The Mountain Home students are only copying what is happening with sports figures, Hollywood stars and overpaid recording Divas who couldn’t recite the 1st amendment if you put it in front of them. The superintendent of this school should be exercising control at the school and redirecting the students’ energy to understanding what they are protesting about by having a debate within the school that actually brings up the bill of rights and the first amendment. This way everyone has an opportunity to support the side of their choice and give their reasons why. Painting a parking spot advocating “Black Lives Matter” without permission is nothing more than an act of disrespect for school property.
Fortunately the superintendent took control of a situation that could have easily gotten out of hand and almost did with the opposing group wanting a confederate flag parking space and bringing down watermelon and fried chicken to the other students which could also be regarded as a disrespectful act. School officials are far too often afraid to stick their necks out for fear of losing their jobs because of ambiguous regulations and by often misguided public opinion, but it is important for them to act both prudently and swiftly to keep control of situations like these.
There is nothing wrong with expressing opinions in school; after all isn’t that what the learning experience is all about, or should I say used to be about. What we need to keep in mind is that we do it respectfully and in an intellectual manner to spur debate on the subject with our opponents, but keep it in the class room. If students want to peacefully demonstrate, that is their right as American citizens, and there is a time and place for that to happen with permission of the proper school officials.
We must all remember that our children spend more time with their teachers than they do with their parents now a days. Teachers have a tremendous amount of influence over our children, and how they will turn out as adults. We can see that by the activities that are taking place on our college campuses that many of our students had very liberal and progressive instructors who have influenced them over the years they were in school. This in many cases is a result of two parents working and not having the time to spend nurturing their children and mentoring them on a daily basis. These are the same parents who have to rely on the teachers to fill in for them so they can make enough money to support the family unit. The problem is that teachers are not parents and are not going to teach their principles and values so the family unit disappears before their very eyes as their children learn different values than their parents would have taught them.
I have spoken to many parents whose children are still in college and even graduated, too many times they have told me “I just don’t understand why my Johnny turned out to be such a liberal thinker since we are so conservative.” How do you tell a parent that it was their fault for not having the time to spend mentoring their children in their formative years when you know they are both working two jobs to make ends meet? This is why it is so imperative that we have school choice and top of the line teachers where the money follows the children not where the children are forced to deal with one education fits all in the public system run by government bureaucrats.
Our education system has become bloated with bureaucratic administrators who are nothing more than sheriffs for government rules and regulations. These people make up as much as 25 to 30% of our school budgets, and many make outrageous salaries compared to what we pay our teachers who are the ones responsible for the day to day education of our kids. The State has taken over way too much of the responsibilities in the education of our children because of funding by the federal government with their thousands of rules and then layered with State regulations on top of that. We now have a politicized education system where the bureaucrats in the state are responsible for the hiring and firing of our teachers, so if you have liberal administrators, it’s a good bet you are going to have liberal teachers.
Whatever happened to involving parents with the hiring of teachers and the picking of curriculum for our schools on a local level? That is all but forgotten because of the power structure now owned by the state and federal officials. We have politicized our school boards so much that they run our local school systems as they please with very little input from the public.
I have heard from many people that charter schools are being taken over by corporations and that foundations like the Albertson’s foundation have been wielding a heavy hand in the Charter school arena, but we need alternatives to a general public education because competition is a way to obtain change. We are now seeing some of our churches contemplate building schools because of the government regulations, and this will help by offering again another choice as long as the money follows the children in equivalent dollars that would be paid for a public education. The money needs to be taken away from all government officials and given to the children if we want better educations at lower costs. Increased competition will benefit our educational system just as free enterprise benefits our economy. We need to allow for more choices as not everyone wants to go to college. There will always be a need for plumbers, carpenters, welders and automotive technicians, just as we will need artists and musicians. Donald Trump has said he wants to allow for choice and get rid of the Dept. of Education as we know it. This would be the first real step in giving parents and their children true control to choose their education.
