My Way, or the Highway

The End Game of Secular Humanism in Our Schools

When government schools, and the education system breaks down, guess what happens?  Parents--who can be expected to be far more concerned about their respective child's education than the local or national educrat--find alternatives.  More often than not the non-educrat controlled alternatives work far better. 

One of these alternatives is the rise of independent schools.  Another is home-schooling.  In the US, recent estimates have 2 million children being home-schooled.  And the number is rising.  A Canadian study purports to show that the educational outcomes are superior to government run schools.  No surprises there.

Home-schooled students may have the academic edge over their public schooled peers, according to a new study from the Canadian Journal of Behavioral Science.  The study, which examined the test scores of 74 students ages 5-10, found that kids educated in structured home school environments actually outperformed their public school counterparts in math and reading.

Researchers found that public school kids tested either at or above their grade level, while home-schoolers tested about a half-grade higher in math and 2.2 grades higher in reading.  “Structured home-schooling may offer opportunities for academic performance beyond those typically experienced in public schools,” author Sandra Martin-Chang, a professor at Concordia University, said in a statement about the results.

While public school might help kids develop social skills, the advantages of home-schooling — including smaller class sizes, individualized attention and more time spent on core subjects — can accelerate the learning process, Martin-Chang said.  The test score differences remained even after researchers controlled for income levels, the mother’s education, employment and marital status. 

One would imagine that the dedication and commitment to the parent-teachers is a major factor in the superior performance as well.  But there is one kind of home-school that is turning out out bad results:

Still, home-schooling didn’t beat public schooling across the board: The study included 12 students educated in unstructured home-school environments — known as “unschooling,” which uses no teachers, textbooks or tests — who scored between one and four grade levels below the public school and structured home school groups.

As the Associated Press reported in August, “there’s no fixed curriculum, course schedule or attempt to mimic traditional classrooms” with unschooling, and parents serve as “facilitators,” with materials and other resources, rather than top-down “teachers.”

Get this--where home-schools attempt to mimic government schools and "unteach" they fail--just as the government schools do.

This is relevant to New Zealand.  Our teaching profession, its ideologues and academics, and its avant-garde have morphed the government education system into a system that is designed to have teachers as "facilitators" and the child to construct its own curriculum and learning (known to the cognoscenti as "constructivism").  This anti-teaching educational philosophy--now dominant in the government school systems--produces bad educational results in all schooling models--whether in home-schooling or independent or government schools.
 
Educrats are so obtuse on these matters because of the philosophical and religious underpinnings of their ideology.  A fundamental proposition of contemporary paganism is "there are no absolutes".  Post modernism is destroying education in our country.  Pomo has nothing definite or settled which can be taught; therefore there must be no teachers trying to impart a received or settled or definitive truth.  There can only be facilitators trying to help children discover for themselves truth that is meaningful and relevant to them. 

This enervate idology cannot be rejected without an offensive game--in other words, without an alternative.  And secular humanism has no alternative.  The cupboard is bare.  The only absolute secular humanism can find now is one which comes out of the barrel of a gun.  Authoritarian force is the only ideological and philosophical "principle" left.  It is the ultimate anti-principle.  Eventually, when all else has failed it will emerge as the end-game of secular humanism.