Author: Sharman Burson Ramsey: Who are you? Just a Parent?

Had an interesting experience today at a church group meeting. I am a member of that group and I wanted to invite this group of Christian women to the Panhandle Eagle Forum meeting. I said, "I would like to invite you to the Panhandle Eagle Forum meeting a week from Thursday at noon at the Bay County Library. Eunie Smith, President of the Eagle Forum, will be there to speak on the Eagle Forum, Common Core and more. If you don't know about Common Core, please watch the video with Dr. Duke Pesta Common Core --Six Years Later. Common Core is here in our schools."

I started telling them about the graphic sex in the American Experience Literature 11th grade specifically the recommendation for Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eyes and how graphic it was. I have a granddaughter in the 9th who may eventually be affected by this. I also expressed my concerns about the Common Core inclusion of teaching Kindergarten children how to know if they were transgender, gay, or lesbian introducing pre-schoolers to age inappropriate sex education being required to be INTEGRATED into the curriculum. (I have grandsons this age.)

Suddenly one of the attendees interrupted saying, "I have LET you speak before."

I couldn't help but say, "Thank you for LETTING me speak."

"But I cannot sit here and listen to this propaganda," she continued.

I persisted, "Christian women ought to be concerned."

She said, "I was a principal." (As if that meant she was an expert on Common Core and what works in education.)

"But, Common Core is new," I responded.

She said, "No, it isn't."

As if that made it better? Really? That was a sad admission. So, now what failed before has been canonized in Common Core?

Then another former music teacher spoke up and said, "You just don't know about what the Black children live in. Toni Morrison's story is just the kind of thing those children experience!"

Well, first of all, who gave the former principal the authority to LET me to speak? That is freedom of speech, isn't it? Or is that another example of the Left attempting to silence the Right. Where did the Left ever come up with the idea that they have the RIGHT TO SILENCE others.

Secondly, she was a principal? I wanted to say, "Oh, then, we have you to blame for the continued failure of our schools. Isn't that why Race to the Top and then Common Core got into our schools in the first place? Everyone felt they "had to do SOMETHING" because things were so bad?"

But I didn't. I did not persist because that would have been bad manners. So I took a deep breath and the program ended. I left.

JUST CURIOUS--WHY DO WE LISTEN TO THOSE WHO PRODUCED THE PROBLEM TELL US HOW TO FIX IT?

And then to the woman who defended the use of pornography in the classroom, I wanted to say, "Don't those children who might have experienced rape and incest have the right to NOT to be mentally raped again? You really consider that (what I think they justify calling it authentic texts) worthy of 11th grade literature. Couldn't you expose them to tried and true classics? What is the REAL AGENDA FOR THIS?

How dare our schools allow curriculum that will Rape the Minds of those innocents who have NOT experienced incest and rape?

And...isn't assuming that Rape is a Normal part of the Black experience CONDESCENDING?

Why don't ALL CHILDREN have the right to an education that will prepare them academically for whatever the world might send them opening windows of opportunity with quality instruction for reading, Math, History, etc. rather than the condescension of assuming we should lower the standards of academics, civility AND COMMON DECENCY in effect giving that pornography the endorsement of the education establishment!

Needless to say, I came home with my tail tucked between my legs. Discouraged. I admit to feeling as if I had been struck by a woman prominent in the organization of the church.

Joe said, "Sharman what did you expect? If you stand up for something you truly believe there are those who will try to silence you or intimidate you into backing down."

I've been there before. I will do it again. It would be easier if God had called me to Uganda to build missions. It is quite difficult when going to "the ends of the earth" happens to be your own town.

This was indeed a wake-up call. The LEFT has an agenda. They blame us for challenging that agenda and want to silence us. They promote this agenda under the guise of social justice-- a term that sounds so righteous. And yet, the purpose is not social justice, but the undermining of the values that founded our country and seeking to establish an atheist globalist, one world order--though those individual teachers did realize this!

It is our wonderful culture that has produced the greatest Social Justice the world has ever seen. Their version would create a nation of slaves because the uneducated are so gullible and defenseless.

Too many have "drunk the Kool Aid" and simply circle the wagons defending whatever comes down from the central office.

These two ladies are lovely people. But, we have a serious difference of opinion (as Christians, fellow educators, and citizens) on what the purpose is for sending our children to school where we entrust them to those who assume en loco parentis position when we walk them to those school house doors. That is an awesome responsibility and not one teachers or parents should take lightly.

Ironically, I spent an hour yesterday with a young mother bemoaning how the new Math was creating a very, very sad and emotionally drained fourth grader. She was herself quite frustrated because she did not have a clue how to help her daughter with it! I could relate. My own granddaughter here in Panama City did the same thing. And that was when I started digging deeper into what once more was happening in my profession.

"As a man thinketh, so is he."

This experience reminded me of when nearly thirty years ago I sought to find out more information about a “new” “innovative” program our school system (then Dothan, Alabama) was putting into the high school our daughter would be attending. It was the Four Period Day (Block Scheduling). Being a teacher myself, I wanted to know the research that supported this program. I called the central office and they put me through to one of the Instructional Directors.

She asked, “Who are you? Just a parent?”

I have never forgotten that. I was not “just a parent.” I was/am the mother of a precious child who only gets one shot at an education. But, I was also a very disillusioned teacher who saw children in my seventh and eighth grade classes unable to read their secondary textbooks. I looked at their permanent record and saw that some had made all As in elementary school. But when that mental rolodex of memorized words was insufficient to reading secondary material, they had no attack skills (Phonics), could not sound out a word!

I had asked for research to support the Whole Language Method being so highly touted in the local college of education (Troy State Dothan) and then sought it out in the textbooks they use to teach teachers to teach reading and found only a couple of mentions of Phonics. Yet, my children had attended a private Christian school with the ABEKA curriculum and had no trouble sounding out words and read proficiently on a very high level. I asked the Dean of Auburn University what research he had that supported Whole Language and his response was “I don’t have any. It is current wisdom.”

So, needless to say, I had little faith that this new innovation, Block Scheduling, would have any either, but I persisted. Finally we were told that some teachers/administrators had gone to Frederich, Maryland to talk to folks there that had used the method for a couple of months and they “loved it.” Well, that didn’t give anyone much time to evaluate or validate, so we called there and asked the principal at that high school for his research and he cited a study by Dr. David Bateman in Canada. My husband, an attorney, tracked Dr. Bateman down to where he was vacationing and he faxed us his study that concluded that Block Scheduling, the Four Period Day, was “detrimental to academic achievement.”

Well, there you have just a couple of reasons I have no faith in innovations in education. This is my profession. I have a BSE from the University of Alabama and a MSE from Troy University. I have served as an adjunct professor of Western Civilization at TSUD and Gulf Coast. I also write historical fiction and cozy mysteries, but that has nothing to do with this. What I am attempting to say in my bumbling fashion is that Colleges of Education and School Boards are notorious for using our children as guinea pigs.

Though we tried to get the research to parents with Block Scheduling, the Director of Instruction silenced us and used my child as one of her guinea pigs for her dissertation on the effect of Block Scheduling on Math education. She later became Superintendent of another School System. My child went on to become a computer engineer. But, she was not helped along by being a lab rat.

Though I tried to get true information about Whole Language out to the public, the Whole Language Hootenanny with the teachers throughout the area supporting the Reading instructor at TSUD shouted us down and resulted in robbing children of the major purpose of school--proficiency in reading. Today the greatest outrage is Common Core Math, but that is only the most obvious to parents. Somehow with reading parents have been convinced that their child’s problem in reading is some disability and not as Dr. Samuel Orton, founder of the Dyslexia Society, called it -- school induced dyslexia with the methods they use to “teach” reading. (Then they are offered remediation through the school in the method that caused the problem and continue through life “learning disabled” ADD, etc.)

There is so much more to that story, but the gist of it is, it is happening to an even greater degree now with Common Core. This is every problem just mentioned on steroids. Not only undermining basic skills like Reading and Math but undermining the very fabric of our society with Sex Education, and the atheist, globalist agenda to destroy patriotism and nationalism through Multiculturalism and Social Studies. And now, it is more than the colleges of education, it is a cabal of special interests (Bill Gates, Pearson Publishing, and the usual Social Justice ideologues--Bill Ayers, David Coleman, architect of common core, Jason Zimba, Arne Duncan).

And yet, we are forced to send our children to these schools with no input as to whether we want our children to become Social Justice warriors taking tests data mining information and modeling their attitudes and beliefs under the guise of “education.”