Dakota Beacon

We;ve all heard it said a million times - "Our children are our future" - so often that we don't absorb it anymore or give it any thought.  Yet this is fundamental truth.  Our future will be no better than the preparation we give our kids.  Our schools are a disaster - but we have options.

It began with experimental programs to teach reading in our schools.  My first exposure to this terrible fraud being practiced on children was when I was a child myself.  I had two brothers.  One of them and I had a first grade teacher who was a fearless veteran - she defied the system and taught as she had been taught - using the logical organization of our English language as it was designed.  This system of teaching reading has nearly 100% success and not only does it make it simple and easy to read in English, it also holds the door open to most alphabetic languages, making it possible to learn these languages with relative ease as well.

My other brother got the short straw with teachers - his teacher followed the “guidelines”, which were to use the infamous and now totally debunked “see-and-say” method, wherein the kid must memorize hundreds of words every year rather than learning how the system works.  Instead of being given the key to our phonetic language organization, the victims of this program were consigned to the deadly boring prison of having to learn a few words and that be the limit on their reading.  My brother had the extraordinary intelligence to teach himself to read.  Few kids have that innate drive or ability.

I saw his unnecessary struggle and vowed, when my baby sisters came along, that they would not go through this.  It was about this time that Rudolf Flesch’s Why Johnny Can’t Read (and what you can do about it) hit the stands.  It was the most important book I had found.  As I read this page-turner, describing the money machine system which was subverting our schools (I was about 15 at the time) I found my anger growing.  I used the second part of this little paperback to teach my sisters to read before they ever attended school.  If you have not read Flesch’s book, please do.  He is not by any means the only good educator to write about this, but his blockbuster book created a sensation and with it, serious doubts in many parents’ minds.  

The end of that story was that my sisters were very well educated and always capable of learning about anything they found an interest in.  But the bigger story went on despite this, and it turns out that the curveball thrown in reading instruction was the tiniest tip of the iceberg.  Our schools, it seems, have been pursuing a far different goal from what we know as “education” for a very long time, and it is intentional - deliberate.  Not only are they “dumbing down” American schoolchildren, they are in the full-time business of perverting them - intellectually, morally and politically.  It is no wonder that our nation is in the mess it is when we realize that most of the people who are now the “adults” in our society have never been exposed to any real education.  They have been indoctrinated, propagandized, instead.  Dr. Mark McDonald outlines the course that has been plotted to take America off the cliff through the perverse educational system.  He issues some ominous warnings and some very sound advice.  

If there is such a thing as a “silver lining” in the ugly storm cloud that has been “covid”, it is the beginning of an uptrend in parents’ homeschooling of their children.  Homeschool has been a growing interest now for a decade or more but covid, plus the kinds of stories we are hearing now about what is going on in our classrooms - everything from organizing BLM marches in primary school to after-school satanic club to drag queen shows - plus the ever-present push for use of drugs in kids to control classrooms, rather than teachers’ skills in providing a learning environment - have been driving factors in this pendulum swing back to some sort of normal life.  

As a homeschool parent myself, I cannot speak highly enough of the quality of both life and education which homeschool made possible for our family.  Nothing of substance was sacrificed educationally - and as is being shown in studies now, homeschooled children grow up to be responsible and great contributors to society.  

If you are worried about your kids’ schools (and you should be) it might just make more sense to take time out from other career pursuits and spend that time with your own kids, teach them to read, encourage them to write and research the topics that fascinate them and help them to grow up to be sane, productive and civic-minded, compassionate adults.  These are qualities that will never be developed in our schools, sadly.  And support others who choose to homeschool.  It is not the easiest pathway, but it is easier than trying to turn the system around.  We can really only do that one child at a time - at home.  And the rewards are tremendous.  There is no greater adventure than to raise your own child!

NOTE:  If you are a homeschool parent, by all means check out Hillsdale College's free courses on history, literature and our country's government.  I highly recommend their Economics 101 cours for middle school and high school kids!  It is a brilliant - and cost-free - course in how the economy works in a free society!  Don't miss it.  

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