MISSION: ( Come back and watch it grow )

1. Provide mailing and physical addresses to every school system in the USA.
2. Break it down to every public, charter, vocational and private school.
3. Provide a forum to publicly announce abuses and issues within these institutions.
4. Eventually provide detailed performance information on each school per grade level.

9-23-2003

The public school system in the USA is in shambles. The teachers and many administrators are protected by the strongest union in the nation. They work the least amount of hours per year than any other profession. They should be held more accountable. Literacy rates in the richest nation on the planet are terrible. Parents are equally responsible for the problem. Many are too busy working overtime, paying off the BMW and credit cards, or drinking away the hours in a local saloon.

Accountability, this is the issue. When a child fails to learn to read, write, or form logical decisions, the entire nation suffers. They end up on welfare, or in prison, on the streets selling drugs or worse. I have walked miles with the homeless and one thing most of them have in common is the inability to form logical decisions based primarily on the fact that they were never FORCED to read, write and do math.

I realize that the liberal lawyers of this nation have taken away a teachers ability to enforce rules or punish unruly students. This is a viable excuse for some drop in educational quality but this can be remedied by removing unruly children to more disciplined environments and making their parents accountable. If a parent cannot teach their children to behave in school they need to be held accountable. Chances are they are the ones that didn't behave as kids, or are too busy to care. The unruly child still needs to be FORCED to learn if needed. Better they learn young than to become a burden to the entire nation later. While drugging the kid isn't the solution, putting the parent on roadside cleanup work detail may well be.

Investing in our children, is investing in the security of our nation. If imposing fines on teachers who consistently allow children to under achieve or jailing parents on weekends who allow their kids to disrupt class would make one less kid end up on welfare, it would be worth it. The government already removes kids from homes of abusive parents. What greater abuse is there than not making a child learn to read. Why not remove them from homes that don't encourage learning.

Yes, I did emphasize the word, FORCE. I force my children to learn. They don't always like it. Actually they seldom do. They would rather sit in front of the darn TV or GameBoy and be mesmerized. They have not yet acquired the ability to understand that wasting time is a permanent loss. Many people would say, they are just kids, let them be kids. I say hogwash, this country didn't grow as strong as it is on a bunch of players, it came to be on a bunch of workers. Ask anyone who grew up on a farm in the 40's how much time they spent "playing" before the work was done. I don't have to beat them into submission, the threat of losing that TV and GameBoy for extended periods seems to suffice, scooping dog poop does the trick as well. I predict the same negative alternatives would work equally well on teachers and parents.

As you can probably tell I am not the greatest writer of all time, I wasn't forced to write much as a kid. My vocabulary is limited and my grammar is less than to be desired. I am over 40 now and can no longer blame the system. I can say I didn't get a real good start.

This will not be the case with my kids.