Give Them Everything I Never Had
By Kimberly Mann
December 21, 2021
If we are all as righteous as we claim to others, there is nothing more important than a child’s education. The money flows freely from the taxpayer hand into the hands of parents in order for their offspring to learn. Donations may not be made directly but by Federal and State taxes or through the largest portion of property tax, school aged children learn in government-organized, educational facilities. Providing education to youths can be a complicated issue.
The animal bloodline of humans is held in those smiling little faces that beg for knowledge. We are teachers, all of us. Mothers, daughters, daughters of daughters, grandparents, grocery store clerk, even CEO of GE are all teachers. We show our children what we believe our world should be like. While books can teach information, people teach life and how to carry it on to the next generation.
Years ago as the story goes, people lived their lives without formal education. They learned from each other the knowledge and skills that were required of them to carry on to the next generation. We learned when someone died of eating a certain plant not to eat that plant. We learned. Education is not just reading from books and listening to what a government describes as education. Learning how to live, supporting yourself, and providing for your family with hopes of progress for every generation is education, the bulk of our human activity.
If we really care about others and their space on the planet, we would look to see what makes them happy. Does the thought of spending most of your precious little time on this earth in an office surrounded by concrete and asphalt beg your presence or would you rather spend your time with your children laughing and creating a world of happiness for them with an eye on education.
When we look to our elder years, happiness usually sounds a little like “I can’t wait to spend more time with my kids” or “My Grandkids and I are going to have so much fun when we retire.” Or “It’ll be fun to go on vacations with the kids”. We don’t want to work our lives away. Reality may dictate that one parent might have to work outside the home, but not both. You can live without the mansion and the kids can do without the $500 phone but living your life getting to know your kids is irreplaceable. If your idea of having children is just simply reproducing, that is your right. But for those who exclaim their love for their children is held in the highest regard, stop giving them “things” and start giving them you, your knowledge.
Some profess that without formal education children would end up as delinquents filling the jails and prisons in astronomical numbers. “After decades of stability from the 1920s to the 1970s the rate of imprisonment in the United States more than quadrupled during the last four decades. The US penal population of 2.2 million adults is by far the largest in the world…..The US rate of incarceration with nearly 1 out of every 100 adults in prison or jail, is 5 to 10 times higher than the rates in Western Europe and other democracies….” (1) This is a “better” result by formal education than by a “home schooled” or loosely-organized, educated population?
“By the year 1870, all states had tax subsidized elementary schools.” (2) The US population had one of the highest literacy rates in the world at the time.(3) Literacy in 1870 was about 80% with most of the illiterate congregated in the Southern part of the United States because of segregation.
In 1933 President Roosevelt rejected the elitism shown by the education system. He refused monies to universities and concentrated his education system on the poorest citizens. He believe in an anti-elitist system that a good teacher does not need paper credentials, that learning does not need a formal classroom and that highest priority should go to the lowest tier of society. When liberals regained control of Congress in 1964, they passed and expanded federal support of education “The Higher Education Act of 1965.” This bill threw billions of dollars into the formal government education system.
“From 1870- 1979 illiterate adults over 14 years old dropped from 20% to .6% in the United States.“ (4) According to a 2003 study conducted by the US Department of Education after the 1965 Higher Education Act spending billions of US taxpayer money, “32 million American adults are illiterate, 21 percent read below a 5th grade level, and 19 percent of high school graduates are functionally illiterate, which means they can’t read well enough to manage daily living and perform tasks required by many jobs.” (5) This is the result of throwing billions of dollars at a problem by giving more money to our government for them to find a solution. It sounds good when discussing verbally but produces very little improvement and poor results.
Today’s educational environment is politically charged because unions always want their fair share of greenbacks. The teacher’s union is one of the largest unions in the nation spending millions, if not billions, on lobbying our Congress to “spend more money” on the “issue de jour” (issue of the day.) Creating public support for those issues will always be the best advertisement for a lobbyist. Congress members know that numbers count when the voting machine is pulled out. The more public support a lobbyist can garner, the more likely Congress members will vote their way even if the public has been lied to.
Allowing children to become pawns used by a formal education organizer simply because you want to “give them everything I never had” by using an 8 hour job to supply “that” is negligence because of and on behalf of society. Give them something they need and will use throughout their lifetime, your knowledge and time.
1. https://www.nap.edu//read/18613/chapter/2
2. Paul Monroe, A Cyclopedia of Education.
3. Press Politics and the public Sphere in Europe and North America 1760-1820.
4. https://nces.ed.gov/NAAL/lit_history.asp
5. https://nces.ed.gov/naal/estimates/index.aspx
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