Notes From Gordon: Public School - Bring Your Own Shovel

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Public School: Bring Your Own Shovel

A supreme irony—one that would not sit well with boards of education across America—is that the primary purpose of education is to remove the teacher from the process. 

Ask most children who their teacher is and they will reply, "Miss Johnson" or "Mr. Smith."

Ask my children who their teacher is and they will politely reply, "I am."

The reality is that information cannot be pushed, it can only be received.

Everything else is just inculcation.

The very idea of force feeding information into the mind of another and calling it education is ludicrous.

Yet that is exactly how many (most?) of today’s government public school teachers function—as information pushers.

The harder and better the teacher pushes, the better the grades the student will get.

At least, that’s the plan.

And the more likely the school system will be to remain eligible for federal funding under the "No Child Left Alone Behind Act."

Is it possible to push information into another mind, as if the brain were a hard drive and facts were data being written to the drive?

Take the case of 5^th grader, Mary Williams, who lives in rural America and is publicly schooled.

• A yellow transport vehicle picks Mary up each morning at the designated waiting area and ships her off to a regional, federally subsidized, social conditioning center where:

• Bells ring and inventory is taken.

• Mary is segregated by age and forbidden to collaborate (it's called cheating).

• Mary is seated in a stuffy classroom with no ventilation and overhead fluorescent lighting at Barack Obama Regional Elementary School.

• A state-licensed individual in career appropriate attire called a teacher stands in front of the room while facing dozens of fidgeting youngsters in rows of seats bolted to the floor.

• Some of the more hyperactive students have been medicated and now stare straight ahead (drooling optional).

• The teacher delivers a sanitized, politically correct, one-size-fits-all curriculum of facts and information by reading from a book that the students could easily read for themselves.

• Concept mastery is not required.

• A 90 on a test receives an “A” grade.

• The 10 incorrect answers are not retested.

Concept mastery… what’s that again?

Let us pray that Mary does not become an aerospace engineer and calculate 90% successful orbits (only 10% of the astronauts die).

Or become an architect and have only 10% of her buildings collapse.

Today Mary is being taught how to put a condom on a cucumber, and learns that Heather has not one, but Two Mommies.

Mary fills out quiz papers asking if Daddy ever pushed Mommy, or whether there are any firearms in the home.

Hands must be raised for permission to go to the bathroom.

Hall monitors observe Mary’s comings and goings and report suspicious behavior to the Central Office.

A loudspeaker on the classroom wall allows the principal to speak to every student in every classroom at the same time.

Mary will never read 1984 by George Orwell, so it will never occur to her that the authoritative voice of Big Brother speaking to everyone from a central command center is more than a little creepy.

Mary’s locker is periodically subject to search without warning.

Mary could be suspended for wearing a catchy T-shirt bearing the image of a Super Soaker water gun, or an instructive saying like Thomas Jefferson's stirring quote:

"The tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of Tyrants and Patriots."

Police officers under the DARE program come into the classroom to teach Mary about drugs that she never knew existed, thereby sparking her intense curiosity.

After-hour programs are made available to keep Mary and her classmates in involuntary edu-custody long enough for Mom or Dad to get home from their jobs.

Successful regurgitation of a mere 60% of the inventory of facts that Mary is supposed to memorize will get her a grade of D.

A perfect string of D’s throughout her four years of continuous attendance (in compliance with state truancy laws) will keep Mary traveling down the moving beltway towards graduation and free up her slot for the next kid coming through.

Upon graduating and venturing out into the real world, Mary and her classmates will proceed to forget most of what they were taught which, if truth be told, they will never need again anyway.

Like the fact that the contractile structure in the vorticella is the myoneme.

Apparently this is more important to know than how to balance a budget, complete a resume, split firewood, sprout bean seeds, change the oil, change a flat tire, use a telescope, put the red dot on a beer can from 100 yards away, build a tree house, understand a credit report or—God forbid—learn how to become an entrepreneur. 

Or to learn that Abraham Lincoln was a career climbing tyrant with a kleptomaniac of a wife who once slapped him in the face during a White House cabinet meeting and stormed out of the room while Abe sat there looking sheepish.

Why do tax-consuming educrats in the Emerald City (D.C.) allow this farce to continue?

Because the real reason for the existence of public schools is not to teach children how to become self-reliant individuals who can think for themselves.

The real reason for the existence of public schools is to function as glorified federal day care centers for the millions of children whose working parents aren’t home all day.

The nation’s children need someplace safe where they can be supervised during working hours while their parents labor to provide economic lubrication in the form of taxes.

This became necessary at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution when a future army of workers would need to be able to read the manuals of the machines they would operate in order for Empire to expand.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the real reason for the multi-billion dollar, standardized, centrally managed institutional system that we call public education.

Yes, glorified federal day care in the name of public schooling (diploma optional).

And while the educrats have the children in their hot little hands, why not:

• Discourage dissent?

• Reward consensual thinking?

• Force feed them the Empire's winning version of history?

• Entirely avoid all mention of real history, in particular those facts that would undermine the sociopolitical goals of Empire?

Lovers of liberty, hear me now!

Become become sappers and miners.

Undermine we must, if truth and liberty are to prevail.

Tunnel under the assembly-line social conformity factory that passes as public education until the entire rotten edifice falls of its own weight.*

Do what freedom lovers did when the Berlin Wall fell.

Tear the public schools apart, brick by brick, with your bare, bleeding hands.

Liberate your children from the clutches of the educrats.

Rise to the occasion!… do whatever is necessary!… quit your job if you have to, go on welfare (don’t forget EBT cards)… live with your precious children in an RV down by the river and home school them there!

An education like this could not be purchased for the largest of student loans.

And what memories they will have.

For only the truth can set us free.

Gordon

* P.S. Bring your own shovel.

About The Author
Gordon’s juvenile rap sheet includes 12 years of hard time incarcerated in a state-mandated social conditioning camp, complete with chain link fence, security cameras, entry buzzer, periodic lock down drills, yellow inmate transport vehicles, ringing bells, daily roll call, locker inspections, hall monitors, a pill dispensary, regular assessment exams and a warden principal.

Upon escaping Gordon is known to have joined the notorious Al-Gebra movement who derive solutions by means and extremes, and sometimes go off on tangents in search of absolute values.

BOLO! Gordon is currently wanted in all 50 states for not giving financial advice without a license.

If you see this man, approach cautiously, for he is known to be armed with a protractor, a compass and a slide-rule, all weapons of math instruction.