Amey's Blog

I planned for this to be about homemaking and homeschooling, but now it's just a chaotic jumble of news and ideas about animals, kids, food, and other random thoughts.

Thursday, November 18, 2004

A Long Opinionated Post on Education

A recent quote from the President:
"We must ensure that a high school diploma is a sign of real achievement so that our young people have the tools to go to college and to fill the jobs of the 21st century."

The problem is that the "education people" want to give high school diplomas to everyone. If a diploma is to be "a sign of real achievement", there are going to be some who don’t make that achievement. A few are not capable of meeting the objective standards (through no fault of their own, and certainly not for lack of trying), and there are some who don’t try, and don’t want a diploma. This is upsetting to the education people because they want everyone to be an academic success. That is why they keep lowering the standards and adding subjective standards.

Of course, wanting academic success isn’t a problem. But we need to know THE GOAL. What’s the purpose of education? The purpose drives the standards. The people who come up with these standards, policy changes, etc. believe that education is salvation. It is part of the humanistic belief system, that if only people were educated, they wouldn’t (fill-in-the-blank with any number of social wrongs). It’s all about money and education. If the Muslims had money and a good education, they wouldn’t blow themselves up along with other innocent people. If teenagers had a comprehensive, highly funded sex education in school, we’d end teenage pregnancy and STD’s. There are so many examples that could be used to illustrate this. This assumption is so wrong, it just boggles my mind that our federal government continues to put more and more and more money into education. It will not fix the problem - it will only make it larger.

If the government does not continue to lower objective standards and add subjective standards, and if it does not continue to raise the amount of money they allocate for education; then they will have to admit that something is wrong with their system. That is why they continue to do these things. I think that most of them truly want to help children (except maybe for the union people), but their philosophical basis for education is doomed to failure. The only education that is worth working towards, is the education that points children to Jesus Christ. A real education will teach children that sin is the reason we see evil in the world. And a real education will teach children that reliance on God’s grace by faith is the only way we can keep from sliding into the abyss with the rest of the world ourselves.

I was asked today what I thought about the President’s recent selection of Margaret Spellings for Secretary of Education. I think that she probably won’t make any of the changes that need to be made. Testing, standards, and money will continue to increase. The only way to stop these increases is to completely abolish the Department of Education. As far as public education ever changing its philosophical foundation, I don't see it happening anytime soon.


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