Family: Public-School Prisons ---- What Crimes Have Our Children Committed?

Public-School Prisons ---- What Crimes Have Our Children Committed?

Written by Joel Turtel

What are prisons? They are places were people are locked up against their will for crimes they have committed.

What is life like for a prisoner? The warden and prison guards, in effect, take away repparttar prisoner’s life and freedom. They force a prisoner to live in a small cell he doesn’t want to live in, eat food he may hate, work at a job he detests, associate with other prisoners who may be dangerous, and remove him from everyone and everything he loved in repparttar 145931 outside world when he was free.

So why have we put our children into educational prisons called public schools? What crimes have they committed? Why do we condemn almost 45 million innocent children to this punishment? Do I exaggerate by calling these schools “prisons?” Well, let’s compare prisons and public schools.

Like prisons, public schools impose their will by force, by compulsion. Local governments force parents to send their children to public schools just as repparttar 145932 police drag convicted criminals into prison (even though many parents are not aware of this and voluntarily send their kids to these schools). A parent can be convicted of alleged child abuse and sent to prison if she disobeys repparttar 145933 school authority’s order to send her child to repparttar 145934 local public school.

Local governments then force parents to pay school taxes for these education prisons. If they don’t pay these taxes, their local government will foreclose on their home and throw them out on repparttar 145935 street.

School authorities force children to stay in school until they are 16 years old or graduate high school (these age limits vary by state). In effect, most children get a 10-year education prison sentence if they start school at age six.

School authorities force millions of children to sit in boxes called classrooms with 20 other children-inmates for six to eight hours a day, five days a week, for up to ten years. The children must obey repparttar 145936 adult education wardens (teachers and principals), who they may fear or dislike. They must study subjects they may hate or that bore them to death. They must associate only with other children their same age who may be bullies, violent, or emotionally disturbed. They must do homework and study for tests they must pass or be left back in school.

The children are removed from their loving parents and put under repparttar 145937 control of teacher-wardens who may not love them, care for them, or simply even have repparttar 145938 time to pay attention to them. They are stopped from being a free and free-spirited child. They are told to keep quiet. They are told to obey repparttar 145939 rules. They are told to march from classroom cell to classroom cell every 50 minutes to study different subject that may mean nothing to them.

Public Schools --- Why On Earth Do We Need Them?

Written by Joel Turtel

From repparttar

time

Mayflower landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620 until repparttar 145931

1850s, most parents taught their children to read at home or sent their children to small private or religious grammar schools. Education was voluntary and local governments did not force parents to send their children to state-controlled schools. Yet, literacy rates in colonial America were far higher than they are today.

In 1765, John Adams wrote that “a native of America, especially of New England, who cannot read and write is as rare a Phenomenon as a Comet.”1 Jacob Duche, repparttar 145932 chaplain of Congress in 1772, said of his countrymen, “Almost every man is a reader.”2 Daniel Webster confirmed that repparttar 145933 product of home education was near-universal literacy when he stated, “a youth of fifteen, of either sex, who cannot read and write, is very seldom to be found.”3

After repparttar 145934 Revolutionary War, literacy rates continued to rise in all repparttar 145935 colonies. There were many affordable, innovative local schools parents could send their children to. Literacy data from that early period show that from 1650 to 1795, repparttar 145936 literacy rate among white men rose from 60 to 90 percent. Literacy among women went from 30 to 45 percent. 4

In repparttar 145937 early 1800s, Pierre Samuel Dupont, an influential French citizen who helped Thomas Jefferson negotiate for repparttar 145938 Louisiana Purchase, came to America and surveyed education here. He found that most young Americans could read, write, and “cipher” (do arithmetic), and that Americans of all ages could and did read repparttar 145939 Bible. He estimated that fewer than four Americans in a thousand were unable to write neatly and legibly. 5 (See Note references in my book, "Public Schools, Public Menace")

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