An Iowa public school teacher, perhaps accidentally, reveals what her colleagues believe is the greatest threat to kids in public schools. Was this just an isolated ‘hot mic’ moment, or an explanation of everything that’s wrong with the tax-funded, government-run public school machine?
Video above hosted at Rumble.
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30 replies on “Greatest Threat to Public School Kids Revealed by ‘Hot Mic’ Teacher Remark”
I think Bill is missing the point on homeschooling. The main purpose is to get AWAY from the standardized, cookie-cutter curriculum and tailor your child’s education to not only reflect your values and beliefs, but also to your child’s specific learning style and needs. What Bill is proposing is basically just another school system where someone else decides what your child learns.
Such utterances from a “teacher” represent the worst of humanity associated with public education. No wonder the seeming majority of Americans have lost faith in those responsible for the nonsense that passes for education in our public and private school settings. It doesn’t have to be that way, folks. Yea, I heard–and appreciate–Bill’s, Scott’s, and Steve’s ideas…all worth fleshing out. Realistically, I think public schools are here to stay, but we’re dead in the water, should we allow them to remain the cesspools that far too many are.
Stephen Wallis here, retired school principal and author of a new book on K-12 schools titled, Dead Last: The Triumph of Character, Passion, and Teamwork in Education ( stephenwallisauthor.com ), just released.
Take a look at my blog post on this site to see the ideas contained within the book. I believe you’ll appreciate the read.
We more than made it happen in the Baltimore-Washington corridor, but we exhibited what many school communities lack…character.
Although I like Bill’s homeschool franchising idea, based on what I’ve seen, because of the franchiser’s standardization constraints, it will still be subject to O’Sullivan’s Law which is that any organization or enterprise that is not expressly right wing will become left wing over time.
The webcam idea is a good one. Besides helping keep tabs on what’s taught, it can also provide a type of distance learning for those who can’t get to school that day when the snow is too deep or the hill too steep. Also the comment about it being a refresher for parents was a good one.
I saw that several people brought up existing homeschool web resources. Good to see that.
And it’s true: Football has pretty much caused the ruin of K-12 education.
Steve Green hit the nail right on the head – neighborhood schools. $15,000 is earmarked Federally each year per student, and if that money could be diverted from the current indoctrination factories, it could make a nice lucrative income even for a teacher with only a half dozen students.
As background to this discussion on the sad state of U.S. Education, I highly recommend the series “The MisEducation of America” on Fox Nation. It is normally behind a paywall but is free at the present time.
It is moderated by Pete Hegseth and has an overall segment called “Live Summit” consisting of several panel discussions and then 5 historical segments going into detail on the history of our system: where its values came from and how, starting over 100 years ago, the Progressives began eroding and taking it over. IMO it is fascinating and terribly sad. However, the last segment gives several good ideas on what we can do to repair the damage. Despite having spent 36 years as a public school teacher, I still learned many new things.
Bill, Scott, Steve…What you are referring to all ready exists. It’s called Freedom Project Academy. Also Hillsdale has an Academy system for charter schools. There are options for parents and teachers, they just need to be made aware of them.
Gonna put this on Rumble too, God bless all!
Some good points made, fellas. Nice job of starting it off Scott with your chicken school size analogy.
Cameras in school could also count as either review or remedial education for some parents who either never had that level of biology 40 years ago when they were in school or have forgotten in the intervening years.
The thing that most worries me about this problem with critical race theory in schools and the rest of it — Is that we really had no comprehensive idea how bad things had gotten until COVID came along and parents saw what their kids were being taught and how pervasive it had become.
Oh, sure, there were little incidents cropping up here and there, tips of icebergs as it turned out … But nothing was known about this on the scale that would have a significant influence on a state election and do something like turn Blue Virginia red.
This makes me highly suspicious that there are other things going on that we aren’t consciously aware of as a nation. The underhanded, sneaking, lying, cheating predilections of our political adversaries do not in any way add to my comfort on this matter.
If power like that is being wielded secretly and in opposition to the wishes of the majority of Americans … The People no longer hold power and had damn well do something about it. Quick.
It may be later than we think.
Scott Ott’s analysis is RIGHT [angle] ON brilliant. I’m sure his grandfather is proud of him.
There are home schooling programs . Here is one: https://www.ronpaulcurriculum.com/ There are others.
What about mixing in the enormous number of retirees as part time teachers at these home schools. Gets rid of the bogus barriers to entry created by various “credential laws, unions etc. As a retired prosecutor and criminal defense lawyer I certainly know about civics than some 23 year old with an education degree. I could teach civics to six to ten home schoolers one afternoon a week. Add rosters of retirees to your home school kit.
I gave a thumbs up for James Drury’s comment below (about 10 comments down from this one). There are lots of resources available for home school parents.
One of my friends took his 2nd grader out of school to start homeschooling, and it’s gone very well he says. I used to meet with his daughter for origami lessons, lots of fun for us both – so if you don’t have kids, but want to help, perhaps volunteering to help a home school parent would be an option.
I had 3 Granddaughters graduate from High School in the past 2 years. The oldest Granddaughter, in 2020, had a lockdown Graduation, Parents drove up to the back door, the kid got out and was handed a diploma. In 2021, two Granddaughters graduated from adjacent school districts. In one, the graduation spent more than half the time celebrating the accomplishments of the Valedictorians (over 50 w/ greater than a 4.00 GPA). Well done Utica Schools. The other, with an Equity Administrator, celebrated nothing, calling each graduate on stage alphabetically to hand them a diploma. This, from a school district with a much higher family income level, is an example of what is wrong with public education in America today!
My high school graduating class was 51. My wife’s graduating class was several thousand. My high school was in rural Washington state. My wife’s was in New York City. Our common thread was we both had solid parental values in our youth. I saw a recent study that showed that less than 20% of kids under 18 are living in homes with married parents. Family values have been under attack since at least the 1960’s. My wife and I are cruising up on our half century mark in our marriage. Our sons have all been married to their original wives for going on 2 decades each and are doing their best to instill the values we taught them in our grandkids. The government in certainly not helpful to families trying to do the right thing these days to raise a successful family. And that government meddling is not, and cannot, help our families and therefore our society.
While driving by my old HS I noticed all the bars on the windows and guards on the entrances.
I think we should bring back the dunce hats as well as issuing teachers the old rulers.
Do you seriously want to give teachers that think critical race theory, social justice and equality of outcome a tool to beat on kids and permission to use it? That’s a little bit like arming jackbooted thugs with clubs.
I’m OK with the dunce hat idea as long as it’s teachers and administrators that are made to wear them when caught teaching or advocating any of the above Leftist agendas/narratives.
You’re right, there’s a discipline problem but it started a long time before the kids who sit in class today had anything to do with it.
I would like to make a comment on what Steve said using the analogy of healthcare. I spent 35+ years working in healthcare, most of the time in supervision of blood banks and transfusion services in large level II trauma centers. About 10 years ago I was having a heartfelt, relatively deep discussion with my favorite medical director of my entire career. At one point I made the statement, “The decline in healthcare in the US began when doctors stopped being hospital administrators and they started bringing in MBA to run the facilities!” She agreed with me whole heartedly and I still stand by that statement.
Bean counters and management monkeys have ruined a lot more than the healthcare business.
Giant high schools rob the “second tier” athletes from the great things that organized sports offer.
In suburban Atlanta, kids that were in their elementary, middle school, and junior varsity teams (and were highly productive), aren’t getting the opportunity to be on their high school basketball team. The high school starters are recruited from regional Club teams, nationally ranked and stocked with five-star college recruits, whose parents magically moved to that school district.
Looking back, I can’t believe how fortunate I was to go to a relatively small college where I could be on a team and experience success. I think of my nephew, who was in the same sport in high school in Texas, had similar times as me (I made Nationals with those times 15 years earlier) and couldn’t make the varsity. There were 6,000 kids in his school, over twice as many as in my college.
I know this is hard for a lot of people but if you are at all able please homeschool your children. I was homeschooled and I thank God that I was because there are a million areas where I am better off than many of my friends because my parents made that decision.
Bill, exactly where is that “like” button on the website?
Bill was talking about YouTube, which has a thumbs-up icon under each video. Here, we have a star-rating gizmo you can click under each video. Rumble’s desktop version uses +/- , and the mobile version offers a thumbs up.
The website has a rating system underneath the video, I would use that if you only watch the videos here. That being said he is referring to the like button on YouTube itself. Granted the link on the website is to rumble where you can “rumble” a video instead of like it (just their jargon, its basically the same thing). So I guess rate it here on the site and if you are so inclined go to YouTube or Rumble and hit their like/rumble button. Either way it helps the videos have some reach beyond loyal listeners like us here on the actual site.
We’ve been homeschooling for over 20 years and have been part of a co-op for many years where parents are the teachers. Families are still responsible for their own curriculum but the co-op offers group projects. For example, the co-op owns 10 or so dissection tools kits for biology classes so kids can get together for those labs instead of each family purchasing their own. The co-op isn’t the primary location for learning but helps families with certain tasks. Our co-op is set up as a legal non-profit organization but many are simply “clubs” without the legal paperwork.
Each family, each child is different and may require a different curriculum, which makes a cookie-cutter, or franchise approach difficult. Isn’t that standardization what lead to the current situation?
There are many, many well regarded publishers of home school material, from religious or non-religious institutions that can make the first year of home schooling extremely easy for parents. You can get video-based learning that is more “school-at-home” where students watch pre-recorded (or now live-stream) lessons. There are workbook based plans that allow students to go through at their own pace. If the student excels in English, for example, then they can work at a 12th grade level while still working at an 8th grade level in math.
There are also many resources available to provide How-To’s on removing your children from public schools and how to keep track of their progress. Each state has different requirements so local resources are best.
We’ve known both “left” and “right” homeschool families. The two common issues that all agree on are how we want the best education for our children and a sincere distrust of government schools.
“We’ve screwed up our educational system for the sake of High School football.” Scott Ott. BOOM. More there is more in that statement than people can possibly comprehend. Not only to get good players, but it creates tribalism and competition between schools and communities that divide the community in subtle but very real and negative ways.
Having grown up in rural Nebraska, you could not date a girl in a neighboring town because of the division based on sports. To attempt to do so was literally taking your physical well-being into your hands. Think about what this and scale it now to college and pro sports and we wonder why we are so easily divided?
On the plus side, the pandemic lifted a veil and people see how nasty Big Education has become. America has a long fight to reclaim education, but if it could get a Republican sweep in a once Republican now Democrat leaning state there’s still hope
Ah, but Steve, there’s also a downside to making smaller schools.
In NJ, we have “home rule” which basically means except for a couple regional school districts, every town is on its own. Each town needs its own board of ed which creates its own curriculum and selects its own textbooks. Sounds great, right?
But they also have to negotiate their own contracts with the teachers’ union, which is a statewide organization. The reason that NJ is one of the three highest-tax states to live in is because the massive teachers’ union calls all the shots and can bring massive pressure to get whatever it wants.
Additionally, every town not only needs a board of ed with five elected members or so, but they also need all the administration you’re trying to eliminate (they don’t really “need” it, of course, but it’s going to be the near-inevitable outgrowth). The town I grew up in is 5.3 square miles and has about 30,000 residents. There’s one high school, one middle school, and three elementary schools. We have a superintendent, an assistant superintendent or two, a board secretary or three, a principal for each school, two vice-principals for each school (one for discipline and one for academics), secretaries, etc.
The next town over is one square mile with one high school and one combination elementary/middle school. They have all the same administrative bureaucracy. The town next to them is smaller, and ditto for them.
The superintendents and the principals get paid six figures. You want to get someone who’s decent, and that’s what all the bigger towns are paying, so you have to be competitive or you’ll get the guy the bigger town canned for ineptitude or malfeasance.
My parents live on a 1/4 acre lot in the house my mother grew up in. Yes, they added onto it in 2000 when my grandfather died, but most of the house was built in 1957. They are paying $11,000 a year in property taxes (and they were grandfathered in at a lower rate because my grandmother still lived with them until recently). Oh, and in that town, stuff like garbage and sewerage are not included in your takes. That $11,000 is basically all for the school and the clearing of snow and the filling of potholes (neither of which is done very well).
Yeah, taxes are what drove my parents when they retired. As much as I loved growing up there and would move back in a heartbeat the taxes guarantee that I never will.
Yes, they don’t really need all those positions. Seems like there are many possible cost savings here, but the inertia is great. Just 1 example. Why can’t the principal of the HS be the de facto superintendent? With the Jr HS/Elem Principal as the asst. And so on down the line. Seems like 30,000 residents could figure it out through the town council. Someone needs to get that ball rolling.
Have you watched the interview Scott did with DeAnna?
Gotta be honest. As a teacher, I can say that there truly is practically no overlap between the duties of the superintendent (which really is full time) and the high school principal (which also has full time demands). Also, each school does need its own principal in the building (the buildings are spread around town, and they really can’t be shared). For vice principals, it truly does help to have someone in charge of all academic issues and someone who is the enforcer when it comes to disciplinary issues. Maybe the principal could handle the disciplinary issues with an academic dean vice principal, but that would depend on the character of the student body.
It’s the assistant superintendents and maybe some of the secretaries that are not really needed.
The big issue is in the collective bargaining, though. If regional school districts are busted up, you’ll end up with a situation like we have in NJ, where the “management” of the small district is at a perpetual disadvantage against the state-wide teachers’ union. Teachers’ unions are the real cancer in the system, and making schools smaller only serves to make the problems that they make worse, worse still.
That’s the part that was missing from the “smaller is better” — the teacher in the one-room schoolhouse wasn’t unionized. She would be, today, and there would be more money backing her than the entire town’s tax base, and the pressure of a statewide organization that could strike out of “solidarity” in other towns, leading to towns putting pressure on each other to cave to the union’s demands.