K-12 education

Not far from Dulles, the Loudoun County school board decided that their able-bodied white Christian elementary teachers were a toxic threat to LGBTQ and BLM, had to complete a questionnaire about their personal life and promise to snitch on other teachers if they said anything privately that could be construed as dissent. One of the "oppressors" was brave enough to address a closed door school board meeting. Perhaps you've heard the recording, a distraught young woman who calmly read a prepared statement after multiple years of classroom success — bright, dedicated, and white, the kind of loving, professionally qualified 4th grade teacher I wish every kid had, forced to quit her job in protest.

 

Our little mom and pop consulting business took us around the world, and it was difficult to find sane elementary schools for our daughter. I took her out of kindergarten in Tripoli because she was shoved and threatened by Arab boys. I took to her out of kindergarten in Houston because a black girl punched her. First grade in Australia was nice, gave her a chance to flower and smile for a year before she was assaulted twice in the first couple weeks of 2nd grade. Private school in Copenhagen was terrible. She tested into 3rd grade, which was combined with 4th. I had to escort her to and from the classroom door because an African diplomat's educationally retarded, crazy son shouted that my daughter was a witch and ought to be killed. I took her home and found a tutor, a lovely 23-year-old New Zealand law student who took her to libraries, ice rinks, parks, and a world class sculpture museum. My little blonde 8 year old smiled and laughed again in the care of a gentle, trustworthy tutor three days a week.

 

We got lucky in Golden, Colorado for an age-appropriate semester of 2nd grade, nice white teacher and happy kids learning arithmetic and expanding their vocabularies. 3rd grade was equally wonderful with a senior white lady, her last year of teaching before retirement. 4th grade in Houston was okay because I scoured the entire city, until I found a red brick elementary school near Rice University and Houston's world class Medical Center, 300 kids from 30 nations, children of doctors, software geeks, and university managers. To boost her musical experience, after beginner piano and violin lessons in Colorado, I found a tutor at Rice, a staff composer at the Sheppard School of Music. She learned to read and write music and used a midi interface at home to chart and play original orchestral pieces. We made a video that she conceived and voiced with marionette string Bakugan toys. I showed her how to edit video on a laptop. A couple years later, she produced a video that blew my mind, a dance interpretation of Peggy Seegar's "Song of Choice" lip synced with multiple costume changes and locales. She had dance lessons in Golden and Houston, an elegant contemporary jazz ballerina and surprisingly good actress.

 

5th grade in Colorado was a constant battle with the teacher and the principal. My daughter was bullied on the playground by the teacher's kid (!) and assigned to a group of bossy brats for an American History project, got shoved aside and outvoted. The elaborate artwork she created at home was ignored by the brats and hidden under a table. I raised hell, face to face with the teacher who didn't give a shit what was fair. We did physics experiments at home to teach empirical observation and measurement.

 

Back in Houston at an apartment chosen in a low-crime neighborhood close to where I was working full time, it was impossible to send her to a 6th grade middle school, 90% black. She studied on the internet with 6th grade University of Missouri coursework. To help her decide if she wanted to be an astronaut, she completed aviation ground school at age 12 and FAA logged five hours flying a Cessna 172 with her instructor in the co-pilot chair. She learned to taxi, take off, climb, turn, land, and recover from a stall that was deliberately caused as a practical lesson at 3000 feet. She was too young for a solo license, but she got to fly an airplane. We vacationed in Colorado and she had a week of horse riding and jumping a stallion over little fences. It was her fourth experience riding in Colorado and a Western Australia resort town. Young girls need to ride horses, control gigantic beasts with a quirt and reins and boots.

 

It was almost impossible to find a safe sane middle school in Houston, so we moved to one of the most upscale neighborhoods in the city, an apartment complex at the edge of the school district. She tested into gifted 7th and advanced placement courses, straight A's, National Honor Society. I had to raise hell with the smiling black principal about bullying by latino kids who were bused in. She got through it okay, but that was the end of her public education. She had rigorous high school online with the University of Missouri, used a big pile of textbooks and lab equipment. My wife coached her in algebra, statistics, trig, and calculus. I made a few comments about World History. She learned Latin by herself, high marks in proctored exams at a University Extension office.

 

A couple months after she sat ACT and aced it, she worked at a part-time job at the county courthouse, transcribing ancient property deeds onto a computer. She applied to a college. Then the Covid pandemic shut every school in America. I don't know what she does in her bedroom at night, but she has internet service and a fleet of screens and devices. If and when life returns to normal someday, I'd like to see her leave home for a college career, a beautiful and brilliant young woman who studied on five continents and writes as well as I can. She's also a talented graphic artist and illustrator.

 

Most people can't give their children the range of opportunities that we gave our daughter, but I've met a lot of working class home school parents and their homeschooled children. Nice people. It doesn't have to be expensive to educate kids. Most of my friends were educated by Catholic nuns and became intelligent, gentle guys who like and care about children. I'm an atheist, and I didn't say much about my daughter's Christian youth group expeditions. What she discovers and decides to value in the world is up to her. Perhaps she'll read my body of work someday, after I'm gone, a legacy intended for adult ears.

 

Other dads bequeath trades like plumbing or legal practice or engineering. My father was a capable block layer, carpenter, and insurance agent. I got to see a foundry fire and hailstorm damage in my hometown. My uncle had a bus line and a totally cool maintenance garage with acetylene torches and chain lifts I explored as a kid. My grandfathers on both sides were successful businessmen, fascinating elders. I had challenging toys as a kid, a microscope, an Erector set, model rockets, a big Lionel railroad layout, a Visible V-8, a CB radio antenna on the roof, and a shortwave receiver I built from a kit.

 

It's a white tradition, to mentor and challenge our children. It can be as simple and difficult as a family farm in Iowa or Wisconsin, tending crops and milking cows, studying books and practical mathematics, driving a huge tractor at age 12, plenty of physical education. If you like television, it was invented by a farm boy. He found and fashioned materials, persuaded investors to do something that no one had ever done before, and he did it successfully, the world's first TV camera. Look it up. Philo T. Farnsworth.

 

Whether our children become inventors or anthropologists or stay at home moms with two or three kids and a husband to care for and a house to keep tidy, no one is served by woke administrators and hordes of dangerous gangsters who can't read or do simple arithmetic after they "completed" high school with a low attendance record and failing grades, excused by unionized Democrats of color.

 

Jesse Kelly is correct. We're experiencing a national divorce. His hope is that conservatives will migrate to so-called "red states" which are turning purple as people flee New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Illinois, California — bringing gun free LGBTQ open border bilingual pre K-14 education with them.

 

We moved to the Ozarks in tactical alliance with adequately armed hillbillies and farmers who know how to make and mend and harvest and keep a watchful eye on strangers in a 99% white region that spans numerous counties, including Branson and the northern Arkansas headquarters of Walmart. People go to church, grateful and positive. The sheriffs and state troopers are stern and alert.

 

.