Here goes another reason why America is going down the tubes. How about the word “help?” Take schools, as a glaring example. The Dept. of Education educates no one, but it seems to me that since it’s inception, schools have gotten even worse, if that’s possible. Stop and think about the public schools for a minute. 150 years ago, there were no public schools. 150 years ago, Americans were far more literate. 8th grade tests of a hundred years ago, when public schools first got started, couldn’t be passed by college graduates today. As the public school fraud gained ground, education slowly progressed downward, till we got what we have today…a disaster. Those first one room schools did indeed educate superbly, and many weren’t even ’public,’ but were formed by concerned citizens who hired a teacher and built a schoolhouse for her to teach. The more glossy and fancy the ’free’ public schools got and are getting, the less educated their graduates are. All the while voting sheeple approve hundreds of billions in bonds to make the schools ever more fancy and wonderful, while the grade achievements go down. American public school graduates are the laughing stock of the world.
The theory is that if the schools are glitzy, it will ’help’ the kids to appreciate education. If kids are allowed to use calculators to do math, it will ’help’ them. Actually, calculators keep their little brains from working, and if anyone thinks that fancy air conditioning, swimming pools, gyms, and other bric-a-brac ’help’ with education, they are dead wrong. I went to the absolute best private school in Washington D.C., or at least it was many years ago, and that was Sidwell Friends. My parents ran out of money and I had to finish the last two years in public school. Sidwell Friends had no air conditioning, fancy gyms, or even a fancy auditorium. We used the small gym for an auditorium. I doubt that the teachers were ’qualified’ by government standards, but they surely could teach! We played no football, but did play soccer and tennis. We did Gilbert and Sullivan operettas and I had compulsory Latin in the 8th grade. When I have dreams or fond recollections of my school days, it isn’t the final two years, but of Sidwell Friends and the kids I went with, although I haven’t heard a word from any of them since I left.
Parents of my schoolmates were responsible enough to spend money to see that their kids were educated. I went to school with sons and daughters of airline presidents, and senators, but also of working class parents who cared about their kids. I took the bus and trolley to school, or was picked up by a classmate and his Dad in an ancient Hudson. Other kids were delivered by Cadillac or right hand drive Lincoln, as Nelson Johnson was, but we all mixed very well. What a fine experience it was. Rich parents, automatically wanted their kids to go to the best schools, maybe even as a matter of snobbery, but others scraped and saved to do it because of wanting to be good parents. My best friend here went to school in a one room schoolhouse in Montana, and had to walk or ride a horse to school for a long distance through snowdrifts half of the year. No school busses then. He still loves to talk about it. When I finished my last two years at a public school, my days in a private one were so good, that I never took a book home, took off every Wednesday, graduated 14th in a class of 173, and was offered a scholarship at Carnegie Tech, which I refused. “Public” anything, from rest rooms, housing, or schools, is bad news. “Private” smacks of exclusivity and excellence. I love “private” housing, schools, and rest rooms.
Obviously we will never eliminate the public school system, even though we should on a gradual basis. Parochial schools are far better than public ones, and any private or even semi-private school is far better than sending your kids to be educated with the masses. Am I a snob? Probably. Public schools are far from “free.” They cost all of us a pretty penny in property taxes, sales taxes, and government ’aid’ which results in currency debasement. It was the word “help” that caused the idea of compulsory public education to be born at the end of the 19th century. Education has gone downhill ever since, just like the dollar, whose proliferation has aided and abetted it. Face it, graduates of today’s public schools are gross dummies as a whole. Many high school graduates can’t read a timetable or tell time without a digital clock. Exaggeration? Maybe, but I hope the point is made. I had to think math problems in my head and memorize the multiplication tables. There were no calculators when I was in school, and when you went to a store, the clerk had to figure out the change, not punch in what you gave him, and automatically tell him what change to give. My god, how we have fallen!
It’s partly the parent’s fault, who use TV and pre-schools as baby sitters rather than books and loving instruction at home. Why? Because Mom has to work, thanks to degraded dollars and high taxes, just to keep the family alive. The declining dollar has caused a universal decay in our lifestyles, and made “help” an all too common verb. “Help” from government, is no help at all, because government can give you nothing without first taking it from you and charging a 50% collection and disbursement fee. “Help” from public schools is not free, as we all pay through the nose for that “free” education, which is no education at all. Kids learn 50% of all they will ever learn before they get out of kindergarten. Those failures in life who cause crimes, and not often enough end up in prison or dead, are the result mostly of parents who lived on the dole in public housing projects. Without the dole or welfare, people would succeed or fail all by themselves, and never be a burden on taxpayers or law enforcement.
The ’help’ given by government, has made the recipients lazy and incompetent, be it in schools, housing, or even subsidies for food in the form of food stamps. “Help’ from any government spawns laziness and incompetence. Private ’help’ without effort given for it or promise to repay, is equally destructive. A hundred years ago, private charities required work for their handouts, but no more. We just have to realize that ’help’ from government has made teachers lazy, and compulsory school has made parents lazy. They feel that government will teach and educate, so they don’t have to give any effort towards sending their kids on the correct paths. Government does a terrible job at educating, plus everything else it attempts to do. If school and education were voluntary and not ’free,’ as they should be, parents would be forced to act responsibly for their offspring, not depending on government, which does a damned poor job. If a parent decided that their kids didn’t need an education, it would be their fault, and no one else’s. Responsible parents would generate wonderful children, and irresponsible parents would generate horrid kids who might end up in jail or dead, which is OK, because if a nation has microscopic government and individual responsibility on all fronts, with everyone being responsible for their own family, life style, jobs, offspring, food, housing, transportation, and all of life’s problems… with the proviso that we had a stable currency… millions would fail and die or never be born. Millions of the inept would not be with us today, and that would be of great benefit to America.
Look at the crime statistics, which are usually lies like the number of jobs ’created.’ The criminals are invariably the result of ’help’ from government, be it poor education, poor parenting, welfare, public housing, or even a shoddy and inept judicial system, which slaps wrists rather than doling out actual punishment, in the hope of ’helping’ the perps ’do better.’ There are so many wrongs in America and the world, which has given us graffiti, cops afraid to un-holster their guns, teachers who pass on failures to ’help’ them, slums, hideous crimes, and of course a lack of punishment for convicted criminals. The attitude of ’helping’ others, at the expense of those who don’t need help, by taxation to the gills or currency devaluation, has just destroyed America. The old saw is totally true: “Whatever you tax, you get less of, and whatever you subsidize, you get more of.” What is being subsidized? Just about everything. The average Joe Blow thinks that far too much is “free,” because the cost of it, no matter what it is, is not born by him when he consumes it. Are food stamps ’free?’ Are public schools ’free?’ Are the needless wars fought in the past and currently, ’free’ because we don’t have to directly shell out dollars to pay for them? Of course not. Is Medicare and Medicaid ’free?’ Is Social Security really a good deal? After pouring good dollars into it and getting bad dollars back, which buy nothing compared to their value when put in, is it a good deal? Enough for today. More Monday, if I haven’t been assassinated before then.
For the weekend, think about the “166,000 new jobs created in October,” and wonder if this statistic could be anything but a blatant lie, as most government figures are, when factories by the dozens close every month, mortgage and construction jobs have evaporated, and more and more production and clerical work goes overseas. Shouldn’t the ’jobs created’ be compared to the jobs lost? Never hear of those statistics, do you? Governments must lie to give themselves credibility as they drag their nation down the tubes. They can thereby say, “It wasn’t out fault.” Have a great weekend.