Public education is simply broken. American kids are now ranked 17th globally, with massively increased spending per student over the last 2 decades, and get lower scores and graduation rates. Kids leave school without the ability to put together a coherent resume, and many lacking the skills, work ethic and values necessary to get and keep a decent job. Many point of failure here but the point is, the ‘same-ol,same-ol’ people and approaches won’t fix anything.
Gail brings a different and highly analytical experience into the race and is not afraid to rock the boat and ask the probing questions necessary to get the SBOE thinking about the need for fundamental change. the curriculum needs to be looked at, not only to roll back much of the social engineering content, but to add back some of the old styles of information-based education that originally put Americans in the lead. Gail will be a strong dose of different insights and approaches, something the SBOE desperately needs.
Good choice for SBOE 12!
Gail, are you aware that we are expecting you to be with White Rock Republican Women on March 15th this Thursday at 6:30 PM. Highland Park Cafeteria, Casa Linda Shopping Center..Garland Road and Buckner..My earlier attempts to reach you have not been with a response so I am confident that I have not used the best method of reaching you. Carolyn McInnis 214-381-0469
Wrong choice for anything that has to do with education.
You have endorsed a person who has never been to college, is not a teacher, has never worked for a public school system, has never written a lesson plan, taught a class or graded a paper. Just what are her qualifications? I
Well, at least she’s certain about the race she wants to run in, George. And I’ll bet she can actually read a map well enough to know what district she lives in. You declaring you were pulling out of the SBOE race and were running for Texas Rep, only to find you didn’t live in the district you though you did, THEN going back to the SBOE race…. Kind of embarrassing, George, and brings your commitment to the job into serious question.
Yeah. This is the “highly analytical” Gayle Spurlock. She says the pilgrims were communists and used dollars. Don’t take my word for it. She says it herself.
Joe, you just might actually try reading up on the Pilgrims. Here is a piece pointing out they DID try a classical communism approach- and it failed utterly.. http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=40196
So are you going to suggest that be a text for Texas students?
Read the Bradford work and read Mourt’s Relation while you are at it. Then go check up some peer reviewed work on how they got there, who was on the ship, what they ate, and so on. What you will find out is that they poorly planned the entire affair. They didn’t want to eat the native food. They didn’t bring a bevy of farmers. They dwindled their supplies. They tried to use foodstuffs unsuited to the American northeast. They arrived right before winter.
They did not practice communism. Simply because people share resources does not mean it is communism any more than we have communist fire departments and communist roads. If that is the case then many American rural areas (which are dominated by Republicans by the way) are communists because they have co-ops. Co-ops have been a way of life in rural America since us white guys got here. Let’s not forget the “communist” Indians who were communal for generations. One of the first festivals on which Thanksgiving myths are based had the Indians led by Massasoit bringing in game to save the day. This entire “communism” insertion is an attempt to wrap any type of collective behavior is socio-political terms and for that matter socio-political ideas that weren’t even invented until the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Now of course we can detect your defense. “Well it was proto-communism” or some such schlock. Well no it wasn’t because Maxist Communism bears no relation simple “tribal” sharing of resources for survival. Maxist Communism fails because it concludes that the communist state is the inevitable end state of capitalism. Besides being just bunk, this bears no resemblance to simple communal living for the sake of survival let alone the political and economic state of the Pilgrims.
So even if we (incorrectly) say that they had a “pre-communism” or “proto-communism,” then are you going to make the distinction for the student to REALLY understand the different between Marx, Engels, and on to Lenin and the colonists? Are you going to spend time teaching the real nuances so that the student doesn’t go away falsely thinking that the pilgrims early efforts functionally resembled later Marxism? I doubt it. Why? Because you aren’t so much interested in history as you are interested in pounding a political ideal into their heads.
Lastly, part of this was an investment vehicle and not so much a public system with private property. Investors put in and ultimately all property was linked back as property of the crown and was so for quite some time.
Oh yeah and they didn’t use dollars.
This is why students ought to learn some version of real history and not some version baked into mythology using currently charged political terms inserted for political purposes.
Gail’s clarification
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COMMUNISM – A FAILED EXPERIMENT
Recently the media has chosen to highlight a statement that I made and to use it to bias the public against my candidacy for the Texas State Board of Education. I stated that the Pilgrims who came to our country practiced an early form of communism that led to dire consequences. However, once they began to get a deeper understanding of the Bible and to move to a free market system, they began to prosper. Here is the clarification of my statement:
The Pilgrims did come to America and did experiment with a communist system of communal owned and operated property. This system caused confusion, discontent, and a lack of entrepreneurship and individual initiative. The men who were the most able were jealous because they got paid the same amount as those who did not do as much work. The most able women who did the heaviest communal chores began to feel the same type of discontent. This discontent led to the lack of a strong work ethic; and the failure of the communist experiment began to lead to illness, starvation, and death.
Realizing the seriousness of the situation, Governor William Bradford began to study the situation and realized the root cause of failure was the communist system. He decided to change course and started giving each settler his own piece of land. The settlers began to work harder on their own land because they knew they would reap the benefits. Soon the entire colony began to prosper under the new system; and the rest is history.
Conclusion: Communism does not work; by the same token, big government does not work effectively either because it destroys individual responsibility and initiative.
Indeed America has proved that the free enterprise system does work because it encourages entrepreneurship, competition, self-control, individual liberty, a strong work ethic, individual responsibility, self-discipline, and all the benefits derived thereof.
America is an exceptional nation because our forefathers built it upon the free enterprise system combined with the Judeo-Christian ethic of generosity and love. When a nation thrives and is prosperous, everyone benefits.
http://www.askheritage.org/how-did-the-pilgrims-beat-communism-with-the-free-market/
http://www.hoover.org/publications/hoover-digest/article/6580
The liberals fight dirty and they fight hard to teach progressive materials and standards with tax payer dollars. We MUST have strong TRUE CONSERVATIVE LEADERSHIP who will stand on Conservative principles. THE ONLY ONE IN THE RACE with these high qualifications is Gail Spurlock. Join the fight. I’m a volunteer who did. More info at http://www.GailSpurlock.com
I don’t think repeating herself helps make her case. Her interpretation of a slice of evidence while ignoring the rest of the study of that period demonstrates why she isn’t qualified. Then someone screams “liberal.”
Joe; the ‘qualified’ people who have been leading all aspects of ‘education’ for the last quarter-a-century have lead us from 1st to 25th place in the world in terms of education, while we increased spending ON education more than nearly ALL of our global competitors. That is what the ‘qualified’ have brought us.
I have seen better, more practical education being delivered in orphan-dominated schools in Uganda, than our primary kids get here. Under appalling conditions and associated with social and poverty issues that make any of ours here appear laughable. The ‘qualified’ have led us so far into the academic weeds that most of the world has marched right on by and left the normal American graduate improperly educated and with inadequate work ethic. THAT is what will maintain our high rate of unemployment and it is the ‘qualified’ education ‘leaders’ bearing a big part of the responsibility.
Who needs a college degree to know about college? That’s like saying you need kids to know about being a parent. I know people who’v been to college, and they think they know more. What do they know? I don’t have kids, but I’ve seen the Cosby Show a thousand times (even though I’m white as a sheet). Let’s stand up and start yelling at parents and college people and tell them to follow the TeaApproved people. Stop thinking and start blinking!
The SBOE does NOT address colleges. And I have 300 college hours, two degrees and an ABD (all but dissertation). And I was NEVER the intellectual powerhouse my mother was who had maybe 9 hours in community college, but could practically recite the Federalist Papers, AND the various works of Karl Marx from memory.. she brought the many-degreed lawyers in my home town to their knees in debate and understanding of government.
Of course, in her day (and mine) kids came out of high-school fully functional. Not like today, where the highly-degreed ‘educators’ crank out kids unemployable, incapable of putting together a coherent resume and totally baffled while calculating a simple sales transaction at the store.