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Nikita Bush's career as a public school teacher came to an end when she faced the decision of how to educate her own children. Having been told for years that American public schools would eventually get better for black children, the number of African-American homeschooling parents like Ms. Bush has doubled in little over a decade.
As Patrick Jonsson of the Christian Science monitor reports, studies show all kinds of public school problems disproportionately affect black children, and many parents have decided to take matters into their own hands. Even single parents are forming co-ops to make it possible to educate their children together outside of the public school system.
What do you do when you feel the system is failing your child and their education?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by kurenai.tsubasa on Monday August 22 2016, @02:23PM
Looks like we have a Department of Education common core shill here! That's odd. There is such a thing? Eh, who knew? Is this a workgroup or something in Correct the Record? Ok, I jest. You're probably not a shill….
That's quite a leap to go from black people taking responsibility for their own betterment and doing what I, perhaps in my addled libertarian two-parent-of-whatever-gender family lunacy, have believed for a long time is the responsibility of co-ops of parents (if memory of reading TFA while it was still in the queue serves, is something only possible in Alabama?), educating their children. (If one wanted to fund such a co-op, I think they call them vouchers or something, but that's an entirely different debate whether such a thing should be funded with public monies or not.)
Government schools are more prisons and indoctrination centers than educational establishments. I was still in high school when there were the first signs of things seriously starting to go off the rails. My high school bought some cattle gates and barricaded the student parking lot during school hours I think in my junior or sophomore year. They're making sure that kids are raised as cogs in prisons so they are comfortable living as cogs in prisons. While I can understand that perhaps government schools should exist and that they could be much, much better at the goal of education, as they exist these days, I would go so far as to call it child abuse and un-American to send one's children to a government indoctrination day camp.
I suppose I could scale back the tinfoil hat rhetoric. It's probably just a tragedy of the commons combined with rampant anti-intellectualism come home to roost.
Educating my kids is not something I would trust the American government with in a million years. Too many ways it can go wrong, and the consequences can be life-altering. Other countries seem to get it, but Americans are hopelessly lost, so their government by them, for them, is equally hopelessly lost. But I can't have kids so whatever.
I, for one, salute these parents! Let them be an example of how to fight against and hopefully one day overcome generations and generations, centuries and centuries, of systematic, institutional oppression and of their human rights being trampled upon. I am certain it is not easy, but I believe they are fighting the good fight.
Finally, this is not victimhood. Nobody is asking anybody to FEEL GUILTY. This is working towards a solution. This represents the principles of Kwanzaa in action. I don't see anything inherently FEEL GUILTY or threatening about this. In fact, I find it inspiring.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday August 22 2016, @07:33PM
I was still in high school when there were the first signs of things seriously starting to go off the rails. My high school bought some cattle gates and barricaded the student parking lot during school hours I think in my junior or sophomore year.
I wonder if we're about the same age. For me it was when they replaced one of my best friend's grandma as hall monitor with two uniformed cops and started locking the school doors. And this was in a Very nice suburb, not the hood (there was no criminal activity to justify the cops). Figure the first Bush presidency era, before the first Gulf war, etc.
The idea of school doors being locked is really weird to me. I suppose people who grew up in prison will not find prison to be unusual at all. I guess in the old days high school was very "salaried like" where you were expected to mostly show up and make your numbers, and now its very "call center like" where its basically a locked down zoo or prison. Very weird.
My kids are getting to the age where they'll have to participate in that kind of foolishness, trying to figure out how to handle it. Send them to the local Catholic school? To a private school of some sort? I donno. I got a couple more years to think it thru.