NO MORE BS: Child Abuse in K-12 Education

The child abuse I witness in K-12 Education makes me want to weep, pull my hair in frustration, and become irrational in demanding change!  K-12 education in America, and much of the world, has been deliberately designed to abuse your child since the late 1800s!  Almost since the inception of government-mandated “free education,” the methods of teaching and educating children has been captured by the enemies of America and been planting the seeds of America’s demise.

An astute reader asked me how I can draw a line of congruence between how a student is treated in public school and child abuse.  The reader maintained this needed to be explained and clearly spelled out.  Hence, this is the explanation as to how and why K-12 education is abusing children.

Abuse of children occurs through the constant lowering standards, bell-curve grading, and wasting time on non-school related topics, all while not teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic.  Want more on how K-12 Education abuses your child; I recommend reading, The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America – a Chronological Paper Trail.  The link takes you to the digital edition.  The book is well worth your time!

Without Head Start programs, most American children will be in school from age 6 to age 18.  Twelve years to master the basics of society, the history of their country and state, understand a social order exists outside the home, learn to read, write, speak, think, and perform to an academic standard.  Each child has but a single chance at K-12 education.  When a public school spends valuable time on lesser value topics in place of reading, writing, and arithmetic, that student’s time is wasted, and their potential is hindered, hampered, and harmed.  As the parent or guardian, do you understand the classroom distraction is deliberate, to dumb your child to the level of compliant pudding?

What are those “topics of lesser value?”

Does a child in third-grade need to know how to put on a condom?  Does a child in first-grade need to know some families have two-mommies or two-daddies?  One curriculum for second-graders mystified me; the students would spend a year recognizing and defeating the “internal-bully.”  Fourth-Grade science was all about caring for the environment and race or overcoming white privilege.  Unfortunately, each new school year brings more egregious examples of leftist ideology into classrooms.  A school district in America showed a pornographic film for sexual education to young children; sure, the film was “discussed in the classroom,” but how many students understood or had the mental capacity to draw conclusions on sex?

I talked to some Albuquerque Public School (APS) parents and senior and junior level high school students about the quality of education they are either receiving or witnessing in APS classrooms.  Here are some examples and how these examples are child abuse:

• I heard stories about verbal assignments where the student memorized a standard response in the APS classroom, and this standard response was acceptable for participating in the classroom discussions.
  • Classroom participation is where a teacher gains evidence that the material presented not only makes sense but that the student can then apply the material in a variety of ways and means.  Verbal memorization is a useful skill.  But memorization does not equate to participation, nor does memorization reflect critical thinking skills where materials are applied.
  • I still remember the work I put into memorizing a poem for a school assignment, which also included a poem recitation contest. The classroom assignment was to memorize a multi-stanza poem, and the classroom grade was not dependent upon the performance in the poetic competition.  Memorizing a multi-stanza poem took me weeks, lots of heavy mental lifting, and tons of effort.  I took fourth in the contest for sixth-grade students, out of four participating students.  I spent too much time memorizing and not enough time speaking the poem to improve delivery.  These are “other” lessons learned in a school environment.
  • Memorizing a set classroom response for “participation” points is the epitome of mental abuse and a waste of a student’s time.  Wasting valuable classroom time is an indirect method of abusing the student.  Consider a student is in a classroom for 50-minutes, with a 10-minute break to move to the next class.  If that teacher does not maximize the learning time, all those attending that class are abused because their time was wasted.
  • I saw my first R-rated movie in school, not about an educational topic.  Still, the teacher thought it was a good movie and obtained permission to view the film in multiple consecutive classes, and then we “discussed” the film to complete the assignment.  I don’t remember the movie’s name, but I remember being bored out of my skull during these three weeks and still wonder why we had to participate in this lesson.
• I heard about verbal book reports because the APS teacher claims not to have the time to grade written book reports.
  • Verbal book reports do not require critical thinking to produce, nor does an oral report reflect a deep understanding of the material or scored upon an objective, non-biased scoring system.  From experience, I know how to bluff a verbal book report; you read the back flap and pull a couple of cool quotes, and an improv speech is easily assembled.  I learned how to do this in school for oral book reports, five-minutes before the report was due.
  • Remember time is critical; 12- years include summer vacations, all the Federal Holidays, winter/spring break, Teacher Conferences, Parent-Teacher week off, etc.  These reduce the number of days a student is physically in the classroom.  Thus, every minute counts, every assignment counts, and not capitalizing upon the student’s time is abusing the child.
  • Common core classrooms are focused upon the materials presented, dreamed up by a group of disconnected bureaucrats, and do not capitalize upon the “other” lessons learned in school.  For example, how can a student be expected to form good habits about reading, or a love of reading, while not reading, not learning through phonics, and not being exposed to the vast array of books?  Reading remains a key metric in measuring learning, but reading is not focused on the classroom.  Reading develops imagination, critical thinking, evaluation, and so much more, yet common core continues to refuse to acknowledge these “other” lessons a student learns when they read and draft a report, focusing only upon teaching to a test, e.g., the ACT or SAT.
• I heard about and witnessed APS classrooms that have churned through 5 or more teachers in a single year.
  • Classroom continuity builds confidence, relationships, and cohesion in the learning process.  Teacher churn, specifically in the Albuquerque Public School District, is remarkably high.  But APS refuses to address the why behind teacher churn, insane policies, dumb procedures, and a horribly political environment where teacher innovation is all but punished.  The teacher creativity that does not strictly adhere to APS rules, guidelines, and mandates means the teacher is not in charge of the classroom but the school board’s bureaucrats.  The stress teachers, educational assistants, and other teaching staff are experiencing are ruining teachers.  This stress is witnessed by the students who are harmed by teacher churn, teacher frustration, and the byzantine quagmire APS has produced in which teachers exist.
  • Teacher churn is wasting student time, destroying student relationships, and wasting considerable student time; thus, by abusing the teachers and teaching staff, APS indirectly abuses children.
• An educational assistant (teacher’s aide) told me stories about a verbally abusive APS teacher who constantly bad-mouthed the students to the student’s faces.  But, because that teacher has been around forever, the words used and disparaging tone and teacher attitude are not illegal; the district refuses to remove the teacher from the classroom due to the teacher shortage and allowed the teacher to retire with full retirement benefits.
  • Another example of child abuse, only this time that damage is directly observable by students and parents and required immediate remediation, but the teacher was allowed to skip. Yet, APS told the principal not to initiate removal of the teacher, hampered all attempts to move the teacher to non-teaching roles, and the teacher’s verbal haranguing has only gotten worse over time.  Thus, we see another example of how APS is abusing children both directly and indirectly.

Parents, how many times are these stories repeated in your child’s school district?  How many times are race and poverty being blamed for low classroom educational attainment?  The reality is that the teachers are suffering because of the abuse they receive from the school district, and the teacher abuse is being passed onto the students.  If a teacher was sexually molesting your child, would this anger and excite you to action?  If so, why doesn’t the abuse inflicted upon your child by indirect, direct means that waste their time and deny their innate potential?  Your child gets a single opportunity for education, and if the foundational blocks are not correctly set in K-12 classrooms, your child will be hindered for life.

Three of my younger brothers were constantly told they had no value, could not learn, and were passed anyway from grade-to-grade.  All three of these people are convinced they cannot learn and only deserve jobs that abuse them.  Except, all three have IQ scores.  Their academic potential was measured and found wanting by a teacher who did not have the time to explain and teach adequately due to the requirement to teach a test.

I substitute taught, for a short season, high school students.  I met a brilliant young lady who the school leadership forced into alternative high school because her parents were poor and lived in poverty.  The school leadership demanded she go to work to support her family and study “elsewhere.”  I met jaded students whose attitudes were programmed into them because they were deemed less likely to graduate.  Those jaded students were forced into trade classes as options for learning.  The teachers and school board were using their parents’ economic circumstances in judging these students’ potentials.  Their education rights were systematically stripped from them until they believed they had no potential, no future, no abilities, talents, and skills.

I asked these parents’ questions in drafting this article and remain astonished that the parents cannot make the connection between lost opportunity, poorly taught lessons, and life-altering educational abuse.  Want to pay less for food stamps and other government subsidy programs; improve education in K-12 classrooms.  Want to improve your student’s potential; help them read using phonics, develop a love of literature, help them write with critical thinking, and do the math per formulaic logic.  Want your tax dollars spent on education to return a more significant dividend for your investment; hold the school district accountable for every poor decision, bad policy, and ridiculous practice forced upon a teacher in the classroom.

America is the Land of the Free because we do not believe that their parents limit their children’s potential.  America is the Land of Liberty because we never believed that a person could not improve, grow, change, and become better.  Yet, this is precisely what is happening behind the classroom doors in America’s unbelievably expensive school systems.  Our children are being taught that their potential is limited if they were born into poverty or are not the right race, their “American Dream” is being chained to falsehoods, and mental abuse is heaped upon them.

The school boards across America have abused our students enough. The corporations involved in selling technology and textbooks have abused our students enough. The government has abused our children enough, and the perpetrators need to be held accountable!  The school system desperately requires change.  From the Department of Education to the local school board, the totalitarian education system in America must adapt or disappear.  The abuses of the school district are creating a bloated welfare state and hostile dependency upon government subsidies.  If America is to remain the land of the free, home of the brave, and a source of educated free-people, we must improve K-12 education in America today!

© 2021 M. Dave Salisbury
All Rights Reserved
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