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I believe the worst part of public schooling is what it does to children's minds.
From birth to 6 years of age, children are wide-eyed and curious about life and the universe. They absorb everything they see and experience life with a sense of awe and wonder. When they learn to talk, they inevitably bedevil their parents with endless repetitions of that three-letter word, "Why?"
By the time they end their 12-year sentence in public schools, all of that has been smashed out of them.
They have learned to memorize and regurgitate; they have also lost the natural love of learning.
Newly named Upshur County Superintendent of Schools Christy Miller recently said, "It takes all of us to be able to make a school system operate and work in a positive way that we can support everyone to become who they deserve to be."
Remember when President Joe Biden smirked, "Our nation's children are all our children?"
Administrators like Ms. Miller think they know what is best for your kids because school personnel are with them every day. The community must trust educational staff.
Miller's remarkable response tells me: She believes that children's testing results tanked during COVID because their parents were incompetent. She believes that parents have no right to know what their children are learning or doing.
No matter how bad a job a teacher does, no matter how bad an educational support employee you are, you can not be fired no matter what.
More money and more employees is not the answer. Ms. Miller, a bigger, higher-paid bureaucracy does not work.
Today's public education has become a self-perpetuating bureaucracy with large, centralized facilities instead of smaller, convenient ones.
There are shortages: overcrowding and lack of materials both. Costs soar, yet many facilities and equipment are poorly maintained.
Teacher certification selects the bureaucrat and protects them from competition from the intelligent.
Powerful, entrenched political organizations like the teachers' union shriek continuously about the unknown dangers of changing to anything else. If you ask me, their fear of structural change makes them way too conservative.
Perhaps worst of all, a politicized system compromises teaching by adding social engineering to teachers' job descriptions, and the control is becoming more centralized every year.
Public education in Upshur County needs reform badly. There is an abundance of data showing the under-performance of our schools. That's not to say that all public schools are bad. Quite the contrary. It's a pointed observation.
This is not a single state or a single school's problem, it is a systematic problem.
Ms. Miller, a loss of confidence in an elected body is the problem. Your mission is not to drive a wedge between students and parents, nor is your assignment to increase a dysfunctional bureaucracy.
You were appointed to provide answers and solutions.
Good Day!
Robert Ware
French Creek