any other school. It receives about half of the funding of his public school. I am not some ideologue who has no knowledge in the system, but we see students, new every year coming to Summit who are three or more years behind in their studies, and one who was so beaten by the public system that he arrived in eighth grade illiterate. Some say "for one innocent man to go to the gallows..." then what of the millions sent out into the world illiterate? You speak of the "robber barons" but do you know from where they came? Many from abject poverty, notice the passion they had for education as they founded many schools and universities. How about those kicked out of school most notably Edison and Einstein. Sir I have been through the sausage factory personally, have watched my son and daughter traverse the grind and know how it is made. I have worked with Gov. Strictland to help and improve public education, fought him and prevailed as he tried to extinguish the charter schools. I have lived the nightmare and have no issues with the path I was placed on as it has led me to be educated in the system, and allowed me to advocate for my son, daughter, and who knows how many others in perpetuity. If I had my way, all public schools would be closed in mass and private schools would compete for the students through their results. It works for private schools and universities as every parent would love to see their prodigy achieve at Harvard, Yale, Smith and so on. "For one to pull them selves up by their own bootstraps they must have the boots, and the boots are the education" I quote my self as vein as it may be... Respectfully, Keith Hayes