Public School To Investigate Intent Behind Groin-Kick

Stop sexually harassing that pole!

Well, it’s come to this.  Society’s obsession with political-correctness (or is it just the public schools’ obsession with sex…hmmmm…) has turned the Bureaucracy of the Bored and Useless, i.e., public school administrators, on a seven year old kid for defending himself.

A 7-year-old boy is being investigated by his South Boston elementary school for possible sexual harassment after kicking another boy in the crotch.

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Lynch’s son, Mark Curran, said the boy that he kicked had been bullying him on the school bus ride home from Tynan Elementary last week.

Sexual harassment?  For a kick to the  family jewels?  By a seven year old?  Did the kid perform some sort of ninja-cupping action with his foot in the process?  The school’s explanation:

‘Your son kicked a little boy in the testicles. We call that sexual harassment,’ Lynch said the school told her.

I call it an unnatural obsession with testicles.

This is dumb.  What happens if the B.B.S. finds that the seven year old actually acted with the intent of sexually harassing the bully?  What if he was just being insensitive to the bully’s feelings?  Is he then branded a sexual harasser?  And what then?  Does it go in the dreaded permanent file?  Is there a special board in the school where the testicle-kickers are listed for purposes of scorn and mocking?  Are there multiple boards?  What about the “titty-twister” board?  Or the “insensitive rhymes” board?  I used to love the old “Chinese, Japanese, Dirty Knees, Look at These” chant.  I don’t think I sexually harassed anyone.  Of course, I was ten, so I’m not sure I knew what either sexual or harassment were, let alone what constituted sexual harassment.  If I had known though, I wouldn’t have wasted my opportunity on the school bully, if you know what I mean (that was a veiled reference at holding hands.  So calm down mom).

In any event, another wonderful example of your tax dollars at work.

33,000 inmates ordered released in California. I blame public education.

$578 million. I wonder how many criminals it can fit?

With today’s U.S. Supreme Court decision, I have yet another reason to be thankful for leaving California.  In a 5-4 decision, the Court ordered the release of 33,000 inmates in California, due to continued violations of “inmates’ rights to adequate care for their mental and physical health.”  In other words, the prisons are overcrowded.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to analyze the decision, or give my opinion on whether the Court made the correct ruling.  I’m not going to go into the ideological breakdown of the judges, or the nitty-gritty details of the law at issue.  Finally, I’m not going to respond to the pot-heads who will inevitably argue that there wouldn’t be overcrowding if drugs were legalized.  Instead, I’m going to address this:

California Gov. Jerry Brown said he ‘will take all necessary steps to protect public safety.’

(…Except build a new prison so we aren’t forced to release 33,000 felons).  It goes without saying that “public safety” is certainly a purpose of any government.  In fact, I would imagine everyone would agree that it’s a primary purpose of government.  Unfortunately, this purpose has been diluted in many states because public safety has to increasingly compete with unnecessary human interest projects that are forced down our collective throats by do-gooders and/or liberals.  In other words, California can’t pay to house its criminals because it spends too much friggin’ money on crap.

Gigantic example of the crap: public education.  California is $15.4 billion in debt, and an astonishing one out of every four dollars spent goes to the education system.  Who can forget the $578 million Robert F. Kennedy Community School in Los Angeles?  The Los Angeles Unified School District spends $11,357.00 per pupil!  Keep this cost in your head as you read this statement made by Doug Nielson, a government and economics teacher at Coalinga High School:

‘If we stick to our ideologies, our children are going to suffer. When somebody says well, extending these taxes is a tax increase, you’ve got a mindset there that says the dollars are more important than the kids. And they can’t be. We can’t afford to do that. You can’t have first-class teaching on a Third World budget.’

This is the complete lunacy that we face with the public education system.  “Third World budget?”  The United States spends more per pupil than any other nation in the world.  And for what?  Is there any question that private schools can do a better job, at less cost? While saving money for the government to keep felons off the streets?

It’s in this way that liberals have won.  People no longer seriously question why the government is spending $11,000.00 per student.  Heck, most of the people complaining about the 33,000 inmates being released won’t even remember that $578 million of tax-payer money was used to build a school.

At some point, every community needs to answer a basic question: What is the role of government?  Do you want more cops on the the street and criminals in prison…or do you want your government to spend $11,000.00 per pupil at the public schools?  The government can’t afford to do everything, and if you don’t decide on what our taxes are paying for, somebody else will.  Today in California, the Supreme Court made the decision.

Public Schools Are a Waste of Money.

This is not a money tree

On January 13, 2011, an article was published in a local Orland Park, Illinois newspaper, with the following title:

District 135 considering civil suit against district jumping parent.

Read it if you want, but you can probably guess what the article’s about from the title.  Yep, a father wanted his kid to go to school in a district other than the one he lived in.  The father lived in Blue Island, Illinois, and wanted his daughter to go to school in Orland Park.  Both communities are suburbs of Chicago.  The father falsified an affidavit as to his residence, which was eventually discovered, and he was sentenced to six months probation for lying.  That the guy was stuck sending his kid to a school in Blue Island, whether he wanted to or not, isn’t the point of this post…although it certainly could be. 

The newspaper article mentioned that the district was considering suing the man for tuition.  I heard on the radio today that it did so.  Of course, the public school in District 135 doesn’t charge “tuition,” per se.  Like every other school district, it extracts the money at gunpoint in the form of local property taxes.  Because of this, it’s sometimes difficult to figure out exactly how much each kid costs.  Well, the article has it: $10,000.00.  For one kid.  In junior high.  It’s difficult for me to express just how astonishingly high this ”tuition” is; but let’s try.

A nearby private Christian school, Liberty Christian Academy, located in more affluent Arlington Heights, Illinois, charges $4,450.00 for a junior high student.  And additional kids from the same family get a discount.  More expensive private schools can approach $6-7,000/student for junior high.  According to Liberty’s website, 90% of the graduating high school seniors go onto college.

There must be a reason for the difference in costs, right?  What is the junior high student in District 135 getting for $10,000.00?  Well, according to the 2009 National National Assessment of Educational Progress, which is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, not much (I can’t link the actual report…it’s a pdf).  A little over two-thirds of the eighth grade students are considered either below or at the “basic” level of math and reading.  Am I saying that District 135 provides a crappy education, or graduates minimally proficient junior high students?  Not necessarily.  There are lots of different tests used to evaluate the public schools, and it looks like District 135 is doing fine on some of them.  Does scoring well on any of the tests matter?  Who knows.

What I do know is this: the public education system in this country is a complete boondoggle that is totally unnecessary.  It costs an absurd amount of money, and at the very least, doesn’t do any better than private schools in educating the youth.  This is why the Department of Education should be defunded and a voucher system put into place on the local level so that parents can send their kids where they want.  Honestly, can anyone explain to me the point of the public education system?  $10,000 a student?  In-state tuition at a lot of state universities doesn’t cost that much.  And since the families aren’t paying $10,000 in property taxes, the rest comes from the government. 

Some guy called into the liberal talk-radio show that I was listening to today, complaining about how the right was trying to kill public education and force everyone into a private school.  He, obviously, was against this alleged plan.  Why?  Well, according to him, it’s because private school students were having to read Ayn Rand and Friedrich Nietzsche instead of Steinbeck.  Well, as a life-time private school matriculator (k-law school), I can say that I’ve had to read Steinbeck, didn’t read Nietzsche until my political philosophy class in college, and read Rand only during free time.  Of course, the caller also claimed that private schools only teach Creationism, as opposed to evolution.  This is also not true…we just don’t buy into the “we all came from monkeys” theory.  Of course, in a private school, if a parent has issues with the curriculum, they can actually get a hold of somebody on the school board.  Good luck with that at a public school.

The public education system is an entitlement program that offers virtually no value, especially for the cost.  Americans demand choice in everything else…why not with their education?  I ask myself almost every day why the people of the United States have so little interest in disbanding this stupid system that literally forces families to send their kids to schools that are terrible.  And then sues them if they try and send them somewhere else.  I just don’t get it. 

Thoughts?  Anyone?