When I was in the fourth grade I had an English teacher named Mrs. Griggs (no relation to the Lethal Weapon fame). Towards the end of the "semester" she assigned as a team task of memorizing something and then presenting it to the class.
I got stuck with this girl named Michelle-something. As fourth-graders go she was a bit of an out-cast (more so than me). We were supposed to memorize the Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln.
Well I memorized my half of the famous address and presented it. She (Michelle), however, didn't do ANY work on this and couldn't repeat any of the address. I tried to make up for part of her half, but hadn't focused on it so I botched it for her.
Well, Mrs. Griggs decided to fail me for the year on it (I was pretty much an A student at this point). She gave me an F, even though I aced the final exam. My parents were pretty peeved by this and went to go have a talk with her.
This was pretty much the beginning of my downward spiral with respect to authority, the public school system, and bureaucracy.
In any case, you can see I turned out just fine!!!
But, here we are, years later and my father sent me this email:
"I remember talking to your teacher after she gave you an F in English, even though you made 100 on the Final Test. Basically she told me that her objective was not to teach you English, but rather to indoctrinate you so you weren’t such an independent thinker, but rather accepted the conventional wisdom. Thank goodness she failed. This post by Sanity discusses how collectivists are trying to destroy freedom of thought in the k-12 schools, etc. "
coming from someone like my dad, that's a hell of a compliment!
BTW - here is the link to the website with the article to which he is referring. I couldn't find a direct link to the article, so you may have to scroll down a bit or do a search. http://drsanity.blogspot.com/ it's titled "THE EVOLUTION OF EDUCATION INTO INDOCTRINATION" and was posted Thursday, May 17.
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