Are you into philosophical debates?
Here is a URL regarding the agenda to remove Christianity from society at large. In a nutshell, it discusses the role Horace Mann, the "Father of the common public school", and Robert Owen, one of the fathers of modern socialism, and others.
http://www.littlegeneva.com/docs/education.htm
Another URL regarding general moral decline in the United States and Horace Mann's purposes.
http://www.jewsformorality.org/moral_decline.htm
I've been in the schools. I taught 7-12 science for five years, two of those after I had already been burned out once and took a break to raise my children to school age. In Missouri, the average new teacher burns out and quits the public school system after 3 years, never to return. Sadly, with only five years of experience, I've got more teaching experience than >50% of the Missouri teaching population. Most of the burnout is due to the fact that the average teacher works 60+ hours a week during the school year, discipline is at an all time ineffective low, and the state's demand for continuing education for certification. It is difficult to find balance in your life as a teacher.
Life as a substitute is better because you have time to live your life outside, but in the classroom it can be worse because in the students' eyes, you're not a "real teacher". IME, the classes who behaved best for substitutes faced double the consequences for misbehavior upon the teacher's return.
Good Luck,
Yolanda
I was only digging a little deeper, not off track.
You and rozett began a discussion on 9/23/04. You mentioned the imbalance of christians represented in the visual media, and rozett talked about the parent's abdication of responsibility for their children's education. Horace Mann's agenda to promote socialism was implemented both by deliberately separating children from their parents, thereby limiting the parents' influence on their children's philosophies, and by setting up teaching schools (Normal Schools) to influence what teachers eventually taught.
The establishment of teaching schools and state certification has, by implication, led the parents of today believe that when it comes to their child's education, they are inferior to those that are formally trained, leading them to leave education to the professionals, when in fact the opposite has shown to be true. Studies have shown that by the time a home schooled child reaches the 8th grade, he or she is functioning on average 4 grade levels above publicly schooled peers.
I thought that the links I provided were relevant to this discussion. Besides, I personally believe that it is never a bad idea to know the historical contexts that brought us to our present state.
I did not mean to offend, and apologize if I did.
Yolanda
Re: I was only digging a little deeper, not off track.
I enjoyed reading your perspective on this topic and I certainly don't mind you changing the subject line at all. Sometimes we just have to out run the post patrol. [img]/forums/images/icons/wink.gif[/img]