I have just been going over the facts and figures put out by the State department and the U S education dept for the amount of money we spend every year on education. Between the U S dept of education that contributes 8.2% of a budget of $555. billion for education, and the people of the country who pay school taxes in every town and city in America make up the difference. We do have the right to demand excellence. We have fallen behind the rest of the advanced countries of the world.
It seems to me that the money is divided into so many programs with wonderful sounding names that no one has any idea of the whole picture. The variety of loans and grants for students and teachers is so staggeringly complex that duplication and overlaps are increasing all the time. Their seems to be a program for every conceivable situation and problem that could arise. And every bureaucrat somewhere in Washington or from some union has their own pet project to advance. A lot of them include granting loans and grants to illegal aliens under so many programs it is staggering to try and track them all down.
The problem I see is that they are spending to much time and effort to make sure that every student, no matter how slow, is given a special teacher to help them through, inside a classroom filled with children of normal intelligence even though they hold back the class as a whole. Should children with special needs be placed into classes with so called normal children just to make the child's parents feel better? We seem to hear that from more and more people. We have become babysitters for working parents.
Federal law says that whenever possible children with special needs should be included into regular classrooms with other normal kids unless that would have a disruptive effect on the class as a whole.. This means a special paraprofessional aide has to be with them in class. It cannot help but to slow the whole class down. How many special aides can we put into an average class? More and more parents are turning to schools to take care of children instead of trying to place them into special programs to educate them. Who pays for all these extra aides and how many are their nationwide How can schools train and educate downs syndrome children to make their way in the world? They will always need supervising companions to help them cope for as long as they live. It will not work.
How disabled must a child be? What is the definition of special needs as it relates to inclusion with other non disabled children? What disability level must be included and what should not? It is a tough question. Mental disability or physical? How severe? Are schools becoming baby sitters for parents that cannot cope or afford special placement schools? The normal average child today needs every learning opportunity available. The schools today with its present systems are failing to keep up with the rest of the world. We are hiring inclusion specialists for placing children with special needs into regular classes and the result cannot help but slow the whole classes progress. Are we to take the place of special schools and programs just so parents can feel better and to relinquish responsibility for their children to others? I would love to have enough money to take care of every special needs child in America but it is not possible as of now. In today's economy every dollar must be used to full effect and placed where it does the most good.
I would accept the fact that some good comes out of mixing students with special needs children as it teaches acceptance and sympathy and a desire to help others less able than they. But how far are we willing to go and just how disabled should a child be to include them with normal children? In the 35 years since the disabilities act was enacted, the inclusion of special needs children has been tried in almost every state in the union and the scores of children overall in the nation have gone down. We are failing in the upper levels of math, science, chemistry, physics, and others in which we have historically been the leaders.
The dilution of educational programs that do not teach our real history in classrooms about how our country was founded and the truth about how slavery was really administered by people in the south. The watering down of any part of education by political correctness and leaving out history that offends some part of the population. The money spent on education must be spread over more and more programs that benefit fewer and fewer children because of special needs children being included in regular classes.
The work being done by groups for placing special needs children into class means that a lot of money is being spent to accomplish what should be up to local school boards with parental input and not bureaucrats in Washington or the teachers unions who only want to add more teachers to their ranks. I can really sympathize with parents that want to include their children into regular classes in school but that has not worked so far according to children test scores over the years and across the country.
It is a sad reality of life in America today that in our day and age both parents have to work to bring in an acceptable level of income to raise a family and do all the things our parents did with only one breadwinner. When I was discharged from the Marine Corps in 1958 I got a job and bought my own truck and drove cross country for a very large moving company as a leased owner operator and earned approx $200 to $300 a week and believe me, that was a lot of money then. I was able to get married and buy a house on the G I bill back then for only $20,000. and raise three children. My total mortgage including taxes and insurance was only $195 per month.
Life today is very different and the government has grown into a monstrosity with tentacles reaching into all our lives at every level telling us what we must do and not do. We have so many departments in education today that their is probably not one person anywhere that can tell us what they all are. The unions inside the government are so big and almost every union in our country is controlled by democrats.
To get back to school class sizes and the inclusion of developmentally disabled children in normal classes with children that are not. The money spent on aides for each child placed into class could be multiplied by how many disabled children their are and we could pay for separate classes where each child could be helped individually by several teachers in a group setting.
Teaching is one of the most admired professions because in their hands we place our children, to be taught the values of our country and its history and all the knowledge we have learned in the past. The math, science, chemistry, physics, and all avenues of higher learning. Especially the values we place on this country and its beginnings. Our constitution, written by our founders has been downplayed by our President but revered by our people. We have to get away from being afraid of political correctness and teach the truth about our history with all it warts and blemishes.
It is a hard nut to crack but on the one hand we have to protect teachers from indiscriminate firing by superiors to being able to get rid of bad teachers who are only their for a paycheck and are not doing their jobs. Their are far to many teachers being burned out by union policies and rules that discourage innovation and teachers feel left out and alone trying to fight a bureaucracy. Parents must have some say in the process whereby they are involved.
I can personally remember that my nephew was indoctrinated by a teacher who was very against the republican ideals of our nation and went on and on about socialist principals that were his agenda to teach and he battered these into the minds of children. Even today he still believes most of that hogwash. He is what I call a democratic demagog and a democrat through and through. The old school democrats like Roosevelt and Kennedy are nowhere to be seen today.
The old type democrat was a person who held to democratic principals and could be talked to and reasoned with but now the name democrat means the way out far left wing that includes every liberal group imaginable. They all want to have their special projects enacted for their special needs like gay rights among a long list of others. The democratic party today bears no resemblance to what it once was. Joe Lieberman is an example of a good old time democrat that people respected and admired and who was forced to remove himself from what the party has become.
Politics has become a dirty word for what Washington has become, bitter partisan conflicts on a scale that is very hard for us to comprehend. Their are signs of violence spreading from the top down trying to control dissent. The corruption and misuse of money and position are their for all to see. I have come far afield from where I started but it all seems to be tied together with the control by the teachers union and many other unions pitting their power under our new President against any outside interference. It seems to me that every union group, weather or not its members agree, is on the side of the democratic party leaders, and do what they believe will help them, and contribute union money to various political figures.
It starts with us all being informed about things that are happening all around us. In our schools, in our neighborhoods, in our places of work, and especially in Washington and each State government and town boards and local school boards are the place to start. Meet the teachers that teach our children and ask your children about what teachers tell them. It all starts with you being informed and it really only takes about two to four hours a week of REAL searching on the world wide web=WWW and you can put any question to it and get an answer.
I have looked up the history of the union organized by the United Federation of Teachers and its fight for the rights of teachers as a whole over this last 75 years or more. It was a fight that was needed against the powerful interests that held them practically enslaved to low salaries and few rights. The unions were desperately needed and the progress they made was commendable for teachers everywhere. The problems came in the late 1990s when they became so big and included so many other union groups that it seemed to become a political arm of the democratic party.
It became home to various groups that wanted a platform from which to demand attention for their own agendas. What have Nurses and medical personnel have in common with teachers that they should be included in the AFT union. Their are many various union groups being included into one big organization for the power they can exert although each has different aims and wants for its own people. We have to keep one fact in front of us at all times. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Give any group total power over its subordinates and they will eventually misuse it.
It does not work anymore to say, I just do not have the time to spend looking into everything for myself. THE PRICE OF LIBERTY IS ETERNAL VIGILANCE. If you are to lazy or busy then remember and do not complain when things happen that you are against. wait for others to do everything and nothing will be done. Then you deserve what comes.
" by David Berglund, 1977