Northeast Kansas. The land of academic sighing. The place where sixth grade teachers use the movie, The Ten Commandments, starring Charleton Heston, as source material to teach about middle eastern cultures..........(these kids did not even know which religious holiday the movie was about) The place where children in school are told how to get to heaven or hell, but not how to find the Dominican Republic, or any other country, on a map. The place where children are not encouraged to become fluent in any language at all, including their native language(s).
There are alternatives, thank the Gods. Cyber districts have become much more sophisticated in recent years, and some are free. They have the same title programs for students who need assistance in reaching certain goals, and they have excellent teachers. There are also many more choices in foreign languages and other electives. The online schools that charge fees are often less expensive than enrollment fees that are extorted from parents in places where public schools are unconsolidated. Students are also much more free to personally investigate locations discussed in online classes.
Cyber schooling is a godsend for the student who is academically ahead of the other students in a geographic location more given to intolerance and below average thinking. A gifted and talented child is usually miserable sitting a classroom, day after day, with students whose skills are several grade levels behind the level of the gifted student. In some instances, cyber schools will even allow dual enrollment, in cases wherein there is a reason to send a child physically to a local school, as well.
As for bullying, it is much harder for the strata of bully cultures to flourish in online schools. It is also nearly impossible for religious discrimination to play the role it plays in person by tormenting a child whose parents do not conform socially to accepted religious and meaningless hierarchy or conform physically to the genetically unvaried phenotypes found within an isolated and undersocialized population.
Of course, the fewer children personally enrolled in the public school system of a locale, the less money that locale will garner from state and federal agencies to run their public schools. So this eventually affects the quality of education for the children whose parents do not care about education enough to remove their children from negative influences. It also reduces the need for public school teachers; and as teachers for cyber schools are usually better educated and more qualified than many public school teachers, especially in Frankfort, Kansas, the need for public school teachers becomes reduced, as well, as a result of alternative choices. What a quandary for the local school! It might have been a more strategic choice to simply resist the urge to force religious conversion upon students in a public school!
