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July 24, '01                            Vol. 1, No. 23
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   T H E    S C H O O L   L I B E R A T OR
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* Poor, poor charter schools * Titanic Deck Chairs *
* Beyond Redemption * Separationist Poetry *

--> Charter Chatter: In a recent article appearing in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Diallo Dphrepaulezz of Pacific Research recounted the trials of several charter schools at the hands of, as he refers to them, "educrats."

http://www.pacificresearch.org/oped/

01-07-06dd.html

--> Edison in San Francisco, Arlington Traditional School in Virginia and Jim Geiser's schools in Baton Rouge, Louisiana are all fighting an uphill battle with local school boards who are loathe to anger teachers unions.

--> Yours truly has twice recently been excoriated for criticizing the false education reforms of tax credits and
government-funded homeschooling. I may as well antagonize everyone into heaving rotten tomatoes by exposing the
charter school fraud, too.

--> By quoting impressive test scores for Edison's students and warning school boards that "[n]ationwide, parents have
seen improved achievement for their children and will not sit quietly while union-backed school boards turn back the
clock to the days of low expectations and failure," Mr. Dphrepaulezz is wasting his time on trivia.

--> Improving meaningless test scores or inciting poor, urban parents to riot for more dependency-creating government
programs is akin to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

--> Mr. Dphrepaulezz, you are right that we shouldn't go back to "the days of low expectations and failure." We must go back further to the days of liberty and achievement, when parents did not whine supinely for more government handouts to raise their families and when children were simply children, not pawns in a never ending political chess match. We must go back to when school and state were separate.

--> Speaking of rearranging Titanic deck chairs, the pros in our nation's capital are at it as usual, this time with the recently passed education "reform" bill.

--> In what may be a first, the superintendents of New York and LA school systems gave a joint talk at the National Press Club pointing out, well, the obvious, that congressional reforms will achieve the opposite of their expressed
intentions.

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/13/po

litics/13EDUC.html

--> Reports the NYT: "The superintendents of the nation's two largest city school systems warned today that the toughened testing and accountability measures passed by
the House and Senate recently could drive down educational standards, rather than raising student achievement." To which we can only reply, "Thank you, Watson."

================ ANNOUNCEMENTS ================

--> Thanks to some significant donations that came in last week, we are getting near our goal $8,500 for our webpage
upgrade. To those still on the sidelines, there's a way to go to reach our goal with only eight days left. We still need two $500 gifts, and a whole bunch of gifts from $25 to $250. Larger donations are, of course, still welcome. Please make your commitment of support by July 31 so that we can secure Geoff Braun's services for the rest of the work.
Email Morgen with your pledge mailto:Morgen@psnw.com
or call 559/292-1776.

Take a look at our new homepage http://www.sepschool.org and show us how much you like it with your donation. As always, we thank you for your generous support.

--> SepCon2001 is set for Nov. 16-18 in Arlington VA, the weekend before Thanksgiving, at the Hilton DoubleTree
Hotel in Arlington VA. We have a SepCon2001 page listing the speakers and topics. Registration information, too. Go to

  http://www.sepschool.org/sepcon.html

Mark your calendar now.

======= SPECIAL OFFER =========

Are you still leaning toward the notion that public schools simply need some tinkering on the margin? May we suggest
listening to "Can Public Schooling Be Repaired," a panel discussion featuring Don Bourdreaux, Ron Brandt, Cathy Duffy, Charlotte Iserbyt, R. Franz Jordan, Rev. E. Ray Moore and Jim Woodall. Get this 60 minute audiotape as a School Liberator special--$1 plus $3.50 shipping--a full $7 discount. Call Morgen at 559/292-1776 to order.

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Public Schools Are beyond Reform and Redemption

By Charley Reese

Public education, or, more accurately, compulsory government education, is a failure. It should not cost half a trillion
dollars a year to teach people to read and write, especially when even that effort is far from successful.

Back in the late 1800s, when compulsory government education was still a topic of debate, R.L. Dabney, a great Southern
theologian, remarked, "If all you mean by education is teaching people to read and write, then all you will accomplish is to create a mass market for trash literature."

Fairly accurate prediction, I'd say, because America is the largest market in the world for trash literature, trash  television and trash movies. Some of the nation's highest paid heroes are barely literate, which can be verified by listening to almost any sports interview.

I have observed this process of decay since 1955. Certain things have always been constant. The cry is always: Give
us more money and we will do the job. The educational bureaucracy has always been given more money, and it has a
done a worse, not a better, job. Another constant has been that blame has been placed on everybody but the responsible
parties -- students and their parents.

Learning, which is what students do or at least are supposed to do, is a subjective process. A child cannot be force-fed
an education. If the desire is not there, if the willingness to work hard is not there -- yes, Virginia, learning is hard work -- there's not much the teachers can do about it.

Of course, the decay in the system is so pervasive that 60 percent of the college graduates in Massachusetts flunk the
teacher-qualification exam. I have no doubt that Massachusetts will react in the typical way: either abolish the examination
or water it down to the point that a moron can pass it.

I do not believe that compulsory government education can be reformed. I have long advocated that parents get their
children out of it if they can find an alternative. I'm well aware that, in a nation with more than 15,000 separate school districts, there are some schools that do a fair job--relatively speaking. Not one, I'm convinced, could stand a comparison with a typical school of 75 years ago.

The system today is a political system and, like everything else in our society, has been strangled by laws, rules and
court orders. If you look at the areas left where a school- board member could actually make a decision, you find there
practically are none. Hence, elected school boards have become, in effect, a cover for a bureaucracy that runs itself without any democratic input whatsoever.

Contributing to the unlikelihood of serious reform is the disunity in a country that is being destroyed by immigration and by a moronic native population conditioned
to despise its own heritage.

Consequently, there is no consensus even on what education should accomplish. Business wants it to produce docile workers and mindless consumers. Various fanatics want it to produce cannon fodder for their respective ideological wars. Many parents just want public schools to baby-sit their brats so they can enjoy their soap operas in peace. In the meantime, colleges of education, better called institutions of no learning, are spreading the poison
that education should be effortless and under no circumstances should any child have to earn self-esteem.

And, at the same time, in our litigation-mad society, teachers and administrators alike are paralyzed into
inaction.

I have a friend, or at least an ex-friend, who is upset at my position on public education. He keeps sending me
clips about good teachers. All he is doing is reinforcing
my position.

The people in the gigantic educational bureaucracy who have the least influence on the system are the classroom
teachers. There isn't a one of them who doesn't know that if they speak about what's wrong with the system, they do
so at the jeopardy of their jobs. They will either be fired or exiled to some educational equivalent of Siberia, and every school district has such a place.

I wish I could just say: Put your children in a private school. Unfortunately, when a culture is poisoned, the poison spreads to all its institutions, both public and
private. In other words, not all private schools are any better than the public ones.

In the meantime, don't be fooled by cries for more money or promises of more reforms. Unless you see colleges of
education (the source of a lot of nonsense) shut down, the federal Department of Education abolished and the compulsory-attendance laws repealed, you will know the reforms are a sham.

There are simply too many people with a vested interest in getting their share of that half-trillion dollars. They aren't about to change the gravy train, and to hell
with what it does to your children.

Reach Charley Reese at 407-420-5315 or creese@orlandosentinel.com.

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WANT TO SOUND OFF? Discuss education issues with fellow articulate School Liberators. Go to
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sDiscussion.htm

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FINAL THOUGHT

The Time Has Come
By Dorothy E. Kreiss Robbins

"The time has come," the walrus said,
"To talk of many things;
Of readin', writin', 'rithmetic,
Of pupils, schools, and tax-made kings."

For years we faithful denizens
Have paid our tax as citizens.
(The tax goes up, our voice goes down
Until, at last, it's nearly drowned.)
We're taxed and taxed for better schools:
For baseball fields and swimming pools....
But for the fundamentals what percent
For EDUCATION's really spent?
Who cares if Johnny really reads?
Just so we've met his social needs?
We're trapped, we cannot get away!
"Comply, comply," is all they say.
And so the buses run on time;
We're up at dawn in every clime;
The streams of children ever flow
Into the systems that daily grow;
While still, small voices that object
Are held in total disrespect.
We dare not think or criticize
Methods, books, or taxes' size:
Just keep them coming in the door
All we want is more and MORE!
Forget the reasons for the books;
"Smile, parents, smile; no angry looks!"
"And, teachers, watch your P's and Q's
"Or your seniority you will lose.
"To question who you're working for
"Would slam retirement's lovely door."

"It's big, it's great...we graduate!
"Ten thousand pupils passed our gate!
"(Don't ask us if we educate.)"

Mrs. Dorothy Robbins (twice widowed) is the mother of eight, grandmother of 28, great grandmother of four (Aren't I blessed?); published writer (magazines and the web); talk show guest on various patriotic and Creation programs; teacher of America's Christian History of the Constitution for over 20 years; writer of manuals and books on the same;
active in pro-Constitutional activities; member of Constitution/American Independent Party, as such candidate
for Secretary of State-California, 1994; proud signer of the Proclamation of the Alliance for Separation of School & State.

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THE SCHOOL LIBERATOR is a FREE service of The Alliance for the Separation of School & State, 4578 N First #310,
Fresno CA 93726 (559) 292-1776. We are a non-profit, grass roots educational organization dedicated to informing
people worldwide how education can be improved for all-not only the poor-by liberating schools from politics. For more
information go to

http://www.sepschool.org

Publisher: Marshall Fritz
Editor: Cathy Cuthbert
Copyright 2001, The Alliance for the Separation of School & State, Inc. All rights reserved.

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