Parents using a questionnaire

How to Impact Education Organizations
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patriot
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Parents using a questionnaire

Post: # 17Post patriot »

It has become obvious that schools of all grade levels are using children to further political and ideological goals. There have been numerous anecdotal stories from parents who claim the education their children are receiving has deemphasized the traditional subjects in favor of espousing political and ideological positions. They claim American history does not provide a balanced view, but, instead, has emphasized the various injustices and wrongs that America is alleged to have committed. There are even reports of schools suggesting limits on free speech to only what is politically acceptable.

One example of this indoctrination is the demonization of capitalism and the glorification of socialism.

One approach to start addressing this is determining in an objective way the accuracy of these assumptions.  A set of questions would be developed for parents to ask of their children. The questions would be age-tailored from elementary school through college. They would ask about what the students are being taught and determine the degree that traditional subjects are being covered versus social and ideological positions some claim are being used to indoctrinate children. The questions might be multiple choice to provide some objectivity to the process. Responses indicating traditional subjects being taught would get positive scores, while responses indicating political and ideological indoctrination would get negative scores. A total, composite score would be calculated.

Initially, a questionnaire might be created by a local group of parents.  It could be shared on this site. As this gathers steam, a person or organization with expertise and credibility could be sought to create the age-tailored questions.

The questions could be distributed by a combination of social media, news and other sites that agree with the approach, and possibly local newspapers. There would need to be grassroots efforts to get the process known, questions distributed, and parents engaged.

If parents are dissatisfied with the results, they would have evidence to confront school boards, work through PTA organizations, or become active in local and state politics. Newspapers and other media might solicit parents to submit results, so that the public is aware of how the schools are performing. While no scoring system is perfect and bias can be introduced, it should be possible to create a fair scoring system so that the results would be credible and motivate reforms.
SurroundedByLiberals
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Re: Parents using a questionnaire

Post: # 29Post SurroundedByLiberals »

This topic pops up now and again. Unfortunately, actually quite fortunately (because we can) we sent our three kids to private schools where they received a proper education which got all three college degrees.
Years later we're paying for some of our grand kids to go to private preschool and primary school.
ZeWazir
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Re: Parents using a questionnaire

Post: # 35Post ZeWazir »

The one sticky wicket in the outlined strategy is that when push comes to shove, the school boards don't give a ripe pig fart what the parents think of their choices in curriculum, texts, and other support materials.  Teachers will do what they want to do, teach what they want, and treat students who come from conservative families with contempt and derision as they wish.  Once in a while, out of the literally thousands of times the education system stomps on student and/or parental rights, the district may get sued, and a judge reluctantly order the school to desist - and the schools may or may not comply, and even when they do it's not for long.  Just as with every other elected office to which leftist progressive manage to get themselves elected, they view the school board as implied authority to act like a bunch of petty dictators, and treat parents as barely tolerable ignorant serfs who cannot POSSIBLY understand the complexities of educational theory.

While it is a very, very good idea that parents become fully aware of what is being taught in the schools their children attend, I can guarantee the vast majority of any attempts to adjust the approved curriculum from outside is doomed to failure. Even with a packed-house showing at board meetings, and massive write-in campaign, the best most school boards will offer upset parents is some kind of "opt out" or "alternate course" for those sections of their indoctrination scheme "some parents" find exceptionally objectionable.

While some parents do have the means to offer private schooling or home schooling to their children, these alternate settings are not enough to turn things around. The majority of conservatives with school age children simply do NOT have the means, a situation which will only be minimally mitigated by things like vouchers,  And, let's not just ignore the plight of children whose parents WANT them thoroughly and properly indoctrinated instead of educated. Until these kids reach an age they can start making informed decisions (informed by whom?!?), they are not at fault for being led down the leftist primrose path by their elders. In short, we need to free the prog's kids from their propaganda camps, as well as our own.

If we want to have a real and lasting impact on the public education system, conservatives need to get more directly involved by getting elected to these school boards.  School boards actually have an enormous amount of authority for elections that habitually get a response in the 20s percentage of voters.  Thing is, no matter what state or national regulations may require, school boards are the final authority when it comes to approving the curriculum, approving selection of texts and other teaching materials, are directly responsible for the selection and hiring of administrators from superintendents down to building principals, and are indirectly involved with the selection and hiring of everyone else. By choosing more conservative professionals to administrate, the boards have a significant impact on what kind of teachers are put in the classrooms. This kind of influence is our only real chance at taking back the education system.

 
patriot
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Re: Parents using a questionnaire

Post: # 36Post patriot »

All good points. To put the above posts into context, I suggest the activities in the first post to get parents aware of the situation based on objective evidence.  Then with discussions in local social media, local media, PTA groups, etc., increase overall public awareness.

Then this public awareness would motivate strong platforms and support for conservatives to get elected to the school boards as well as to local political positions.
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