Happy Independence Day
Filed Under: Freedom & Politics, Parenting, Thriving
I love the 4th of July - the warm weather, swimming, BBQ’ing, camping, fireworks, friends and family. It feels so… free. I’ve got a fun day planned today, but I want to take a moment to consider this holiday. What does Independence Day mean to me?
First and foremost, it means living responsibly and being aware. I tend to close myself up in a little bubble - my house, my car, my pool, my family. PHAT Daddy loves to read about history and politics and shares a lot of this information with me, breaking into my bubble. I am naive about the world. The reality of how people live in other countries, how historical events truly unfolded, and how the political system works (or rather, doesn’t work) often shocks me. This year, I am making a “4th of July Resolution” to become more socially, historically, and politically aware and to instill that value in my children. Apathy, along with the intentional omission and avoidance of truth as perpetrated by our school and secondary education systems, is endangering the future freedom of our children.
What does Independence Day mean to you?
PHAT = Parenting, Homeschooling And Technology. That about sums up my life at the moment. 
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Anonymous | Jul 4, 2005 | Reply
“Apathy, along with the intentional omission and avoidance of truth as perpetrated by our school and secondary education systems, is endangering the future freedom od our children”?????
That’s quite a statement —
explain please!
explain, please!
Anonymous | Jul 4, 2005 | Reply
yes, pls respond…
Anonymous | Jul 5, 2005 | Reply
I’m new to this:
Your sentence starting with “apathy…is a strong one…pls explain
Richard | Jul 6, 2005 | Reply
Independence from the Government. That’s what the day means to me. But it’s no longer true. Sad to say.
Shannon | Jul 9, 2005 | Reply
Raised some eyebrows with that apathy statement, huh? I will blog more about that another time. The cliff notes explanation is that the public school system glosses over so many historical events and trains our children to believe America is so pure and just. Case in point: the genocide of the Native Americans. I’ll post more in-depth later.
Anonymous | Jul 9, 2005 | Reply
I may be making an incorrect assumption here but you probably went to public school and it’s largely responsible for making you the person you are today…good AND bad but it started you on the path to the successes and luxuries you are enjoying now. Maybe it’s been awhile since you’ve been in school — they cover much more objectively than they used to. Generalizing is dangerous. Not all public schools are bad or brainwash.
Shannon | Jul 9, 2005 | Reply
Yes, I did go to public school, but I wouldn’t say it’s largely responsible for making me the person I am today. How do I know that school hasn’t thwarted/hindered what I was supposed to become?
I’m aware that some schools are better than others and history is covered a bit more objectively these days. But the very nature of the school setting doesn’t allow for full exploration of truths or for encouragement of free thinking.
trixie | Jul 11, 2005 | Reply
Wow. Such intense discussion on PHAT Mommy! Anonymous does make an interesting assumption — that school is largely responsible for one’s successes. What evidence is there to support this claim? How do we know we wouldn’t have been far better off without school and simply doing okay despite it?
Good or bad public schools aside, I see extreme danger in allowing one’s rulers to take charge of one’s education. Education cannot be value-free and the public schools in this country were founded in order to remove children from their parents’ influence so as to create “good citizens” under the assumption that each child belongs first to the state. True to this purpose, our education system was copied from a fascist national sytem of education. What sorts of values do you think will necessarily come through in a system such as this?
Whether the schools do a good job at teaching history (or any other subject) objectively is an empirical question. Frankly, I don’t really care. The fact that our government determines what history a child will learn, what types of resources he’ll learn it from, in what way he’ll learn it, at what age he’ll learn it, and how he’ll be evaluated, is reason enough for me to be suspicious. Shannon’s right… schooling simply doesn’t leave much room for free thinking, critical thinking, or dissent. And the history students I know don’t care much to do any such thinking anyway — school has taught them to walk straight, follow orders, do their homework, figure out precisely what their teachers want so they can give it to them by rote, and to do just as much work as they need to get by. And since both they and their parents trust that the schools are teaching them all they need to know, nobody has much interest in furthering study in any other way. This all amounts to greeat preparation for becoming a cog in a nationalist regime — our citizens become great at following instructions and rules and laying blame on their rulers when things go wrong. Most are not so good at innovation, invention, problem-solving, or self-responsibility. And when kids graduate from high school utterly ill-equipped for successful living beyond dull, dead-end, low-paying, “follow-orders” types of jobs, parents and students throw up their hands, wondering what went wrong. They don’t consider that perhaps their education has accomplished just what it set out to do.
Here’s a link to a great article from one of my favorite authors on education:
http://www.educationalfreedom.com/pages/article_richman.html