Government-Mandated Education

Do We Understand – Important Truths From President James Madison

Exclamation Mark Sometimes revisiting a topic is required to help promote urgency in learning. Other times revisiting a subject helps to broaden the mind to more of the problem. My intent in reviewing the topic of understanding is for both of these reasons. President Madison provides counsel that every American should be adhering to, regardless of political flavor, as the first policy in being a responsible citizen.

We begin with an absolute from President Madison, stated two different ways, with the same meaning:

- - “The trust is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted.”
  - “All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree.”

To those who would like to be female apologists and excuse women just because President Madison used the term “men” here, the President spoke of “men” as in all humankind. As in, when power is invested in any person, they should be mistrusted. They should be carefully watched, monitored, and scrutinized. Not blindly trusted to act and never called out for their actions. Hence the role of the media, the role of laws, the role of three co-equal branches of government. Yet, what do we find today?

Honestly, take a look around, and take off the political glasses of partisan politics for a moment. Can you honestly claim that the media is representing fairly both sides of the partisan political spectrum? Can you honestly trust the co-equal branches of government not to be intimidated, cajoled, browbeaten, or unduly influenced by another branch? Is the military following their civilian leaders without political influence and acting in the best interest of all Americans? Is each of the co-equal branches of the government pulling their weight and acting in accordance with the law?

Now, look closer to home. How about the school board, the mayor, the governor, the state legislature, the county board, the city council, the town council, and every other bureaucrat vested with public trust. Are they obeying the duties and honoring the roles of their office and deserving of the public trust? What about the teachers in classrooms who the school board officials directly supervise? Are your children taught reading, writing, and arithmetic, or are they being taught wokeism, sexism, and being groomed for sexual perverts?

“Public office is a public trust, the authority and opportunities of which must be used as absolutely as the public moneys for the public benefit, and not for the purposes of any individual or party.” ~ Dorman Bridgeman Eaton

Public trust remains the single most important and least discussed aspect of American culture and American politics, mainly because public trust is the most misunderstood concept. Public trust has been intentionally misunderstood (plasticized), so it can be perverted and challenging to understand. Yet, public trust comes down to one thing and is revealed through an easy test in its most simple form. Would you leave your home and children alone, under the supervision of any person holding public office? If the answer is yes, they hold your public trust. If the answer is no, why are they in office?

Using President Madison’s quotes above, no one in a position of public trust should be “trusted” without verification, scrutinization, and they should be held accountable for their decisions made while in office. Missouri is the “Show-Me State!” I possess a “Missouri Mindset,” show me you have done the job correctly. Show me; you are transparent in doing the job you were elected to perform. Show me you can be trusted. I am willing to give anyone a chance at leadership, but they had better show me they can do the job!

Under the heading of trust and show me comes an important principle, and President Madison elaborates this principle simply, eloquently, and precisely.

“I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.”

Find me that article of the US Constitution. If you cannot find that, then the Federal, State, and City governments need to get out of taking money through taxes and giving money to people who have not earned it. Welfare belongs to charity groups and religions, not governments! Pork barrel spending is anathema to good order and discipline and should be shunned and shamed. Consider with me the plethora of laws that have been invented to control society just because of the government welfare programs. Soulful Musings: Don't Tell Me, "Show Me"

Food controls, including price controls, control what, when, and how much a farmer can grow, how a farmer can grow, and much more. These controls include legalized theft of a farmer’s goods which the supreme court has upheld.

Dairy, farm, and rancher controls for grain, meat, and milk. Then when the government has too much in store, they force price-controls, forcing dairy and ranchers out of business in support of large commercial production facilities at the expense of smaller and medium-sized operations. Labeling laws that unfairly punish smaller and medium-sized establishments.

Larger governments manage programs through bureaucrats and bureaucratic inertia that are abused at every potential opportunity and are not scrutinized adequately for waste, fraud, and abuse. Where systems and operations are regularly gamed to keep the benefits rolling in at the expense of society, taxpayers, and those needing assistance cannot receive assistance due to the gamesmanship and fraud of others. Show Don't Tell - Working Writers

I am all for helping people learn how to help themselves, using charity programs and religious outreach. But, taxpayer dollars should NEVER be spent in helping one person at the cost of another person!

The following has caused many a discussion in my home. I hope it will cause many a conversation in your homes. May those discussions be heated, be full of lovely disagreement, and be full of fiery opinions. For in the spirited debates come ideas and solutions that work. Invite people who disagree with you to dinner, and may the food and conversation be a delightful experience and a gustatory wonder!

“In framing a government, which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty is this: You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.”

What is the discussion in my home centered upon, “How does a citizen ‘oblige a government to control itself?’” I will offer a couple of suggestions here. Feel free to refute my recommendations with your own in the comments below. Better still, suggest more ideas for topics of discussion. I am not the only person with ideas, and we need every person to help “oblige” the government to control itself!

1. 1. Be an informed electorate! – The one thing a politician fears or should fear more than a ballot box is an informed electorate. Do you know why the politicians preferred Dewey’s system of functionally illiterate stooges to the informed electorate of the early 1900s? They could get away with robbing the citizens blind! When the citizenry is not informed, they become property, bought and sold as chattel (cows, goats, sheep). Doesn’t this make you angry that your elected leaders and the unelected Hollywood elite think of you this way?
  2. Scrutinize government and demand transparency! – It is your government. Tell me something, if your neighbor went across town and graffitied buildings, broke windows, burned property, and defecated on private property, then told the authorities that you had paid him to do these acts, would you be a little concerned? If your neighbor did these things and used your hard-earned money to pay for these crimes, would you want revenge and a criminal charge levied against your neighbor? These are the actions of your government; why does the government get a pass? Your name is on the check, right beside mine, claiming full financial responsibility for the actions of our intermediaries, the government.
  3. Gather with like-minded people, teach each other, learn from each other, and teach your children WHY! – Every tin-pot dictator in history has captured children, taken them from hearth and home, and “educated” them away from parents to influence the next generation. Today, we call this “education,” “state-run schools,” using “laws,” and obligations as “good parents” to shame and force parents to send their children into re-education camps. Want to freak out the government; change the next generation!

Finally, President Madison provides two pieces of advice for living in the American Society worthy of knowing and on-boarding.

- - “Knowledge will forever govern ignorance.”
  - “The circulation of confidence is better than the circulation of money.”

Consider a parable. Give a person a fish, and he eats for a day. Teach a person to fish, and he eats for a lifetime. Teach a person to fish and sell his wares, and his children build a prosperous society. Knowledge will always govern ignorance, but knowledge and confidence build nations! I do not want to build small communities; I want to rebuild the American Nation, a free nation under God, with liberty and justice for all. I cannot do this alone; our forefathers did not undertake this task alone. It took every member of the 13-original colonies to shake off tyranny and oppression and then build America.

Knowledge Check! It will take every single American citizen, and every single person desiring to be an American citizen to rebuild America, after all the damage intentionally done to her by the political leaders, secret societies, and bitter haters who have abused American generosity and then wanted to protect their pile by destroying America. America has been abused by countries foreign, and enemies domestic, corporations foreign and domestic, and individuals who have paid large sums to watch America burn. Do you understand better now? Is the mission clearer in your mind? Is the task ahead more urgent and more desirable? What are your next steps?

© 2021 M. Dave Salisbury
All Rights Reserved
The images used herein were obtained in the public domain; this author holds no copyright to the images displayed.

NO MORE BS: Child Abuse in K-12 Education

Problems 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!

Tools 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?

Detective 3 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.

Theres more 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.

Detective 2 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!

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