Take Your Children Out of Government Schools

by Dave Hodges

Many Americans are speaking about removing their children from government-run schools and finding alternatives to an increasingly failing system. In lieu of the recent rash of school shootings, many parents feel that moving their children to another educational venue will help to protect them from crazed, lone gunman who are on psychotropic medications and are seeking to do harm to our children while attending school in gun free zones with no protection. In a few isolated incidences, this may be true.

However, school shootings are such an isolated event, I am not sure how to protect against students other than by having armed guards on every campus in America.

Aside from school violence, there are some other very compelling reasons that parents may want to consider when deciding where and how to educate their child. This is the first in a multi-part series which will clearly delineate the reasons why those in the know will never let their child darken the doors of the nation’s government schools.

Many American government run schools are largely becoming bastions of ignorance and underachievement. In short, many schools are not doing their job. School districts across America flirt with every new educational fad, most of which most are scientifically unproven when it comes to positively improving the academic performance of students, thus, resulting in an enormous waste in tax dollars. Subsequently, much is made of reforming the schools and improving student performance.

On the surface, reforming the public schools is indeed needed when one considers that:

• Only 43 percent of all U.S. high school students have any idea the Civil War was fought in the 19th century.
• ·More than 65% of all U.S. high school students cannot find Great Britain on a map.
• Twelve percent of U.S. high school students cannot find the United States on a map.
• More than 25% of all U.S. high school students thought that Christopher Columbus made his famous voyage across the Atlantic Ocean after the year 1750.
• About 33% of all U.S. high school students do not know that the Bill of Rights guarantees freedom of speech, religion and due process.
• Only 55% of all U.S. students can name the Vice-President.

Yes, government schools are doing their job. They are producing students who are educated enough to greet you at Walmart, but too stupid to question authority with any meaningful resolve. Government schools are perpetuating a state of perpetual idiocracy.

What are parents to do about the epidemic underachievement of our government-educated children? The short answer appears to be move. Move your children out of the government-run schools. Or perhaps, move your children totally out of the country. This is not an outrageous statement when one considers that students in Latvia, Chile and Brazil are making gains in academics three times faster than American students  and those in Portugal, Hong Kong, Germany, Poland, Liechtenstein, Slovenia, Colombia and Lithuania are improving at twice the rate states a recently published by Harvard University’s Program on Education Policy and Governance.

The Harvard researchers estimate that the educational gains made by students in those 11 countries equate to about two years of learning.

The Harvard study found no relevant correlation between increasing the per-pupil spending and gains in test scores. In 2009, the U.S. spent more than $10,000 per student, ranging from $6,356 in Utah to $18,126 in New York.  Utah graduates a higher percentage of its students than does New York. Yet, school funding is the number reason given by government officials to support the need to impose a property tax on American citizens. Property tax is one of the planks of the Communist Party.

Eric Rudner (1999) analyzed the test scores of over 20,000 American homeschooled students and found them to be exceptionally high with the median scores of homeschoolers placing in the 70th to 80th percentile. This is a mean difference of about 25% between homeschooled children and children educated in the government schools. Twenty five percent equates to three grade levels. Do you remember the Harvard study in which our foreign competitors were two grade levels ahead of American schools. The message is clear, close the government schools and home school the children.

Government schools are increasingly propagandizing our children. For example, the new unproven religion being worshipped in the government schools is environmentalism and global warming. Oops, I meant to say climate change, not global warming. I almost forgot that the global warming crowd changed their name when they got caught committing scientific fraud three years ago from hacked emails at East Anglia University in which researchers admitted, through their hacked emails, that global warming was a hoax. Yet, this is the new religion of the American educational system and the facts be damned.

The government schools are conditioning our children to accept a lower standard of living and to pay tribute to the global elite through carbon taxes. Universities like Arizona State University are now offering graduate degrees in sustainability based upon this pseudoscience. It is interesting to note that the President of Arizona State University is CFR member, Michael Crow. Crow is also an ex-CIA operative. This is just one small example of who is running the government schools at the supposed elite level.

One of the more compelling reasons to home school your children is because parents do not want their children going to school with this guy…

And most reasonable parents certainly do not want their children obtaining their world view from this guy….

Dave is an award winning psychology, statistics and research professor, a college basketball coach, a mental health counselor, a political activist and writer who has published dozens of editorials and articles in several publications such as Freedoms Phoenix, News With Views and The Arizona Republic.

The Common Sense Show features a wide variety of important topics that range from the loss of constitutional liberties, to the subsequent implementation of a police state under world governance, to exploring the limits of human potential. The primary purpose of The Common Sense Show is to provide Americans with the tools necessary to reclaim both our individual and national sovereignty.