Common Core and Throwing Money at Schools

My local newspaper is toeing the line regarding the county commissioner of education's exciting New Plan to pull our "C" rated schools up to "A" level within a few years. Fantastic. What is this plan?

The article is quoted as stating that "increasing staff learning and growth and providing support and resources to students and staff" will get the ball rolling in the right direction. Oh, and throwing more money at everyone. 

Uh huh. Right. I'm no dummy. I can read exactly what's there. See all these 'improvements' they're talking about for Polk County really only mean one thing: money in the pockets of certain people who handle the money it's going to involve to supposedly implement these 'improvements.'
I'm not jaded. I just woke the hell up. It's just a money game; creating jobs for themselves especially. Our economy is crap and they're off trying to create jobs which AREN'T GOING TO HELP THE KIDS!!!!!!!! You can't fix something if you haven't got a clue about what's WRONG!!!

This is a load of crap. Don't throw more money at the problem and don't implement Common Core. Get back to the BASICS.

My (now)home schooled kids were pulled out during fourth and fifth grade due to the ridiculousness going on in class. Always catering to the lowest denominator and babyfying the kids all across the board.

We brought them home and now they have excelled far beyond our wildest dreams. One is doing college at the age of thirteen and the other is not far behind his big brother.

Here are the three biggest reasons why public school is the cesspool it is:

1) Apathy
2) ... which is spawned by 'busy work'
3) and not being realistic about which kids are college bound or not.

Now this doesn't mean that some kids won't spontaneously bloom and suddenly jump onto the path of the college bound, but I don't think that keeping the entire class on the same pace is realistic. It bores the interested kids and keeps everyone dumbed down. And then you wonder why more kids aren't 'college ready.' hmm...

Also, let's be honest here, shall we, about college? The new high school diploma is a bachelor's degree. Colleges are simply money making operations right now, only in it for themselves, since the industries they're accredited to give degrees in don't have enough positions to fill in this country.

Our jobs are being outsourced but college is still being pushed as a great idea for EVERYONE!

WAKE UP!!! This is not sustainable in our society.

Kids need to learn basic skills(through 10th grade) and then go into the college track if they're willing and able. Otherwise they can go into vocational/trade schools and get a good job. The last two years of high school really only exist for those kids who are on the college track. Look at the curriculum and prove me wrong.

I don't know the last time I've seen a cashier or bank teller use Pre-Calculus or Chemistry.

Also, the previous article about this topic in the newspaper online and everyone's comments were deleted. Here's today's article. Let's see what happens to it.

Actions speak louder than words and in this case I think the Ledger spoke volumes about their agenda to protect the money makers at all cost.

A New Road Less Terrifying

"And the new man reigns by love, by faith, by perfection, by patience, and by wisdom. Yet his king is the light mind, who is king of all. He reigns over it as he wishes." 

~Manichaean Literature

Quite a bit happened over the past few days with my youngest(12yo) boy with school and it's led me to make decisions I never thought I'd be strong enough to make. I'm brave. I'm fearless. I have taken on the responsibility of teaching this boy 8th grade US History for the rest of the school year. Yes, yes, REAL home school. He was virtual schooling up until now, curriculum and teachers provided by the county. 

Emotionally, as of Friday I was a wrecking ball of nerves after fighting with the county administration for virtual schooling over his Final Exams for 7th grade Civics. (He's worked ahead and is going into 8th now.) Long story short, there is no such thing as letting a child fail anymore. No Sir. Nope. Now, you either make a 60% or above on your Mid Term Exams and your Final Exams(apiece) or you fail the entire course and have to retake it. OR you can retake the Exam itself. Well, when a teacher resets the exam before even talking to the parents it kinda takes the whole 'choice' out of everyone's hands, don't you think? That's precisely what happened on Friday.

As a rule, we do not allow do-overs or resubmissions. We've always let our kids suck it up and take the failing grade so they learn from it. And until now we've never run into this 60% policy of this virtual school. With the elder boy(13yo) being such an overachiever the lowest grade he's ever made on a midterm or final was a C. John is not his brother. John has problems memorizing facts and dates and definitions. History is BORING!!!! Ergo, his grades in that class have always been on a slippery slope. I get it. I totally do. I was the same way in history classes all my life.

His teacher held the password for the last part(there were three parts) of the Final hostage until he retook the second part. He did better on the second part by a good twenty points. GREAT! Not that it's any real indication of learning since quite a few of the questions were the same the second time around and the night before I made sure he looked in his lessons and found the correct answers to figure out what happened on the test. Of course he did better the second time around! He had access to some of the same questions and had time to look up the correct answer. This is kind of a no-brainer to me.

Anyway, hubby and I were not happy and vented to every administrator you can think of with the county and the main company itself which provides the curriculum the county contracts from on a yearly basis. It's a respect issue, I feel. I think it's disrespectful to expect a kid to be happy about retaking a test because he didn't get the information the first time around and then letting it all be about the company's numbers during auditing. And that is exactly what it's about. (K12.com has a minimum of 80% by the way. On EVERY assignment, not just the tests. Imagine the stress being in school there!) Life doesn't give you do-overs and neither should school. It's a bad way to practice for 'real life' after high school. My kids totally get our philosophy and happily abide by it because they understand its worth. It helps them push harder to do better in the future.

So I decided to take the high road and home school John in 8th grade US History. We'll get a signature from a teacher at the end of the year and submit it to the county and that will be that. This is an adventure that is quite a bit less terrifying since it'll only be one class but still, when I went to the library this afternoon to find a starting point I was looking at four shelves of books for the main core topics and could only guestimate what would be best based on the time frame of the topic. 

Monday is a long way away still in my mind. I have some work to do and some decisions to make about how to make this more digestible for my boy. I want to do some old school kind of learning to help him with reading and vocabulary and writing but still teaching him the subject. I came home with five books dealing with and leading up to the Colonial era and I guess that's where we'll start. We'll compile a bibliography for his homeschool portfolio as required. Read, write essays, research using the Library of Congress for students, find things he's interested in learning about on his own and he can report it however he wants.... I'd like to make it more easy going than the cyber pressure he's been feeling in school. Not sure how successful I'll be or if I'll turn into a raving beast when confronted with his bad spelling. I don't want everything to be graded. I'd rather have an 'unschooling' approach to the final result but have structure because of John's lack of enthusiasm about the subject. 

Who knows, maybe he'll bloom within the new freedom and find that History isn't such a dry thing after all? 

I am breathing deep and finding that calm inside myself to understand that perhaps this is what this child needs right now. So what if we spend a month doing absolutely nothing but reading cool historical books and figuring things out, right?!! Oh well. We'll have fun reading and talking about the books and anything cool he discovers. Then maybe we can get a timeline going up on his cork board and put things into perspective in a more logical way for him visually. 

I'd love to do the same thing with him in English but fear I'd be biting off more than I can chew at the moment. As it is, the second semester of his LA class can't be opened yet because the curriculum hasn't been published yet. Why? Common Core is about to crash and burn in the state of Florida and the school can't figure out what to do. I know, right? It's insane!! He should be done with the second semester of this year's LA in six weeks and instead, we're still waiting for the school to retract it's head from it's sphincter and take a look at reality. People don't want Common Core. Competition is a good thing, keeping everyone on the same level is BAD. It pulls everyone down.

This momma is ready to learn whatever the journey is willing to teach. Hopefully a little boy is willing to go out and find the lessons he wants to learn best. 

 "He breaks off from his teacher and the brothers. He always wants to go in and come out alone, a solitary man. He will always walk alone. It is a sign that the closeness of his brothers does not persuade him." 

~Manichaean Literature

And this is the way of gnosis, entirely. It is a solitary pursuit when it's all said and done. We take cues from the world around us which are available but we must apply it to our heart and sort out the gold from the chaff.

Cat's Eye Nebula, Hubble telescope

Back to School Time and Vaccines

Both my boys (11 and 12) got their physicals today and of course we were shown their vaccine records so they could be updated. Now up until three years ago I had no problems with vaccines except for making that decision about my own body(I got pneumonia from a flu and chickenpox vaccine which put me in the hospital for three weeks). About my stepsons, though, this was of course a bit more tricky. Hubby had his own ideas and I had mine.

Through time, reading, and much deliberation, I decided to broach the topic with my husband about discontinuing vaccines with the boys. He fought me hard last year but gave in. This year, after all the ranting I'd done about all the new research on Gardasil killing pubescent girls he finally woke up. The trigger was, I think, that they started pushing it so hard toward BOYS and for the most inane thing: genital warts. Gimme a freaking break. Warts never killed anyone. 

"Son, I'm terribly sorry but if you don't get this potentially deadly vaccine your penis may not be as attractive to a woman." 

I hope that sounded just as ridiculous to you as it does to me. 

Cervical cancer? Ok, yeah. I can agree with there being a need for a vaccine-- if one did exists which was SAFE!-- to protect our girls. But when you give a girl the Gardasil vaccine, she gets WARTS on her body, and after a lot of other complications then drops dead-- well. I have to say that there's a sick sort of irony in there somewhere. 

If you see a sudden surge in adolescent boys with genital warts in the next decade or so ehh... I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions about why and how that might be coming about. This puts me in mind of our  dear ex-president saying emphatically, "I. Did. Not. Have. Sex. With. That. Woman." (But he did ruin her dress.)

Also, if they can come up with a vaccine for cervical/penile/anal cancers and genital warts then why the hell can't they cure breast cancer yet? With as much money thrown at the Komen foundation I have to wonder where all that money is going. They have a vaccine for several cancers but can't kill it? 

A vaccine for CANCER but we still can't cure the common cold? I do not believe for a minute that the science behind this is based in reality. Wishful thinking, maybe, for those who have been affected by these cancers or warts in some way but realistically speaking: what is the gain here? You can't cure the people who are already sick besides irradiating them and injecting them with poisons and then hope their immune system reboots. It's a crapshoot. 

Getting back to my boys being hounded to get their vaccines today. The nurse was nervous and shoved a pile of papers at me when I informed her we were declining. The doctor, however, was more composed and wanted a specific reason. I was pretty blunt. I told her that when the companies which are making these vaccines remove four items then we'll get vaccinated again. 

1. Thiomersal 
2. Squalene
3. Aluminum
4. Polysorbate 80

She said that all of these ingredients serve a purpose in the vaccine and that they can't remove them. I told her that I don't recall reading in my multivitamin information insert that the human body has a deficiency of any of those ingredients. 

"Well, I give my kids these same vaccines and I feel comfortable doing so." 

"I'd like my documentation on the physical so we can leave." 

She left the room and got me the paperwork and that was that. Here's the list of vaccines she wanted to give my twelve year old boy: 

1. HPV(Gardasil)
2. Meningococcal
3. Hepatitis A
4. TD or Tdap
5. Chickenpox

Five. That's FIVE vaccines with all of those insidious ingredients that he would have gotten today if I hadn't spoken up. That's five shots of thiomersal, five shots of squalene, five shots of aluminum, and five shots of polysorbate 80. 

Considering the fact that this twelve year old is probably going to be in college by the time he's fourteen or fifteen he certainly doesn't need all this crap floating around in his brain! Although some days I am tempted to gag him to protect him from himself and his ever-eloquent and comedic smart mouth, the truth is that at some point he's going to outgrow this phase and learn how to not sound like such a snot. I'm willing to wait. But I certainly don't want to deprive him of the chance to do that by turning him into another stupefied sheep. We've got too many already. 

The whooping cough vaccine(Tdap) certainly hasn't helped all those people the past few years which have contracted it. Seventy percent of the people who've contracted it were vaccinated! Herd immunity theory is debunked with that alone. 

The more I read about school districts trying to force the Gardasil vaccine on children in their school clinics even without parental consent the more strongly I began to feel about refusing further vaccines for the boys. You have to ask yourself why these pharmaceutical companies are so gosh darn insistent that our little boys shouldn't have genitial warts and our little girls have to be protected from cervical cancer-- especially when it's now shown that the only thing the Gardasil vaccine can positively do is give a false negative on a Pap smear. Congratulations. They just killed another woman. If that's not proof of a soft kill operation then I don't know what more people need to see.

UNCRC- Important Parental Rights Law video!

United Nations Conventions on the Rights of the Child(wiki link): When I stumbled across the video I've embedded below I was shocked, but not so shocked that I was falling on the floor twitching dumbfounded. Why? We've had enough run ins with our local elementary school which made me pull both my boys out to do cyber schooling two years ago. But this!! this is absolutely insane- and the USA is the only country so far which hasn't accepted it. Read how here. I find it positively nauseating to think that our current method of raising our two sons in Customary International Law, is illegal. If I didn't set boundaries for these boys they'd run over me and burn our apartment down. Or kill us. But hey, what's a little blood and gore between parents and kids if it's what the kids want, right?



Watch for yourself. It's true. After you watch the video think think long and hard about whether or not you want to have more children added to your family. And maybe in the end that's the whole point? Because if the government has control over your children and how you raise them then where has our freedom gone? We've signed them away. We're nothing more than a breeding workforce. There is hope. People are fighting this law. Keep reading and watching.

Here are some main points from the video:

• Uganda and other countries in the middle east: still figuring out whether or not honor killings should still be legal and yet they have passed the UNCRC for their country. So killing women who are raped is/maybe alright but disciplining your children is wrong? Who's raising who here? The parents or the state?
  
• Holland: children start sex education at the age of four. Why? I'm pretty sure they've seen body parts from both parents or siblings by then to say that there are differences between boys and girls. So why formally educate? So they can learn even earlier how to damage someone? As if the Terrible Two's weren't enough, for crying outloud. Next we're going to have eight year olds raping each other.
  
• Sweden: homeschooling is illegal. Only state indoctrination for the Swedes, it appears.
  
• Belgium: doctors can murder a child under a year old if they find the child physically or mentally deficient/disabled. In 16% of cases they didn’t even ask for the parent’s consent. Government sanctioned murder.
  

US courts are more frequently using ‘Customary International Law’ to decide domestic case outcomes. So we have not ratified the UNCRC here but it is still beginning to take effect in public schools and in the home itself.

Once enough of these bits and pieces of international law have passed here in the USA then a precedent is created and… UNCRC will be passed. Clinton(Mrs.) signed it already in the UN but Clinton(Mr.) didn't push it forward for ratification. And so it sits on the shelf scaring the crap out of parents in the US while it is slowly being obeyed by local family courts even without official ratification.

Taking the opinion of the child into consideration is the priority with CRC:

• The parent cannot have access to medical tests unless the child gives the doctor permission. Think your kid is high and up to no good? Good luck proving it! Even if the child is a danger to the rest of the family because of their mental state you can't do anything because the child will not allow the parents to see the drug tests.
  
• Anything the parents state the child must do to fulfill family obligations is subject to state approval. Real court case example given in movie: child doesn’t feel like going to church three times a week. Child complains to the school counselor. Child is removed from school and put into foster care and parents not even notified until after the fact. No court case is presented for abuse of any kind or imminent danger. The child simply doesn’t feel like complying with the family’s schedule. “I don’t wanna” becomes “I get put in foster care.” Surprising to the kid but then they decide to go along with it because it's how they can get what they want. Does this sound surprising to most parents? NO! (What, don't you remember being a headstrong little punk and driving your parents up the wall? I can answer honestly- yes, I do. I was a hellion.) Three times a week is too much for a thirteen year old but once a week sounds about right, according to Washington state law for a few years until it was thrown out. Many more cases were brought before family courts before it was taken out of the state’s law.
• Spanking? Forget about it. Grounding them? No can do. They have a right to freedom. Standing them in the corner or have them write a repetitive paper on their infraction(That's my personal fave. They hate handwriting assignments)? Get sued by your own child because they disagree with you. Can you imagine it, getting called into court because you tried to discipline your child and every spat turning into a legal battle? It'd be enough to give any sane person the chills when that pregnancy test comes up positive. At that point you might as well hand the child over to the state because everything you say or do is up for review in a court of law. I can see abortion rates rising exponentially as the generations get more and more unruly because to be a parent is to be the ultimate schmuck.
  

3) From the ParentalRights.org website an example was given of the ‘perfect storm’ which will rise up from the CRC being passed in the US: In the early 1980s, a landmark parental rights case reached the Washington State Supreme Court. The case involved 13-year-old Sheila Marie Sumey, whose parents were alarmed when they found evidence of their daughter's participation in illegal drug activity and escalating sexual involvement. Their response was to act immediately to cut off the negative influences in their daughter's life by grounding her.

But when Sheila went to her school counselors complaining about her parent's actions, she was advised that she could be liberated from her parents because there was "conflict between parent and child." Listening to the advice she had received, Sheila notified Child Protective Services (CPS) about her situation. She was subsequently removed from her home and placed in foster care.

Her parents, desperate to get their daughter back, challenged the actions of the social workers in court. They lost. Even though the judge found that Sheila's parents had enforced reasonable rules in a proper manner, the state law nevertheless gave CPS the authority to split apart the Sumey family and take Sheila away.

The moral I take from that story is that it's alright to say, "Sweety, we think your friends are a horrible influence," but it's not ok to keep your child safe inside your home from getting into trouble with those same horrible friends. What rights do we have left as parents??

ParentalRights.org has put together a Constitutional amendment(SR 99) which will actually spell out parents’ rights since currently there is nothing to protect a parent from saying no to their child and it being Constitutionally legal. That's right. It's not legal to tell your child NO! or that they must comply with your decisions about their friends, medical testings, education, etc. Let's just let the little darlings run wild, yes?

This is the proposed amendment SR99:

SECTION 1
The liberty of parents to direct the upbringing and education of their children is a fundamental right.

SECTION 2
Neither the United States nor any state shall infringe upon this right without demonstrating that its governmental interest as applied to the person is of the highest order and not otherwise served.

SECTION 3
No treaty may be adopted nor shall any source of international law be employed to supersede, modify, interpret, or apply to the rights guaranteed by this article.

Sign the petition to pass the Constitutional amendment!

Reading the 'Parental Rights in the Courts' and 'Families in the News' examples on the site will blow your mind. This is real, people. The state believes it can raise your child better in foster care than you can!

• Parker v. Hurley(2007)
  
• Brown v. Hot, Safer and Sexy Productions
  
• Fields v. Palmdale School District
  
• Graham v. Florida(2012)
• + dozens more in the past twenty years.
  

More lawsuits are coming and things are coming to a head now.

Here is a direct link to the current 2012 update to the ratification process and who has has/has not supported the adoption of the International Treaty or the UNCRC. The statistics are appalling. The Democrats are trying to collectively throw our children under a bus.

So Readers, what is your opinion of the legislation? What have you seen or heard about it?