The Return of the Little Red School House

Some of the basic problems with public education:

https://steemit.com/education/@gungasnake/the-situation-with-public-education

Most are aware of the problems with public ed in our own day, leftist indoctrination, Common Core, unsafe schools etc.etc. What most are not aware of is that the most fundamental problems with public ed arose in the early to middle 1800s and with the Prussian model that most public ed systems are based on. That model was meant to produce cannon fodder and bricks in the wall, and not self-reliant people.

LaRouche Group literature describes where we are now with education...

https://larouchepac.com/20200727/how-prevent-third-obama-administration

"Today, our college and university students are being forced, not just to consider, but to accept the tenets of “critical theory,” along with some of its offshoots, such as queer and critical race theories, gender studies, disability studies and fat studies. They are required to agree that the human individual is little more than the sum of the identity groups to which he or she belongs. More generally, they must agree that knowledge is a construct of power, which functions through ways of talking about things. Thus, knowledge can be changed and power structures toppled by changing the way we talk about things."

“The idea that words are powerful and dangerous has now become widespread and underlies much scholarship and activism around discursive (or verbal) violence, safe spaces, microaggressions and trigger warnings.”

“Teaching is now supposed to be a political act, and only one type of politics is acceptable–identity politics as defined by social justice theory.” (This treatment adapted from Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay, Cynical Theories, 2020.) A corollary is that only white people can be racist or make racist statements."

"So who is to blame when your children return home from college loaded down with a lifetime of debt, without any education but with a head full of racist slogans or worse....."

Or who is responsible for present literacy rates? Remember that in 1800 before there was such a thing as public ed, literacy rates in America were vanishingly close to 100%.

Victims of all that insanity include our future K12 teachers of course.

The Cost Differential

The problem in cost/value terms was obvious enough several decades ago. Public schools spending ten to fifteen thousand dollars a year per student and totally failing while little Christian schools in the same areas were doing a perfectly good job of educating childen for a fourth or a fifth of that. What, you had to wonder, would happen if even ten families in one of those areas were to band together and spend even half of what the public ed systems were charging for some sort of a little red school house and hire their own teacher or, God forbid, take turns teaching themselves?

With the Dempanic/Plandemic still in force despite having been exposed as a sham and teachers unions demanding schools be shut down for the forseeable future or at least until police have been defunded, many parents have seen the opportunity in the picture and are going for it.

Podding Up

https://www.wsj.com/articles/amid-coronavirus-parents-pod-up-to-form-at-home-schools-11595323805

https://reason.com/2020/07/24/the-media-wants-to-guilt-trip-parents-over-school-pods/

https://www.dailysignal.com/2020/07/20/pandemic-pods-are-fundamentally-reshaping-k-12-education/

https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/parents-flock-to-pandemic-pods-microschooling-to-educate-kids-during-coronavirus

The Other Possibility for Podding

All of the podding articles I've seen so far assume that small family groups are going to hire a teacher. There is another potential approach. Suppose a pod consisting of ten to fifteen families with middle school and high school kids were to tell whoever they worked for that they needed one day of working on the weekend rather than during the week every couple of weeks or so and split the job of teaching up amongst themselves.

Aside from the benefit of near zero cost and not being taught by products of our colleges' education departments (e.g. not being taught math by somebody with 20 semester hours of math and 40 of ed courses), the kids might be exposed to such parent-teachers with ten or twelve different salable skills.

The nation might start producing George Washingtons again. Remember George, who was earning the equivalent of $100,000 a year as a surveyor when he was 15 years old?

Education for Self Reliance

Today's school kids could conceivably be living in a dystopian world twenty years down the road. Best would be for them to be as close to self-reliant as possible.

Public schools do not teach many such self-reliance skills. Parents and their circles of friends should be thinking of ways to fill the gaps.

If I were twelve or fourteen years old, I'd have a list of thing I'd want to be able to do at 16 or 17.

A minimal such list might include:

• Be able to drive most modern vehicles including manual transmission vehicles.
• Be able to change tires, change oil etc., simple car things...
• Be able to use a Singer sewing machine.
• For girls, have some idea as to how to assist at births.
• Have at least two unrelated and salable skills (welding, carpentry, cosmetology...) so that I'd have some shot at putting myself through college if I ever thought I needed to.
• Be able to type decently, at least in English and at least 60 - 70 wpm without watching my hands.
• Be familiar with at least the three basic msoft office products, Word, eXcel, Powerpoint.
• Have command of at least one foreign language, which in Texas would usually be Spanish.
• Know how to use basic tools including power tools.
• Be familiar with most categories of modern firearms, at least know how to use and clean them.
• Have some clue as to public speaking.
• Have some clue as to the basic ideas of the US constitution.
• Have some idea as to how to cook, at least simple things like eggs, sausage and potatoes, so I wouldn't starve the first week after I left home....
• Understand the basics of modern mathematics if possible, have some idea of what logarithms and slide-rules were, some idea of basic trig functions and how they work, some idea of what derivatives and integrals are and the basic rule ("fundamental theorem of calculus:) which ties the two together.