Public Schools Public Menace
Joel Turtel
(Reviewer - Rebecca Brown)
2004 Liberty Books
ISBN: 0964569329

How Public Schools Lie To Parents & Betray Our Children.

What if your local public school is a menace to your child’s mind, education, & future?
What if public schools are hopelessly beyond repair & simply cannot give your children the education they need & deserve?
Do you have children who do poorly in school or are bored or frustrated with school?
In contrast to what most public school officials tell you, in most cases the problem lies with the schools, not with your children. It turns out that millions of children, including yours, have good reasons to hate public school, reasons that you as a parent should not ignore.

In Public Schools, Public Menace: How Public Schools Lie To Parents and Betray Our Children, Joel Turtel argues that public schools have become so dangerous & such a waste of time for America’s children, that parents should vote with their feet & look elsewhere to educate their kids.

In his preamble Joel Turtel takes us on a quick history of how government took control of our education: As America became more civilized, & more & more immigrants of different religious & educational realities arrived, (especially Irish Catholics against whom English Calvanists have an antipathy) activists for a public school system “saw compulsory education as a way to achieve a uniform culture among an increasingly heterogeneous people [based on] three main ideas from the authoritarain Prussian schools. The first was that the purpose of state schooling was not intellectual training but the conditioning of children to obedience, subordination, and collective life... Second, whole ideas were broken into fragmented subjects and school days... divided into fixed periods... Third, the state was posited as the true parent of children.” (pp. 26-27) Kinda curdles the blood, doesn't it! Over a century later, we are now seeing the transformation of a rigid & highly effective totalitarian system wallowing in ineffective politically correct disarray.

In Public Schools, Public Menace you will learn:
 • how public schools deceive parents into thinking their kids are doing well in school by using dumbed-down tests, textbooks, & grading systems.
 • how public schools cripple children's ability to read & destroy their love of learning.
 • why over four million school children a day take mind-altering drugs like Ritalin.
 • why desperate minority parents should not pin their hopes on vouchers, charter schools, or the No Child Left Behind Act.
 • how these schools indoctrinate our children with anti-parent, anti-American, & anti-Judeo-Christian values.
 • 22 ways parents can home-school their children, even if they work.

Joel Turtel's jeremiad explains why parents should think seriously about taking their children out of public school, permanently! Children don’t have to suffer through 12 years of a mind-numbing, third-rate education. Public Schools, Public Menace explores & gives a detailed Resource list of many quality, low-cost education alternatives that parents can take advantage of right now, from accredited Internet schools & computer learning software to inexpensive learn-to-read & learn-math books, & home-schooling.

He also shows parents how home-schooling can be a lot easier, less costly, &, actually, less time-consuming than they might think.

This book is for all those hesitating, trying to choose between sending their children to public school, or wondering if they can teach teach them “at home” -- with all the permutations that involves. This book is by no means unique, however Joel Turtel has a cogent way of rousing the reader from our perpetual state of over-load, when it comes to the ills of our school system. Perhaps we need to re-think “what was good enough for me is good enough for my kids”.

A caveat or two: While my children's sojourn from K-12 was fraught with the typical troubles of American school children -- drugs, booze, sex & culture clashes, don't be fooled that my English education was any “better”, even though I attended private girls schools! By the time I graduated at 16, I could quote from The Classics; knew a ton of history; a smidgeon of Bible; my times tables & how to figure simple everyday math. I got very good at reading & writing, singing & acting, & could draw well. I knew not a thing about money, politics or any of the sciences, nor how the “real” world worked. I also never came in contact with drugs, booze, sex, or any other culture!

Beware! After reading Public Schools, Public Menace you will never again look so benignly after your children as they head off for another day in the maw of our national education system! A thoroughly frightening book, & everso thought-provoking.
(03/13/05)

Rebecca