Public School Tragedy

Written by Cedar Bennett at age 15

Let us say, if you will, that our public school system is a figurative battlefield (and not all too figurative at that!) and your little Joey is the soldier. Only little Joey, having been brought up in this sort of life, doesn't know any better, and so he marches back and forth with his artillery, like a time bomb waiting to explode.

One of these days he sees all the other soldiers charge, and so he charges as well, only to be felled along with the majority of his comrades.  It is not such an esoteric analogy. Perhaps even, the child would grasp it better than the adult. How can this be? Because with all fairness and due respect to the parent, our educational system has been sliding so rapidly in the past few decades, that even when you attended school, imperfect as it was, it stood worlds above today's institutions.

Think back to when you were in grade school, did a teacher ever once have to discuss the dangers of drugs and sexually transmitted diseases? Unheard of, right? Did your high school distribute condoms in an ineffective attempt to stop teenage pregnancies? Not on your life! But this, this is the key, and I want you to read these words carefully: did a man spouting ludicrous psychobabble ever tell your parents that because you cried after losing a baseball game, or liked to run outdoors, or couldn't quite grasp multiplication yet, that you had some cockeyed  "mental deficiency", slap some psych label on you and pump you full of drugs to the point where you were "quiet"? If you think I exaggerate, go and visit the office of your school "therapist" and see for yourself the tomes written about fraudulent mental "diseases", and the poison they call drugs which "cures" them.

However, the real purpose of this article is not to impeach school psychologists but to speak as the voice of a child to the parents of today. I have gone to these public schools before, not for long, admittedly, but long, enough to experience what I sincerely hope your child never does.

What seems to be absent above all else is simple common sense. It doesn't take a genius to figure if you don't understand a Word to took it up in the dictionary, and it certainly doesn't take an Einstein to figure that if one is in an English, or History class, that is, what one, studies.

For those parents who know how degraded it's gotten, but are wary of pulling their children out for fear that if they don't receive a "proper" education they shall surely perish, let me make a point which I hope will help you to see the light. Probably the majority of geniuses and impressive historical figures did not receive a formal education. This does not mean they went uneducated. It means simply that they sought knowledge in different and more effective way.

If I can be any sort of example, my education has been extremely chopped and spliced together. A year at this school, three years at that, a year of not doing much of anything; and I still match my knowledge to any fifteen year old or high school graduate who grew rancid as she fermented away in the public schools for twelve years. I do not propose that every child travel to Timbuktu before they reach the age of ten, or that every 6th grader be a budding Aristotle, but I'm quite convinced a study of students outside the public school system would reveal a distinctly higher level of learning.

Now for those parents still unconvinced, I should like to relate to you a few stories from my experience in a small town "top" public -high school. Keep in mind that this is merely skimming the very surface of the cesspool; I made it a point of not allowing myself to act the little sheep or soldier, as it were, who followed along with the rest. But take my word for it, there are more flocks in these schools than one would care to imagine.

I will begin with my English class and you will no doubt see how atrocities such as "ebonics" could ever have been invented. Basic fundamentals have long since departed and been replaced with a psychology based education which produces a society dumber than dirt.

Indeed, I felt the majority of the time that I knew more than my teacher who had a degree in literature. We received all sorts of enlightening assignments to play with, such as different techniques to guessing the meanings of words (apparently the dictionaries were for pressing dry rose petals or some such thing) and we viewed such educational films as the O.J. Simpson murder trial, or a horrible motion picture called "Camp Nowhere", which could at least have lived up to its name, stayed that way, and been nowhere to be found. All of this, of course, was entirely irrelevant to our studies, which proceeded at a pace a snail could easily have rivaled.

Looking at my fellow students, especially in Algebra, one got the impression that the poor things were lost somewhere back in the 1st grade and wouldn't have known an integer if it walked up and bit them on the hinder. I can forgive the students for their basic illiteracy. That is simply the uniform result of the schools these days, but because they are so stupefied and numb from years of poor education, they turn their attention to a game; any game will do. This is where the druggie punks, gangs, and such enter into it, and it is dangerously catching. The natural sheep phenomenon of young people trying to fit in has a devastating effect on otherwise ethical boys and girls.

When one is fully informed of the state of the schools, it seems there would be few who would continue to subject their children to it. As a fifteen year old to the parents of children in public schools, or considering the enrollment of their children in these battlefields masquerading as educational institutions, I strongly urge you to reconsider.