Here are ten reasons why parents should keep their kids in public schools:

1 – Public schools can cripple your child’s ability to read. The schools use a special reading-instruction method to do this called whole-language (or balanced literacy). But that’s a good thing. Why do kids need to read anyhow? It only gives them ambitions to go to college. Parents have to shell out tens of thousands of dollars for college tuition these days, so if your child can’t read, you end up saving a lot of money.

2 – Public schools can wreck your child’s ability to do math, with “fuzzy” math curriculums. But that’s a good thing. That way, your child will not strive to be a scientist or engineer and make a lot of money. Having a lot of money causes stress, and you don’t want your kids to be stressed in life, do you? Also, if your child grows up to be a supermarket check-out clerk, you don’t have to worry. The machine scans in all the prices and will tell your child how much change to give back to the customer.

3 – Public schools violate your God-given parental rights to choose who teaches your child and what he is taught. But hell, aren’t we swamped today with too many choices anyhow? It’s only reasonable to let education “experts” who have been trained in our finest “teacher” colleges tell us how to educate our children. After all, haven’t these education “experts” done a superb job educating our children up to now?

4 – Public schools give your child a “well-rounded” education. Your child’s day is filled with shocking sex-education classes, multiculturalism classes that spit on American values, save-the-earth environmental propaganda classes, drug-education classes that give your child all the dope about these drugs so he can choose wisely, and violence- prevention classes for those kids who get violent from being bored to death in public-school classrooms.

5 – Public schools give your children great socialization. Where else can your kids smoke a joint in the bathroom, meet roaming drug dealers in the schoolyards, be raped or assaulted by violent bullies on the prowl for victims, and join a racial clique that promotes harmony among the students? That’s a lot better than the “bad” socialization of homeschooling that “isolates” kids from this wonderful interaction with their peers.

6 – Public schools give your kids a great sex education. As parents, we don’t want to talk to our kids about embarrassing sex matters anyhow, so this takes us off the hook. Your child’s sex-education classes will teach her why homosexuality is a “normal” lifestyle and why sexual promiscuity is OK, as long as you remember to “protect” yourself. If your teenage daughter then decides to experiment and gets pregnant, that’s great also, because the welfare office will give your daughter monthly welfare checks, food stamps, rent subsidies, and free health care. What more can you ask for?

7 – Public schools will give your child free drugs. Yes, Ritalin is now the drug of choice for millions of school children. But isn’t that a good thing? Ritalin will help your son stop “fidgeting” and “pay attention” in class, even though he is bored to death. Ritalin also helps the teacher maintain discipline in the classroom. After all, if your son disrupts the class by “acting out,” the other kids can’t learn anything, right? So Ritalin is a wonderful way to mentally strap-down your child to his desk.

8 – Your child can “participate” in your school’s Teen-Screen program. These are “mental-health” screening programs that help determine if your teenager is mentally deranged. A health “expert” in your public school will ask your child questions such as, “have you been unhappy lately,” or “do you get along with your brothers and sisters?” From your bewildered child’s answers to these illuminating questions, the health “expert” will give his opinion as to whether your child might have a mental “disease.” He might then “recommend” that you take your child to a psychiatrist who might start your child on a cocktail of mind-altering drugs. But hell, having your child labeled with a mental “disease” isn’t that bad, is it? Your child will lose the confidence to go to college, and we’re back to advantage number one, where you’ll save a lot of money on college tuition.

9 — Your child can stay in school for twelve years. Well, maybe he won’t know how to read a bus schedule or his own diploma after twelve years, but twelve years go by fast, don’t they? Why teach your child to read at home with phonics so he becomes a great reader in only two years? My God, what will your child then do with all his free time once he can easily read War and Peace? He might actually come to love learning.

10 – Finally, public schools are cheap day-care centers. We all work hard these days because income, real estate, social security, and dozens of other taxes loot half our paychecks, and big-government-created inflation sharply increases the cost of everything we buy. So since we can’t save a penny, we can’t afford private day-care. That’s why we need public schools to house our kids while we make a living to pay the bills.

Parents, there are many other reasons NOT to keep your child in public school, but I hope you get the point by now.

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“We” have to give the schools more money. “We” have to pay the teachers more. “We” have to get parents more involved in their children’s public schools. “We” have to get parents more involved in their children’s homework. “We” have to find a way to close the achievement gap between white children and black or Latino kids. “We” have to demand accountability from our public schools and teachers. “We” have to end the drugs and violence in our public schools. “We” have to improve our teaching methods so our children can read their own diplomas when they graduate high school. “We” have to teach our children environmental propaganda about saving the earth and global warming. “We” have to teach kids to “respect” other people’s lifestyles with classes about homosexuality in their sex-ed classes.

And on and on it goes. Every “we” pressure group is at each other’s throats about what “we” have to do to “improve” the congenitally-incompetent public schools and our children’s education.

Do you notice the one common factor in all these disastrous problems with our children’s education in public schools? Right you are — it’s the “we” part. Americans have been brainwashed into thinking education is a collective “we” enterprise that must be run by governments that “we” elect. Since “we” are all taxpayers, and our taxes pay for the public schools, all of us “we” have the right to input our demands, desires, complaints, and suggestions about how to “fix” the system. Hence the endless bickering, fighting, backstabbing, grab for “public” tax dollars, power plays, and government-induced incompetent education.

What’s the real solution to finally giving our kids a decent education? Get rid of the “we.” Education must be made a private concern of individual parents, NOT a collective “right” of education run by a government-education monopoly called public schools. Let each parent educate their own children in their own way, paying whatever they can afford, in a quality, low-cost, fiercely competitive, private/independent school system. Each parent should be responsible for their own children’s education in this free-market, private-school system, just as each parent is responsible for feeding their children with food they buy from private grocery stores and supermarkets.

The problem with public schools is that they are “public” and run by government. The problem is that these government-run public schools exist in the first place. Government is the PROBLEM, not the solution to our children’s education. Get government out of the education business, and the problem is solved quickly and permanently.

No more “we” taxpayers demanding a say in the collective, government-run education system called public schools. Make it illegal for any local, state, or Federal government to own, operate, or collect taxes for any school system.

Put an end to the ridiculous notion that “we” all have a “right” to an education, so “we” need tax-supported government schools to enforce that “right.” There is no such thing as a “right” to an education. Education doesn’t grow free on apple trees. Schools, books, and teacher salaries all have to be paid for by someone. That’s what tuition is all about in a private school — to pay for these expenses. To claim that your child has a “right” to an education, is to claim that you have the right to steal from your neighbor to pay for your child’s education, through school taxes imposed by your local government.

Ask yourself this. Do you have the right to put a gun to your neighbor’s head and demand money from him to pay for your child’s sneakers or Wheaties cereal? Do you have the right to steal money from your neighbor to pay for ANYTHING your child needs? If you have some moral sense and answered no, then you also don’t have the right to steal from your neighbor for your child’s education either, no matter how much you love your child, because it’s wrong to steal, and two wrongs don’t make a right.

Yet a public “we” school system requires that “we” all steal from each other to pay for our children’s education, courtesy of compulsory school taxes. But what about single people, married couples with no children, parents with children in private schools, homeschooling parents, and older-retired people with no children in school? All these people, your neighbors, have no need for public schools because they have no school-age children in public schools. Why do your neighbors with no school-age children have to pay school taxes so that your children go to public school?  What if they passed a law saying you have to pay taxes for public golf courses, yet you hate golf and would never set foot on a golf course?

Public schools need compulsory taxes to stay alive. These taxes let some parents with school-age children steal money from their neighbors who might not have school-age children. The “we” of the public-school system therefore requires massive collective looting on a grand scale, turning us into a nation of education thieves.

So how do we end this moral nightmare that creates congenitally incompetent government (public) schools? Put an end to the “we.” Get government out of the education business. Turn education over to parents and the life-giving fresh breath of a fiercely competitive free-market education system, where each parent has complete control ONLY over their own child’s education. Then this free-market of education will sharply raise the quality of our children’s education, and sharply lower the cost of this education for average parents. The best of both education worlds without having to pay a single dollar in school taxes. Wouldn’t that be great?

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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? Do I exaggerate by calling these schools “prisons?” Well, let’s compare prisons and public schools.

What are prisons? They are places were 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.

Comparing Prisons to Public Schools

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 up to ten 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 child, ask yourself this. 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, and probably your child, 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 ten 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. If your child hates school, listen to him or her. Don’t let school authorities put your child in a public-school prison for ten years. You have a choice, and your child’s life is at stake.

You can find out about all your education options in Joel Turtel’s book, “Public Schools, Public Menace.” Please take advantage of the Resources in this book, for your children’s sake.

Joel Turtel

Read more information about “Public Schools, Public Menace.”

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Many parents might think it a bit farfetched to compare our public schools to schools in socialist or communist countries. However, if we look closer, we will see striking similarities between the two systems.

In the former socialist-communist Soviet Union, for example, the government owned all property and all the schools. In America, public schools are also government property, controlled by local government officials. In Soviet Russia, the government forced all parents to send their children to government-controlled schools. In America, compulsory-attendance laws in all fifty states can force parents to send their children to public schools if the parents can’t afford a private school.

The Soviet rulers taxed all their subjects to pay for their schools. Here, all taxpayers pay compulsory school taxes to support public schools, whether or not the homeowner has children or thinks the schools are incompetent. In the Soviet Union, all teachers were government employees, and these officials controlled and managed the schools. In America, teachers, principals, administrators, and school janitors are also government employees, paid, trained, and pensioned through government taxes.

In the Soviet Union, most government employees presumed they had a ‘right’ to a job provided by the state. Public-school employees in America also believe they have an alleged right to their jobs, enforced through tenure laws. In America, it’s very difficult and costly to fire tenured teachers. In communist Russia, competence and working hard didn’t matter very much — the government paid most workers regardless of their performance on the job. In America, public-school teachers’ salaries depend on length of service and civil-service rules, not competence. In communist Russia, the elite ruling class had estates in the countryside while peasants starved. Here, public-school authorities get fat salaries, pensions, and benefits while millions of children get a dismal education.

In communist Russia, government control of food supplies created eighty years of chronic famine. In America, one hundred and fifty years of public schools has created an educational famine. Many public-school children can barely read while the system wastes years of our children’s lives.

Albert Shanker, former President of the American Federation of Teachers, Agreed

Still think the comparison to communist schools is too farfetched? Albert Shanker, late President of the American Federation of Teachers, the second largest teacher’s union, once said: “It’s time to admit that public education operates like a planned economy, a bureaucratic system in which everyone’s role is spelled out in advance and there are few incentives for innovation and productivity. It’s no surprise that our school system doesn’t improve. It more resembles the communist economy than our own market economy.”

Public School Authorities Act Like Socialist Commissars

Finally, schools in some communist countries like China seem to give a better, more disciplined education in the basics of reading, writing, and math than our public schools. International math and reading test-score comparisons often find American kids lagging far behind children from China.

But what values do Chinese communist schools teach their children? Here is another apt comparison between communist schools and our public schools. In both cases, either a central or local government controls the curriculum and the values it chooses to teach its students. The Chinese government can and does indoctrinate all school children with its communist ideology and loyalty to the communist leaders.

Similarly, in our public schools,  school authorities control the curriculum and the values they teach our children. In many public schools, values-clarification programs and distorted American history courses in many public schools now indoctrinate our children with anti-traditional American values. In both communist schools and our government-controlled public schools, it is extremely difficult for parents to stop school authorities from teaching what parents consider harmful or immoral values to their children. Question — Do socialist, compulsory, government-controlled public schools belong in America, once the land of the free?

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February exhibition offering displays of plants forced into early growth and bloom, as well as agarden marketplace. Includes dates, prices, exhibitor list, …

Home & Garden – Tips for a weather-wise home and garden

Home and garden feature articles with planting and growing tips for your home garden, as well as energy saving suggestions for your home from weather.com.

UNH Cooperative Extension – Family, Home and Garden Education Center

THE FAMILY, HOME and GARDEN EDUCATION CENTER at UNH Cooperative Extension in Manchester provides practical solutions to everyday questions for the citizens …

Home Garden Lettuce

Home Garden Lettuce. Revised 1/01 — Author Reviewed 1/01 HIL-8011. Douglas C. Sanders Extension Horticultural Specialist …-

Garden Ridge

Crafting and home decorating retail chain. Includes store locator and employment information.

Home, Yard & Garden Newsletter at the University of Illinois

Thank you for your interest in the Home, Yard & Garden Pest Newsletter. We are pleased to let you know that beginning with the first issue of 2009 …

Growing Giant Pumpkins In The Home Garden, HYG-1646-94

Growing giant pumpkins can be a fascinating experience. This information can be found in the Extension Fact.

Boulder County Home and Garden Magazine: Home Remodeling, Home …

Boulder County Home and Garden Magazine is a beautiful, colorful, glossy new magazine designed to link Boulder County homeowners with architects, …

Home & Garden – Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

News, Columns and more about gardening in and around Pittsburgh from the Pittsburgh Tribune Review.

WHG – Interior Design Trends – Garden Landscaping Ideas …

Home and garden magazine showcases photos of exceptional interior design projects, great gardens and landscapes and fabulous homes, around Maryland, …

Home & Garden Daily Buzz – CafeMom

Jul 17, 2009 … Home & Garden Buzz features stories, products, and advice for moms about their homes including crafts, cleaning tips, and decorating tips.

Design Your New Room Layout or Decorating Makeover Online

Perform your room makeover online with our interior decorating and room design services. We also provide home and garden news, home decor shopping, …

Roots Home & Garden: Unique Home Decor, Distinctive Home Accessories

Roots for the Home and Garden: An eclectic collection of furniture, rugs, lamps, gifts, lighting, furnishings and decorative accessories for the home and …

Growing Home Garden Tomatoes

Tomatoes are a popular home garden crop. They require a small area, bear repeatedly, are widely adapted and easy to grow, and have many culinary uses. …

Home and Garden – URL.biz Add URL Free Marketing

TheImpCo’s Wholesale World Of Products Giftware Home Decor Garden & Patio Accessories Collectibles Novelties Toys Tools and More …

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Moms — Below you’ll find important information and resources about how to protect yourself and your children if you or your kids are threatened.

Mothers Arms

The Chapter Mom positions are open only to women, although men can participate in … The site also features useful tools for self-defense techniques and …

Our Site (Tampa Bay) : Discussions : Self Defense class pic …

5 posts - 4 authors - Last post: 23 hours ago

Here is the large group of ladies who atteneded the free self defense class that Parasmom organized. Thanks again Tara!!! Angela New Tampa/Wesley Chapel Mom …

Self-defense class benefits moms, daughters – MiningJournal.net …

Jan 5, 2009 … The Mining Journal – The best source for local and national news, sports, weather, and features in Marquette. The Mining Journal serves the …

Self-Defense Secrets For Moms by John Hall | LibraryThing

All about Self-Defense Secrets For Moms by John Hall. LibraryThing is a cataloging and social networking site for booklovers.

Kitchen Table Blogs – Blogs – MilwaukeeMoms

Favorite part of being a mom: The little moments — that sweet snapshot in time and you know you’ll … Today we had a self-defense instructor on our show. …

Self-Defense in the News

Commentary and links on self-defense in the news. … The Bay City News [April 5, '05] reports that a Santa Rosa mom with her toddler used pepper spray to …

Founder of MOMS Denounces Acquittal in Son’s Murder;Teenager …

Founder of MOMS Denounces Acquittal in Son’s Murder;Teenager Pleaded Self-Defense …Brenda Muhammad, founder of the group Mothers of Murdered Sons (MOMS) …

Stratton Fitness at Ultimate Self-Defense Center in Boston, MA …

Stratton Fitness at Ultimate Self-Defense Center – Find contact information, reviews, and directions to Stratton Fitness at Ultimate Self-Defense Center in …

DALLAS MOMS Blog | The Dallas Morning News

Jul 18, 2009 … Featuring the Briefing Moms Panel. … Moms Panel: Helicopter parenting …Entries tagged with ‘self-defense‘ …

Self Defense for Teen Girls on LinkedIn Events

Self-defense is taught by Christine: black belt martial artist, self defense trainer and mom. Emphasis is on thinking strategically, how to avoid conflict …

Tucson radKIDS: Childrens Self Defense

Hey Mom and Dad, if you are interested in learning a few personal protection techniques yourself then join us for our next Self Defense seminar. …

2/02 Moms For Gun Safety

Doesn’t Moms for Gun Safety sound like a gun control group? … The community forum announcement listed known anti self-defense, pro control groups and …

She Said it – Moms and Guns by Adriene Sere

The Million Mom March, along with the rest of the gun control movement, avoids dealing with the complexities of women’s need for self-defense. …

Mom’s Marketplace : Discussions : FREE SELF-DEFENSE CLASS …

Sep 27, 2008 … I am an area martial arts instructor and I’d like to offer you my services. This coming week, I am hosting a free self – defense seminar, …

Santa Barbara Women’s Self-Defense – Mom & Daughter Weekend …

Women’s Self-Defense Course in Santa Barbara, CA. … Special Price for this class ONLY- $100 (for both mom & daughter ! ) 2 FOR 1 PRICE …

Self-Defense Amidst a National Crisis « Women of Caliber

Are you prepared to implement self-defense amidst a national crisis? … My mom once taught me to have one “bullet” on hand for every pound …

Personal protection, self defense products including stun guns and …

Our company specializes in stun guns, and pepper sprays and self defense products.

American Girl party, free self-defense for girls and Rutherford …

AP Photo/Karori Wildlife Sanctury,Tom Lynch,HO Build-a-Reptile Where: Warner Parks Nature Center , 7311 Hwy. 100, Nashville; 352-6299 When: Thurs.

Self-Defense Secrets For Moms (Open Library)

Self-Defense Secrets For Moms. by John Hall Published in November 1, 1996, Published by International Network Publishers. Self-Defense Secrets For Moms …

Chris Brown Cowardly Pleas Self-Defense | Bumpshack.com

No, there’s no excuse to hit or kill any1 other than self-defense, but if you’re going to provoke people by talking s&*t about their mom, well you’ll start …

Mom2Mom : CPR/First Aid/Fiearms/CCH Class/Unarmed Self-Defense …

CPR/First Aid/Fiearms/CCH Class/Unarmed Self-Defense | Mom 2 Mom … UnarmedSelf-Defense (Martial Arts Experience). Contact me for more information. …

Cane Fu – Senior Self Defense

That is a great tip!) Here are a few more self-defense suggestions for you: http://www.gedanate.com/selfdefense/self-defense-t · Triplet Mom profile image …

Florida Man Tasers Wife in Self Defense | momlogic.com

A Florida man says he Tasered his estranged wife during a fight in what he claims was an act of self defense.

Kids Self-Defense: Stranger Danger: Kids Safety & Self-Defense …

Learn how to teach children about self-defense and personal safety in this … The other things that they like to do are scare tactics, “your mom’s been in …

SELF DEFENSE FORUM : IGNORANT MOM

15 posts - 8 authors - Last post: Dec 2, 2008

Sammy Franco’s Self Defense Forum provides free discussion on mma, street fighting,defence, self defense, hand to hand combat, …

New Jersey mom on ‘Wife Swap’ accused of stabbing husband, calls …

NJ ‘Wife Swap’ mom accused of stabbing husbandTRENTON, NJ — A New Jersey mother once featured on the reality show.

Online Dating: Security Tips for Single Moms « Single Minded Women

Jul 19, 2009 … SMW Single Moms‘ Parenting Tips & Resources … Take a self defensecourse. The single most effective self defense offering on the planet is …

Mom self defense – Rapidshare Search

RapidShare File Search Results: 1-25 of 5887 for mom self defense. Sort Results By: Size + – Alphabet + -. Sponsored Links, mom self defense.full.rar …

*FREE SELF DEFENSE AND RAPE AWARENESS PREVENTION CLASS – Topic …

1 post - 1 author - Last post: Apr 7

Hop To Forum Categories Mom-to-Mom Hop To Forums Health and Wellness *FREE SELF DEFENSE AND RAPE AWARENESS PREVENTION CLASS …

Time to Stop Judging Other Mothers and Ourselves | Newsweek …

May 7, 2009 … Primoff can have the crown, but I’m keeping the scepter for self-defense. Allmoms could use one. It was only when complete strangers …

Interested in a free self-defense class? How about target practice …

10 posts - 9 authors - Last post: Feb 13

Midsouthmoms.com would like to know how many of our Moms would be interested in a FREE self defense class? We are looking to schedule one in …

Mother & Daughter Self Defense Seminar

Jun 30, 2009 … Although the content is primarily about self-defense and … e.g. for many daughters it’s their first time seeing their mom kicking butt! …

Self-defense secrets for moms [WorldCat.org]

Self-defense for women. Women Crimes against Prevention Handbooks, manuals, …

Calendar of Events – Saturday, April 4, 2009 – Mom’s Weekend – WSU

Mom & Daughter Self Defense: Personal Safety Basics and Intro to Self Defense (Part 1). 10:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m. • Hollingbery Fieldhouse, Room 201, …

NJ mom on ‘Wife Swap” stabs husband – Topix

NJ mom on ‘Wife Swap” stabs husband … Self Defense Photos. Vote on and add your comments to the latest Self Defense photos from around the world …

Safety : Discussions : Women’s Self Defense — Mom to Mom Forums …

Would anyone be interested in taking a women’s self defense class? My husband is working on getting one together. He is a 7th degree black belt and teaches …

Self-defense | The Survival Mom

July 9th, 2009 | Tags: budget, credit card debt, economy, emergencies, firearms, food storage, organization, preparedness, self-defense, survival, …

Martial Arts School Offers Free Self Defense Class to All Indy …

Theros promises to leave every mother with some excellent self-defense skills and says that it will be a fun, informative evening for all moms who …

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www.advocatemag.com >> All Things Lake Highlands – LHHS senior to …

She will gather her black belt friends to teach a self defense class for moms and daughters Tuesday, April 21 at Sokol Athletic Center. …

MOMS FIRST Discussion: Self Defense? – DailyStrength

500+ Free Support Groups bringing people together to share support, treatment experiences, information, stories, and photos.

Women’s Self Defense

“Lisa, Thank you so very much for sharing with the Knowing Mom’s. Our self defense class was fantastic!! We had looked forward to it for a long time, …

Mom: Shooting that killed Kenneth Rodriguez was self-defense …

Mom: Shooting that killed Kenneth Rodriguez was self-defense. Posted by John Tunison and John Agar | The Grand Rapids Press April 09, …

Cinderella’s big score: women of the punk and indie underground – Google Books Result

by Maria Raha – 2004 – Music – 343 pages
“At fifteen, my mom taught me three chords … Thanks, Mom!”4 As more proof of the importance of ‘zines in the emerging indie culture, Wilson discovered the …

7 year old applies self defense [Archive] – AikiWeb Aikido Forums

[Archive] 7 year old applies self defense “Off-The-Mat” … Mom was really proud of Matthew, and said in hs defense that he’d been very patient with them up …

self-defense, or something else? >> a peek inside the fishbowl

I told my mom, we told the school, they called the cops, … Wasn’t that just self defence? I guess I didn’t know what else to do at the …

Home invader’s mom didn’t like self-defense – Page 3 – Oklahoma …

Page 3-Home invader’s mom didn’t like self-defense General Discussions.

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[Huber] Complimentary 90-minute Self-Development, Self-Defense …

In honor of Mother’s Day, Meng’s Martial Arts of Centerville is proud to present a complimentary 90 minute Self-Development, Self-Defense Workshop for Mom’s …

Mom and Pop Stores Go Self Defense! – Simple Self Defence Tactics …

I just read an article that I found amazingly interesting. A shop owner in New York was robbed several days ago. Usually a shop owner would just sit back, …

Why take Self Defense? How to Sign up for a Session: Mom’s SAVE 1 …

File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat – View as HTML
Includes Course materials, FREE Lifetime Return. Certificate*, and a snack. Mother’s Day Special. Mom’s SAVE 1/2 Price on our Basic Self Defense Course! …

LL&L Blog // Recent Blog Entries // self defense // BlogCatalog

Posted on Friday February 20th, 2009 at 06:27 in family, friends, rape, self defense … It seemed like my mom was there within in seconds. …

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Bellingham Herald / Blogs / Get Out – Self-defense classes for …

Self-defense classes for women are in demand … is launching a new trails-running group formoms who want to exercise with other moms. …

Boston Women’s Self Defense Courses For Mothers & Daughters

Women’s Self Defense Courses In Boston For Mothers And Daughters … e.g. for many daughters it’s their first time seeing their mom kicking butt! …

I started cooking in self defense

I started cooking in self defense … … I started writing down my moms recipes in a blank book when I was 19, and kept it up though the years. …

The Million Mom March — Infoplease.com

May 9, 2000 … President Clinton, beside Million Mom March founder Donna Dees Thomases (left), … The Second Amendment sisters advocate self defense, …

Deconstructing Self-Defense in Wife-to-Husband Violence

This paper explores the adequacy of the claim of self-defense further. ….. view of what danger is and of what self-defense is, and Mom doesn’t really know …

Self defense Coupons – Tjoos

Self defense Coupons – List of merchants and coupons for ‘Self defense‘ … Witty MomCoupons · View 1 coupon >. http://wittymom.com/ …

Million Mom March Dangerous To Women And Kids

The so-called “Million Mom March” represents a clear and present danger to every …. Every second is precious in a self-defense and a trigger lock costs …

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Deconstructing Million Mom March Propaganda | LearnAboutGuns.com

The Million Mom March is an anti gun organization that is closely … Gun control laws only serve to make self defense more difficult for …

Guns in American society: an encyclopedia of history, politics, … – Google Books Result

by Gregg Lee Carter – 2002 – History – 756 pages
Spitzer See also Million Mom March For Further Reading: Homsher, Deborah. 2001. …Self-Defense, Legal Issues Generally speaking, the use of a firearm for ……

American Self Defense and Fitness | Facebook

American Self Defense and Fitness mom and matty. June 26 at 10:29am · American Self Defense and Fitness at 10:49am June 26 …

ExecutiveMom’s Safety and Self Defense Blog: Self Defense

My blog focuses on Self-defense and personal safety tips, news, items and much more to protect yourself, your loved ones, children and home.

GRACIE JIU JITSU STREET SELF-DEFENSE 2 AVI Torrent Download …

I’m getting this for my mom now so she can kill when she wants to. … Bas Rutten’s LethalSelf-Defense System-Ripped by the Uploaderman avi · Movies …

Playground Patrol: Advocate Self Defense in the Sandbox …

Yeah the self defense moves would work for awhile until eventually … My mom in particular was a big advocate of trying to get to know what …

DALLAS MOMS Blog | The Dallas Morning News

Featuring the Briefing Moms Panel. … both starting Monday, Mother and Daughter Self Defense for ages 9-14 and Dating and Self Defense for ages 13 and up. …

DALLAS MOMS Blog | The Dallas Morning News

Featuring the Briefing Moms Panel. … both starting Monday, Mother and Daughter Self Defense for ages 9-14 and Dating and Self Defense for …

Father Murphy and the Million Mom March

Father Murphy and the Million Mom March. by David Dieteman …. The church teaches that one has a moral duty of self-defense. Just as suicide – actively …

Overprotective Moms – FamilyEducation.com

A lot of moms have this fixation. The fix-it fixation is the uncontrollable … her daughter’s mind, screamed in self-defense: “Mother, I swear I am happy! …

Susan Polk case: murder or self-defense? – Dateline NBC …

He didn’t have to hit my mom, hit us. It was unnecessary. … Susan pleaded not guilty, claimed it was not murder, but self-defense. …

Charm City Moms: Weekend family fun – A blog for Maryland parents …

Charm City Moms: A blog for Maryland parents by The Baltimore Sun’s Kate … Self defensefor young women: This event is for young women, ages 12-

‘Guns & Mothers’ Premieres on PBS

… guns are also used for self-defense, so arguably one way to prevent murder …. One sign at the “Million” Mom March in 2000 read, “Hey hey NRA how many …

Results for Moms on EdgeUcation

Moms on Edge presents Etiquette Moms at http://www.etiquettemoms.com … Learn basicself-defense to protect yourself and teach your children and family. …

Realty Times – A Prelude To Self-defense

Apr 11, 2002 … A Prelude To Self-defense. by Robert Siciliano. Growing up, do you remember Mom saying “Look both ways when you cross the street and honey, …

Mothers Arms

a) Mothers Arms is pro self-defense. Personal safety is an individual matter. … 1) This could be at the “Chapter Mom’s” house, moving the meeting to …

LizMichael.com – Million Mom March Dangerous to Women and Kids

May 13, 2000 … The so-called “Million Mom March” represents a clear and present danger ….Every second is precious in a self-defense and a trigger lock …

The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Verbal Self-Defense – Google Books Result

by Lillian Glass – 1999 – Reference – 338 pages
Mom: Okay, then you aren’t leaving this house until you do. … This dialogue illustrates the combination of verbal self-defense techniques, including Give …

Have you ever kicked a guy in the balls in self defense? How did he…

My mom held the guy’s arms behind his back while I would try many self defense moves on him. Kneeing, kicking, slapping and squeezing his …
www.answerbag.com/q_view/421832 - Cached – Similar -

» Black Mom gets White Justice – Blogger News Network

Black Mom gets White Justice. Posted on May 16th, 2007 … wished to remain anonymous, argued that Habib’s conduct was more provocation than self defense: …

Million Mom March MN

People do not go to jail for legitimate self defense. So why change it? … Send contributions to Twin Cities Chapter of Million Mom March, PO Box 390623, …

Groups Discussing self defense classes | Yahoo! Groups

Feel free to take classes in self defense, magic, english, psychology, or anything in that ……This group is dedicated to the world of being a MOM! …

VITAL Self-Defense Blog: February 2009

skip to main | skip to sidebar. VITAL Self-Defense Blog … child is in foster care after telling police that “Mom cooks me in the oven like a turkey. …

Self defense for mom – Page 4 – Calguns.net

If i had to give my mom a gun to use for self defense, I would give her something like a revolver. “Aim and pull the trigger”.. simple as that. …

Martial Arts School Offers Free Self-Defense Class to All Indy Moms

PR: Level 10 Martial Arts College will be hosting a free, fun self-defense/fitness class for all mothers who live in Indianapolis, Beech Grove and Greenwood …

YouTube – JRT self-defense class from mom

The mom is not hurting the kids, it’s only a self-defense class.

Aikido School of Self Defense / Women’s Fitness / Black Belt Mom …

Aikido School of Self Defense. Uniforms · Videos · Women’s Fitness. Give us a call! … Black Belt Mom Floral … Product Details. Black Belt Mom Floral …

Excel Defense Studios, Las Vegas – Mixed Martial Arts, Kickboxing …

While a child attends a martial arts class and dad takes a self defense class, mom can work out in the cardio, strength, or boxing areas – It’s a studio …

Women’s Self-Defense: College Bound, Protecting Our Daughters by …

Having them study martial arts or taking a self-defense workshop (perhaps with Mom) designed especially for females, is one means of helping them help …

Ogre proposal ’07

File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat – View
Much to her chagrin, Lilly fails her first class — Self-Defense. Mom decides it’s time to teach the teacher how. Self Defense should REALLY be taught. …

Why Most Self Defense Courses Suck

Mar 22, 2008 … I know I missed out on a lot of other things that are wrong with the “SoccerMom Self Defense” world, but I really just didn’t feel like …

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Bored.com – Burn your Boredom!

Just For Fun. Crossword Puzzles - Fun crossword puzzles; Birthday Search – Search for someones age; How-to Videos – Learn how-to do stuff. Comment Bored.com …

FamilyFun – Fun stuff for Kids, Parents – and More Great Family …

FamilyFun: Fun stuff for Parents, Kids – and More Family Fun … Easy Crafts – Quick and easy crafts for parents to do with kids, plus easy homemade gifts. … Kids Room Crafts – Great crafts for the home, kids room decorations, …

Dog Play: Great activities you can do with your dog

Here is an introduction to some great things people do with their dogs. Most activities welcome all … Fun things to do with your dog: Games, Sports and Just Good Fun …DogPlay Home Page Lost? PageList lists all the DogPlay pages. …

What is some fun stuff to do at home alone? – Yahoo! Answers

I have a few hours to kill untill I go to sleep so what do you suggest? … Surf the net. Take an aroma therapy or bubble bath. Read a book. Eat bon bons …

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Free Gifts for Kids – Stuff to Do at Home that Won’t Cost You Anything

Free Gifts for Kids – Stuff to Do at Home that Won’t Cost You Anything. … So after reading the facts lets get down to the fun stuff and go checkout …

WikiAnswers – Fun stuff to do at home

Hobbies and Collectibles question: Fun stuff to do at home? well.. u can go on the computar.. read.. go thro all ur clothes and mess around.. watch a movie …

Safe Kids Chat Rooms – Fun Games for Girls and Boys – Action ...

Our kids’ games focus on fun, learning and Internet safety. Check back for new games for kids, chat for kids, prizes and tons of fun! …

Boulder Colorado CO Attractions, Event Higlights, Fun Stuff to Do ...

GetBoulder.com Fun Stuff to do in Boulder Colorado. Boulder County Home & Garden Magazine. ARTS & EVENTS; DINING; LODGING/TRAVEL; SPORTS; FEATURES; CALENDAR …

BigHugeLabs: Do fun stuff with your photos

BigHugeLabs.com: Home of fd’s Flickr Toys. Helping you do cool stuff with your digital photos since 2005. Have fun with your photos! …

Toddler Tactics: Fun Stuff to do with Your Toddler

You are here: Home > toddlers > Fun Stuff to do with Your Toddler … boys went to bed I realized there are plenty of fun things you can do with your kids, …

What is fun stuff to do at home when you are bored? – Yahoo! Answers

Everyone has one of those days where they are just bored. … You never know if you are bored until you’ve tried these websites: …

Play Free Online Games | Candystand.com

Other Stuff. Candystand Blog · Candystand on Twitter · Candystand on Facebook …Headcase, Hero’s Arms, Hockey Face-Off, Home Run Rally, Hover Wars, Hydro Racer …. Doyou prefer to play Flash or Shockwave games? Don’t care; Flash; Shockwave. Candystand.com has the web’s most fun and free Sports Games, …

Free Kids’ Coloring Pages and Coloring Printables: Birthday Party ...

Jun 1, 2009 … Get into spooky Halloween spirit with these fun and spooky kids’ Halloween …Recycle old paper and create fun kids’ activities in one. …

Being Savvy: Your guide to activities and fun things to do with …

Looking for fun things to do? Find activities, events and hidden gems! … Books & Toys for Your Child · Activities to Do At Home …

Tasman District Council > Fun stuff to do at home

You are here: Home > Publications > Boredom Busters Magazine > Boredom Busters September 2005 > Fun stuff to do at home, Mon, Jul 06 2009 …

Steve Bass’s Home Office: Fun Stuff To Do With Kids and Your PC …

Math made fun, brain teasers, memory builders, and offensive error messages.

Well here’s an eclectic mix of fun stuff to do when your bored. … Quick and Easy Dinner and Dessert recipes to make when you get home at the end of the …

Fun stuff to do at home

Fun stuff to do at home: Reading Activities: Read a story every night! Answer questions your parents ask on each page about who, what, where, when, and why. …

Fun Stuff to Do While Shopping for Portsmouth NH Homes …

Jun 7, 2009 … Are you thinking about making the Portsmouth NH area your home? … Browse > Home / Blog, Just For Fun / Fun Stuff to Do While Shopping for …

Fun stuff to do at home by yourself: Whether it’s a slow Saturday …

1 Make a full dinner out of wine and cheese. Beaujolais-Villages and Barbera are light, fruity, and bring out the fromage perfectly.

Stuff to do? (Knoxville: home, college, restaurants) – Tennessee …

6 posts - 3 authors - Last post: Jul 3, 2007

Im looking for things to do where i can meet people and have fun. …. I just put my home on the market, and now I have to see what happens. …

Eureka | Fun Stuff | Things to do at home

Print out these experiments and activities to have fun at home. Always ask a grown-up for help before you start.

Things To Do – The Beach Life … The Virginia Aquarium’s newest exhibit is home to 3 Komodo Dragons. Pet Friendly Unleash your vacation at our pet-friendly …

Pa Fun Stuff To Do – Related Articles @ Funny.co.uk

Warning: fopen(/home/funnyweb/public_html/kwcache/fdb9b9fd6fdba9c6cfb81695fc02d46c) …stuff to do before you die · fun stuff to do going out …

Fun stuff to do at home – Seedless Watermelon

Fun stuff to do at home. Seedless Watermelon “Cookies”. You will need: A set of cookie cutters. Slices of Seedless Watermelon …
Leaving Home in the Highlands – Fun Stuff to do Online

Calman Trust. Leaving HOME in the Highlands … Fun Stuff to do Online! Click on the links to be taken to fun websites. Magic Crystal Ball Web Crosswords …

Did it? Find it & check it off on Diddit’s guide for life!

Diddit is a fun and easy way to discover new stuff to do and meet people like you. Getting started… Check off stuff you’ve done. Star things you wanna do. …

Fun Stuff – IPL Kidspace

http://www.weeklyreader.com/: At this site you’ll find some stuff to do for … Also serves as ahome for many K-12 Internet projects and has resources for …

linkaGoGo Sites – fun stuff to do

GO.com – Official Home Page Discover how GO.com can launch your online experience with Search, fun stuff to do, and the latest Sports, News, Entertainment, …

things that you do. things that happen to you. talking about the above! … [Saskatoon] [OldHome Renovations] [Building a New House] [Landscape] [FunStuff] …

Welcome to Gators Cafe

Gators on the Pass – YOUR place to go for FUN !!! Located on beautiful John’s Pass, morning noon or night there’s something to see, do or listen to! …

Fun Stuff for Kids

Disney’s Home Page. The Official site for everything thats Disney Magic. … Smokey Bear’s Official Home Page. Smokey has lots of fun stuff to do here. …

JibJab – Funny eCards, Birthday Cards, and More at JibJab

Whether it’s a Birthday, New Born Baby, Anniversary or just for fun. … Yes I do have a JibJab account! Sign In to link your Facebook and JibJab accounts! …

Disney Family.com – Answers to everyday family life including …

Log in to join the fun. New to Disney Family? Register today! Search: … What do you do with your newfound free time?

YouTube – fun stuff to do when your home alone

Jul 16, 2009 … SUBSCRIBE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!here are some fun stuff to do when your ever home alone.

Fun Stuff Custom Parties – HOME – WE DO YOUR PARTY FROM CONCEPT TO ...

Fun Stuff Custom Parties is owned and operated by Roger and Cindy Ewing. We have over 20 years’ experience in party planning, party decorating, …

Other fun stuff to do in Shenzhen | Shenzhen and Shekou Party ...

Other fun stuff to do in Shenzhen. Posted February 26th, 2008 by Scott Welsh … There is a map on their home page ************* …

Calgary Dads – Information & Resources for Calgary Dads | Fun ...

Are you looking for fun stuff to do with your children? Are you a stay at home father looking to keep yourself busy? …

Fun stuff to do and delicious specialties of the Pacific Northwest …

Fun stuff to do and delicious specialties of the Pacific Northwest … Skagit Valley is home to rows upon rows of colorful tulips, daffodils, …

Fun science experiments you can do at home with little kids with …

Children can be drawn into Science fairly easy. Try getting some White carnations or what we always called ‘Queen’s Lace’ (it can be found growing on …

Fun Stuff To Do on the Web – Links

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FUN STUFF TO DO. Skip Navigation Links. … I think we all do. If you do bring home foods like chips or cookies, buy smaller portions of them. …

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See also my articles on how homeschooling can be a lot easier and less time-consuming than you thought, even if both parents work

In this section, I list many Money-Saving Tips resource websites. I hope these resources help you save a lot of money. The money you save could then help you pay the low-cost tuition for an online K-12 private school for your children. Your kids deserve a quality, rewarding, private-school education. I hope this section on Money Saving Tips helps you pay this tuition.

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Here you will find many kinds of online Internet private schools. Some are full virtual schools. Others are Internet divisions of brick-and-mortar private schools. Some offer only accredited high school programs, others have junior high and high school programs, and some offer a full 1st -12th grade education.

Many are state-accredited schools that offer fully structured academic programs leading to a high school diploma. Others have a less structured curriculum or offer courses or tutoring on various subjects. You will also find university-affiliated 1st – 12th grade and high-school programs, and Christian-based 1st -12th grade schools.

Also, many of these schools will offer online assessment of your children’s current academic skill levels in reading and math. Research these sites to find Internet schools that best suit your children’s age and interests and the tuition costs you can comfortably afford. To find additional Internet sites, use search phrases like “online high-school,” “online K-12 school,” ‘internet schools,” “virtual schools,” and “university high-school programs.”

High-School programs

1. Compuhigh

2. Dennison Online Internet School

3. Keystone National High School

4. Citizen’s High School

5. James Madison Online High School

6. Thompson Education Direct

7. Alger Learning Center

8. The American School

9. CompassLearning Odyssey

10. EdAnywhere

11. North Atlantic Regional Schools

12. Phoenix Academy

13. Thompson Education Direct

14. Indiana University High School program :

15. University of Nebraska-Lincoln High School program

16. University of Texas at Austin High School program

University Accredited High-School Programs

Many state colleges and universities offer accredited high school programs. These are of particular interest to those students who plan to also attend one of these colleges after homeschooling.

Independent Study High School

Accredited classes through the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Four-year curriculum-based program, with diploma on graduation.

Indiana University High School Course & Diploma Programs

Fully accredited program, that  offers more than 100 distance education courses.

O.S.U. Precollege Programs

Oregon State offers high-school academic programs, providing an entry to higher education. It also has youth camps that offer physical sports and mental well-being.

Portland State University Independent Study

Offers fully accredited high school and undergraduate college-level courses via correspondence and online.

Texas Tech Extended Studies

Texas TEch offers Elementary through High School accredited courses. You can enroll at any time.

University of California Extension

Offers accredited high school classes such as English and math, US History, civics, physics, and health. Classes meet UC entrance requirements.

University of Iowa

This university has guided and accredited  Correspondence Study courses that are equivalent to their on-campus course work.

University of Missouri Center for Distance and Independent Study

Offers a fully accredited four-year high school diploma. They also offer Elementary/Middle School courses grades 3-8 in Math, Science, Social Studies and Language Arts.

University of Wisconsin Independent Learning

Offers a variety of credited high school courses, some online. View the course descriptions of all of our High School courses on their website.

University of Texas, Austin, High School Diploma Program

This is a fully accredited high-school diploma program run by the Texas Education Agency and provides quality curriculum, with over 45 excellent courses.

Grades K-12

17. The University of Oklahoma Independent Learning High School

18. North Texas Academy (grades 4 – 12)

19. The Odyssey Academy (grades K – 6)

20. Willoway 3D Learn (grades 5 – 12)

21. Advanced Academics (grades 7 -12, works with your local public-school district who may pay for tuition at Advanced Academics)

22. North Dakota University Division of Independent Study (grades 1 -12)

23. Texas Tech University Extended Studies (grades K – 12)

24. University of Missouri-Columbia Independent Study Program (grades 1- 12)

25. Stanford University Education Program For Gifted Youth (grades 1- 12)

26. University of Arizona Academic Outreach (grades 1 -12)

27. Allendale Academy (grades K-12)

28. Clonlara School (grades K -12)

29. K12 (grades K-12, nationwide Internet charter schools, and homeschool program)

30. The Trent Schools (grades 1-12)

31. Oak Meadow (grades K – 12, plus curriculum material for homeschooling parents)

32. Bradford Grove school (grades 1-12)

33. Active Learning Academy (grades 1 -12)

34. The Sycamore Tree (grades K-12  homeschool program)

35. Homeschool.com (grades 1 –

36. Home Study International (grades K – 12)

37. Alpha Omega Academy (grades 3 -12)

38. Laurel Springs School (grades – B12)

39. Eldorado Academy (grades K-12)

40. Sycamore Academy (grades 3 -12)

41. Christa McAuliffe Academy (grades K-12)

42. Bridgeway Homeschool Academy (grades K-12)

43. USA International Online School (grades K – 12)

44. Internet Home School (grades 1-12)

45. Internet Academy (grades K-12)

46. Waterford Academy (grades K–12 homeschool program)

47. Royal Academy (grades K-12)

Online Programs for Gifted Children

Do you have gifted and talented children? These special programs are geared toward  gifted and talented kids. The courses usually ask for qualifying IQ test results or other testing. These programs are fast-paced, and great for children who are highly motivated.

Accelerated Christian Education

Center for Talent Development at Northwestern University

Education Program for Gifted Youth (EPGY) at Stanford University

EPGY Online High School

Stanford’s online high school will offer two types of classes.

HP Telementor Program
This is a program from Hewlett-Packard that works with 5th – 12th grade students and college students from public, private and home school environments. The courses help students excel in math, science and career planning. No tuition charge, but you must apply to be accepted.

Irish Centre For Talented Youth
Program run through John Hopkins University in Dublin.

Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth
For academically talented students in grades 2-8.  Fast-paced academic programs (both on-campus and internet-learning formats).

Trent Academy
Trent is an internet-based classroom. It has special programs for homeschool families with gifted and talented children. It is affiliated with HSLDA.

Christian-affiliated schools, usually grades K-12

48. Country Christian School (grades 1–12)

49. Aaron Academy (grades 1–12)

50. Agape Christian Academy (grades 1- 12)

51. Alpha-Omega Academy (grades K –12)

53. Crossroads Christian Schools (grades K-12)

54. Deseret Academy (grades K-12)

54. Eagle Christian School (grades 7 -12)

56. Home Study International (grades K-12)

57. Lincoln Christian Academy (grades 1-12)

58. Northstar Academy (greades 7-12)

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The problem is the system they are trapped in. Too many teachers have become more concerned with their economic security than with realizing the best within them. This attitude is typical of many government employees. I should know, because many years ago I once worked for the City of New York, for three years.

When the City first hired me, I was young and eager. I intended to give the job my best efforts. However, I soon realized that little was expected of me. I saw the lazy attitudes of my fellow workers who had the security of tenure. Since I am only human like everyone else, I started to become like my fellow employees.

I soon realized that if I did passable work and did not make any waves, I would advance up the civil-service salary ladder just for showing up at the job. My supervisors did not make me work harder or become more competent. To make more money, I only had to grow old on the job. I quickly noticed that when I worked harder or came up with innovative ideas, I did not get paid more. I also saw that when I slacked off in my work or enthusiasm, I did not get paid less.

As a result, I gradually, insidiously, started to die inside. My spirit, initiative, and the best within me started to die. Most employees will act the same way under a similar system of rewards or punishment. If a person is not rewarded for trying harder or doing better, if he is not punished for being lazy or incompetent, most of us, myself included, become mediocre employees just putting in our time. By remaining a government employee, every undiscovered talent and possibility I had within me was being smothered in the stifling, undemanding atmosphere of government employment.

Why didn’t my government employers demand more of me? Because government agencies never go out of business—they are monopolies that stay in business whether or not they do a good job. These agencies get paid from taxes, not from individual “customers” they are supposed to be “serving.”

The public is forced to deal with civil-service employees of the Post Office, Social Security Office, or local Board of Education because these government agencies have no competitors. Worse, government employees know this. These monopoly agencies get their “customers” by force. They do not need your consent when they take your tax money or make you wait in line to see them. So if government employees or supervisors know their agency can never go out of business, if they are not afraid of being fired for incompetence, there is little incentive to work harder or innovate.

The same psychology applies in government schools. No matter how bad the public schools are, they don’t go out of business. The educrats just ask for more tax money to “fix” what they think is wrong, and the schools stay open for another fifty years, wrecking our children’s education.

In a free-market school, such things don’t happen. A private school that didn’t teach children how to read would soon lose parent’s confidence. Parents would remove their children from the school, and the school would soon be out of business. End of story.

In government schools, no matter how bad a teacher or principal is, it is almost impossible to fire him because of tenure. That would never happen in a free-market school. If students do badly because of incompetent teachers, parents will complain to the owner. The owner will quickly remove a teacher if he doesn’t improve his performance, because the owner could lose parent-customers if he doesn’t. End of story.

But government schools entrench mediocre education without hope of improvement precisely because the schools can’t go out of business and tenure protects bad teachers or principals. These schools and teachers are not accountable to parents, their true customers. That’s why so many public schools give a third-rate education to our kids.

So I offer this challenge to teachers and their unions. If you think your government schools do as good a job as private or religious schools, have the courage of your convictions, and prove it. Put your money where your mouth is. Instead of strangling parent’s freedom of choice, prove to us that you could do better.

How? Here’s a suggestion. Use your multi-millions of dollars in union dues to buy the government schools and run them as private schools, the way former Soviet Union employees bought the factories they worked in. Let us privatize the government (public) schools. Let the teacher unions buy every public school in the country. Instead of being government employees, teachers will then be shareholders in school companies they will own, like Microsoft shareholder-employees who became millionaires from their stock options.

When you, the unions and teachers, buy the schools, you will then compete with every other private school in the free-market. There will be no more compulsory-attendance laws that force parents to give you their children. There will be no more compulsory school taxes that pay your salaries.

You will compete on a level playing-field, like every other private business has to compete. You will have to prove to parents, your new customers, that you deserve to get their business and educate their children. You will have to be better than your competitors. If you teach well, you will succeed. You may even make a fortune in profits from your private schools, and congratulations if you do. If you don’t teach well, you will go out of business, as you should. Parent-consumers will decide your fate.

That being said, I predict that most of you would do great. I believe that once your unions bought the schools, your attitude and your lives would change remarkably. You would soon discover that your school’s success depended on your hard work, competence, and innovation. Fierce competition in the free market would force you to work smarter and harder and become great educators.

I believe that public-school teachers have not even begun to live up to their highest potential. All you need is to understand that the free market, rather than being your imagined worst enemy, can be your best friend.

So here’s the challenge—if you love to teach, if you think you are good educators, if you care about giving quality education to our children, prove it in the real world. Put your money where your mouth is. Pit your best against the best the free market has to offer.

Teachers, you especially will benefit from a totally free-market education system. There will be so many new schools opened, so much fierce competition for competent, innovative teachers, that teacher salaries will skyrocket.

K-12 education today is a $500 billion market, because most parents consider education as their first priority for their children. There is a huge, pent-up demand for your skills, creativity, and dedication. As a result, your incomes will rise dramatically. Your status as teachers will rise with parents as they see the new vigor and quality you bring to your profession. You will be respected and in great demand. By the way, did you know that the best private teachers in Japan are so in demand that they can earn as much as star Japanese baseball players?

So here’s the challenge I offer you. Live up to the best within you in a free-market education system, or let the best within you shrivel up in a government-run public school.

To mayors in cities across America, I extend this challenge to you. Stop wasting our children’s time and billions of our tax dollars on futile programs to “improve” the government schools. Politicians have been trying to “improve” these schools for the last fifty years, and the schools have only gotten worse. The public-school system is beyond repair because government is not the solution, it is the problem.

Instead, push to privatize the public schools in your cities. Push to get government out of the education business, once and for all. Challenge teachers to live up to their highest potential. Challenge them to consider the life-giving breath of a free-market education system. They will eventually thank you for it.

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Yet, consider the following:

We may still have fundamental freedoms of speech and the press, but America is in a transition from liberty to despotism, a halfway house on the road to tyranny. We already have economic tyranny in America. If you add up all the taxes you pay, including income taxes, Social Security, sales, real estate, gasoline, telephone, and dozens of other hidden taxes, government loots over forty percent of your hard-earned income in taxes.

Yet, only a hundred years ago, the average worker paid no more than five percent of his income in taxes. In 1901, there was no income tax, Social Security tax, or most of the other taxes you pay today. In the Middle Ages, medieval rulers took about 20 percent of their serfs’ produce. Our government now taxes us worse than serfs. If government claims the right to forty percent of your income, it claims the right to forty percent of your labor, and forty percent of your life. In effect, the people we “elect” have put us on a chain gang until May 10th of every year, working for the bureaucrats.

Most parents may not see it this way, but local governments, in effect, kidnap your children through public-school compulsory-attendance laws. They force you to send your children to government (public) schools that waste twelve years of your children’s lives and turn them into illiterates. They then tax you to support these so-called “schools.”

“War on Drugs” government SWAT teams can break down your door in the middle of the night without a warrant, based on the drug tip of a malicious, anonymous informant, then threaten you in your own living room. Drug laws dictate what we can or cannot put in our own bodies. These laws tell us we do not have the right to smoke marijuana, even if we have cancer and the marijuana alleviates the nausea from chemotherapy drugs.

Government tells us we cannot commit suicide if we have terminal cancer with excruciating pain, nor can a doctor assist us to commit suicide. By these laws, government tells us it now owns our bodies. These laws deny our right of free choice for important personal decisions in our lives.

Try building a new home for yourself, and you will run into a hornet’s nest of building department inspectors, zoning commissions, environment impact statements, and local agencies who will tie you up in knots. Try starting a small business and you will need government licenses and approvals. Local, State and Federal tax authorities, like vultures, will then devour your profits with their ever-increasing taxes.

Taxes loot your hard-earned money to pay for dozens of “entitlement programs” such as Medicare, Medicaid, farm subsidies, corporate subsidies, welfare programs, health care for illegal immigrants, and now a “welfare” program for the entire population of Iraq called the Iraq war. Your voluntary consent is not required for these programs. Government forces you to pay for them.

Federal, State, and local police agencies use asset-forfeiture laws to steal the cars, homes, businesses, and bank accounts of innocent people under the pretext of a War on Drugs. Victims of drug raids then have to prove their innocence and sue the agency to get their property back. Asset-forfeiture laws have turned too many local police departments into agencies for legalized looting.

Anti-gun politicians make thousands of gun laws that restrict a woman’s right to protect herself from a rapist, a homeowner’s right to protect himself from a robber in the middle of the night, or American citizens’ right to protect themselves from a tyrannical government. The 2nd Amendment to the Constitution that guarantees our right to bear arms is under massive assault. It may be only a matter of time until we lose this right altogether.

Equal Employment Opportunity Commission regulations can control who an employer hires, fires, or promotes, how much he has to pay his employees (minimum wage), and what their “conditions of employment” must be. This same agency can sue an employer into bankruptcy for “discrimination” or other “infractions” of its regulations.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) can stop a home builder from building homes, a farmer from farming his land, a rancher from grazing his cattle, an oil company from drilling for desperately needed oil, or a logging company from cutting down trees to give us lumber for new homes. EPA regulations sharply jack up the price of oil and destroy property rights in America for a great and noble cause — to protect “endangered” species like the Alabama mud rat, mosquito-infested swamps called “wetlands,” and “delicate” frozen Arctic wastelands that look like the surface of the moon.

The Food and Drug Administration forces drug companies to spend over $500 million and seven years to get approval for a new drug. It puts pharmaceutical companies through a regulatory torture chamber that strangles the development of thousands of new, life-saving drugs. It has made SWAT-team raids on vitamin stores to “protect” us from Vitamin C and other dangers.

Federal agents can persecute a religious sect they don’t like, as the Feds did in Waco, Texas. They persecuted these people partly because the sect owned allegedly “illegal” firearms, firearms the 2nd Amendment says they had the right to own. After slaughtering innocent women and children in a ball of fire, none of the Federal agents were ever prosecuted or sent to prison for their actions.

Finally, in response to the Sept. 11th terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, the Federal government passed an “anti-terror” bill that created secret military tribunals. These tribunals will be like medieval star-chambers, where defendants’ legal rights will be ripped to pieces, and trial by jury will be denied.

These tribunals have set a terrible precedent. It is only a matter of time before government prosecutors expand the vague definition of “terrorism” to an ever-widening list of “crimes” that can be used against American citizens. Government judges and prosecutors will then be able to try and convict Americans without the “messy” need for juries, proof, evidence, or the presumption of innocence.

Does all this sound like “the land of the free?” Government in America is a growing tyranny. It is a government that would shock our Founding Fathers, a government they would consider a greater tyranny than the British monarchy they fought a revolutionary war against. Worse, whatever freedoms we have left are being taken from us at an ever-accelerating rate.

If you, my reader, do not see this, it is not your fault. Your liberty has been taken from you gradually, one new tax and regulation at a time. You have become accustomed to the taxes and regulations. You think they are “normal” and therefore nothing to complain about. You mistakenly believe that because you elect your representatives, and because they enact laws based on majority rule, that their laws, taxes, and regulations are moral and legitimate. It is like your wife or husband not noticing you have gained thirty pounds over the past five years because they see you every day, and the weight gain was gradual.

So it is with gradual tyranny. But if Americans living 150 years ago suddenly came back to life today, they would be shocked, for they would see the stark difference in their freedom.

President Bush and his Republican lemmings continue to waste hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of American lives to protect the “freedom” of the Iraqi people. Well, how about first giving Americans back the freedom that is their birthright, the constitutional freedoms our Founding Fathers fought and died for?

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Mary Hanlan knew how engrossed her father got when he was working, and smiled adoringly at his handsome face peering intently at the computer, clicking his mouse furiously, while his brows furrowed in concentration. She knew she had to use her ingenuity to get his attention, and it had become a game between them on how she did this. She went alongside him and tickled his left ear lightly with the feather. Josh waved his hand next to his ear, as if swatting away an annoying fly. Mary giggled and tickled his ear again while she said “Daddy” again, this time more insistently. Finally, her father turned in his chair and noticed his daughter standing there.

“Hello, sweetheart,” he said, as he smiled with delight on seeing his daughter. “I didn’t notice you. I’m working on the designs of the new engine for my company. You want to see what it looks like so far, honey?”

Mary loved that her father shared his work with her, shared his love of science and engineering. It was what got Mary fascinated with science since she was three years old, sitting on her father’s lap in front of the computer screen, while he let her click the mouse as he was designing. But she didn’t have time to do that now. “No Daddy, I have to talk to you about something first,” she said.

“O.K. sweetheart, what is it?,” he said, as he turned around in his chair and gave her his full attention. Mary loved her father’s kind, bright, playful brown eyes. “By the way,” he said, “how come you’re home in the middle of the morning? Shouldn’t you be in school?”

“That’s what I want to talk to you about, Daddy. I got this letter from my science teacher. The principal told me to give it to you. He said it was about the note I wrote to my science teacher, Miss Johnson. Here’s the letter from her. Josh took the letter and read it.

The letter said, “Dear Mr. Hanlan, I must speak to you about your daughter, Mary. She wrote me an insulting and inexcusable letter criticizing my teaching. We cannot allow such behavior from our students. You must come to see me immediately, or serious measures will be taken against your daughter. Please call me as soon as possible for an appointment.”

Josh looked up from the letter at his daughter, who had a worried, but angry look on her face. Josh knew that look. His daughter was so bright, but also willful when she thought she was right.

“What’s this about, honey? What letter is Miss Johnson talking about.”

“Oh Daddy, I was so bored with her science class, I could just scream. Daddy, I want to learn science. I love it so much. You know that, don’t you?

“Of course sweetheart.”

“Well, Miss Johnson does the silliest, stupidest things in class. For a science project, she had the whole class pick up bird seed with the bottom of wet spoons, to show us how birds use their tongues. She makes us do projects like that all the time, and they’re all just as silly.”

“Then after we do these projects, she has all the kids sit in a circle holding hands, and each kid has to tell their feelings about the project. Daddy, I like the other kids in class, but I don’t care about their feelings when they pick up bird seed. Why is Ms. Johnson doing this? It’s stupid and a waste of time. I want to learn real science.” “And the textbook is so simple it bores me to death,” continued Mary. “I can’t sit still in class, and I annoy Miss Johnson by always raising my hand to ask questions. Daddy, I knew most of the stuff in that textbook when I was six years old from what I read myself and what you taught me. Here, look at the textbook, Daddy.”

Josh took the textbook and looked through it. He was appalled. The book was filled with pictures like baby books, and the reading level seemed geared to six-year-old kids just learning to read. Also, the book had too many stories about global warming, save-the-polar-bears, and other environmental propaganda. “Honey, do all the kids in all the science classes read textbooks like these?,” asked Josh.

“Yes, Daddy. The textbooks in the higher grades are a little harder, but not much. I know everything in those textbooks already. Daddy, I don’t want to spend three more years in science classes that bore me so much and where I don’t learn anything. I would rather be home with you. You could teach me so much more than I could ever learn in these stupid classes.”

“Honey,” Josh Hanlan said, “did you ask Miss Johnson if you could skip grades and go into the more advanced science classes for seniors, or a more advanced class in your grade?”

“Yes, Daddy. I asked her so many times. But she said they don’t have advanced classes anymore. She said the school doesn’t allow special classes for students who learn quickly. Ms. Johnson said it would be unfair to the other students if she put me in an advanced class or with the seniors. She said it would hurt the other students’ feelings. So they don’t allow it. And I’m stuck in this class with this same teacher for the next three years.”

Josh was shocked at what his daughter said. “They don’t let you take advanced classes because it would hurt the other students’ feelings? That’s what Miss Johnson said?”

He couldn’t believe his ears.

“Honey, do they follow this policy in all your classes, like math and English? You mean they don’t have any advanced classes for faster-learning kids anymore?”

“Yes, Daddy, the whole school works the same way. Every class I take bores me, but especially science. I got so mad that I sent Miss Johnson a note telling her how I feel. I thought maybe she would help me. This is the note I gave her.”

Josh took the note and read:

“Dear Miss Johnson,

I am so bored in your class. You are not teaching us real science. I think the projects you make us do are silly and such a waste of time. Why don’t you give us real science projects and teach us more difficult stuff? And why do we have to sit in circles and talk about our feelings? I want to learn science, Miss Johnson. Some day I will be a great scientist. And you are wasting my time. Please teach us real science that is challenging.”

Thank you. Mary Hanlan

Josh Hanlan threw his head back and laughed uproariously. He laughed for a long time, looking at his daughter with delight. He loved her spunk and her innocent directness.

Mary at first looked sternly at her father, because she thought this was no laughing matter. But then, because she loved her father so much, and she loved his infectious laugh, she started laughing also.

When they finished laughing, Josh re-read his daughter’s note, then read Miss Johnson’s letter again. Miss Johnson’s letter had something ominous about it that he didn’t like. He decided to take care of this matter immediately.

“O.K. sweetheart, we’ll go see Miss Johnson tomorrow. I don’t want you wasting your precious time either. But first I want to do a little research on public schools before we meet your teacher. Do you want to help me?”

“Yes, Daddy,” said Mary. She loved sitting with her father at the computer and loved especially when he asked her to help him. Her father did a search for “public schools” on Google and then Yahoo, and the two of them sat engrossed for the rest of the afternoon, absorbing everything they read like sponges.

The next day, they found themselves in a dingy office with green walls sitting across from Miss Johnson. She was in her mid-thirties, with loose brown hair down to her shoulders, and wearing a paisley print dress. Her eyes were brown, and she had a prim, tight little mouth.

Miss Johnson said, a little red in the face, “Mr. Hanlan, I asked you to come here to talk about Mary’s letter and her behavior. The letter she wrote me was absolutely incredible. I have been teaching for 15 years now, and I have never gotten such an insulting letter from one of my students. Most of my students enjoy my classes, so I was shocked at your daughter’s letter. Not only that she wrote the letter, but that she said such insulting things to me. I have talked to the principal and he has agreed with me that Mary must write an official apology letter before we can allow her back into my class. We cannot allow our students to insult teachers in this manner. And if Mary is not allowed back in class, she will fail this class and be left back.”

Josh Hanlan listened quietly to Miss Johnson. By the time she finished, his eyes had become a little colder and he felt anger rising in him.

He said, “Ms. Johnson, my daughter is very bright. She loves science. She told me about the silly science projects you do in class, and about how you make the children sit in a circle and talk about their feelings. She’s also told me that your public school does not have advanced classes for faster-learning students anymore, that you frown on such classes because they might upset the feelings of the other children. She also showed me the textbook you use in your class, which looks like a baby book suitable for a six-year-old, not for bright ten-year old girls.”

“I have to say that I agree with my daughter completely. You are wasting her time, and the time of all your other students. Mary only wrote you that letter because she loves science so much and she wants to learn so much, and she doesn’t want to waste her time. She didn’t mean to insult you, but was asking for your help. She was just telling you the truth as she saw it. Are you or your principal so frightened of criticism that you want to expel my daughter for telling you how she feels about your class?”

“I’d also like to ask you why your textbooks and teaching methods seem so simple-minded? Why is the textbook so dumbed-down? These childrens’ time is as valuable as yours. These are their precious years in which they learn the basics of science and reading for their future life. If you don’t expect much from them, you are hurting them. If you teach them that learning is boring and something they have to endure, that attitude will affect them their whole lives. You are supposed to be challenging their minds, not teaching them meaningless drivel so their feelings don’t get hurt.”

As Josh spoke, Miss Johnson’s mouth got tighter and tighter, and her face got whiter and whiter. When Josh finished, she seemed ready to burst out like a steam kettle.

“Well,” she exploded, “I see where Mary gets her attitude from. Mr. Hanlan, I have been teaching for fifteen years. I went to teacher’s college. I have had the best teachers-ed training available. Whatever projects I give in class are for a good reason, based on the best-known educational theories. We don’t just teach dry facts or boring basics anymore, Mr. Hanlan. That went out thirty years ago. We now concentrate on our student’s feelings and their self-esteem. That’s why we have simple, fun projects. It’s why we sit around in circles telling each other about our feelings. We can’t make the textbook too difficult because the slowest children in the class would be upset that they couldn’t keep up with the rest of the class. It’s far more important that we protect the feelings of our slowest-learning children than give advanced classes to our faster students.”

“Why should children who are lucky enough to be born fast learners take advantage of the slower students? Why should we give them special privileges like putting them in advanced classes? Such uncaring ideas have been discarded by our public-school experts long ago. In fact, we now require our faster-learning students to tutor the slower students, so they learn to share their skills. The feelings of all our kids are much more important than the fact that Mary is bored in class because she is a fast learner. Our kids’ feelings are far more important than Mary thinking she is wasting her time. That’s also why no student ever fails in our school. We automatically advance them to the next grade, no matter how well they know the material from the previous grade. This makes all our kids happy.”

“And who does Mary or you think you are, criticizing our teaching methods? These methods have been approved by the best educational experts in the field, experts who devote their whole lives to finding the best ways to teach children. We will not have our teaching methods insulted and criticized by a mere girl like Mary or by any parent. We know what is best for your child, Mr. Hanlan, and the faster parents like you realize this, the better off you’ll be.”

“Now as I said in my letter, the principal has agreed with me that Mary has to submit a formal apology letter before we will let her back in class. Will you make Mary write that apology?”

Mary looked at her father. She was shocked. She had never seen that look of rage on her father’s face. In all her years with him, he had only looked at her with delight and serious attention. Even when he was arguing with someone from his company on the phone, she saw that it was a stimulating, challenging argument for her dad. She had never seen the murderous rage she now saw on her father’s face.

Josh Hanlan forced himself to control his feelings. He wanted to slap Miss Johnson’s face. Instead, after a few long moments, he said,

“Why certainly, Miss Johnson, I will write that apology letter. But my letter will be to Mary, not you. I have been almost criminally negligent with my child’s education. I will humbly apologize to her for not having investigated your school a long time ago. I will apologize to her for having let her remain in your school at all.”

“I have never heard such vicious horse manure in all my life as what you just told me. Regarding your so-called expertise in teaching, and the so-called quality of your teacher colleges, that is a joke. Most of your teacher colleges are the laughingstock of the academic community. Most student-teachers who graduate from these colleges have never majored in the subject they are supposed to teach our kids. I understand that they stopped teaching phonics instruction in these teacher colleges 30 years ago. How can student-teachers who never leaned phonics or majored in science, teach kids these subjects? It’s like the blind leading the blind. And I don’t blame these teachers. They can’t teach kids what their so-called teacher colleges never taught them.”

“And your so-called theories of education are just junk pseudo-science, psychological gibberish foisted on unsuspecting parents and children. Over the last 40 years, your public-school theorists have concocted one nonsense theory of education after another. After each one failed, your education bureaucrats then came up with yet another goofball theory with which to torture 40 million school kids around the country. Every so-called education theory your “experts” have tried has been a miserable failure. SAT scores in this country are near the lowest they have ever been. Our high-school kids place in the bottom third on standardized tests among all the industrial countries in reading, math, and science skills. Millions of kids who graduate from public schools can barely read a bus schedule or write simple paragraphs, and 30 to 50 percent of our children now drop out of school.”

“Your schools cripple our kids’ ability to read with whole-language or balanced-literacy reading-instruction methods, instead of teaching them intensive phonics. Our kids don’t learn basic arithmetic because you have them using calculators since kindergarten. That’s why so many kids can’t even figure out change when they buy something at the store for their mom.”

“You claim that you want to protect our kids’ self-esteem by using easy textbooks and not failing the kids if they don’t do their work or pass tests. You do just the opposite. You give them a false sense of self-esteem. When these kids hit college, or worse yet, when they apply for a job, then reality hits them—the reality you tried to fake for them by “protecting” their feelings and self-esteem.”

“Real self-esteem comes from working hard to meet challenges. By testing yourself. By persevering to learn difficult material. By not giving up. By being held accountable for the work you do. By achieving real learning skills and real goals from personal effort, and by gaining real self-confidence in your ability to learn and solve problems. Instead, your so-called teaching methods destroy children’s real self-esteem and cripple their minds. Only you delay their day of reckoning, which can ruin the rest of their lives.”

“I don’t know why you use these idiotic teaching methods. I think you get away with it because your public schools are government-run monopolies. Most everything government controls turns to poison, and I don’t see why public schools should be any different. Public schools don’t go out of business no matter how bad they are or how stupid their teaching methods because they are government monopolies. That’s a prescription for education disaster. If you really cared about our kids, you would agree with me that your public schools should be shut down and education turned over to the free-market.”

“I know that you and your principals and administrators don’t agree with that, right? Because of tenure rules, you get job security, good salaries, and fat pensions and benefits, whether our kids get a good education or not. That’s why you can be so arrogant or condescending with parents. Parents can complain till they are blue in the face, but your compulsory, tax-supported schools don’t have to give our kids a decent education, right?”

“I know there are many good teachers in your schools, but many of your best teachers quit after a while because they can’t stand the strangling regulations they work under. I see now that your public schools are like education prisons that promote mediocrity and dumb-down our kids’ education to the lowest level.”

“Well, not with my child. I am hereby immediately withdrawing Mary from your school. I’ll teach her at home or send her to a private school, even if I have to work two jobs to pay for that private school. I’m also going to get a little more active on this issue. I am going to tell every parent I know about your public schools. Maybe I can shake things up a bit so more parents take their children out of public school, permanently.”

“Let’s go, Mary,” Josh said, as Mary beamed up at her father with adoration. As they got up and left the room, Miss Johnson had a look of utter shock and rage on her face.

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To teach children how to play the piano, you have to teach them the basics of music — keys, notes, chords, melody, and harmony. With these tools learned, your kids can experience the joy and sense of accomplishment from playing their favorite songs on the piano.

To most of us, driving a car seems effortlessness. Our eyes, hands, and feet work together seamlessly, automatically, without conscious thought. But we first had to learn the basics of driving when we were young. Remember back to your father’s driving lessons? He taught you how to turn the steering wheel, where the gas and brake pedal was, how to stay in your lane, turn signals and stop signs, use of mirrors, keeping to speed limits, looking ahead. All these basics took time and practice to learn. Now, those of us who have been driving for many years, take these basics for granted. We drive “automatically” and with skill.

The same process applies to another skill—reading. Read a book or a newspaper and it seems effortless. Yet such skill comes from constant use, from constant practice of basic skills learned at an early age.

What are these skills? To read, you have to recognize words on a printed page, yet there are millions of them. Enter the wonder of the alphabet and phonics. It is by recognizing letters and their sounds that a child puts letter-sounds together to form words. Since all words are built from only twenty-six letters, the huge task becomes greatly simplified. The child need not memorize the word, only sound it out, read it, and find its meaning in a dictionary.

As in driving a car, reading is difficult at first. But, once learned, the skill becomes automatic, unconscious, effortless, and we read quickly without sounding-out every letter of every word. In the end, with practice, we read effortlessly, and all the knowledge of the world is open to us. Without learning the basic skills, however, reading is not possible.

Enter educrat “experts” who think otherwise. “Don’t adults read without sounding out every letter of every word,” they ask? “So why teach children phonics? Why put children through the boredom, drudgery, and hard work of phonics and spelling drills? How can reading be “joyful” if literature becomes drills?,” they say. “Why wound children’s self-esteem and self-expression with tests and standards and high expectations?”

“If we have children memorize whole words instead of drilling on the alphabet and letter sounds, all this pain is gone,” they chime. “Do not teach them to sound out M-O-T-H-E-R. Have them memorize what the whole word looks like—teach them word-pictures, teach them hieroglyphics, so they “recognize” the word in a book. Have the child read “Dick and Jane” learning books that repeat each word a hundred times, so the child comes to “recognize” it. Do this for each word.”

“If the child can’t grasp a new word because he cannot sound it out, teach him “pre-reading” strategies,” they expound. “These “strategies” will help him “guess” what the word is. Have him look at the title of the story. Have the child look at pictures, look for “clues,” look for “patterns” in the story that make sense. Or skip the word and come back to it. Or ask a friend who also cannot read it. Or finally, when all else fails, ask the teacher. Anything,” say the learned educrats, “except actually sounding out and reading the word.”

This, the educrats say, is the “centered,” “self-esteem-enhancing” way to teach reading. Meaning and context—not basics. Group discussions—not letters, sounds, drills, and independence.

This is your whole-language method (now called “balanced literacy” or some other deceptive name). This is the hieroglyphics of Egypt transported to your children’s classroom.

This is our educrats’ pet “reading” theory, foisted on 45 million public-school children-victims across the country.

The results were inevitable—half the nation’s high-school grads cannot read a bus schedule. Businesses lose $40 billion a year for remedial reading classes for new employees fresh from high school. Thirty percent of Americans functionally illiterate. The child who is taught phonics is able to read thousands of words in a few semesters. The “whole-word” child-victim is able to “recognize” only a few hundred words. Thus we have the crash in reading skills, the dumbing-down of our kids, the millions of frustrated teens who drop out of school, turn to crime, and end up in prison because they can’t get a decent job.

Yet, in the face of such failure, such disaster for our children, the educrats turn a blind eye and a deaf ear. In the face of reality — massive denial and rationalization.

Buy why? What do they gain? There is always a reason for irrational behavior, and the educrats have many.

Educrats think phonics believers are extremist Christian Rightists or educational simpletons unable to understand the “complexity” of the educrats’ so-called learning theories. Yet, let reality be the judge. The children who learn phonics read far quicker and better than the “whole-word” readers. And the “complexity” educrats proclaim is a self-serving fantasy of their making, designed to ward off competition. Educrats think they are gurus with special skills no parent can possess. Rather, they are education buffoons who don’t know how to teach phonics to your kids any longer, or don’t want to bother.

Educrats claim that phonics and rules will turn kids off to the joy of reading. Just the opposite is true — when a “whole-language” victim-child tries to read the many words he was not taught to “recognize,” he will give up in frustration. His frustration will end his reading and his ‘joy” in reading. The phonics-trained child can read any word and any book, and the joy of reading follows from his skills

This learning of basic skills need not be a struggle. What turns kids off? The insufferable boredom, the mediocrity of the educrats’ teaching methods, unchanged for 50 years.
Children learn the alphabet and letter sounds with delight at home. Sesame Street, “Hooked on Phonics,” the Internet, learning channels on cable TV, creative reading books especially made for kids by learning entrepreneurs can make learning letters and sounds a delight.

Phonics and drills are a drudge in government schools because educrats don’t have the time, skill, desire, or imagination to make them otherwise. Rather than blame themselves or their government-run system for failure, they blame everyone else. They now claim it is the child’s fault (he has attention-deficit disorder!), the parents’ fault (they don’t get “involved!”), or “society’s” fault (racism or “not enough money for the schools!”).

Educrats also say that drills and basics, tests and standards, are “unfair” to kids, cause them stress, and threaten their self-esteem. Just the opposite is true—real self-esteem comes from achievement, not from a teacher’s hot-air, feel-good compliments. Achievement needs tasks, content, ever-increasing complex skills children learn with guided effort. Joy, not stress, is the result of achievement. And what is more important than for children to learn that rewards come from effort and perseverence? Educrats hate phonics and true reading skills because their teacher colleges don’t train them in the phonics method. Teachers who are not taught the phonics method will naturally feel inadequate to teach phonics to children. It is not the teachers’ fault. Rather, the fault lies with educrats, teacher colleges, and educational theorists who have contempt for phonics.

Phonics and drills requires a “teacher-centered” approach in the classroom. This approach requires greater effort and responsibility on teachers and schools to create lesson plans that show real progress in reading skills. The teacher-centered approach requires teachers and educrats to constantly test and evaluate both students and themselves.

The “whole-language” reading method, in contrast, is allegedly “student-centered,” meaning that kids get to sit around in circles and talk about their feelings rather than learn to actually read. With “whole-language” reading, educrats can claim there are no standards, no way to test reading skills and achievement. There are few rigorous tests, low standards, and no failing grades.

“Whole-language” reading therefore achieves the educrats’ ultimate goal — if there are no standards or objectivity, no one can blame them, no one can question them, no one can hold them accountable for their failure to teach our children to read. The educrats don’t want to grade their students’ performance because it allegedly hurts the kids “self-esteem.” I believe this attitude is merely a projection of the educrat’s primal fears—they do not want parents judging their performance and holding them accountable for teaching their kids to read. The educrats don’t want their fragile self-esteem threatened by angry parents who expect public schools to do one simple thing—teach their kids to read.

Government schools are designed to assuage the educrats’ terror at being judged by parents, and being forced to compete in a free-market education system. Government (public) schools’ ultimate purpose is to be a full-employment program for educrats—to give them guaranteed jobs without accountability to parents. It is to placate these fearful educrats that our government schools dumb-down our children and turn them into illiterates with bleak futures.

So what can you, as a concerned parent, do to protect your child? As long as public schools are run by government and their educrats, they will never change. In my book, “Public Schools, Public Menace,” I tell parents about wonderful new education alternatives to public schools, such as accredited, low-cost internet private schools. Parents, I urge you to look into these alternatives, before your children are irreparably harmed by public-school whole-language, anti-phonics, “reading” instruction.

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“Public educators, like Soviet farmers, lack any incentive to produce results, innovate, to be efficient, to make the kinds of difficult changes that private firms operating in a competitive market must make to survive.” — Carolyn Lochhead

Here’s another argument that public-school bureaucrats use to “justify” their monopoly control over our children’s minds and lives. They claim that we cannot trust the free-market to educate our children because too many free-market (private) schools are greedy for profits, cheat parents and students, take their money, make wild promises, or go out of business.

Look at the trade-school scandals a few years ago, they say. Phony trade schools cheated students with bad teaching and empty promises. This is typical of the free market, they say.

No, it is not typical — rather, the opposite.

The few bad apples in any field in the free market are just that — the exceptions. The free market has a harsh task master called competition. Fierce competition in an education free market acts the same way it does for any product we buy, whether cars, food, or computers. Fierce competition forces all competitors to keep improving their product’s quality, lowering the cost, and giving better service to their customers, or risk going out of business.

To succeed, a free-market school owner must prove that his school is better than his competitors. All free-market (private) schools have to prove their excellence to skeptical parents — their customers. If a school does not live up to its claims, parents are merciless. Like switching channels on TV, parents can and do switch to a better school, for they love their children and want their money’s worth.

Yes, there are always a few rotten apples in any field, but competition forces the vast majority of apples in the barrel to be healthy. Parents are not stupid or fools. They would quickly see if Johnny reads better or worse. It does not take four years of meaningless education courses in a so-called teacher college to figure that out. Like a rising tide, fierce competition would force all educational boats to rise. Computers get faster, cheaper, and more powerful every year. Similarly, in a free-market education system, educational quality and innovation would explode, while competition would drive down the cost of tuition.

In a fiercely-competitive education free-market, your child would quickly learn the basics in safe, competent, innovative schools, rather than wasting twelve years in violent, drug-infested, chronically-incompetent government schools.

Also, what hypocrisy for the rotten orchard of government schools to point their finger at a few bad apples in the “private” sector. For in these monopoly government schools, the situation is completely reversed. The whole system, the whole government-controlled barrel is rotten, and the education for our kids is abysmal at worst or third rate at best. In a free-market school system, the bad schools would be the exception. In a government-controlled school system, the good schools are the exception.

You see, government (public) schools are a never-ending education disaster because they have absolutely NO accountability to parents. The schools’ teachers, principals, and administrators are civil-service government workers who are paid by their local State or city government, not directly by parents (as is the case with private-school owners). Yes, there are some good, dedicated teachers in the public schools, but the system breeds mediocrity on a massive scale, and it is the system that parents have to put up with.

Year after year, compulsory taxes prop up these schools, no matter how bad they are. Compulsory school taxes also pay teachers, principals, and administrators’ salaries, no matter how bad or mediocre these tenured government employees are.

So, no matter how bad these schools are, or how miserable the education they give our kids, parents are impotent to make changes in the system. That is also because every state has compulsory attendance laws that force parents to bring their children to these government schools (if they cannot afford a private school), whether they like it or not. In effect, these schools are government-enforced education prisons, both for parents and their children.

The difference between government and free-market schools is this — when government schools are rotten, when they dumb-down our kids with nonsense education theories that fail, 45 million children can suffer for twelve years, without parents having any recourse. If and when an entrepreneur-owned free-market school is bad, only a handful of children suffer for a few months while parents shop for a better school — with parents having full recourse and freedom of choice.

Public-school apologists criticizing private-schools for allegedly not being accountable to parents is a sick joke, but a joke that is tragic for our children. To education bureaucrats who point to alleged bad apples in the “private” education sector, we can only say — “Doctor, heal thyself.”

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At least ten of our presidents were home-schooled. James Madison’s mother taught him to read and write. John Quincy Adams was educated at home until he was twelve years old. At age fourteen, he entered Harvard. Abraham Lincoln, except for fifty weeks in a grammar school, learned at home from books he borrowed. He learned law by reading law books, and became an apprentice to a practicing lawyer in Illinois.

Other great Americans were similarly educated. John Rutledge, a chief justice of the Supreme Court, was taught at home by his father until he was eleven years old. Patrick Henry, one of our great Founding Fathers and the governor of colonial Virginia, learned English grammar, the Bible, history, French, Latin, Greek, and the classics from his father.

Abigail Adams, Martha Washington, and Florence Nightingale were all taught at home by their mothers or fathers. John Jay was one of the authors of the Federalist Papers, a chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and a governor of New York. His mother taught him reading, grammar, and Latin before he was eight years old. John Marshall, our first Supreme Court Chief Justice, was home-schooled by his father until age fourteen. Robert E. Lee, Thomas Stonewall Jackson, George Patton, and General Douglas MacArthur were also educated at home. Booker T. Washington, helped by his mother, taught himself to read by using Noah Webster’s Blue Back Speller.

Thomas Edison’s public school expelled him at age seven because his teacher thought he was feeble-minded. Edison, one of our greatest inventors, had only three months of formal schooling. After leaving school, his mother taught him the basics at home over the next three years. Under his mother’s care and instruction, young Edison thrived. If Thomas Edison was alive today as that child of seven, school authorities would probably claim he had ADHD and stick him in special-education classes. Poor Thomas would have wasted his precious mind and 12 years of his life being bored to death in public-school classrooms until they released him from public-school prison at age sixteen.

So it turns out that many of the famous Americans our children now read about in their dumbed-down public-schools textbooks were either home schooled, never set foot in a government-controlled public school, or thankfully only went to a public school for a very short period of time.

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“At every hour of every day, I can tell you on which page of which book each school child in Italy is studying.”  — Benito Mussolini – Italian Fascist Dictator

Compulsory-attendance laws force parents to send their children to public schools. These laws presume that the politicians we vote into office, our agents whose salaries we pay with our taxes, have the right to take away parents’ liberty and inalienable rights. Compulsory education means that in America, contrary to the common view, we no longer live in the land of the free. Local and state governments that claim the right to control our children’s education also claim, in effect, that they own our children’s minds and lives for twelve years. That is an appallingly arrogant claim, especially in America.

One reason public schools get away with educational murder, year after year, is because local governments violate parents’ liberty and parental rights with impunity. Local governments don’t own or run food stores, auto showrooms, office-supply stores, or pre-schools and private colleges in America. Yet they own the public schools and control our childrens’ 1st through 12th grade education in America.

Do government officials have any right to dictate how we should educate our children? To answer this question, we have to examine what our Founding Fathers understood to be the real function of government. In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson clearly stated the moral nature and purpose of government:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness — that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. . . .”

The Declaration of Independence affirms that we have natural rights as human beings to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” It establishes the principle that we, the people, acting individually and by free consent, created our government only to protect and secure our natural rights as human beings. That is government’s sole legitimate function.

Look again at the phrase from the Declaration that says, “governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” The “governed” means all the people, not just some, not a minority, and not a majority. It means that all citizens, including parents, have the same inalienable rights.

That phrase also means that government is our agent, not our master. It means that we, as free human beings, voluntarily grant limited powers to government for a specific purpose, to protect our natural rights. It means that government should only have those powers we specifically grant to it for that purpose. Yet, nowhere in the Constitution is the word “education” mentioned. The Constitution did not give the federal government any right or power to control how parents educate their children. By implication, state governments do not have any such right or power either, because such a power would violate our fundamental liberties.

Nature and justice confirm that parents have the right to decide who educates their children. Like parents of all species, most human parents protect and nurture their children and teach them the skills and knowledge they need to survive. Parents in all cultures make teaching their children a first priority. Since reading, writing, and arithmetic are skills needed to prosper in a modern society, it stands to reason that most parents will find a way to teach these skills to their children if the means are available.

If parents have the natural right to nurture and educate their children, then any law that interferes with or violates that natural right is illegitimate. Any such law violates the basic liberties we all have as parents, human beings, and Americans. That means that all local and State compulsory attendence laws, compulsory school taxes, and the thousands of other local and State education regulations that prop up the public schools, are illigitimate and violate parents’ fundamental natural and constitutional rights.

Since those in power and the special interests who feed off the public schools will never rescind these illigitimate laws, parents should exercise the one right they still have left, before it is too late for their kids. They should take their children out of public school immediately and give their kids the great education they deserve by homeschooling, or with the new, low-cost Internet private schools I talk about in my book, “Public Schools, Public Menace.”

Parents, you no longer have to settle for a mind-numbing, public-school education for the only children you will ever have.

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Other than requiring two years of military training for young men that began at age eighteen, Athens let parents educate their children as they saw fit. Parents either taught their children at home or sent them to voluntary schools where teachers and philosophers like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle gave lectures to all who wanted to learn. These great teacher-philosophers did not need a license to teach, nor did they have tenure. The ancient Athenians had a free-market education system. The thought of compulsory, state-run schools and compulsory teacher licensing would have been repulsive to them. The Athenians respected a parent’s natural right to direct the education of their children.

In contrast, Sparta, Athens’s mortal enemy, created the first truly state-run, compulsory education system on record. Individual Spartans lived and died for the State, and had to serve the State from birth until sixty years of age. Their society was a brutal military dictatorship in which male children literally belonged to the city rulers, not to their parents.

The Spartan military government took boys from their homes and parents at the age of seven and forced them to live in military-style barracks for the rest of their lives. Spartan men were life-long soldiers whose highest duty was to obey the commands of their leaders. It is no coincidence that Sparta had compulsory, state-run education. If a society believes that children belong not to parents, but to the State, then the State must control children’s education by compulsion.

Are our public schools any different than the brutal Spartan society in the way they treat parents and children? Today, school compulsory-attendance laws force parents to hand over their children to government employees called teachers for eight to twelve years. In effect, our local and state governments claim that they, like the Spartans, own our children’s minds and bodies for twelve years. Parents who refuse to hand over their children to the public schools can be, and have been, locked in jail for disobeying the compulsory-attendance laws.

In this respect, our public schools today are just as brutal as the Spartans. The difference is only in degree. Where the Spartans stole children from their parents to serve a lifetime in their military, our local governments create laws that let them, in effect, legally kidnap our children to serve twelve years in their education boot camps called public schools. The brutality of the principal is the same.

Both the Spartans and our public-school officials think they own our children, and have utter contempt for parents’ rights.

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“The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.”  –– H.L. Mencken

The driving force behind the eco-radicals’ fierce efforts to strangle the free market with environmental regulations is their virulent hatred for a free, prosperous economy. Yet behind this hatred is an even deeper one. To understand why they try to wreck our economy, you have to grasp the shocking fact that many eco-radicals hate the human race and Western civilization. They hate the fact that you, your family, your friends, and millions of other human beings live and prosper on this planet.

Most of us are naive about the environmental movement. We believe that when eco-radicals say we should “protect the environment,” they mean we should protect it for people. What they really mean is that we should protect the environment against people. People are the enemy. Rats, swamps, and old-growth forests must be protected against you, your family, and the rest of the human race.

To confirm this, just watch nature programs on public television. In every program I’ve seen, human beings are depicted as the enemy. These programs portray humans as vicious, violent destroyers of birds, wildlife, forests, rivers, and oceans. Nature is seen as “pure,” “fragile,” and “innocent” (including child-eating hyenas and alligators). Environmentalists or their sympathizers create these programs, so the programs reflect the environmental movement’s deepest attitudes toward the human race.

If environmental groups valued human life, they wouldn’t try to cut our oil supplies by banning drilling in arctic wastelands or off the coast of Florida and California. They wouldn’t ban the hunting of alligators that kill children. They wouldn’t file lawsuits against housing developments that give people shelter, to protect kangaroo rats.

They wouldn’t have lobbied Congress to ban DDT, the pesticide that saved the lives of millions of people worldwide from malaria. They wouldn’t ban logging in northwest forests to protect spotted owls, a ban that destroyed over 30,000 logging and sawmill workers’ jobs.

Here’s what one environmentalist had to say about loggers losing their jobs:

“Loggers losing their jobs because of Spotted Owl legislation is, in my eyes, no different than people being out of work after the furnaces of Dachau shut down.”

In other words, forcing owls to move to another forest because you cut down trees they nest in is just as evil as murdering six million people in gas chambers. Owls are as important as six million human lives. If loggers unintentionally kill a few owls, they’re as evil as the murderers who ran the Nazi gas chambers. Therefore, we should have no sympathy for loggers who lost their jobs. Here’s another quote:

“Somewhere along the line . . . we quit the contract and became a cancer. We have become a plague upon ourselves and upon the Earth . . . Until such time as Homo sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along[emphasis added].”

In other words, this eco-radical wishes the human race to die out—for your family, your children, your friends to die, so that the “sacred” Earth will be free of the “plague” of human beings.

These are quotes by radical environmentalists. These quotes eloquently reveal the eco-radicals’ utter hatred and contempt for the human race, and for human life and progress on this Earth. Are these the kind of sick people that we, and State and Congressional legislators should be listening to?

I knew that the environmental movement values swamps and kangaroo rats over human life, but I didn’t realize how sick this movement really is until I read a shocking article in the New York Times. It seems that in Brazil, “endangered-species” regulations forbid hunting “protected” wildlife. This ban includes the dreaded jacaré and caiman, two Brazilian alligator species.

The jacaré is a vicious, prehistoric, man and child-eating monster who inhabits the Amazon River Basin. In the high-water season, alligators infest the riverbanks near where Mrs. Ramos lives. One evening in August, an eighteen-foot jacaré emerged from the lagoon to forage for food in waters flowing around the stilts of her house. The New York Times article described what happened to Mrs. Ramos’s son:

“Gilson (Mrs. Ramos’s 17-year-old son) went down to tie up his canoe,” said Sidecley Conceicão Andrade, a barefoot, 12-year-old neighbor. “In the dark, he thought he grabbed the canoe, but it was the jacaré’s tail. It took him away and ate him up.”

Can you imagine the horror of being eaten alive by an alligator? Can you imagine the nightmares and searing pain Mrs. Ramos must feel when she thinks of her son? Well, Brazil’s environmental regulations killed her son and hundreds of other innocent victims of alligator attacks.

Imagine that you lived in Florida and were the parents of a beautiful little girl. How would you feel if an alligator protected by the Endangered Species Act snatched your daughter and ate her alive? How would you like hearing your little girl crying for her mommy or daddy while the alligator ripped her to pieces? I apologize for describing such a horror in detail, but I want to bring home the real meaning of environmental laws like the Endangered Species Act. If you want to picture the essence of many eco-radicals’ contempt for human life, just remember what the jacaré did to Mrs. Ramos’s son.

Radical environmentalism and its strangling regulations threatens our health and our lives. But environmentalists can hurt us only because most of us have fallen for their propaganda. The problem is that we’re a good-natured, but sometimes naive people. We give everyone the benefit of the doubt, including environmentalists. We think eco-radicals are normal human beings like we are, and couldn’t possibly mean what they say. That’s what the world thought about Hitler—people didn’t believe what he said in his book, “Mein Kampf.” But we can’t be naive any longer.

We have to judge eco-radicals by their words, values, and actions, and recognize that the agenda of too many environmentalists is evil. The only way to stop them is to de-fang them, to take away their power, to repeal most environmental regulations and abolish the Environmental Protection Agency.

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* Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive . . . . . those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. – C. S. Lewis

One of the most common arguments that school authorities use to justify public schools is that all children have a “right” to an education. Public-school apologists claim that all children have a right to an education, and that only the existence of a massive, compulsory, government-controlled public-school system can “guarantee” that right.

As I will explain below, the claim that all children have a right to an education ends up hurting the very children it was intended to help. I will therefore ask a seemingly shocking question – do all children have a right to an education? If they do, public-school apologists are correct in assuming that we need government to guarantee that right so no child gets left behind.

What is an economic right such as the alleged right to an education? A right means that a person has a claim on the rest of society (other Americans) to give him some product or service he wants, regardless of whether he can pay for it or not. For example, if we claimed that everyone has a right to a car, that would mean if someone couldn’t afford a car, government would give that person the money to buy it (the payment might be called a car voucher).

Similarly, if we say that all children have a right to an education, regardless of their parent’s ability to pay tuition, then only government can guarantee this alleged right. Government has to guarantee this right because no private, for-profit school will admit a student if the parents don’t pay tuition (unless the student gets a scholarship). If a private school doesn’t get paid for its services, it soon goes out of business.

Local or state governments can guarantee this alleged right in two basic ways. They can own and operate all the public schools and force all children to attend these schools, or they can give subsidies (vouchers) to parents to pay for tuition in the private school of their choice. Since most school authorities strongly oppose vouchers, that means they support only a government-controlled system of compulsory public schools and school taxes to guarantee children this alleged right to an education.

But government produces nothing by itself. Government gets its money by taxing us. To guarantee this alleged right to a product or service, government tax collectors must therefore take money from one person to give it to another. They must take from Peter to pay Paul, as the saying goes. So, in effect, a person who demands food, housing, or medical care as an alleged right, is really demanding that government tax agents steal money from his neighbor to give him an unearned benefit he didn’t work for.

Education, like housing or medical care, does not grow free in nature. Just as someone must pay doctors, nurses, and hospitals for all the services they provide, someone must also pay for teachers’ salaries, textbooks, janitorial services, and school upkeep. Other than air, nothing that we need is free.

The average public school now gets over $7,500 a year per student, paid from compulsory taxes. To guarantee education as a “right,” local, state, and federal governments must tax all Americans to pay for public schools. All of us are taxed, whether or not we have school-age children or think these schools are worth paying for. So when some parents claim that their children have a right to an education, they are really demanding that their local or state government steal money from their neighbors to pay for their children’s education.

Here’s an analogy that might help clarify this issue. Imagine that your unemployed neighbor comes to you and asks you to lend him money to pay for his children’s education. You reply that, though you sympathize with his problem, your answer is no. He responds by saying that he is poor, points out that you have a big house and a job, and insists that his children have a “right” to an education. You say, “Sorry, my answer is still no because I need my money for my own children’s education.” Suppose that your neighbor then gets real mad, pulls out a gun, puts it to your head, and says, “I asked you nicely. I told you my children need an education. You have a job, and I’m unemployed, so you have a moral duty to give me your money.” Then he clicks back the hammer on the gun.

Does your neighbor have the right to put a gun to your head and steal your money because his children “need” an education? He has no such right. Nor does he, or any number of your neighbors, have the right to rob you by getting government to be their enforcer – by pressuring local governments to take your money through school taxes. Any school system that uses compulsory taxes is a system based on the notion that theft is moral if it’s for a good cause. No goal, not even educating children, justifies legalized theft.

It is only natural that all parents want the best education for their children, but do good intentions justify stealing from your neighbor? A mugger on the street who puts a knife to your throat and demands your money also has good intentions – he wants to make his life better with your money. One of the Ten Commandments says, “Thou shalt not steal.” It does not say, “Thou shalt not steal, except if you need tuition money to educate your child.” Since no one has a right to steal from his neighbor, no one, including children, has a “right” to an education.

Some might argue that I may be correct on this issue when it comes to adults, but surely we can’t punish innocent children for their parent’s failures? Just because parents are poor or unemployed, why should innocent children suffer and be denied an education? The answer to that question is one that many people find hard to accept, yet it is true – there are no guarantees in life, not for adults or for children. Good intentions to alleviate a problem do not justify hurting other people by stealing from them. Two wrongs do not make a right.

Moreover, if we agree that children have a right to an education because their parents are poor, then shouldn’t they also have a right to food, a bicycle, a nice house in the suburbs, and designer clothes? If poor kids (and all children) have an alleged right to an education, don’t they also have an alleged right to everything else that other kids have whose parents are well-off? Why not then say that anyone, poor, middle-class, or rich who has less money than his neighbor, has the “right” to steal from his neighbor? Where do we stop if some people can legally steal from others because they claim their kids need this or that?

The answer is, we don’t stop, and we haven’t stopped. That is why our country has turned into a devouring welfare state that is drowning in debt. When I use the word “welfare,” I don’t mean only for the poor. Rich, poor, and middle-class alike in America now claim the right to everything from corporate tax breaks and subsidies, to price supports for farmers, to Medicare, to rent subsidies for unwed mothers. When we let government steal money from taxpayers to give unearned benefits or subsidies to special-interest groups, we open up a Pandora’s box. We become a nation of thieves stealing from each other. Is this what we want America to become?

It is true that a free market does not and can not guarantee that all children have enough to eat or live in a comfortable house. Likewise, a free-market education system in which all parents have to pay for their children’s education obviously can’t guarantee a quality education for every child.

However, government-controlled public schools also can’t guarantee that every child gets a quality education. These failed schools can barely teach our children to read. Also, neither system can make guarantees because there are no guarantees in life, and because each child’s abilities, personality, and family background are so different that such guarantees are impossible. The real question, then, is not which system is perfect, but which system is more likely to give the vast majority of children a quality education that most parents could afford?

Public schools fail and betray millions of children, year after year. The only “right” the public-school system gives to school children is the right to suffer through a mind-numbing, third-rate education for twelve years.

In contrast, the free-market, while not perfect, gives us all the wondrous goods and services we buy every day, such as cars, fresh food, computers, refrigerators, and televisions. The superbly efficient and competitive free market gives us all these marvelous products at prices that most people can afford. Even the poorest American families today have a car, refrigerator, and sometimes two televisions in their homes. If we want to discover which system would give the vast majority of children a quality education at reasonable prices, I think we have the answer – the free market, hands down.

We therefore don’t need a failed public-school system to enforce an alleged right to an education, when there is no such right in the first place. Each parent should be responsible for paying for their own children’s education, just as they pay for their children’s food or clothing.

Finally, public-school apologists use this alleged right to an education to justify keeping the public-school dinosaur alive, in spite of these schools’ never-ending failure. Many public-school apologists who claim that children have a right to an education do so out of good intentions. They want to give all children a chance to get a decent education. But good intentions mean worse than nothing if they lead to dismal consequences. This alleged right to an education lets government bureaucrats have tyrannical control over our children’s minds and future.

The “right” to an education requires a massive government-controlled public-school system to enforce that right. But it is this same public-school system that cripples the education and lives of millions of children. So, ironically, the alleged right to an education is the worst thing we can offer our children.

Most low-income families don’t need government education handouts anymore in the form of allegedly “free” public schools. Parents today can buy quality, low-cost food in a competitive, free-market food industry full of grocery stores and supermarkets. In the same way, parents today can give their kids a quality education using low-cost Internet private schools and homeschooling.

Only when we reject the notion that all children have a “right” to an education will we get government out of the education business, permanently. Only a fiercely-competitive free-market education system can give kids the quality, low-cost education they deserve.

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The following letter to College Admission boards by Caitlin Guthrie Freeman describes her experiences as a homeschooled student. Her letter will give you an idea of what homeschooling (or low-cost Internet private schools) can be like for your children. This is just one homeschooling student’s experience, but it reveals the typical enthusiasm and passion for learning that your child can get from homeschooling:

“I am writing this letter in the hope of answering the two questions that you might have for any homeschooler: Why do I homeschool, and How do I do it?

After graduating from the Antioch School, a private alternative school connected with Antioch College, I decided to spend my seventh grade year at Ridgewood, a private prep school. This was instead of going on to Yellow Springs Junior High like most of my friends. I chose Ridgewood primarily for one reason: the students. They were happy, lively, accepting, and seemed very interested in their work.

Although I received very good grades, and did very well academically at Ridgewood, I found that my learning was very controlled and prescribed. At the Antioch School I had always been encouraged to take charge of my own learning. But at Ridgewood everyone was expected to move along with everyone else, plodding at a universal pace that was too fast for some and infinitely too slow for others. It was expected that we would accommodate our learning for the good of the class; no one was allowed to move out of the mundane rhythm and learn for themselves. Our minds were not our property, they belonged to a communal brain bank and no one could make a withdrawal without their other classmates taking out the exact same amount. For example, although grammar had always been very easy for me, and though I had always received “A”s, I was still often expected to complete four grammar assignments per night along with everyone else in the class, whether or not I needed them. I often found I did not have the time for my own interests or my own learning.

I left Ridgewood for the last time in June of 1993 with a firm idea in my head: I was not going back the next year; I was going to homeschool. My parents and I had discussed this at length during the second half of my seventh grade year. There was so much I wanted to do, so many things I wanted to accomplish that I knew would not be possible if I remained at Ridgewood. So, that last day, after saying farewell to my friends and telling them I would not be returning the next year, I finally started to live my life.

That first year of homeschool was filled with such an incredible sense of elation. I had the sense of limitless time, and the feeling I could learn everything and accomplish anything. Each day I had hundreds of little grab bags set before me, each filled with something new to experience, new to learn. I was free and encouraged to plunge my eager hands into as many of these grab bags of knowledge as I could. I became enamored of archaeology and paleontology, and poured at length over my many references and fact finders.

I read Isaac Asimov’s The Realm of Algebra as part of my math course. I discovered a love of Shakespeare and that I had a knack for learning and comprehending his rich language after being cast in Twelfth Night. I worked on a public access television show and got to conduct a special television interview with children’s author, Virginia Hamilton. I began singing with the Dayton Choral Academy. I also discovered opera that year, and found that I could not get enough of Le Nozze di Figaro, Faust, and Die Zauberflote. I became a member of the Yellow Springs High School Drama Club, and acted in my first pre-professional musical, Jesus Christ, Superstar, under the superb direction of Marcia C. Nowik. It was an amazing year, filled with freedom, learning, field trips, theatre performances, and all sorts of other experiences.

Today, as I look back on that first homeschool year, I realize that, although I have matured and changed, my love and drive for acquiring knowledge is still as strong — I am still as elated by the process of learning as I was in eighth grade. I am still just as busy; my days are still as packed with activity as when I was fourteen.

This I hope, gives a sense of why I home school. Now let me explain how I do it. In between the intense bursts of driven energy that make up all my classes, I relax, or read, or work with my friends. Some are homeschoolers, some are not, some live in Yellow Springs, and some live hundreds or even thousands of miles away and keep in touch with me over the Internet. My life is far from being socially empty as some believe homeschoolers’ lives must be. I converse on-line each day with people I met while at Interlochen Arts Camp, and consider them to be some of my best friends. Really good friends are hard to come by, and it really doesn’t matter whether they are across the country or right next door.

My homeschooling friends have taught me that there are about as many ways to homeschool as there are homeschoolers. I have one friend whose work is completely unstructured. She learns by employing only hands on techniques (creating a budget or measuring ingredients to bake a cake is her math program; her English and grammar come from reading and writing). There are many homeschoolers who employ this unschooling approach to learning, and for many it is very successful.

I have another friend, however, whose entire life is structure. She works completely out of text books and school curricula, reading only to write book reports, studying and learning only for the next homework assignment. She studied at home with an extremely accelerated curriculum for two years, and then graduated to go to college at the age of fifteen.

Although I chose to homeschool to free my schedule, to open up new possibilities for learning, and to allow myself more time to accomplish my own work, being busy creates its own schedule. I have to have a definite routine to accomplish what I want to. It is a routine I set for myself — or that is often set for me by my many outside classes: French, Italian, voice lessons, Shakespeare, Theatre, and Horseback.

If I do have a free space that has not been scheduled with a class or my homework, I always seem to find something to fill it. I keep to a regular practice schedule for voice, and always do math and French each weekday morning. I read, write, do science or history, and often do more French in the afternoon. In addition, I have my lessons.

It is a bit of a paradox. I both have what seems like unlimited time to complete projects, and extreme time constraints brought on by my homework, lessons, and classes. However, I do have a flexibility which allows me to prioritize and alter my schedule when some opportunity comes up. This January, for instance, I may be traveling to New York City to attend the 10th Anniversary performance of The Phantom of the Opera by Andrew Lloyd Webber. But there is always daily practice and the responsibilities of classes, homework, rehearsals and performances. I am always busy.

Many of my classes are basically self taught in that I am both the teacher and the student, although they are supported by my parents or by weekly lessons with a teacher or tutor. But I have to find a way to use and build on what we’ve done together between my lessons.

An example of how I organize my homeschool is the way in which my writing course is done. My parents assign me essay topics or research projects, and help provide some of the information or books I might need to get started. I am currently researching the English translations of Le Fantome de l’Opera (The Phantom of the Opera) by Gaston Leroux. Over eighty pages were omitted in the Alexander Teixeiros de Mattos translation, and I am trying to find out why. In addition, in the different translations that I have read, each translator seems to have a different style and a different understanding of the French language which colors the way the story is perceived by the reader.

I am also working on translating part of the original text into English. I would like to be able to find the time to translate the entire book and create my own definitive translation of Le Fantome. This is something that I am really looking forward to.

I believe choosing to homeschool has been one of the most positive decisions I have made in my life. It has given me freedom of time and choice, the freedom with which to explore my interests, to follow tangents and delve into a subject. Because of homeschooling I have been able to focus on the theatre and music and language in a way that is denied to most people my age. I have learned early to appreciate the wisdom of Shakespeare, the beauty of opera, and the heart and soul of theatre. I know I would not have been able to do this without the vehicle of homeschool supporting and carrying me along the way.”

Caitlin’s letter should give you some idea of the options and flexibility you have in designing a homeschooling program for your kids, as well as how exiting, rewarding, and effective homeschooling can be for your children. Every child’s interests will be different, but that is the beauty of homeschooling. After learning to read and write, each child can study whatever subjects excite them. Learning by homeschooling can become a joyful and rewarding experience, instead of 12 years of mindless drudgery in public schools.

Also, low-cost Internet private schools can give your kids the same, great homeschooling education, yet do 90 percent of the homeschooling work for you. These quality, accredited, internet private schools are therefore great for working parents who have less free time for homeschooling than a stay-at-home parent. Best of all, many of these internet private schools cost less than $1000 a year tuition (that’s only about $85 a month, or $22 a week!).

Many of the homeschooling, general information, and parent-organization websites listed in the Resource section of my book, “Public Schools, Public Menace,” can also give you an idea of what homeschooling can be like. These websites have many true stories by parents who describe their homeschooling experiences, and offer homeschooling tips. Also, two wonderful books I can recommend will also give you an idea of what homeschooling can be like for you and your children. They are: Homeschooling For Excellence, by David and Micki Colfax (Warner Books), and The Unschooling Handbook, by Mary Griffith (Prima Publishing).

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Benny Doland was tall and skinny, about 30 years old. He had small, narrow eyes, a long nose, and heavy, wet lips. He had a high-pitched voice and his hands moved erratically as he talked.

He was talking to Jimmy, his partner. Jimmy Greeves was short, barrel-chested, around 27 years old. He had cold, brutal eyes, a small nose, and a thin, tight mouth. He looked at Benny Doland with contempt. “Yeah,” he said, “the little wifey was sure pretty, wasn’t she Benny? I sure would like a piece of that.”

Benny looked at his partner with fear. He had seen that look on Jimmy’s face before, and he remembered what happened the last time they hit a house. Jimmy had raped and strangled the pretty young wife in that house, and left her for dead on her living room floor. Jimmy Greeves had raped her five times. He had spent so much time raping the girl, that they didn’t search the house to find the cash and jewelry. They left empty-handed. Benny didn’t want that to happen again.

“Jimmy,” he said, “remember what happened the last time? Please, Jimmy, let’s keep our minds on robbing the place, not the girl. O.K?”

Jimmy looked up at his partner with a sneer. “You just case the joint and find the loot in the house, Benny. I’ll take care of the pretty little wife.” Jimmy looked at the cold eyes of his partner and didn’t say anything.

Then Benny said, “Jimmy, what if they have a gun in the house? What if the husband has a rack of guns and his wife knows how to use them? I don’t want to get killed just trying to rob a house.”

Jimmy Greeves looked at Benny with contempt. “You idiot, don’t you read the newspapers? Our friends in the State legislature just passed a gun-control law that forced all gun owners to hand in their guns to the cops. Ain’t that grand? We always used to worry about getting shot when we hit a house. Now, we don’t have no more worries. If I could, I would kiss the moron politicians who passed the gun-control laws. They give guys like us a free ride. All we have to do is break into the house, and the house and pretty little wife is ours for the taking.”

Benny’s wet lips smiled at the thought. “Yeah,” he said, “I forgot about that. You’re right. They just passed that law. And all the obedient law-abiding citizens in this town turned in their guns. Do you believe that? I guess they think they don’t have to worry about guys like us any more. I guess they think the cops will protect them. Ain’t that a laugh, Jimmy? Yeah, Jimmy, let’s hit that house tomorrow night. Remember, we saw the husband with his packed bags riding off to the airport yesterday. I guess he’s going on a business trip. The wifey will be all alone.”

Jenny Hanson loved her house, her husband, and her two little daughters. She was 25 years old, with beautiful blue eyes, a delicate nose, and a wide, sensuous mouth. Her dark, lustrous hair flowed over lovely shoulders. She had a lush, curvy body that she tried to hide under sweatshirts and baggy jeans.

But Jenny Hanson also had an inner core of steel. She was raised as an army brat. Her father was a Marine Corp colonel who loved his daughter to distraction. Because he loved her so much, because he saw how beautiful she was, and because he knew how men were, he taught his daughter how to use guns from an early age. Jenny Hanson was a deadly shot.

Jenny had a close friend growing up, Betty Draper. One night, when they were teens, she witnessed her friend Betty being raped by a gang of drunk teenagers. Jenny had managed to escape before the gang could get her, too. That terrible night was etched in her brain, in her heart. Later, her friend Betty had committed suicide.

Sweet, lovely Jenny therefore kept several loaded pistols in her house. She kept them hidden and locked up, so her daughters could never find them or reach them. When the State legislators passed the gun-confiscation laws, her father had called her from his base in Colorado. He told her, “Honey, the hell with those damn politicians. The government in Australia just confiscated all handguns. Guess what? Rapes, robberies, and murders are way up there. What else could you expect? Jenny, I forbid you from handing in your guns. Do you hear?”

Jenny said, with love in her voice, “I know, my wonderful, protecting Daddy. You didn’t have to tell me that. Do you think I would give up my guns because some gun-control morons want to take away my right to defend myself and my children? May those bastards be damned for disarming us. Especially for disarming the women in this town. Now every woman on my block is threatened by rape or robbery because they can’t defend themselves with a gun. Don’t worry, Dad, I have my revolver armed and loaded. Good-night, Daddy.”

Her father, on the other end of the line, was proud of his daughter. “O.K. sweetheart, I was just checking. You know how I am. Good night, and call me if you need anything.”

“O.K, Dad,” Jenny said.

At 9:15 p.m. the next evening, Benny Doland and Jimmy Greeves broke a back window on Jenny’s house. What they didn’t know was that Jenny had a good alarm system. She was upstairs in Sara and Melissa’s bedroom, reading to them from their favorite book. When she heard the alarm go off, she got up very slowly from the bed. Sara and Melissa looked up at their mother with fear.

“What is that noise, Mommy?” Melissa said. Jenny looked down calmly at her daughters and said, “Sara, Melissa, I want you both to stay in your bed and be very quiet. I have to see where that noise is coming from. It’s very important that you be quiet so I can hear the noise. O.K, darlings? Do you promise?”

Sara and Melissa both nodded their little heads yes and watched as their mother walked slowly out the bedroom door. They heard the outside key to their door lock, something their mommy had never done before.

Jenny walked to the master bedroom, went into the closet, opened a stepladder, then took away some big boxes on the top shelf. Behind the boxes, was a small locked box. She took out a special key, opened the box, and removed the fully loaded revolver.

She calmly walked out of the master bedroom and down the carpeted stairway to the big living room. She heard the voices of two men whispering to each other. She heard drawers being opened, cabinet glass being smashed, and she heard curses too. She knew the men would find nothing. All their valuables were hidden in a secret safe under the floor in the master bedroom. The men’s voices were angry, she knew, because they had found nothing.

Jenny switched on the light to the living room and came down the stairs. The two thieves, startled by the light, turned around and saw this beautiful woman slowly, calmly walking down the stairs towards them. What astounded them most was that the girl seemed to be totally unafraid. She held her right hand behind her back as she walked towards them.

“Get out of this house right now,” Jenny said. She faced the two men with utter calm. “There are no valuables here,” she said. “They are all in our bank vault. You will find nothing, here. If you leave now, I won’t call the police.”

Jimmy Greeves was astounded. This ripe plum was giving them orders. He was also angry. He said, “You bitch. Where’s the cash? Where’s the jewels? Don’t give me that crap about the bank vault. We saw you wearing those expensive jewels. We tailed you.”

“I told you there is nothing here.” Jenny said. “Those jewels are fake. There isn’t more than $100 cash in the house. Now get out, or I will call the police.”

Jimmy Greeves’s eyes turned cold. He took in every curve of her body, lusting for her. He wanted her even more for being so arrogant. “O.K., just for being nasty to us, me and Benny are going to have some fun with you. You won’t mind, will you, bitch? We know you pretty little housewives always lust for bad guys like us. You asked for it, so now you’re going to get it.”

Jenny was seeing her friend Betty after she was raped and beaten. She was remembering the phone call Betty’s mother made to her six months later, telling her that Betty had committed suicide. Jenny looked at the short, ugly thug approaching her and felt the steel rising in her.

She took the revolver from behind her back and pointed it straight at Jimmy Greeves’s chest. The thug’s eyes opened wide with shock as he saw the pistol come up. She fired twice, point-blank, and Jimmy Greeves flew backwards from the impact of the bullets. He lay dead on the floor in front of Benny Doland, whose startled eyes were wide open. Benny looked down at his dead partner, then looked at the barrel of the smoking revolver in Jenny’s hand. What scared him most was the calm, merciless look on Jenny’s face. He panicked, and ran screaming out the front door. Jenny watched him run with a grim smile of satisfaction.

When the police arrived, they arrested Jenny for unlawful possession of a handgun.

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One of the most common arguments that school authorities use to justify public schools is that all children have a “right” to an education. Public-school apologists claim that all children have a right to an education, and that only the existence of a massive, compulsory, government-controlled public-school system can “guarantee” that right.

As I will explain below, the claim that all children have a right to an education ends up hurting the very children it was intended to help. I will therefore ask a seemingly shocking question – do all children have a right to an education? If they do, public-school apologists are correct in assuming that we need government to guarantee that right so no child gets left behind.

What is an economic right such as the alleged right to an education? A right means that a person has a claim on the rest of society (other Americans) to give him some product or service he wants, regardless of whether he can pay for it or not. For example, if we claimed that everyone has a right to a car, that would mean if someone couldn’t afford a car, government would give that person the money to buy it (the payment might be called a car voucher).

Similarly, if we say that all children have a right to an education, regardless of their parent’s ability to pay tuition, then only government can guarantee this alleged right. Government has to guarantee this right because no private, for-profit school will admit a student if the parents don’t pay tuition (unless the student gets a scholarship). If a private school doesn’t get paid for its services, it soon goes out of business.

Local or state governments can guarantee this alleged right in two basic ways. They can own and operate all the public schools and force all children to attend these schools, or they can give subsidies (vouchers) to parents to pay for tuition in the private school of their choice. Since most school authorities strongly oppose vouchers, that means they support only a government-controlled system of compulsory public schools and school taxes to guarantee children this alleged right to an education.

But government produces nothing by itself. Government gets its money by taxing us. To guarantee this alleged right to a product or service, government tax collectors must therefore take money from one person to give it to another. They must take from Peter to pay Paul, as the saying goes. So, in effect, a person who demands food, housing, or medical care as an alleged right, is really demanding that government tax agents steal money from his neighbor to give him an unearned benefit he didn’t work for.

Education, like housing or medical care, does not grow free in nature. Just as someone must pay doctors, nurses, and hospitals for all the services they provide, someone must also pay for teachers’ salaries, textbooks, janitorial services, and school upkeep. Other than air, nothing that we need is free.

The average public school now gets over $7,500 a year per student, paid from compulsory taxes. To guarantee education as a “right,” local, state, and federal governments must tax all Americans to pay for public schools. All of us are taxed, whether or not we have school-age children or think these schools are worth paying for. So when some parents claim that their children have a right to an education, they are really demanding that their local or state government steal money from their neighbors to pay for their children’s education.

Here’s an analogy that might help clarify this issue. Imagine that your unemployed neighbor comes to you and asks you to lend him money to pay for his children’s education. You reply that, though you sympathize with his problem, your answer is no. He responds by saying that he is poor, points out that you have a big house and a job, and insists that his children have a “right” to an education. You say, “Sorry, my answer is still no because I need my money for my own children’s education.” Suppose that your neighbor then gets real mad, pulls out a gun, puts it to your head, and says, “I asked you nicely. I told you my children need an education. You have a job, and I’m unemployed, so you have a moral duty to give me your money.” Then he clicks back the hammer on the gun.

Does your neighbor have the right to put a gun to your head and steal your money because his children “need” an education? He has no such right. Nor does he, or any number of your neighbors, have the right to rob you by getting government to be their enforcer – by pressuring local governments to take your money through school taxes. Any school system that uses compulsory taxes is a system based on the notion that theft is moral if it’s for a good cause. No goal, not even educating children, justifies legalized theft.

It is only natural that all parents want the best education for their children, but do good intentions justify stealing from your neighbor? A mugger on the street who puts a knife to your throat and demands your money also has good intentions – he wants to make his life better with your money. One of the Ten Commandments says, “Thou shalt not steal.” It does not say, “Thou shalt not steal, except if you need tuition money to educate your child.” Since no one has a right to steal from his neighbor, no one, including children, has a “right” to an education.

Some might argue that I may be correct on this issue when it comes to adults, but surely we can’t punish innocent children for their parent’s failures? Just because parents are poor or unemployed, why should innocent children suffer and be denied an education? The answer to that question is one that many people find hard to accept, yet it is true – there are no guarantees in life, not for adults or for children. Good intentions to alleviate a problem do not justify hurting other people by stealing from them. Two wrongs do not make a right.

Moreover, if we agree that children have a right to an education because their parents are poor, then shouldn’t they also have a right to food, a bicycle, a nice house in the suburbs, and designer clothes? If poor kids (and all children) have an alleged right to an education, don’t they also have an alleged right to everything else that other kids have whose parents are well-off? Why not then say that anyone, poor, middle-class, or rich who has less money than his neighbor, has the “right” to steal from his neighbor? Where do we stop if some people can legally steal from others because they claim their kids need this or that?

The answer is, we don’t stop, and we haven’t stopped. That is why our country has turned into a devouring welfare state that is drowning in debt. When I use the word “welfare,” I don’t mean only for the poor. Rich, poor, and middle-class alike in America now claim the right to everything from corporate tax breaks and subsidies, to price supports for farmers, to Medicare, to rent subsidies for unwed mothers. When we let government steal money from taxpayers to give unearned benefits or subsidies to special-interest groups, we open up a Pandora’s box. We become a nation of thieves stealing from each other. Is this what we want America to become?

It is true that a free market does not and can not guarantee that all children have enough to eat or live in a comfortable house. Likewise, a free-market education system in which all parents have to pay for their children’s education obviously can’t guarantee a quality education for every child.

However, government-controlled public schools also can’t guarantee that every child gets a quality education. These failed schools can barely teach our children to read. Also, neither system can make guarantees because there are no guarantees in life, and because each child’s abilities, personality, and family background are so different that such guarantees are impossible. The real question, then, is not which system is perfect, but which system is more likely to give the vast majority of children a quality education that most parents could afford?

Public schools fail and betray millions of children, year after year. The only “right” the public-school system gives to school children is the right to suffer through a mind-numbing, third-rate education for twelve years.

In contrast, the free-market, while not perfect, gives us all the wondrous goods and services we buy every day, such as cars, fresh food, computers, refrigerators, and televisions. The superbly efficient and competitive free market gives us all these marvelous products at prices that most people can afford. Even the poorest American families today have a car, refrigerator, and sometimes two televisions in their homes. If we want to discover which system would give the vast majority of children a quality education at reasonable prices, I think we have the answer – the free market, hands down.

We therefore don’t need a failed public-school system to enforce an alleged right to an education, when there is no such right in the first place. Each parent should be responsible for paying for their own children’s education, just as they pay for their children’s food or clothing.

Finally, public-school apologists use this alleged right to an education to justify keeping the public-school dinosaur alive, in spite of these schools’ never-ending failure. Many public-school apologists who claim that children have a right to an education do so out of good intentions. They want to give all children a chance to get a decent education. But good intentions mean worse than nothing if they lead to dismal consequences. This alleged right to an education lets government bureaucrats have tyrannical control over our children’s minds and future.

The “right” to an education requires a massive government-controlled public-school system to enforce that right. But it is this same public-school system that cripples the education and lives of millions of children. So, ironically, the alleged right to an education is the worst thing we can offer our children.

Most low-income families don’t need government education handouts anymore in the form of allegedly “free” public schools. Parents today can buy quality, low-cost food in a competitive, free-market food industry full of grocery stores and supermarkets. In the same way, parents today can give their kids a quality education using low-cost Internet private schools and homeschooling.

Only when we reject the notion that all children have a “right” to an education will we get government out of the education business, permanently. Only a fiercely-competitive free-market education system can give kids the quality, low-cost education they deserve.

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find valuable and informative

* www.hslda.com — Home School Legal Defense Association — this great organization protects the interests of homeschooling parents

* www.edweek.org -– EdWeek.org — website keeps you up to date on education news related to public-school alternatives, school choice, charter schools, and much more.

* www.math-and-reading-help-for-kids.org — Math and Reading Help For Kids  — good resource for teaching your children math and reading skills.

* http://www.nais.org —National Association of Independent Schools — great resource for finding a quality private school for your children

* http://www.homeschool.com —  Homeschool.com — Everything you want to know about homeschooling — resources, curriculumm, parent networking, homeschooling tips, and much more.

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SCENE:  Melbourne, Australia:

“Sir, what are we to do about all this crime?,” asked Captain John Downey, Melbourne’s Chief of Police, to the Australian Minister of Security, Percy Sumner.

Captain Downey, tall, forty years old, square shoulders, close-cropped hair, and brown eyes, was speaking to the Minister in his huge office overlooking Melbourne Harbor in Australia. Minister Sumner was fifty years old, a short, heavy-set man, with a red, round face, brown hair, round eyes, and a small mouth.

One wall of the office had a huge map of Melbourne, with yellow, red, and blue pins stuck on the locations of recent crimes. The yellow was for burglary, red for rape, blue for murder. Alongside this map was a chart showing crime rates for each of the three crime categories. The chart showed a definite pattern — crime rates had been increasing in Melbourne over the last five years.

Downey said, “I don’t know what to do anymore, sir. No matter how many police we put on the streets, no matter how much we increase prison sentences, the crime rates keep going up. I don’t understand it, sir. I don’t know how to stop it.”

Minister Sumner tightened his little mouth. He said, “It’s all those guns out there on the streets, Captain Downey, that’s the problem. We’ve forced every gun owner in Melbourne to register every gun and rifle they own. We’ve planted our agents at gun shows. We’ve started suing the gun manufacturers. It’s those damn guns. If so many Aussies didn’t own guns, the crime rate would fall. I’ve been discussing this issue seriously with the Prime Minister, Captain. We have agreed that the only solution is gun confiscation. Confiscate every gun in Melbourne and the crime will stop. No guns, no crime, right Downey? That sounds like common sense, doesn’t it?”

“Yes sir,” Captain Downey said eagerly, “that’s what I’ve been suggesting to you for the last year. Another reason we want to confiscate the guns is because when we make drug raids without warrants, sometimes our men get shot as intruders. Some home owners actually have the gall to try to defend their homes against our boys, who are just doing their duty. I don’t want any home owner with a gun in his house. We should also make it a crime for a home owner to use a gun to defend himself in his home against a burglar. If we let him have that right, you never know when he might use that same gun against one of our men who break down his door on a drug raid.”

“The same goes for the women. We can’t allow them to carry a gun, either in their home or on the streets. If they think a mugger is threatening them or might rape them, they should contact the police. We’ll be there within an hour. What if the woman owned a gun and didn’t know how to use it? You know how stupid women are with guns, Minister. We can’t trust them with a gun. And women are so careless, they’ll leave the gun lying around the house where children can find them. It’s worth confiscating everyone’s guns, just so one child doesn’t die from a gun accident.”

Minister Sumner nodded his round head vigorously in agreement. He said, “Good ideas, Downey, I’ll suggest them to the Prime Minister. I think we’ll be able to get the confiscation laws passed in about a month. Thank you for your time, sir. I’ll talk to you again in about four months. By that time, our wall charts should start showing a big decrease in crime. Good day, sir.”

“Good day, Minister. Thank you for your help in this matter. We’ll put a dent in the crime, wait and see.” With that, Captain Downey confidently walked out of the Minister’s office.

FOUR MONTHS LATER:

In the same office. Outside the window, the late afternoon sky was dark and cloudy, and the two men were having another heated conversation.

“Look at the charts, Captain Downey. By God, look at them!,” said Minister Sumner. “The graphs are going straight up, there going off the wall! What in blazes is going on? Our crime rate is triple what it was four months ago. Didn’t you confiscate all the guns in Melbourne, Captain? What the hell is going on?”

“Yes, sir, we did confiscate all the guns,” replied Captain Downey, pacing nervously in front of the Minister’s desk. “I just don’t understand it. We put out the confiscation order the day after we spoke at our last meeting. It was in all the newspapers. We think most law-abiding Melbourne citizens complied. Our local police stations report that over thirty thousand registered guns were handed in.”

“Thirty thousand, did you say?,” asked the Minister. “I thought our gun-registration rolls showed ninety thousand register guns in Melbourne. Why only thirty thousand handed in? What is going on? Didn’t you indicate on your confiscation orders and newspapers ads that anyone not handing in their guns would be subject to prosecution and five years in prison?”

“Yes we did, sir,” stammered Captain Downey. “But all of a sudden, every owner we contacted said they had lost their gun, so couldn’t hand it in. What are we going to do sir, get search warrants to search the homes of sixty thousand gun owners? If they’re hiding their guns, we probably won’t even find them.”

“Not only that, sir, as usual the criminals are not paying attention to our confiscation laws. They get their guns illegally, like they always have. We’ve caught a few house burglars and interrogated them, sir. They have been going on a rampage. They used to hit a few houses a week. Now they are hitting a dozen a week, sir. We were puzzled.

We asked them why? They just looked at our interrogators with contempt, like our men were idiots. What do you think they said, sir?”

“What?,” asked Minister Sumner?

“They thanked me, sir.”

“Thanked you, Captain? What the devil do you mean? Why did they thank you?”

“Because, sir, they thanked me for the new gun confiscation laws, and the laws forbidding home-owners from owning or using a gun for self-defense. They thanked me for making their job so much easier and safer. They said they now just knock on the mark’s door, pretend to be the gas man, barge into the house with their guns drawn, and loot the house. They said they’re not afraid of getting shot anymore by the home owner. Some of them had the effrontery to tell me to thank you personally, sir,” Captain Downey said with outrage.

“They did, did they?,” Minister Sumner said, getting red in the face. “We’ll see about that. I’m going to suggest to the Prime Minister some new gun-control laws. I want him to give us the power to make random searches without warrants in every house and apartment in Melbourne. I want him to increase the prison terms for gun possession to thirty years without chance of parole. I want him to forbid all gun clubs and guns shows — that’s probably where the burglars and murderers get their guns.

I’ll also ask him for the power to confiscate anyone’s car, home, or bank account who is caught with a gun. That will solve the problem, by God.”

“But sir,” Captain Downey protested meekly, “we’re already getting hundreds of complaints about the increasing, heavy-handed tactics of our gun squads. There’s been some nasty newspaper articles mentioning our Constitution, ‘rights of the people,’ and all that crap.”

“The hell with that,” Captain. “What do we care about so-called ‘rights?’ We have a crime spree. It’s an emergency. Our efforts must not be thwarted by silly notions about rights and Constitutions. Guns are killing people every day. That’s all that matters.”

Captain Downey said, “Yes, sir. I hope you’re right. I surely do. I am just a little afraid of civil unrest, sir, that’s all.”

“To hell with civil unrest, Captain, said Minister Sumner. “That’s what our riot police and prisons are for. We know best how to solve this problem, and we won’t let a bunch of agitators stop us. I will ask the Prime Minister to put my new suggestions into place immediately. You’ll see quick results.”

“Yes, sir. I hope you’re right, sir. Please let me know when the new laws are in place, sir, so my men can start enforcing them.”

“Very good, Captain. I will do so. I will then meet with you in another four months. Good day, Captain.”

“Good day, Minister.”

Of course, four months later, in that same office, the charts where now going ballistic. Crime rates were soaring. Australia had gained the international distinction of having the second highest crime rate in the world (after England, who also has strict gun control and confiscation laws).

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In our daily lives, most of us believe we are free Americans. The average person can still go about his business, travel where he wants to go, and freely choose his goals, friends, and career. We still have freedom of speech, the press, trial by jury, and many other liberties our Founding Fathers wrote into the Bill of Rights and Constitution. We are still freer than any other people on Earth.

Yet, consider the following:

We may still have fundamental freedoms of speech and the press, but America is in a transition from liberty to despotism, a halfway house on the road to tyranny. We already have economic tyranny in America. If you add up all the taxes you pay, including income taxes, Social Security, sales, real estate, gasoline, telephone, and dozens of other hidden taxes, government loots over forty percent of your hard-earned income in taxes.

Yet, only a hundred years ago, the average worker paid no more than five percent of his income in taxes. In 1901, there was no income tax, Social Security tax, or most of the other taxes you pay today. In the Middle Ages, medieval rulers took about 20 percent of their serfs’ produce. Our government now taxes us worse than serfs. If government claims the right to forty percent of your income, it claims the right to forty percent of your labor, and forty percent of your life. In effect, the people we “elect” have put us on a chain gang until May 10th of every year, working for the bureaucrats.

Most parents may not see it this way, but local governments, in effect, kidnap your children through public-school compulsory-attendance laws. They force you to send your children to government (public) schools that waste twelve years of your children’s lives and turn them into illiterates. They then tax you to support these so-called “schools.”

“War on Drugs” government SWAT teams can break down your door in the middle of the night without a warrant, based on the drug tip of a malicious, anonymous informant, then threaten you in your own living room. Drug laws dictate what we can or cannot put in our own bodies. These laws tell us we do not have the right to smoke marijuana, even if we have cancer and the marijuana alleviates the nausea from chemotherapy drugs.

Government tells us we cannot commit suicide if we have terminal cancer with excruciating pain, nor can a doctor assist us to commit suicide. By these laws, government tells us it now owns our bodies. These laws deny our right of free choice for important personal decisions in our lives.

Try building a new home for yourself, and you will run into a hornet’s nest of building department inspectors, zoning commissions, environment impact statements, and local agencies who will tie you up in knots. Try starting a small business and you will need government licenses and approvals. Local, State and Federal tax authorities, like vultures, will then devour your profits with their ever-increasing taxes.

Taxes loot your hard-earned money to pay for dozens of “entitlement programs” such as Medicare, Medicaid, farm subsidies, corporate subsidies, welfare programs, health care for illegal immigrants, and now a “welfare” program for the entire population of Iraq called the Iraq war. Your voluntary consent is not required for these programs. Government forces you to pay for them.

Federal, State, and local police agencies use asset-forfeiture laws to steal the cars, homes, businesses, and bank accounts of innocent people under the pretext of a War on Drugs. Victims of drug raids then have to prove their innocence and sue the agency to get their property back. Asset-forfeiture laws have turned too many local police departments into agencies for legalized looting.

Anti-gun politicians make thousands of gun laws that restrict a woman’s right to protect herself from a rapist, a homeowner’s right to protect himself from a robber in the middle of the night, or American citizens’ right to protect themselves from a tyrannical government. The 2nd Amendment to the Constitution that guarantees our right to bear arms is under massive assault. It may be only a matter of time until we lose this right altogether.

Equal Employment Opportunity Commission regulations can control who an employer hires, fires, or promotes, how much he has to pay his employees (minimum wage), and what their “conditions of employment” must be. This same agency can sue an employer into bankruptcy for “discrimination” or other “infractions” of its regulations.

Because of the recent Supreme Court “Kelo” decision, your property rights have become null and void. Now any developer who wants to put up a new shopping center can get your local government to condemn your home, and your neighbors’ homes, through their power of “eminent domain.” Local government bureaucrats can now demolish your home, not for public use like a highway, but to let a private developer profit from your land and pay more taxes.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) can stop a home builder from building homes, a farmer from farming his land, a rancher from grazing his cattle, an oil company from drilling for desperately needed oil, or a logging company from cutting down trees to give us lumber for new homes. EPA regulations sharply jack up the price of oil and destroy property rights in America for a great and noble cause — to protect “endangered” species like the Alabama mud rat, mosquito-infested swamps called “wetlands,” and “delicate” frozen Arctic wastelands that look like the surface of the moon.

The Food and Drug Administration forces drug companies to spend over $500 million and seven years to get approval for a new drug. It puts pharmaceutical companies through a regulatory torture chamber that strangles the development of thousands of new, life-saving drugs. It has made SWAT-team raids on vitamin stores to “protect” us from Vitamin C and other dangers.

Federal agents can persecute a religious sect they don’t like, as the Feds did in Waco, Texas. They persecuted these people partly because the sect owned allegedly “illegal” firearms, firearms the 2nd Amendment says they had the right to own. After slaughtering innocent women and children in a ball of fire, none of the Federal agents were ever prosecuted or sent to prison for their actions.

Finally, in response to the Sept. 11th terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, the Federal government passed an “anti-terror” bill that created secret military tribunals. These tribunals will be like medieval star-chambers, where defendants’ legal rights will be ripped to pieces, and trial by jury will be denied.

These tribunals have set a terrible precedent. It is only a matter of time before government prosecutors expand the vague definition of “terrorism” to an ever-widening list of “crimes” that can be used against American citizens. Government judges and prosecutors will then be able to try and convict Americans without the “messy” need for juries, proof, evidence, or the presumption of innocence.

Does all this sound like “the land of the free?” Government in America is a growing tyranny. It is a government that would shock our Founding Fathers, a government they would consider a greater tyranny than the British monarchy they fought a revolutionary war against. Worse, whatever freedoms we have left are being taken from us at an ever-accelerating rate.

If you, my reader, do not see this, it is not your fault. Your liberty has been taken from you gradually, one new tax and regulation at a time. You have become accustomed to the taxes and regulations. You think they are “normal” and therefore nothing to complain about. You mistakenly believe that because you elect your representatives, and because they enact laws based on majority rule, that their laws, taxes, and regulations are moral and legitimate. It is like your wife or husband not noticing you have gained thirty pounds over the past five years because they see you every day, and the weight gain was gradual.

So it is with gradual tyranny. But if Americans living 150 years ago suddenly came back to life today, they would be shocked, for they would see the stark difference in their freedom.

President Obama continues to waste hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of American lives to protect the “freedom” of the Iraqi people. Well, how about first giving Americans back the freedom that is their birthright, the constitutional freedoms our Founding Fathers fought and died for?

Still think you’re living in the land of the free?

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Here are some typical policies the Obama/Democrat/Liberal-looters now suggest to “solve” America’s problems:

“We” need to give health care to all people with a “non-profit” socialized-medicine system (the same system that wrecked medical care in England and Canada?, and paid for by whom?).

“We” need to give all kids tuition money for a college education (a socialist, anti-American-values education presided over by Marxist professors?, and paid for by whom?).

“We” need pre-school for all children from age two years old, especially minority kids (with or without the consent of parents?, and paid for by whom?).

“We” need “parent education” programs to teach parents how to raise their kids (the parent-police in Hillary Clinton’s “village” that “raises” children).

“We” need more federal programs to cure AIDS, for AIDS education, and to pay for drug addicts’ needles (why should we pay for other people’s drug habits and unprotected sex that cause most of the AIDS?).

“We” have to raise taxes on the “rich” to pay for all these multi-billion dollar programs (which kills the goose that lays the golden egg—it’s the productive “rich” who create the jobs the poor depend on).

“We” need to spend more billions of dollars on government (public) schools (that’s like throwing money down a toilet).

“We” need to spend billions of dollars to solve global warming (human-caused global warming is a deliberate hoax designed to destroy our liberty and free economy).

“We” have to take money from the oil companies to fund alternative energy programs (yes, “take” is what Hillary Clinton said in a previous speech. “Take,” as in “loot”).

“We” have to end the imbecile Iraq war that is bankrupting us. But, God forbid, we will NOT give the billions of dollars we spend on the war back to you, the taxpayers. We’ll keep your money and give it away to every petty looter and special-interest group who’ll vote us into office.

“We” have to stop companies from moving overseas and not paying heavy corporate taxes (companies want to run from strangling US taxes and regulations — why shouldn’t they?).

“We” have to tax the rich (who earned their money) to pay for welfare, farm subsidies, employment programs for minorities, and dozens of other giveaway programs (why should these people get unearned handouts they didn’t work for?).

“We” have to make sure the “rich” pay their “fair share” of taxes (“fair share” means to loot money from brilliant, productive businessmen who earn more than others with their superior ambition and hard work, and give this stolen loot to less productive people who do not produce jobs for others).

And on and on it goes. “We” have to help this group. “We” have to help that group. “We” have to raise taxes or take money from the “rich” to pay for all this looting.

“We” is the Democrats’ and liberals’ killer word. They mean that “we” are our brothers’ keeper, whether we like it or not. “We” must sacrifice our lives, our work, our hard-earned money to pay for any looters who want to take our money, courtesy of government-elected thieves.

“We” is an attempt to make you forget the word “I,” as in “I” earned my money and “you” don’t have a right to take it from me.

The Democrat-looter Presidential candidates all claimed the right to tax us to death to pay for uninsured people’s health care (including Mexican illegal aliens), unemployed peoples’ training, tenured-teachers unearned pay raises, congenitally-incompetent public schools’ unending failure, government workers who get rich on these programs, and every other whining special-interest group who demands government hand-outs at your expense.

Let’s be clear on one thing. You are NOT your brother’s keeper, and no government you elect has the right to force you to be. “Compassion” enforced at the end of a government gun (taxes) is naked compulsion. Every program that looting liberals promote with their “we” forces you to be your brother’s keeper, whether you like it or not. In effect, Democrats tell you, “your money or your life.”

There is only one way to fight the Democrats’ vicious moral notion that “we” are our brother’s keeper. Like a prayer, keep repeating the words that you have the God-given right to keep every cent you earn. Your property is not someone else’s “resource” to spend as they please. Liberal looters who spout their “we” think your hard-earned money is theirs for the taking. They think of you as an expendable sacrificial animal. They think that your duty is to work for the money, but they have the right to spend it.

To fight the liberal looters, keep repeating like a prayer, “My money and property are mine—I earned it. No politician I elect has the right to steal my money to give away to others.” It’s as simple as that.

If you accept the Democrats’ deadly “we,” you fall into their trap. You accept the vicious socialist and fascist moral notion that you are your brother’s keeper. You accept the notion that the people you elect to office have the right to loot your hard-earned money to enforce that notion. You accept the fact that those you elect to office have the right to make you into a slave—to work your whole life for the benefit of others.

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Home-schooling removes children from public school. That alone makes home-schooling worthwhile. Unlike public-school children, home-schooled kids are not prisoners of a system that can wreck their self-esteem, ability to read, and love of learning.

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It may seem obvious to many people why literacy is so important in our technologically advanced society. However, many parents may not fully realize the emotional pain and life-long damage illiteracy can cause their children. Literacy, the ability to read well, is the foundation of children’s education. If children can’t read well, every subject they try to learn will frustrate them. If they can’t read math, history, or science textbooks, if they stumble over the words, they will soon give up reading out of frustration. Asking children who are poor readers to study these subjects is like asking them to climb a rope with one arm.

Kids learn to read in their most formative years, which is why reading can profoundly affect their self-esteem. When children learn to read, they also start learning how to think abstractly, because words convey ideas and relationships between ideas. How well they read therefore affects children’s feelings about their ability to learn. This in turn affects how kids feel about themselves generally whether a child thinks he or she is stupid or bright. Children who struggle with reading often blame themselves and feel ashamed of themselves.

As Donald L. Nathanson, M.D., Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at Jefferson Medical College noted: First reading itself, and then the whole education process, becomes so imbued with, stuffed with, amplified, magnified by shame that children can develop an aversion to everything that is education.

Often, poor readers will struggle just to graduate from high school. They can lose general confidence in themselves, and therefore the confidence to try for college or pursue a career. Their job opportunities can dry up. Their poor reading skills and low self-confidence can strangle their ability to earn money. They can struggle financially their whole lives. If they marry and have children, they can struggle even more.

Life for illiterate adults can easily degenerate into misery, poverty, failure, and hopelessness. According to a 1992 study by the National Institute for Literacy, “43 % of Americans with the lowest literacy skills live in poverty and 70 % have no job or a part-time job. Only 5% of Americans with strong literacy skills live in poverty.” As Dr. Grover Whitehurst, Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of Education, said, “Reading is absolutely fundamental. It’s almost trite to say that. But in our society, the inability to be fluent consigns children to failure in school and consigns adults to the lowest strata of job and life opportunities.”

By the 1850s, before we had compulsory, government-controlled public schools, child and adult literacy rates averaged over 90 percent, making illiteracy rates less than 10 percent. By 1850, literacy rates in Massachusetts and other New England States, for both men and women, was close to 97 percent. This was before Massachusetts created the first compulsory public-school system in America in 1852. What is literacy like in our public schools today?

In 1995, a student teacher for a fifth-grade class in Minneapolis wrote the following letter to the local newspaper: . . . I was told [that] children are not to be expected to spell the following words correctly: back, big, call, came, can, day, did, dog, down, get, good, if, in, is, it, have, he, home, like, little, man, morning, mother, my, night, off, out, over, people, play, ran, said, saw, she, some, soon, their, them, there, time, two, too, up, us, very, water, we, went, where, when, will, would, etc. Is this nuts?

In 2002, the New York State Education Department’s annual report on the latest reading and math scores for public school students found:

· 90 percent of middle schools failed to meet New York State minimum standards for math and English exam scores.

· 65 percent of elementary schools flunked the minimum standards.

· 84 percent of high schools failed to meet the minimum state standards.

· More than half of New York City’s black and hispanic elementary school students failed the state’s English and math exams. About 30 percent of white and asian-american students failed to achieve the minimum English test scores.

· The results for eighth grade students were even worse. Here, 75 percent of black and hispanic students flunked both the English and the math tests. About 50 percent of white and Asian-American eighth graders failed the tests. These illiteracy rates are now common in public schools across America, not just in New York City.

In short,as shown by the New York State Education Department’s annual report and other studies, student illiteracy rates in many public schools range from 30 to 75 percent. This is an education horror story.

That is what illiteracy can mean, what it does mean for millions of public-school children who can barely read. Does any parent want this kind of future for his or her children? I argue in Public Schools, Public Menace that our public school system is the primary cause of this tragic illiteracy, and one reason why these schools are a menace to our children.

A great movie to see that shows the tragic consequences of illiteracy is “Stanley and Iris” with Robert DeNiro and Jane Fonda. After you see this movie, you might think twice about keeping your children in public school. There are wonderful, new, low-cost private schools that are alternatives to public school, that parents can take advantage of right now.

Read more information about “Public Schools, Public Menace.”

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