Full disclosure: I am a lifetime critic of public education. Most of my education was in Christian colleges and universities. All of my children were educated in Christian schools through the university level. Same with most of my grandchildren. I would not be saddened if public education fell to the ground like a piece of rotten fruit leaving each town to provide secondary education for all children. I believe in separation of school and state since there is not a word in the U. S. Constitution about education! Moreover, the Federal Government should have nothing to do with education–nothing.

If I were the Education Czar, I would make major changes that would restore sanity, safety, and scholarship to schools, and then I would turn everything over to each state:

*My first actions would be to immediately remove and burn in front of every school all Common Core Curriculum. I would add to the flames such “classics” from each school’s library as Johnny Has Two Daddies, Heather Has Two Mommies, Run, Alice Run, and similar garbage. And I would laugh when fools remind me that Hitler and other tyrants burned books. Hitler also constructed great highways and build good automobiles. Christians in Acts 19 burned a vast amount of damaging books with great success following the bonfire.

*All principals and administrators would be required to have at least five year’s classroom experience. I would cut the number of administrators by 35%. They really aren’t that necessary to a quality school. I would not be concerned about their college training but their knowledge, experience, and common sense.

*Each student would be tested to ascertain his grade level in math, English, history, and reading then an educational prescription would be written followed by a personalized curriculum designed for his specific needs. It is educational folly to assume that all ten-year-olds are working at the same level in all subjects! To place all students in the same grade determined by their age is an administrative convenience. It is one of the biggest mistakes made in all schools–public, private, and Christian. If funding is available then a few “frill” courses would be added.

*I would seek to repeal all compulsory attendance laws. If a kid wants to be a bum, let him be a bum with parents’ approval. After all, the attendance laws are seldom enforced anyway.

*All security guards would be fired and each school would boast of having at least two armed teachers. It would be commonly known that at least two anonymous teachers with proper gun training would be in each school. Those teachers would be paid an extra $1000 per year. Students would be told that the armed teachers would be expected to shoot any student who seeks his “fifteen minutes of fame” by killing others.

*I would hire teachers regardless of their degree. In fact, I would prefer teachers not educated in teachers’ colleges–hotbeds of incompetence. It is an acknowledged fact that the Ed.D (one of my two doctorates) is the easiest to earn and most useless doctoral degree.

*I would hire teachers who have character and would fire any teacher who boozed, used illegal drugs, or slept around. Those teachers would stay fired. I would recommend that any teacher having sex with a student would spend 25 years in prison.

*There would be no smoking of anything on school grounds by anyone at any time.

*All teachers and staff would dress up, not down. All men would wear dress shirts and ties and women would wear dresses or skirts and blouses. It is a fact that classroom discipline is linked to student and teacher dress.

*Teachers would receive merit pay depending on the progress of their students. I would also pay teachers an extra $1000 if they agreed not to join the NEA!

*Schools would be for education, not to make kids feel better about themselves. Those elementary students who disobey would be paddled on the rear, a place provided by a designing God for that purpose. Any disobedient, disruptive, or disorderly high school student would be led to the front door and told to never return.

*Each student would be expected to read by the end of the first grade. If not, he would not be passed to the second grade. Any normal child can be taught to read if the teacher knows how to teach. It is commonly known that children in Christian kindergartens learn to read before the end of the school year.

*All students would be assigned a seat and no one would be permitted to move around the room or to speak without permission. The teacher would rule the room like a tin-horn dictator of a Banana Republic!

*All students would be taught the Ten Commandments each year and when caught in a lie would be required to write on the board 100 times, “Thou shalt not lie.” When caught stealing, they would write, “Thou shalt not steal.” Any state could choose to have Bible reading and prayer in their schools.

*Any student who brings weapons to school, is involved in violence, uses booze or illegal drugs would be expelled permanently. “Shooting” other students on the playground with toy guns, fingers, or sticks would be permitted even if it caused whinny, leftist teachers to hyperventilate and females to experience premature hot flashes.

*Any student, teacher, administrator, or school board member suggesting that sex education, death education, etc., be added to the curriculum would be tarred and feathered!

My last act in office would be to close down the Department of Education putting thousands of federal workers back into productive work and off the backs of taxpayers.

Then I might consider becoming Obama’s Energy Czar! Obama, has my number. And I assure everyone that I have had his number since before his election! I called him an “empty suit” and a novice before he was elected and crowned and my opinion has only been enhanced during his disastrous tenure.

However, I look forward to the invitation to become his Education Czar.

http://bit.ly/1iMLVfY Watch these 8 minute videos of my lecture at the University of North Dakota: “A Christian Challenges New Atheists to Put Up or Shut Up!”

In early 1637 in the Netherlands, ordinary tulip bulbs (that bloom for about a week in the spring!) sold for more than 10 times the annual salary of a skilled worker! A few years earlier, Muslims had introduced tulips to Europe and the unique flower increased in value until a single tulip could be traded for a large estate! Everyone seemed to be caught up in the mania. Not only those of political clout, rich families, and those of noble birth but also farmers, sailors, clothes-washers, chimney-sweeps, and servants were caught up, proving there are fools in every strata of society.

Usually tulips never traded hands; only contracts (now known as futures) and foolish people sold everything to purchase a tulip contract. Then the price began to quickly slide as the first in were the first out (with the cash) and the last out were left holding a wilted tulip. The expensive flower was finally worth an ordinary onion! The bubble had burst causing pain, pathos, panic, and pandemonium.

“Tulip mania” is now often used to refer to anytime the present value of something varies greatly from the actual worth. We see that today in college education.

Even top-rated schools with billion dollar endowments and expensive buildings sell courses to gullible students that would embarrass school founders: “Sex and Death”; “Feminism Studies”; “Frisbee Throwing”; “Afro-centrist Studies”; “Black Lavender: A Study of Black, Gay, and Lesbian Plays and Dramatic Construction in the American Theater”; “Bodies Politic: Queer Theory and Literature of the Body”; and “Feminist Biblical Interpretation”!

But it gets “worser and worser.” Your student can choose to study “The Politics and Aesthetics Of Black Queer Formations” at Princeton University; “Lesbian Lives” at DePaul University; “Prostitution and Social Control: Governing Loose Women” at Oberlin College; “Mad Dogs, Vampires and Zombie Ants: Behavior Mediating Infections” at Vassar College; “Possessive Investment In Whiteness” at Stanford University; “How To Win A Beauty Pageant” at Oberlin College; “Politics of Obesity” at University of California at Santa Cruz; and “The Survival of the Whitest: Two Centuries of Racism And Evolutionary Theory” at Brown University. Hurry before these classes fill up. They’re much more fun than trigonometry, biology, accounting, and History of Western Civilization.

Duke University has announced that it will raise student fees so it can pay for sex change costs up to $50,000 for any student! Why would any sane person send a child to such a school? Oh, yes, I believe they have a basketball team!

A Tennessee school has done worse! A lesbian bondage expert who wants to show students “how to turn up the heat on our own sex drives” and a campus-wide condom scavenger hunt are among the activities planned for the University of Tennessee’s first-ever “Sex Week”– an event paid for in part by student fees. Hundreds of thousands of Baptist taxes are funding that week!

Shockingly, there are numerous Christians who are thrilled to have their children enroll in such schools! I would be embarrassed and I sure would never pay tuition.

I’m not anti-education in the least; after all I have a doctorate in education and a Ph.D. All my children are college graduates, some with advanced degrees. I have lectured at five colleges and have financially supported three or four colleges over the past few years. I have long-time friends who are professors and college presidents.

However, serious mistakes are being made by parents in my opinion. Not every student needs to go to college. Not every student needs a liberal arts degree. Too often parents push their children into college only to frustrate them and hinder them from what they really want to do with their lives. Of course, every Christian should be willing to serve Christ in a full-time capacity and get the training that is needed; but everyone does not have that calling. We have a grandson who is doing very well in construction work (and actively serving in a great church) and attended college for a couple of years. We are very proud of him. (I’d better say that since he will be wealthy by the time I have to pay for a nursing home.)

Every city needs more and better plumbers, mechanics, electricians, carpenters, builders, etc., and some of those occupations are producing more income than dentistry, engineering, and other white collar positions. That may be part of the problem: many parents want their children to “move up” in status to white collar positions–fact is, they see a college degree as a white collar union card. In casual conversations with their friends, they want to say, “My son, the doctor,” or “My daughter, the lawyer.” Such bragging rights are not worth paying up to $50,000 per year tuition!

It has been commonly thought that the most expensive thing other than going to college is not going to college. The college graduate usually made at least one million dollars more during a lifetime than non-college graduates. That is not true now because of the outrageous cost of college plus the advancement in income for businessmen, electricians, carpenters, plumbers, etc.

Moreover, children don’t need to go to expensive, prestigious schools. Parents have been “sold a bill of goods” about higher education. They should not be impressed with a school’s standing or even accreditation! Of course, some professions require an accredited degree. Accreditation is one of the most over-sold, unnecessary things since Hadacol, a patent medicine in the 1950s. It produced a big kick–main ingredient was alcohol–that promised to cure almost anything, even grow hair on a billiard ball and green leaves on a ball bat.

Accreditation, like Hadacol, might not hurt a student but it won’t do him much good either.
It makes no more sense to pay $200,000 for a four-year degree than it does to pay the same for a tulip!

Copyright 2013, Don Boys, Ph.D.