I Was Just Thinking…

academic skills they’ll need as they become young adults and eventually productive members of society. Our children need to be taught math, science, civics, and history. They need to be able to read with comprehension and write with clarity and grammatical prowess.

During the height of the pandemic which ushered in remote learning nationwide, more and more parents were made aware of what was and what was not being taught to their children. And what they saw and heard they did not like.

by Kevin Devlin

“Education is not merely neglected in many of our schools today, but is replaced to a great extent by ideological indoctrination.”(Thomas

Sowell)

Teachers are entrusted to help our children learn and acquire the necessary

Parents and not teachers have the right to know and determine what their child is being taught. The Latin term in loco parentis - in the place of a parent - gives teachers and administrators legal responsibilities in the absence of parents. But that does not mean that they can supersede the authority or wishes of parents.

Teachers are paid to teach. Their job is to educate, not indoctrinate. Parents pay the freight either through taxes or tuition. In the final analysis it’s the par-

Schools continued from front page a blueprint for success to Mayor Michelle Wu and her appointed Boston School Committee. However, that plan was only made public, in sporadic press conferences and releases, and only after she was chosen and under contract. After having been chosen, she has been confronting the challenge of her career: turning around a school system that fails thousands of children every year.

In a New York minute, her agenda, whatever it was, was hijacked by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Boston’s schools are operating under threat of a takeover by the state, which in a report last spring described the district’s “entrenched dysfunction” and “systemic disarray”. Less than one-third of elementary and middle school students are proficient in reading and math. Enrollment has been hemorrhaging in recent years, as parents with means scramble to the suburbs, charters, or private schools.

Ms. Skipper is Boston’s sixth superintendent in a decade. As reported, her predecessor, Brenda Cassellius, vowed she’d hand incoming kindergartners their high school diplomas one day; she left as they finished second grade. While it is early to draw conclusions, there is real optimism and a sense among many principals, teachers, school officials, and outside observers that Skipper is starting to drive the change the school system desperately needs.

It falls to her to carry out the agreement Mayor Michelle Wu reached with the state education department last summer. The Mayor has promised a massive school rebuilding project and “academic ent’s right and responsibility to know and determine what their children are taught. Not the inclinations, the covert maneuvering of teachers who want to impose their prejudices and ideological leanings on their students in opposition to the wishes of parents.

Although the United States has the bestsurveyed educational system on paper in the world, our students “consistently score lower in math and science than students from many other countries.” In 2018, based on the findings of a Business Insider study, the U.S. ranked 38th in math scores and 24th in science scores.

With focus on such matters as sex education for second graders or pitting students against each other by race, labeling some oppressed and some the oppressors in what they consider a corrupt system, it’s understandable why our students lack proficiency in subjects which truly matter, and why parents are outraged

The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle wrote that “Educating the mind without excellence across all our schools,” was able to avert a state takeover. It came a long to-do list, and a series of rigid deadlines in three years’ time.

Skipper has restructured the Central Office, reduced the number of direct reports she has from 15 to three. Her deputies oversee academics, operations, and family and community advancement. She’s assigned additional staff to each of the district’s nine “regions” to help schools with issues around hiring, facilities, and buses, as well as literacy and academic instruction. Simple sounding, but consequential. Her goal is to make BPS more student centric.

Student Centric! ‘What a novel concept’, one active school parent observed. Is the Boston Teachers Union on board? Jessica Tang, the union’s president, was quoted as saying “She’s very no-nonsense, She is thoughtful. She listens.”

Is Ms. Tang listening? Is the School Committee listening? Are Parents listening? “Changing the make-up of the Boston School Committee is the wrong-headed waste of political, financial, resource and human capital that belies the student centric mantra. It is a decoy from the need for leadership”, one prominent retired school officials confided.

HISTORY:

The Boston School Committee is no stranger to controversy.

From 1909 until 1983, the committee was a fivemember body elected by a citywide vote. The later decades of that, though, were marred by criminal indictments and allegations of cronyism. The tongue in cheek quip during those years was – “The School Committee was the only job with income and no salary.”

Then, in the 1970s, the body opposed busing to educating the heart is not education at all.” We need to educate the heart by learning to live and accept others as equals in peace and harmony: as Americans united in thought and purpose. Love not hatred, tolerance not intolerance, is what is needed so our children can feel good about themselves and others. That’s how it should be so we can mold healthy and carefree young minds devoid of unnecessary despair, doubt, anxiety, or hatred. racially integrate the district, leading advocates to push back. Several officials at the time pushed for referendum votes to change the city charter — first in 1977, when the voters shot it down, and then in 1983, when changes to the council and committee makeups were approved. The changes resulted in the committee consisting of nine districts and four at-large seats, as the current council is. But, although the change did diversify the body, chaos still reigned.

The system is failing.

We want our children to be educated in a proficient manner without being indoctrinated.

We don’t want them to be told what to think or how to think.

Because we want them to be able to think on their own, to evaluate facts in an objective and logical fashion to arrive at unbiased conclusions.

It’s time to get back to basics and dump the politically charged and ideologically motivated lesson plans in the classroom wastebaskets.

Then-Mayor Raymond Flynn led the charge for further change, eventually succeeding in getting a move to an appointed board approved, with the change taking effect to start in 1992 and appointing members for the first time.

Advocates and campaigning politicians periodically resuscitate the debate. Then-Mayor Thomas Menino, facing pressure in 1996, promised to bring the matter up for a vote every six years — and then backtracked on that.

A decade later, mayoral hopeful Sam Yoon ran against Menino, pledging to bring the school committee back to the ballot.

The Boston NAACP called for a look at making the body elected, and that year the advocacy group Boston Coalition for Education Equity surveyed all of the council candidates in a push to get the conversation about this topic back going. Many at-large candidates did call for change — though they differ on whether the committee should be all elected, partially elected or appointed by the city council in addition to the mayor. But then-Mayor Martin Walsh didn’t seek to change the board’s makeup.