If you’re going to become a regular reader of this column — and I hope you will — we need to get a piece of terminology straight.
They’re government schools, not public schools. They’re owned by the government: located on government property, staffed by government employees and funded with money the government seizes from taxpayers.
And, like most things government, they are complete disasters. Notice, please, I referred to government schools as disasters, not failures. The sad fact is these government schools have performed exactly the way our politicians and industrialists planned for them to perform 100 years ago.
They manage to educate our children only to the point that most become subservient government subjects and good employees and not much more. ( If you want to learn the truth about government schools, just read “The Underground History of American Education” by John Taylor Gatto.)
Now, let me share a nifty little example of government school absurdities. We will consider recent actions against teachers in the wonderful government schools of Barrow and Clayton counties.
First, Barrow County. That’s where we’ll find Ashley Payne. Ashley, a second-year teacher, has a Facebook page. Ashley’s page is set to the highest level of privacy, meaning that she has to personally approve each and every person able to access her page.
It seems that Ms. Payne posted a picture on her Facebook page showing her toasting someone with a glass of wine. She was smiling. Imagine that. Elsewhere on her page Ashley used the b-word. Remember, it’s a private page, and this was done out of school.
Well, it seems the Barrow County schools received an anonymous e-mail with a fake return address complaining that the e-mailer’s daughter saw this “unacceptable picture” and the b-word.
Never mind that the e-mail was anonymous and most probably not from a parent at all. It took Barrow County about two hours to shove Ashley Payne out the door. She says they forced her out. They say she resigned. I think you folks can connect the dots here.
OK , let’s move to the Clayton County schools and Randolph Forde. Forde is a teacher at Mundy’s Mill High School. Forde is alleged to have asked a student if he might be able to set aside some time to kill another student.
Forde reportedly wrote the name of the student he wanted Tango Uniform (i.e. “dead”) on a piece of paper, which he showed to the alleged young hit man. Forde apparently wanted to whack the student because he thought the student was gay, but that’s beside the point. The point is Forde has been suspended with pay.
Let’s review:
Ashley Payne: Smiled with a glass of wine in her hand and used the b-word on her Facebook page. Complaint was anonymous and, some suspect, actually came from another teacher who didn’t like Ashley all that much. Ashley Payne is no longer employed by Barrow County schools.
Randolph Forde: Accused of soliciting someone to commit a murder. Accuser is known to officials, not anonymous. Forde is still employed and is still receiving his paychecks.
Do we expect our schools to teach something more than reading and some politically correct version of American history?
I would hope so. How about teaching our children some rational decision-making processes? Maybe along the way we could instill a sense of fair play.
Now, does shoving a teacher out the door because she drinks wine and uses the b-word away from school, while keeping the paychecks flowing to a teacher who tries to hire a student as a hit man, sound like a policy born of rational thought?
These are the people who are teaching your children. Maybe you should reassess your choice to turn over your child to the government to be educated.
Neal Boortz's column will appear every Saturday. For more Boortz, go to www.boortz.com .
