The Heros of Paron High
Paron High has higher tests scores than Bryant, even though it spends less money per student. In Paron, there are reports that teachers can still pray and share scriptures with students. In other words, it is a traditional community school, not a modernist education factory controlled from a distant capitol. That is why the statists want it gone, and every school like it. The statist Borg machine tells us that "resistence is futile, you will be assimilated". In the case of Paron, it looks like the Borg are correct.
It started in 2004 with the bone-headed "administrative consolidation". Even "conservative republicans" went around saying that this would not close down any schools, that it was administrative consolidation only. A handful of legislators who were delusional enough to still believe in people being in charge of their own lives, tried to warn us this was coming, but were shouted down by the liberal media and their own colleagues who thought they had all the angles figured.
(click "Tuesday" below and scroll down for rest of article, or if sent directly here just scroll down)
It started in 2004 with the bone-headed "administrative consolidation". Even "conservative republicans" went around saying that this would not close down any schools, that it was administrative consolidation only. A handful of legislators who were delusional enough to still believe in people being in charge of their own lives, tried to warn us this was coming, but were shouted down by the liberal media and their own colleagues who thought they had all the angles figured.
(click "Tuesday" below and scroll down for rest of article, or if sent directly here just scroll down)
posted by Mark Moore (Moderator) at Tuesday, April 11, 2006
2 Comments:
Paron was "administratively consolidated" with Bryant, and as is the case with so many other small schools in that situation, the Bryant School Board steamrolled the smaller community. For a while it looked like the extreme length of the bus rides was going to help keep Paron High open.
The problem is that the modernists keep redefining what a "complete" education is. They keep adding required courses that never before in the history of Western Civilization were considered part of a complete public school education. Most of the new ones are "Work Force Training" rather than Reading, Writing, Mathematics, History, or Science classes. Since there are a huge number of careers, this new view requires huge education factories in order to get class sizes up for the newly-required courses.
Actually, the concept is not really new. It looks a whole lot like the education system of the former Soviet Union. In that system, people were not trained to be generally educated people capable of self-government. Instead, their education quickly became narrowly focused on a set of job skills required by the State. Of course, our socialists think they are a lot smarter than those socialists, so they will find a way to make it work.
Politicians are twisting themselves into pretzels trying to reconcile their hearts to their deeds. Well, not Mike Bebee. He seems to be all for the Machine rolling over these small schools. He does not seem conflicted about it at all. Not Senator Jim Argue either. He actually sank a bill that would have allowed small schools that are part of a larger district to share courses with the bigger school that consolidated them. That would allow them to teach 90% of their students on campus and bus the 10% that wanted courses they don't offer to the larger school.
Argue would have none of it, nor would Bebee. Bebee's reasoning seems to be that it might open up the Lakeview Case again. I have news for you people at the capitol, the judges are not going to let go of Lakeview anyway. What the ledge has done in this special session will only whet their apetite. Bullies don't let go when their victims are cringing, only when they stand up to them.
I am especially troubled by the way Argue sent this bill to a committee that would not let it out to the floor for a vote (it passed with 90 votes in the House), then, when it looked like the committee might waiver and vote it out, he manuevered to keep it from coming up. If our Lt. Governor had not been fighting for his life out of state, it would have been a perfect time to tap the "President Pro Tem" of the Senate on the shoulder and remind him that the Lt. Governor is the Constitutional President of the Senate. My sources tell me that if necessary, the Lt. Governor can step in and take over for a President Pro Tem who is not playing it straight.
Rep. Jeremy Hutchinson was the sponsor of the bill that would let the smaller schools have some classes at the larger schools. That combined with distance learning is an improvement over what we have now, and the Senate deserved a chance to vote it into law.
While there is no moral conflict on the Democratic side- it is too harsh to say that moral conflicts require morals, rather they seem committed to Education Factories and a statist view of education, there is such a conflict on the Republican side. They want the Work Force education because Big Business wants the public to finance it's job training costs. But they also want community schools. They want to please an increasingly runaway court, but they also want to shed themselves of the court's mandates.
Administrative consolidation was not a cost saving measure. If you add up the salaries of every Superintendent in this state it totals $22 million a year. That is for big districts and small. The ledge just voted over $100 million for the biannum to hire educrats to go to all the local schools and micromanage them. Centralizing control does not save money. It costs money, and freedom.
The voters who want to unplug the machine and have more Paron's (small schools with an extended family feel that accomplish more with less money) and less Soviet Union don't have much of a choice. The Democrats seem sold out to the concept. The Republicans are trying to hold on to both conflicting visions at once. This will prove increasingly impossible to do. They will have to look inside their hearts and decide once and for all who they really are, and who they want to serve.
Eventually, if the Paron High Heros of this state are to be saved, the ledge will have to stand up to the courts, and reverse the process of adding more and more "required" courses that no one there really wants and are not part of a classical education anyway.
Cool blog, interesting information... Keep it UP » » »
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