An interesting take - but in my opinion, if you want your children to know something, it's best to teach them yourself.
Every single day at the library, I encounter kids who cannot read an analog clock. If they are missing this simple, yet essential skill, why should we trust schools to teach them something as important as the 4 Rules?
Monday, December 14, 2009
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Ten years on the Board of Trustees of Pikes Peak Library District, now ten years teaching political science at community colleges first in Colo. Springs and now in N. Texas, and continually astonished at the ignorance, detachment from our culture, apathy about our government and state of intellectual discourse of the youth.
Parent (not plural) who may or many not be involved, generations trained in dependence upon government handouts, expectation of a life without effort and willingness to support "hope and change", and you expect they should learn about proper gun handling, where babies come from and individual responsibility?
Ahhh, you've set me off. Sorry for the interruption. Nothing to see here folks, move along.
I feel ya, Ed. I really do.
The article makes a valid point. You can't claim on the one hand that teaching gun safety "will push a pro-gun culture on unsuspecting students" while at the same time claiming that sex-education won't encourage sex. (As if teenagers needed encouragement).
I think Breda's point is more appropriate. Given the public schools' abysmal record at teaching ANYTHING maybe we should rethink letting them teach at all, let alone sex-education or gun safety.
Personally, I'm increasingly annoyed that schools are expected to teach more and more seemingly every year. Parent's should be teaching their little monsters how to be good little citizens themselves.
Hell, I can forgive someone being a bit socially abrasive if that's the cost of them being able to read, write, and crunch numbers effectively.
These days schools are expected to cover so much, they can't teach anything.
My own sister, in an honors HS civics class could not fully list the rights protected under the 1st Amendment and said the class didn't even focus on most of the original BOR.
She drew a blank when I asked about the 3rd, 9th & 10th Amendments, and couldn't name a single current SCOTUS justice. They simply didn't cover the stuff.
Hell, in my 400 level Con Law class at Delaware people couldn't even name all 9 sitting SCOTUS justices.
If the schools can do such a bang up job of teaching the basic tenets of the Constitution I shudder to think what "firearms safety" would end up looking like.
Mike W -
I can. A whole lot of shot up kids.
...And yet they'll teach drivers' ed so they can handle a car safely, and a person could (given intent) use a motor vehicle as just an effective weapon as a firearm.
Oy.
Jim
Not the same thing, but I get the point.
I think another valid point that can be made is that while we all complain about the general failure of public schools to teach, when we propose that the staff dedicate resources to teaching about reproduction, gun safety, the green religion, sports, home "economics", or any of the other not-so-academic subjects, it detracts from the core studies.
I realize that some of it is due to a massive tax burden that requires two working parents, but why wouldn't we want to get students through a basic education as quickly as possible?
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