The Zombies Are Coming, The Zombies Are Coming....!

FORWARD: My definition of indoctrination: "Providing unsubstantiated, non-fact-based, thoughts and feelings as fact to others who are too ignorant (due to a lack of age-based experience or higher order learning ability) to take the ideals and digest them intellectually in order to make clear decisions for themselves as to their level of truthfulness and educational fitness." ( In other words, providing junk science to children - or adults even - who can't make clear choices for themselves as to its truthfulness.)

Yes, All Hallows Eve is ending as I close my day, but I am sad to say that the zombies attacked long ago and what I have sitting on my desk prompting my post today is ample evidence of that fact.

My daughter brought home yet another piece of fabulous homework (PROPAGANDA) from my Blue Ribbon winning elementary school, Quail Creek Elementary. This one was called, "Shifting Shape; The earth is changing shape because of GLOBAL WARMING!"

Yes, according to the worksheet, "For more than 200 years, Earth has been getting warmer. Lately it seems to be happening more quickly....."

I tell my daughter after she makes me aware that she is stumped and doesn't know how to complete this worksheet, "I forbid you to do that and turn that in." And so goes our conversation:

"I forbid you to do that and turn it in! It's a lie. You're perpetuating a lie!"

Betty: "But MOOOOOOOOOM, You're the ONLY parent who ever gets upset at this kind of thing! You're embarrassing me!"

"It's about more than being embarrassed child, it's about doing something that promotes "junk science" - science that isn't true and hasn't been proven!"

Betty: "But I don't care! I don't want to get a bad grade for NOT doing it and my teacher will be mad!"

"I don't care if you get a bad grade! This isn't important to your base of knowledge in any way mainly because it ISN'T TRUE - it's completely unfounded science that even the man who runs the Weather Channel - among others - says isn't true either. It's not just your MOOOOOOOM, you know. What would you say if they started teaching that God was a lie, or Faith was a lie?"

Betty: "They don't do that mom and I don't care. I don't want to get a bad grade and have my teacher be mad at me."

So, the Socialist/Communists have won, haven't they? Absolutely they have! They have figured out a way to put any kind of material into schools they want (check out the new Sex Ed stuff going on in New York public schools - as well as California public schools) and get kids to digest it because KIDS can't withstand the peer pressure of calling out the lie. Shoot, it doesn't matter one whit in a million what their parents say, so long as there could be a threat of embarrassment by exposing that their mother is, "...the only one that ever complains about that kind of thing", or the idea that they might let down their teacher by getting a bad grade!

What a beautiful arrangement 'they've' managed over the years - supplanting the parent through peer pressure that actually 'forces' the student to learn/accept any form of non-truth (America wasn't founded on Biblical principals, saying the Pledge of Allegiance is some form of conservative coercion...etc.) 'they' want to peddle in order to further ingratiate the liberal mantra without the influence of the SILLY PARENT to get in the way.

Sadly, many teachers and parents have seemingly been zombified because this isn't the first time I've been exposed to OBVIOUS bias and actual propaganda in my daughter's homework. Only zombies wouldn't complain about their children being force fed this kind of thing! Only zombie teachers wouldn't stand up to a system that allows this and refuse to send such drivel home with their students.

Schools are not PROPAGANDA MACHINES they are places where simple FACTS should be taught which can be used, later on in life, as a filter to determine truthfulness levels in any 'ideals' to which we might become exposed!

Hmmmm....I wonder what would happen if I brought up a sheet of 'homework' to pass out to the kids on the influence of the BIBLE in the founding of our nation? I wonder how well that would go over?

(note: yes, if you look at the top of her worksheet, my child has been numbered! I finally figured that out by the way....See, teachers can't allow kids to see each others' grades. It would hurt their little easily-bruised egos. So, in order to 'protect' their sensitive beings, teachers must identify each student by the number of the line on which their name sits in their grade book when passing out papers. Apparently, papers aren't handed back personally anymore, they go in cubicles in the room and students are tasked as part of their daily classroom duties to get them out. Consequently, because no other students can see another student's grade, the cubicles are NUMBERED with this/these digits. Of course, thankfully, students are complete idiots and can't figure out after about three days of this, whose number goes to which kid and therefore all problems are solved!)

I Can Bring Home the Bacon...

I sort of had a mental breakdown when I read Brandon Dutcher’s post this morning.

I can't possibly articulate the number of times I have thought of the movie Logan's Run lately myself - not only in terms of public education today - but the way in which our federal government has usurped nearly every aspect of our lives. We are not people anymore, we are numbers – numbers on a computer screen for health care and insurance companies, and public schools from elementary to college – and we have allowed ourselves to become just that.

Why do very few people today understand that ‘numbering’ people has been done before? Please, ask a Jew who has survived Auschwitz. They’ll tell you what it’s like to be a number and how easy it is for those doing the numbering to completely dehumanize every individual numbered.

I wish these kinds of posts (thoughts) would truly waken people to the fact that children are a gift from a God that expected PARENTS to raise them for Him without pawning them off onto public schools or the mall or - where ever with whom ever – so you could go to work or struggle to survive.

I truly FEAR that until we start seeing kids as gifts from God we will never truly decide to throw off our 'worldly' trappings in order to create two parent families with mothers who take up the mantle of protector, tutor and disciplinarian (note I didn't say, 'scheduler of activities' here) things in this country cannot change.

I don't say that lightly, either. Nor am I attempting to wage the war of hypocrisy among my fellow parents.

It is a fact that until I began homeschooling our oldest son this year I had not understood this in totality. Before my son became MY FULL AND COMPLETE RESPONSIBILITY during EACH AND EVERY DAY, I had developed a really great double-speak about the necessity of parents to get their kids out of public school and be actual parents - not guardians - of their children.

Once my son became my actual responsbility, I became absolutely and completely convicted of the kind of mother I had been to my children in their previous years. I don’t think I ever realized how content I was when I could simply drop them off at our ‘safe’ public elementary school every day and go about my regular routine of criticizing our public school administration and elected officials. I was, after all, ‘at home’. I didn’t work ‘outside’ my home. I was ‘here’ for my kids.

I find it sad but true, that since the beginning of the women’s movement in the 60’s and the following “I can bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan and never, let you forget you’re a man” mantra from the early 1980’s, American women have allowed a wholly ungodly group of individuals to tell us supposedly Godly women how to behave – what was and wasn’t important in our lives.

Obviously, Enjolie thought that working outside the home while reading to your kids before you put them in bed to ‘service’ your husband was appropriate and we bought it. The real problem became that once we figured we could ‘do it ourselves’, what did we need men for? We could take our kids and leave that boring (unattractive, not earning enough money…whatever…) man and make it on our own. Too bad the commercial didn’t tell us that by simply taking care of ourselves, not only would our kids suffer, but the communist and socialist sympathizers had plans for them when we finally created that selfish lifestyle advertisers sold us – plans to make them Godless, automatons who prayed to the “environment” and “social justice”.

Now, we’re seeing their plans played out in schools everywhere across the country, yet most American women are Enjolie women who haven’t awakened from their ‘80’s “me” coma yet.

Now, I fear, the only thing that will wake them is social collapse – and that, make no mistake, is coming and coming fast.

My only hope lies in Christ and the absolute fact that God is sovereign and knows all things and works all things for good for those who follow His word.

I pray for a spiritual awakening to take hold in this country (particularly mothers) every day…looking around, I’m afraid we’re vastly overdue…

Am I A Republican Heretic?

So, today I check the YouTube videos of ROPE's interim study given to the Oklahoma House Common Education meeting this month...VERY few hits on ANY of them.

I'm sure for some people, watching a YouTube video of an interim study on the Common Core State Standards might be akin to jabbing bamboo under their finger nails, yet these videos represent so much more than just the CCCSS.

ROPE endorsed Republican Janet Barresi for State Superintendent of Public Instruction. Many of us actually campaigned for her.

Why? Simple really. We believed she provided a better solution to the state of our state's public education than did her Democratic challenger, Susan Paddack - whom we felt convinced would continue to perpetrate the failing policies and principles of our previous Democratic State Superintendent.

Why? Simple really. We believed that a registered Republican would perpetuate REPUBLICAN policies and principles.

Since Janet Barresi has become Superintendent of Public Instruction for the state of Oklahoma, she has:

• Determined to push the CCSS - originally embraced by Sandy Garret - the previous Democratic Superintendent, even going so far as to hire John Kraman - a previous employee of Achieve - the offspring organization of parent National Centers on Education and the Economy (started by Marc Tucker) - which produced "Benchmarking for Success: Ensuring US Students Receive a World-class Education" - the precursor to the CCSS

• Actively, personally fought allowing parents to voluntarily put their kids into kindergarten two months later in the year. Barresi fought such a change based on the perennial liberal argument that such legislation, "would discriminate against low-income families"

• Urged the governor to take a FEDERAL grant to provide more free pre-k programming to children in Oklahoma though a recent Sooner Poll indicates Oklahomans actually prefer having money in their own pockets to make choices for their children instead of the state receiving blanket FEDERAL grant monies to put kids in pre-k

• Promised to apply for a No Child Left Behind waiver from Arne Duncan and the federal department of education though a number of conservative organizations and analysts have decried them as illegal and an end-around the legislative process as well as full of strings that further tie states to the federal government

• Chose to remove a $5,000 per year stipend for teachers with National Board Certification while allotting 10 million dollars for pre-k programming to be matched with a grant from the liberal Kaiser Family Foundation

• Made excuses for her Chief of Staff, Jennifer Carter, calling superintendents in Union and Jenks, "dirtbags" - a 'Tweet' picked up by so many 'news' and informational outlets I couldn't list them all here. Carter, though possessing no experience in classroom education on any level, has been instrumental in state Department of Education budgetary issues such as the removal of National Board Certification as alleged by the Oklahoma Truth Council.

• Joins Jeb Bush's group Chiefs For Change from his Foundation for Educational Excellence. The Chiefs for Change has published their manifesto of what they want seen in the re-authorization of the ESEA. Please note how it is nearly exclusively dictating MORE federal control.

• Uses Senator Rich Crandall (another 'R') from Arizona to help her with her rebuttal to our CCSS interim presentation. Here is an excerpt from the International Baccalaureate website (IB is a program of education written and disseminated by UNESCO that teaches children to be "global citizens", based on globalist thinking lessons) containing comments made by Senator Crandall while addressing IB proprietors on building political support for IB programming,

  "When you pitch one of the IB programmes to your local representative, you’ll want quotes from parents who love it. You’ll want a picture of (not controversial) politicians with IB graduates. You’ll want endorsements from at least one of two groups politicians wouldn’t dare trash: veterans and every day heroes. Talk to a fire-fighter IB dad or a veteran IB mom. People identify with others they admire or see as important."

• Infers ROPE (a taxpayer-based organization that funds itself out of its' board members pockets for no other reason than to help voters, taxpayers and parents understand education policy and legislation - a group made up of individuals that not only supported her candidacy but PAYS HER SALARY) to be liars following our CCSS presentation to the House Education Committee (see inserted video below).

All this leads me to wonder if Dr. Barresi has ever read the Oklahoma State Republican Party Platform. Apparently, she is not familiar with #15 on page 12 which says, "The imposition of national curricula, aptitude testing, and teacher certification or education standards on any Oklahoma school is not acceptable." or #16 on page15 which reads, "To comply with the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the Federal Department of Education should be eliminated and its functions transferred to the states, local communities, and parents." mirroring the grave concerns Oklahoma Republicans foster regarding federal control over public education.

Even the less rigid national platform says, "We reject a one-size-fits-all approach..." to education, (which would be evidenced by a set of 'common core' state standards) and indicates that parents and states maintain control over the education of their children.

Even the National Federation of Republican Women unanimously adopted a resolution to Defeat National Standards for State Schools at their 36th Biennial Convention on October 1st of this year.

In closing, let's look at campaign promises - which can still be conveniently found on her campaign website. Sadly, she has already - not a year in - subverted at least two:

1. I support local control and will reduce government mandates that do little more than create the need for bureaucracy and wasteful spending on administration.
2. I support the expansion of parental involvement and choice in their children’s education, and I will protect the right of those who choose to home school.

So it appears I must take the position of Republican heretic and ask, "Where does Dr. Barresi stand on the political spectrum?" As a voter/supporter, I surely don't feel I got what I thought I would get during her campaign because I can't in fact answer that question based on her actions since taking office. I must at this point urge EVERY Oklahoma Republican to ask themselves this question. I must say I won't be surprised if more than a few of you feel like me.

John Dewey Would Be So Proud

I am closing out my day today and just realized. My post yesterday is absolutely the dream of John Dewey, our Marxist/Socialist "Father of Progressive (read 'modern') Education". He is taught like a God in teacher ed courses at Universities and Colleges everywhere - just as his followers had hoped.

School will provide all your needs.

That is what he wished - his Utopian fantasy. In fact, he thought parents were mostly morons and that the state could do a better job of raising little American young people than they. After all, some of them were getting divorced - as the Industrial Revolution began to re-define the stable, two parent family - some of them were neglecting their children to go to work...(if you want to really get a good feel for Dewey and his plans for public education - all of which have now come true - I urge you to get the book, John Dewey and the Decline of American Education - How the patron Saint of schools has corrupted teaching and learning by Henry T. Edmondson III)

Think on this a minute...I was told by a superintendent just recently that the reason why his district provided 'early childhood education' (tax-payer subsidized day care) was because the district 'next door' did. He would lose students as parents moved their kids to the OTHER school to take advantage of the program.

Butts + Chairs = dollars in public schools.

So...it was either provide free state-provided day care to parents, or lose his students AND his funding.

Yes folks, it's about the kids.

No. It's about class warfare, it's about building fiefdoms, it's about power, it's about MONEY. That's what public education is about in America today.

Here's what it will be soon - and a big shout out to ROPE board member Jo Joyce for this little nugget today:

Swedish Officials To Take Permanent Custody of Home Schooled Boy

Yes, according to the Home School Legal Defense Fund, little Domenic Johansson, son of Christer and Annie Johansson, has been in foster care since 2009 when he was seized from the plane on which the family was attempting to flee to his mother’s native India.

Home schooling is legal in Sweden, however, it is necessary to get materials with which to home school your child from the principal of the school of your child's prospective attendance.

However, this principal was not in favor of homeschooling and was hostile to the parent’s request.

“He was very short and not at all in favor of homeschooling,” Christer told the HSLDA. “I told him that it was my right under Swedish law to home school and that I was making contact with him to make the necessary arrangements and to get the materials. We were planning to leave Sweden in just a month or two. Mr. Eneqvist told me that he ‘didn’t care about my right’ that I didn’t have a ‘right to educate my son like that’ and that he was going to take the matter farther.”

The couple, who are devout Christians, had been planning to return to India where they were going to start a new ministry with the poor, but decided to delay the trip in order to get their son’s schooling arrangements made.

And so, as it was, the principal was a man of his word and somehow got the 'state' to remove little Domenic from his parents care. He has now been a 'ward of the state' for 24 months.

Let's see. That will never happen here in Oklahoma...REALLY? We now have the FOOD NAZI'S telling kids what they can and can not eat at school and a legislator that every year submits bills to try and kill the home schooling option in Oklahoma.

Even reasonable legislators like Representative Janine Noland expresses 'concern' over the idea of home schooling because she is acquainted with a family made up of crack-addicted parents who 'home school' their kids because they are often too stoned to get them there.

If you have reasonable legislators with this perspective, what about those like the one that tries to outlaw home schooling every year?

I guess, in the end, not only do we get the government we deserve, we also get the life we deserve - we're either free to pursue our lives under the Constitution given us by our Forefathers - which requires WORK to keep in place - or we can live our life in the chains of governmental tyranny because it just takes too much time out of our little Dancing With The Stars, Blackberry-texting, salon-going, lunching-out day to make the effort to secure our liberties for ourselves and our posterity.

Please Put My Child in School MORE to Learn Less!

This morning I was yet again flabbergasted to see the editorial in our local paper.

The 'editor' talks about how Karl Springer, superintendent of Oklahoma's largest public school district (OKC), wants to "attack[s] parental apathy by calling for laws that require parental participation in a student's education. If parents fail to show up for a parent-teacher conference, for instance, they could face a fine."

We have to attack reforms NOW because OKC's non-English speaking and poor students (90% of students in the district receive free or reduced lunch) is growing at an [alarming] rate of speed (as OKC residents have heard consistently for YEARS).

“The students and the parents need to understand that education really is the path out of poverty,” Springer said, using the evergreen expression of all liberals everywhere destined to make 'change' happen. Is anyone but me beyond sick of class warfare?

According to the article, Springer wants the Legislature to mandate a seven-hour school day to improve "education standards" - the type of which are not mentioned in the editorial.

So far so good, according to the editorial, as OKC has already expanded the day 20 minutes, gone to a continuous learning calendar (to prevent the dreaded "brain drain") and hired 50 new Teach For America teachers (who are doing so well in their role as intended saviors of public education that you have posts like this one on the TFA site, "on quitting/get me out of here NOW).

Enter my email box this morning, the newsletter from Quail Creek Elementary - attended by the two children not being homeschooled until next year - Sam in 1st grade and Betty in 4th.

I have posted the screen shot of the principals letter above.

Please note the following:

• No less than THREE fundraising efforts ongoing (as noted by yellow)
  
• Today, there is an assembly - "Farm to You" (teaches kids how important it is to eat healthy) that will last 1 and a half hours and require such upset in the schedule that kids will not even get to use the cafeteria for lunch - or, ironically - get a hot lunch! (my kids are not attending school today - it's conscientious objector day at the White house)
• Friday is picture day
• October 31st will be Harvest Parties - not only will kids be NOT ALLOWED to dress up, but the food Nazi's will be in full force, preventing classes from doing as they'd wish for parties - instead forcing children to numb down a glass of juice and a cookie! Oh, at least they get to have their own party favors!
  
• Thursday, November 3rd classes will be going to the Kennedy Center production downtown and be gone most all day (last year's Kennedy Center production was called Bario Girls and my kids thought it was the most ridiculous, PC, Hispanic love fest they'd ever seen. Even today they still laugh and make fun of it.)

• Oh, by the way parents, you'll have to teach your kids MATH at home because we just don't have time to work that into our busy schedule!
  

You see the screenshot. Other than more information on PTA meeting times, information on the Harvest Food drive and Free Clothes day charities (kids wear what they want one Friday a month for a 'donation' of one dollar, which then goes to a charity chosen by the PTA), that's all she wrote.

Now my question...WHY, Mr. Springer, should we ever support increased attendance at school? What actually is going on at school other than completely useless garbage intended, apparently (because it is the only population ever discussed) to help poor kids understand how to make their way in life and indoctrination for all kids on what to eat - even at class 'parties'.

Please note Mr. Springer, your ideas work out especially well in our affluent neighborhood Blue Ribbon (whatever that means) school where we have SO many poverty stricken families.

So, now you know, as Paul Harvey would have said, "...the rest of the story".

Making Sense of the Senseless

I was asked by a state representative to go (2.5 hours) out to Sallisaw, on the border of Arkansas and OK, this morning to talk to a group of Supts about CCSSI. I was unable to speak to any of the group after I finished speaking, but my takeaway was this: Some of them totally get the unfunded mandates part and some get the idea they are being forced into a little box by a government which keeps them - in many cases - from actually helping their students (and towns and communities). Some even understand that this concept operates outside the ideas of the 10th amendment.

I wonder how many really care much about what the 10th amendment is and/or means, though. So many were quiet it was really hard to get a read at all on their actual thoughts other than the fact that unfunded mandates are killing them and the superintendent is not high on their list of "people I most want to 'hang out' with".

Two WOMEN who came from AK to this meeting for some reason (I guess because there's a college/university in Ft. Smith that some Sallisaw grads attend and they are administrators there) sat there during my whole talk, shaking their heads and looking at me like I was a complete idiot. When the one spoke, she acted as though she wanted to slash my tires - or my throat - for not loving the CCSSI to pieces.

This is nothing new for me and it has caused me to see the America of today as completely black or white (not a racial statement) with an amorphous, gooey center.

One group operates on sheer emotion - very little expenditure of actual brain cells, but lots and lots of hormones (in the case of women) and something like an endemic rage syndrome (in the case of men). They see people like me as a 'fight'...as an adversary that wants nothing more in life than to take away the little umbilical cord to their federal government feed trough. I need to be STOPPED. I MUST be stopped.

The other group uses lots and lots of brain cells but not enough hormones (or rage) to actually get the attention of anyone in the emotion zone. We don’t understand emotions or how to relate to them as a course of action, so we spend our days crying out in the wilderness and preaching to the choir.

One part of the gooey middle won't miss Dancing With The Stars, attends every single performance of their kids (grandkids) sports, drama, choir, etc., which causes them to spend 12 hours in the car, carting said children back and forth to practices, during which they do nothing but talk on the phone to their friends about who's left on Dancing With the Stars and having conversations among themselves about who got the new Beemer and whose husbands are cheating.

The other part of the gooey middle is hanging on by their teeth - their lack of education and poor upbringing causes them to think about nothing much but how they're going to get from day-to-day. They care little about the kids they have because they just flat don't have time to - they're too busy feeding them. They could possibly be intelligent enough to make a life for themselves, but no one's really taught them how to make use of the brain they have, so they work and because they’re exhausted from work tend to concentrate on superficial things that make them happy like, getting their nails done or watching endless sports games on the satellite dishes precariously perched on the edges of their roofs or patios. Often, even if they wanted it, they can't get real help from those around them because the others are, in fact, worse off - involved in drugs and/or gang violence and/or sitting around their cockroach-infested homes/apartments in their house shoes watching Jerry Springer and living off their welfare checks.

It has always been so, I suppose. I heard a speaker say once, that those individuals who actually fought for independence of our country from British rule amounted to less than 25% of the total population at the time.

I guess the problem is that, today, we have a gazillion more people, 20 trillion dollars more debt and a welfare class (in some form) that amounts to nearly 50% of the population.

Doesn’t look too good for the home team, I’m afraid....