News Releases
Public School Prisons -— What Crimes Have Our Children Committed?
(PRWEB) July 26, 2005 -- Why have we put our children into educational prisons called public schools? What crimes have they committed? Why do we condemn almost 45 million innocent children to this punishment? Is it an exaggeration to call these schools "prisons?"
These are questions author Joel Turtel asks in his new book, "Public Schools, Public Menace: How Public Schools Lie To Parents and Betray Our Children."
To prove his point, Turtel compares prisons to public schools.
What are prisons? They are places where people are locked up against their will for crimes they have committed.
What is life like for a prisoner? The warden and prison guards, in effect, take away the prisoner's life and freedom. They force a prisoner to live in a small cell he doesn't want to live in, eat food he may hate, work at a job he detests, associate with other prisoners who may be dangerous, and remove him from everyone and everything he loved in the outside world when he was free.
Like prisons, public schools impose their will by force, by compulsion. Local governments force parents to send their children to public schools just as the police drag convicted criminals into prison (even though many parents are not aware of this and voluntarily send their kids to these schools). A parent can be convicted of alleged child abuse and sent to prison if she disobeys the school authority's order to send her child to the local public school.
Local governments then force parents to pay school taxes for these education prisons. If they don't pay these taxes, their local government will foreclose on their home and throw them out on the street.
School authorities force children to stay in school until they are 16 years old or graduate high school (these age limits vary by state). In effect, most children get a 10-year education prison sentence if they start school at age six.
School authorities force millions of children to sit in boxes called classrooms with 20 other children-inmates for six to eight hours a day, five days a week, for 10 years. The children must obey the adult education wardens (teachers and principals), who they may fear or dislike. They must study subjects they may hate or that bore them to death. They must associate only with other children their same age who may be bullies, violent, or emotionally disturbed. They must do homework and study for tests they must pass or be left back in school.
The children are removed from their loving parents and put under the control of teacher-wardens who may not love them, care for them, or simply even have the time to pay attention to them. They are stopped from being a free and free-spirited child. They are told to keep quiet. They are told to obey the rules. They are told to march from classroom cell to classroom cell every 50 minutes to study different subjects that may mean nothing to them.
Parents, if you don't think this is harsh punishment for your innocent children, you should ask yourself the following question. When your spouse pressures you to attend some event you hate, whether a ballet, lecture, or football game, how do you feel? After sitting at that event for only an hour, how do you feel? You are probably angry, irritated, and frustrated. You squirm in your seat or doze off. You can't wait to get out of there. You can't wait to get back to your life and doing the things you love to do.
Well, millions of kids must sit through this agony of boredom or frustration for 6 to 8 hours a day for 10 years in public-school classrooms. Yet, to repeat, what crimes have your children committed to warrant this horrible punishment?
In fact, they have committed no crime whatsoever. They are simply innocent victims of local governments and public-school authorities who think they own your children, who think they have the right to put your children into education prisons for 10 years for "their own good."
Parents, if a rogue cop came and took your child to prison for no reason whatsoever, except for saying it would be for your child's "own good," would you not fight to the death to stop him? So why do you let school authorities take your innocent children and punish them for 10 years?
Parents, if you thought you had no choice, you are wrong. Happily, you can homeschool your child or give your child a fun, quality, rewarding, low-cost education with Internet private schools. You have many education options.
Turtel tells parents, "If your child hates public school, listen to him or her. Don't let school authorities put your child in a public-school prison for 10 years. You have a choice, and your child's life is at stake."
Parents can find out about new, low-cost education options for their kids in Joel Turtel's book, "Public Schools, Public Menace." Turtel asks parents to please take advantage of the Resources in his book, for their children's sake.
###
Parents Can Now Give Their Kids a Quality Private-school Education For Less Than $900 a Year Tuition
Working parents who are disgusted with public schools can now give their kids a quality, low-cost education at home with accredited Internet schools that take most of the homeschooling burden off parent's backs.
[ClickPress, Mon Apr 25 2005] Joel Turtel, author of "Public Schools, Public Menace: How Public Schools Lie To Parents and Betray Our Children," shows busy, working parents who are disgusted with public schools how Internet schools can give their kids a quality, low-cost education at home, while taking most of the homeschooling burden off parent's backs.
Millions of desperate parents today are appalled at the inferior education public schools give their kids, but think they have no where else to go. Many parents believe that the only alternative to public schools is either a Catholic or Protestant-affiliated school or expensive non-religious private school.
The problem is that even Catholic schools now charge an average tuition between $3000 to $4000 a year. Non-religious private schools can charge between $7000 to over $14,000 a year. Millions of low and middle-income parents simply cannot afford this tuition, so they think they are stuck with public schools.
Turtel shows parents that they are not stuck. Internet schools are private schools where children learn through the Internet. Thousands of adults already study for college-degrees through University "distance-learning" Internet programs. Now parents can use the same power of the Internet to give their kids an excellent education through Internet schools that cater to K-12th grade students.
Tuition costs vary with each Internet school, from as low as $350 a year to $2000 or more a year. Many schools charge less than $1000 a year. For example, the Clonlara School currently charges about $750 for the 2005-06 school year for a new student in kindergarten through 8th grade studies. Children get a thorough education in Reading, Math, History, and many other subjects in the curriculum, and the school assigns a personal teacher to each child.
There are dozens of excellent Internet schools parents can choose from. Some schools such as Keystone National High School only offer high-school programs while others offer a complete, kindergarten through 12th grade education. Many accredited Internet schools give a course of study similar to traditional private schools. They take children through a progressive curriculum in math, science, reading and writing, history, and many other subjects.
This structured, comprehensive program, in effect, gives children a personal teacher and private school in their own living room. As a result, these schools can relieve parents of most of the home-schooling burden, while giving children a high-quality education. This setup is especially helpful for single-working moms, or families where both mother and father work. Since Internet-school teachers supervise the child's education, it's less likely that parents have to take time from work or quit their job to homeschool their kids.
Turtel's book has a whole Resource section devoted to Internet Schools and many other education options. The author lists dozens of Internet schools with their website addresses. Parents can quickly research these schools, find out if the yearly tuition fits their budget and the curriculum and teaching methods look suitable for their child.
As Turtel says in his book to parents, "You don't have to settle for a third-rate [public school] education for your children. You do have alternatives, many excellent, low-cost alternatives that can give your children a first-rate education and a rewarding future."
Additional information about Internet schools and the book "Public Schools, Public Menace," can be found at the author's website, www.mykidsdeservebetter.com. Joel Turtel is also the author of a previous book, "The Welfare State: No Mercy For the Middle Class."
###
How Public Schools Lie to Parents and Betray Our Children
Joel Turtel, in his new book "Public Schools, Public Menace: How Public Schools Lie To Parents and Betray Our Children," explains why parents should think twice about trusting their local public schools. To protect their jobs, teachers and principals are now under intense pressure to cheat — to fudge test scores and report cards to fool parents and school administrators.
(PRWEB) April 26, 2005 -- Under the "No Child Left Behind Act," public schools whose students consistently fail standardized tests can now be shut down. To protect their jobs, teachers and principals are now under intense pressure to cheat — to fudge test scores and report cards to fool parents and school administrators.
How do public schools deceive parents? Joel Turtel, author of the new book, "Public Schools, Public Menace: How Public Schools Lie to Parents and Betray Our Children" (ISBN #0-9645693-2-9), lists some of the ways teachers can "cheat":
- Poor students are excluded or discouraged from taking the tests.
- Teachers assign tests as homework or teach test items in class.
- Test security is minimal or even nonexistent.
- Students are allowed more time than prescribed by test regulations.
- Unrealistic, highly improbable improvements from test to test are not audited or investigated.
- Teachers and administrators are not punished for flagrant violations of test procedures.
- Test results are reported in ways that exaggerate achievement levels.
(from Myron Lieberman's book, "Public Schools: An Autopsy")
In December 1999, a special investigation of New York City schools revealed that two principals and dozens of teachers and assistant teachers were helping students cheat on standardized math and reading tests.
Andrew J. Coulson, in his brilliant book, "Market Education: The Unknown History," cites an example of how public schools deliberately lie to parents about their children's academic abilities:
"Consistently greeted by A's and B's on their children's report cards, the parents of Zavala Elementary School had been lulled into complacency, believing that both the school and its students were performing well. In fact, Zavala was one of the worst schools in the district, and its students ranked near the bottom on statewide standardized tests. When a new principal took over the helm and requested that the statewide scores be read out at a PTA meeting, parents were dismayed by their children's abysmal showing, and furious with teachers and school officials for misleading them with inflated grades."
In 1992, the scholarly journal Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice published the results of a national survey about teacher cheating. Janie Hall and Paul Kleine, the authors of the report, asked 2256 public-school teachers, principals, superintendents, and testing supervisors if their colleagues cheated on tests. Forty-four percent of those questioned answered yes. Also, 55 percent of the teachers surveyed said they were aware that many of their fellow teachers changed students' answers, taught specific parts of tests prior to the tests, and gave students hints during tests. Today, the pressure for teachers and principals to cheat is even greater because of the No Child Left Behind Act.
In 1990, three academics, Harold Stevenson, Chuansheng Chen, and David Uttal did a study of the attitudes and academic achievement of black, white, and hispanic children in Chicago. They found a disturbing gap between what parents thought their children were learning and the children's actual performance. Teachers in high-poverty schools had given A's to students for work that would have earned them C's or D's in affluent suburban schools.
In the study, black mothers of Chicago elementary school students rated their child's skills and abilities quite high and thought their kids were doing well in reading and math. The children thought the same thing. Unfortunately, the researchers found that the parents' and children's self-evaluations of their math and reading skills were way above their actual achievement levels.
There was a big gap between their optimistic self-evaluations and their dismal academic performance on independent tests. Public schools were giving these children a false idea of their academic skill levels. In other words, these children were heading towards failure and no one bothered to tell them.
Parents would not be wise to trust any claims by teachers or school authorities about their children's alleged academic abilities, even in so-called "good" schools in suburban neighborhoods. Parents should have an outside independent company test their child's reading and math skills to find out how their child is really doing. If parents find that their child's academic skills are far below what their local public school led them to believe, they might want to take their child out of public school and look for better education alternatives.
The Resources section in "Public Schools, Public Menace" shows parents many excellent, low-cost education options for their kids, such as the new Internet schools, learning computer software just for kids, and home-schooling.
Parents will find more information about public schools on Turtel's website, www.mykidsdeservebetter.com. The website also lists many reading and math-skill testing companies parents can use to determine their children's true reading and math abilities.
###