The Butler Novel, Chapter 2: The History of Public Education in Butler County.
Chapter 1 of “The Butler Novel” began with the deadly effect of behaviors accepted as “normal” in Ancient Athens.
Chapter 2 begins in Ancient Sparta when The Spartan Government replaced Families as educators. Spartan kings took boys from their homes and forced them into decades of “Public Education” in Spartan Military Barracks. While the sins of Athens left their city often defeated by enemies, living by the moral dictates of “Public Educators” in Sparta turned that once powerful City-State into a barren, uninhabited ghost town.
2,000 years after destroying Sparta, those who supported Public Education in Great Britain turned their attention to driving Catholics out of their Family-Supporting Church.
They replaced family-honoring Catholic Schools and Universities with those under Government Control.
By the early 1600s, England’s “Episcopalian Tribe” had run out of Catholic land to seize in England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. And, they had run out of Catholics to kill, rob, and imprison. Families were forced to send their children into new, Government-approved schools that would not be guided by The Church-Creating Word of Jesus to His First Catholic Pope: “And I say unto you thou art Peter and on this rock I build My Church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I give you the keys to The Kingdom of Heaven.”
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England’s Episcopalians knew they must protect themselves from being attacked and looted the way their founders had looted Catholics and The Church of over 20,000,00 acres.
“The Episcopalian Protection Plan” was simple: “We will seize as much of North America as we can. Then, we will replace Indian Tribes with potential trouble-makers who can no longer be allowed to spend their lives honoring God and praying to Him in Catholic Schools, Monasteries, and Convents. Outward Emigration will keep increasingly unhapppy people from being used against us by the handful of remaining Catholics and others from Spain, France, and Europe.”
“Chiefs of The Episcopalian Tribe in America”, the Colonial Governors, began exterminating Indians and seizing their Tribal Areas. Land speculators got title to huge sections of land along the Atlantic coast in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and other states for pennies an acre. In Pennsylvania, William Penn cheated nearly a fourth of the State from inebriated Indians for a few trunks full of Trade Goods produced cheaply by England’s increasingly efficient factories. Land Speculators sold that land to settlers for a few hundred times more.
That process accelerated after some of the brighter American Episcopalians successfully revolted after insatiable government looters empowered by The Crown began to tax them viciously. “We came here to be free of tax-addicted parasites! We must have a Revolution to keep our freedom!”
God’s Peoople won their war against Episcopalian Tyrants masquerading as English Royalty.
History repeated itself. Once again, well-connected Land Speculators ended up with legal title to vast territores West of Harrisburg and beyond. Enough land for an entire farm was available for two or three hundred dollars.
The best parents among The Pioneer Tribes in Butler, and every County, knew: “We need schools! Our children must learn how to read The Bible, respect God, pray in school with their friends, write clearly, know History, behave themselves, and learn enough Arithmetic and Geometry to successfully use artillery to stay free.”
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Family Education began when Fathers and Grandfathers built simple, log school buildings. That process became easier when sawmills let them replace heavy logs with a few wagonloads of wooden studs, clapboard, and oak shingles.
While some built the buildings, others made desks, tables, benches, chairs, and a small podium. Others dug pits and built outdoor toilets for “Boys” and “Girls” in an age so uncorrupted by Public Educations’s later leaders that people were able to think intelligently enough to appreciate the difference between the two.
Mothers and Grandmothers provided food. Often, someone would bring a jug or two of home-made whiskey to “lubricate” the process.
They finished in few weekends. Cost to build an entire school? A few hundred dollars, mostly for windows, hinges, blackboards, screws, bolts, nails, a wood-burning stove for heating, and stovepipe. The twenty-five students in an average school had a “building cost per student” of $20-$30.00.
Leap forward 210 years! A recent Bond Issue for $20,000,000.00 currently has to be repaid, with another $20,000,000.00 in interest, by property owners in Butler County’s Slippery Rock School District. That was justified because a gutless School Board agreed with Public Education Profiteers that: “Students must have ‘an outdoor dining experience’ when eating lunch in their remodeled cafeteria.”
Then, we go back to Family Education: A teacher had to be found. They usually boarded at someone’s house and worked during the summer months, often wooing the most prosperous woman available.
Original Costs of Family-Focused Education:
“In Worth Township, Butler County, Pennsylvania, a typical school was established in 1810 or 1811 in a log house on the old Pisor farm . . . 25 children attended at a yearly cost to families of $6.00 per pupil. The teacher ‘s salary for teaching several grades at once was $150.00/year.”
That “news”, beautifully reported by The Butler Eagle, is over 210 years old, when Public Education was an effective, inexpensive “Family Operation”.
Those schools had no “Principal”. There were no “Superintendents”. There were no expensive “Expert Educators” whose combined efforts would soon be making children more illiterate than ever. There were no “Office Staffs”. for any such people. There were no huge Departments of Enlightened Educators draining taxpayers to subsidize one wasteful ridiculousness after another. No State Educational Bureaucracies were supported by money taken from Families. In Family-Centered Education all those expenditures were utterly unnecessary for nearly a hundred years.
Who ran things? The most concerned parents made the few decisions necessary, often when they met at a local store, tavern, or Church. Most people in every “School District” had a “Real Job” that let them make the new nation better by doing something useful.
More News:
Two hundred years of “Progress” has hurt every Family in Pennsylvania! The cost per student in Public Schools in Pennsylvania has gone from $6.00/year to over $22,000.00! Many teachers now retire with 80% of their $80-100,000/year salaries whose final years are often “boosted” by taking on work as “coaches” and similar positions. Lifetime pensions for the 30 years following retirement provide $100,000/year for many resting on the laurels of Public Education.
Still, Public Educators agree: “I need more!” And, they do. Many of them have second homes in retirement and vacation areas. They need money from our families to pay Property Taxes for distant Public Schools.
The lifetime cost to taxpayers for each teacher may reach a couple of million dollars. Plus benefits! What do they do for that money? They often show up for six hours a day, six months a year, and are sometimes required to appear to be “teaching something” for four to five hours. The only thing many of them regret is that some paid vacation days are still named in celebration of Christian Religious Holidays, like “Thanksgiving” and “Christmas”. They still congratulate themselves for changing the name of “Easter” to “Spring Break”.
This “news” is also ignored by those lacking in concern: Today’s students are unable to read, write, spell, pray, do arithmetic, behave as well, or learn as much about History as those whose families paid $6.00/year in tuition to pay their teacher $150.00 a year, only 210 years ago!
Understanding Cost Increases in Public Education:
200 years ago, an ounce of gold cost $20.00. Today, gold costs 150 times more than that, $3,000.00 dollars an ounce.
If spending on Public Education followed inflation the way gold did, one year of tuition today would be 150 times $6.00, or $900.00 per student per year.
In a little over 200 years, Teacher Salaries have gone from 150.00 per year to an average of over $50,000.00 in many Districts. They have increased 333.33 times more than the rate of actual inflation!
Why does Public Education cost so much and teach so little?
Most people elected to School Boards love praise from Superintendents more than they love their neighbors. A few are honest enough to explain why and how they let greed triumph over taxpayers:
First: “We are nominated and elected because we will protect and increase payments for salaries, pensions, and benefits of families and friends who Profit from Public Education. Our election is almost automatic in low-turnout elections.”
Second: “We get elected because every voter whose livelihood is connected to Public Education, including janitors, cafeteria staff, bus drivers,local contractors, banks, financial institutions, teaching assistants, car salesmen, food and equipment suppliers, volunteers, and every approval-seeking person comes out to vote for us to show how ‘concerned’ they are.”
Third: “Many School Board Members are related to, or are personal friends of, teachers and others employed by, or receiving money from, Public Education. They want to help their families and friends.”
Fourth: “If I obediently vote for The Superintendent’s Budget, I can get people whom I recommend a job in Public Education. I have lots of people kissing up to me. I like that!”
Fifth: “To keep favoritism from being too obvious, Superintendents may make deals to hire friends and relatives from Superintendents in other Districts, often nearby. Those favors are returned.”
Sixth: “We do not want students to learn enough to see how badly we are hurting them! So we do not teach them skills and behaviors that will help them have and raise families. That might threaten our incomes, and that would be a crime!”
Seventh: “We have made the media into gutless cowards who are afraid to share those facts! Our incomes are safe.”
Support Personnel:
Public Education has many employees known as “Guidance Counselors”.
To be sure, there are many behavior problems. Not one “Guidance Counselor” in Public Education is allowed to “guide” with honest “counsel” by telling These Simple Truths:
1. Most discipline problems are caused by children from families so impoverished by Public School taxes it is hard for them to pay rents, mortgages, utility, food, medical, insurance, and transportation costs. Marriages are weakened and often broken by financial stress caused by relentless tax increases from the utterly heartless Public Education Profiteers.
2. As increasing financial distress destroys more families, fewer children than ever no longer have close, loving, daily support from Mothers, Fathers, Aunts, Uncles, and Grandparents.
3. Less loving care from families leads many children to be hostile about life. Many are drugged into a zombie-like state by school-supplied drugs and vulnerable to committing crimes to satisfy addictions from less legal but equally immoral “pushers” when they leave school, their lives usually headed for unhappy ends.
4. No Guidance Counselor ever explains this meaningful “guidance”: “If we Public Educators stopped taking so much money from your family, you would be happier and better-adjusted.”
5. No Public School Counselors will ever admit, not even to each other: “If high taxes inflicted on families by our Puppet School Boards did not force so many mothers to work, their children would all be better off.”
6. Honesty is of the few causes of job loss in Public Education.
Government School Libraries and Librarians:
1. Nearly all Government Schools have libraries. They are proudly packed with shelves of books that are never read!
They all have costly card catalogues that are rarely opened, except by the few sent to use them only for an occasional assignment reinforcing The Need for More Government.
The only books provided by School Libraries are sold with huge profit margins by publishers who aware of what smarter parents know: “Most School Library Books are a waste of time. They are written and published to keep people from knowing more than Public Educators want them to know about anything. But the profits are good!”
The magazines in School Libraries meet the same goal.
2. The nearly universal uselessness of School Libraries becomes more flagrantly evident when we realize that many children are intentionally not taught how to read well enough to actually read the books in them.
3. That illiteracy increases with every Important New Theory that replaces the simple “Phonics” that taught previous generations to read far better than Public Education’s Profiteers want children to be able to read, today.
4. The Profiteers of Public Education are proud of disappearing Reading Abilities, one of their few measurable accomplishments.
The Most Rejected Books in School Libraries?
5. Few, books in the past half a century have provided encouragement and guidance for students to marry and have children because raising children keeps many parents from working at tax-paying jobs. Few, if any, recently purchased Public School Library books share the advantages of chastity, fidelity in marriage, believing in God, or loving one’s neighbor as oneself. Public Educaton prefers children to read justifications for pride, envy, greed, gluttony, anger, lust, and sloth.
6. Public Education Profiteers thrive when populations drop at the same rate as class size.
7. Their ideal ratio of Public School Teachers to Student is 1 : 1. That ideal goal is reached when every Teacher has one student and one or two paid assistants to help with the “Detail Work”, like getting coffee.
Personal experiences from a former Public School Librarian in inner city schools:
Once, a child with behavior problems pulled out a drawer full of library cards, removed the rod, and dumped the contents on the ground. The cards were put back into the drawer in random order. No one ever noticed. The entire card catalogue had turned into decades of wasted effort.
Once, frustrated by the students’ inability to read, a Librarian decided: “The huge number of different sizes and colors of books, each with a Dewey Decimal Number on the back, is overwhelming to the children.” So, he arranged many shelves of books by size and color. “Big Yellow Books” were shelved next to “Big Green Books”, and so on through the spectrum.
That was duplicated by medium-sized and small books.
Then, his library was used for A District Administrator Meeting! The Librarian watched, with some apprehension, as several of The High-Ranking Educators, nearly all with at least one PhD Degree, walked around the library and noticed how the books were shelved.
The “good doctors” nodded approvingly. That, the librarian realized, is Public Education.
Does Butler County, or Any County, need as much, or any, Public Education?
Computers have become powerful and inexpensive enough to teach skills and gather facts from databases. Today, most children can learn more by staying at home and learning on their computers instead of wasting an hour or so a day being bused to increasingly more distant schools as declining populations close their once-nearby buildings. Then, they waste time on required uselessness before wasting more time getting home.
Things like “science labs” could be made available, as could sports and other activities to help students learn to work well with others. Home Schooling does not inflict the permanent brain damage on millions of children by forcing them to head soccer balls!
When classrooms are necessary, otherwise empty Sunday School classrooms built for once-crowded Churches could be inexpensively provided for one or two days a week. Every Catholic or Private School could double or triple their enrollment while providing all with better educations by combining “at home” with “in school” learning to the benefit of all.
A Magic Answer to Wasteful Public Education Spending! Much of the vast wasteland of Public Education could stop draining our families by doing one, simple thing:
“Give every parent a $5,000.00 payment every year for every child in their “home-centered school” who can pass a computerized test that shows their reading, writing, arithmetic skills, and historical knowledge are better than students in Public Schools.”
Suddenly, our focus would be back on our families. Families would be focused on themselves. Families would no longer suffer the abuse of being used as tax objects. Families would not be weakened, and often destroyed, by those who make a living by making families poorer.
But, “families” are the “unspoken enemies” of Public Educators who want to replace them, as Sparta’s tyrants replaced families before their country was destroyed by more “Family-Friendly Nations”.
Two final questions and answers:
Question 1. “Should we feel sorry for those who may lose Public Education jobs if we are able to find better, and far less expensive alternatives to Public Education?”
Answer: “We should feel sorrier for them than they felt for several thousand Butler County Families who lost their incomes when Pullman and Armco closed and not one group of Public Education Profiteers suggested reducing spending and property taxes. Every lost manufacturing job two or three others in every community.”
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Question 2: “Are Public Education Profiteers intelligent enough to be as adaptable as farmers were when ten, twenty, fifty, and ninety farmers were replaced by one farmer with a bigger tractor in the past 100 years?”
Answer: “There is not one Public Education Profiteer who does not believe that ‘he’, ‘she’, or whatever word they may now use to describe themselves, is far, far smarter than any farmer who ever lived.”
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