Most who read this blog are familiar with the fact that I support and promote home education.  Besides the obvious positive advantage for familial relationships, it is a one-on-one style of education which gives the greatest opportunity for learning.

Another unrelated aspect of home education is that it is a legitimate and specific expression of personal secession from the Empire.  The educational establishment is becoming more and more Machiavellian as the years go by.  While education a hundred and fifty years ago was centered in the local community, education is now directed from the District of Columbia—state officials now have very little latitude in schooling.  Local schools are manipulated from "experts" completely removed from the reality of teaching children.

Because of their absence from reality, the orchestrators of today's public (make that statist) education have no concept of the personal nature of learning.  This filters down to the local levels.  An article of an Orwellian nature was pointed out by an Arkansas friend committed to home education.  It seems that the Contra Costa County (California) school district is outfitting their preschoolers with tracking devices.

When at the school, students will wear a jersey that has a small radio frequency tag. The tag will send signals to sensors that help track children's whereabouts, attendance and even whether they've eaten or not.

When the “teachers” at a school have such a high degree of attention deficit that they cannot keep track of their classroom (? 20? to 30? students?) the system is completely bankrupt…intellectually AND morally.

School officials say it will free up teachers and administrators who previously had to note on paper files when a child was absent or had eaten.

When “teachers and administrators” lack the ability or desire to make a check-mark on a list of thirty or less names, why should they be paid?  Mommas don’t need tracking devices to know where their children are.  As a teenager, I remember being consistently amazed that as I walked in the back door of the farmhouse, my mother already knew where I’d been and what I’d done.

Tennesseans might say that placing tracking devices on school children would never happen here, but remember …what begins on the Left Coast always sweeps the continent.

Let’s go ahead and individually secede from as much of the Empire’s system as we possibly can.  We will not only be beginning the trek toward liberty, but our children will be safer as well. 

Give me a free Tennessee, but most of all give me free Tennesseans!

From Solitude,
David O Jones

What happens when a school district pays its faculty over three times the median income ($22,000) of the community? Arrogance!

Central Falls High School in Rhode Island has an abysmal graduation rate of 48 percent. At midyear of this academic year, 50 percent of all the students are failing all of their classes. The school superintendent gave them two options.

Option One: two additional weeks of training in the summer (at $30 per hour), spend one lunch hour per week eating with the students, work an extra 25 minutes per day, and help tutor students for an hour before or after school on a rotating schedule.

Option Two: get fired.

Last week, the teachers, earning $70,000 to $78,000 per year, said “no.” At least their union said “no.” Union leaders felt they should get to negotiate. Already earning exorbitant pay while performing at a substandard level, they have the arrogance to believe they should get to negotiate!

School Superintendent Frances Gallo gave them Option Two. If the teachers don’t change their mind within ten days, 100 teachers, administrators and assistants at Central Falls High School will not have jobs next year.

These people are infected with a special type of arrogance which includes total greed and total laziness. I am sorry to say that they don’t just deserve to be fired they deserve the good old southern practice of being tarred, feathered, and run out of town on a rail.
No people can be free with attitudes such as these teachers have. I pray we have none such as them in Tennessee.

Give me a Free Tennessee.

From Solitude,
David O Jones

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported last Friday (22 Jan) that for the first time in the history of the United States economy, government workers make up the majority of union members. Local, state and government workers now represent 51.5 percent of all union members.

It seems that the poor economy has so affected various union dominated industries that overall union membership has declined by 771,000 workers. Before you cry too much for the boys, realize that that decline only represents 0.1 percent of everyone working.

It’s my guess that the largest single group of employees within the government’s union total would be teachers. The TEA (Tennessee Education Association) does a massive task of political “spin” when they continually speak of their every effort lobbying the Tennessee Legislature as labour “for the children.”

The truth is that the TEA is the biggest beneficiary of government largess. The teachers across the state are paid by your and my tax dollars, then the TEA takes a portion of those tax dollars in the form of dues in order to lobby the legislature for more tax dollars.

The teachers’ union is the only lobbying organization in the state which is paid by the state to lobby the state to pay them more money from the state. Talk about a racket!

As long as there is a teachers’ union, there can be no effect state education legislation. The TEA is paid to look out for the teachers, not for the children. Let individual teachers lobby, but outlaw the union.

Just another step toward a truly Free Tennessee.

From Solitude,
David O Jones

Why do so many private schools, church-related schools, and homeschools succeed while public schools fail? Their motivation.

By motivation, I don’t mean any sense of “rah-rah” excitement, but rather the internal drive which causes the teacher to teach and the student to study. The state schools (a more accurate term than public) are a vehicle for the state to promote its own interests.

Politicians want to stay in office and accumulate greater power, so creating an educational system which dumbs down the electorate is in the politicians’ best interest. True education is lost in the process.

The teachers’ union wants to provide more money for more teachers, thus expanding the union leadership’s own influence and wealth. Teachers then do less so that their teachers’ union has reason to lobby for more. Diplomas are handed to young people who cannot read them.

So why do alternative educational opportunities succeed? Because the teachers do want to teach. They and the students want to learn and work together to make it happen… without the big bucks!

A special session of the Tennessee legislature was called by Governor Bredesen to provide changes in the state schools which will allow more of the Empire’s dollars to flow into the hands of the teachers’ union. And last evening the Tennessee gubernatorial candidates expressed their views on education in a forum called by former Senator Frist’s SCORE organization. It is all just an exercise in futility as long as the motivation is dollars.

Tennessee’s intellectual future rests in the real education provided by private, church-related, and home educators.

From Solitude,
David O Jones

The Nashville Tennessean reports, “Gov. Phil Bredesen will call a special legislative session Jan. 12 to make sweeping changes to education law in hopes the state will win a bid for millions in federal grant money. Bredesen wants state law to require teachers be evaluated on how well their students perform. He also wants tenure and staff decisions to be decided by the student achievement data.”

It was just a couple of weeks ago that former Senator Bill Frist was touting the SCORE report, “A Roadmap to Success.” Phil wants money, Bill wants better standards. Doesn’t everyone want more money and better standards? It seems like a no-brainer, but wait…maybe the problem is neither money, nor standards. Maybe the problem is a system that didn’t work in the first place. And maybe all the fixing and repairing and standarding and pumping-up-with-dollars can’t put Humpty Dumpty back together again because he was broke to begin with.

It seems inexplicable to me that two intelligent men (Bredesen and Frist), one a successful entrepreneur and the other a noted heart surgeon have such a difficulty understanding that the problem with the educational system in Tennessee is the system itself!

In Tennessee’s Constitution, rewritten on the heels of military occupation during the War for Southern Independence and the oppression of Reconstruction, states in Article XI, Section 12, “…The General Assembly shall provide for the maintenance, support and eligibility standards of a system of free public schools….” “Free schools” were a politically correct innovation in the late 1800’s. Although education without public funding (practiced in the South) had been superior to that in the North, the politicians yielded to Yankee pressure.

Perhaps we could do better again. Perhaps we could have a higher percentage of high school graduates with functional literacy if we tried an entrepreneurial and private approach to education instead of continuing with tax-funding.

Albert Einstein said, “We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them .” An educated public is important to regaining and maintaining our liberty. Let’s start thinking with new paradigms and work to get our children educated, not just well-funded.

A truly educated citizenry is important to gaining our own Tennessee Nation.

From Solitude,
David O Jones