“What is it that gentlemen wish?
What would they have? Is life so
dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?
Forbid it, Almighty God! I know
not what course others may take; but as for
Me, give me liberty or give me death!”
- Patrick Henry March 23, 1775
It wasn’t so long ago that this
country had a firm grip on things. It
certainly had a firm grip on its origins and character. America had origins and a character of which
we were proud, and why not? They served
the country well. We treated people
pretty well. We respected them; we
trusted them and we were a land of brave men.
We weren’t bitter and angry. They
didn’t feel deflated they didn’t feel deprived.
They felt distinguished. If they
were given an opportunity to die for their country their only complaint was
that they could only die once. Think of
some of the great men and women of America; if all names were printed, the list
would be immense in length. Think of Thomas
Pane, Patrick Henry, “Give me liberty of give me death” remember a Naval hero
by the name of John Paul Jones, “I have
not yet begun to fight”, Daniel Boone ‘pioneer, frontiersman”, Davey Crockett,
“Remember the Alamo”. Think of our great
authors Longfellow, Thoreau, Emerson, and Edgar Allan Poe also our literary
visionaries such as, Samuel Clemmons “Twain”, Hemmingway, and Steinbeck. More than likely these days a very
politically incorrect history, but a history of inspiration and determination
nevertheless.
I don’t think that there has
been enough said about the lack of real education in this country. Education is the job of the individual
states, so says the Constitution through its deference by the Tenth Amendment
to the United States Constitution.
Decisions on schools funding should be held accountable through state
legislators and Governors. The states
have become so dependent on federal money because of poor decision-making at
the state level that education has become doomed in today’s society if nothing
is done about it education may well be left up to those that would twist
history and make it their own. Many
things are not being taught effectively to children, classes like math and
science have been dumbed down to make an “even playing field” for all students,
even Civics the class where duties and patriotism are discussed is not being
taught because more time is needed to be spent on more meaningful things “in
our lifestyle”. More meaningful than how
we as Americans have responsibilities and rights? This is not only Socialistic, but also a
fraudulent abuse to the very nature and posterity of American values where the
truth had been that the only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance. Those who are unaware of ignorance can only
be misled by their knowledge.
“Education is an ornament in prosperity and a refuge in Adversity.”
“The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living from the
dead.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
He helped to start the
Transcendental Club in 1836 and published
Nature (1836), a book showing
the organicism of all life and the function of nature as a visible
manifestation of invisible spiritual truths.
In 1837, he delivered his address "
The American Scholar,"
often called America's literary declaration of independence, before Harvard's
Phi Beta Kappa Society; in 1838, his address before the Harvard Divinity School
challenged the very foundations of conservative Unitarianism.
[1]
The Swedish scientist,
theosophist, and mystic Emanuel Swedenborg, b. Jan. 29, 1688, d. Mar. 29, 1772,
pioneered in both scientific and religious thought.
University trained at Uppsala, Swedenborg
turned first to a scientific and technical career as a natural scientist and
official with the Swedish board of mines (1710-45), concentrating on research
and theory.
[2]
A first-rate scientific theorist
and inventor, Swedenborg, in some of his insights, anticipated scientific
progress by more than a century.
[3]
Idealism, the
philosophical view that the mind or spirit constitutes the fundamental reality;
has taken several distinct but related forms.
Objective idealism accepts common sense realism (the view that material
objects exist) but rejects naturalism (according to which the mind and
spiritual values have emerged from material things), whereas subjective
idealism denies that material objects exist independently of human perception
and thus stands opposed to both realism and naturalism.
Plato is often considered the
first idealist philosopher, chiefly because of his metaphysical doctrine of
Forms. Plato considered the universal
Idea or Form for example, redness or goodness more real than a particular
instance of the form a red object, a good action. According to Plato, the world of changing
experience is unreal, and the Idea or Form which does not change and which can
be known only by reason constitutes true reality.
The 18th-century epistemologist
George Berkeley was one of the major exponents of idealism. He held that the object of knowledge is an
idea and that ideas can exist only in the mind; therefore, objects can exist
only as objects of consciousness.
Berkeley's dictum esse est percipi ("to be is to be
perceived") has clear metaphysical implications. Indeed he called his
theory immaterialism and intended it as a refutation of traditional
materialism.
Immanuel Kant held that it is
impossible to gain knowledge of the world by either reason or sense experience
alone. Whereas in ordinary idealism the individual subject's awareness is the
basic element of reality, in Kant's transcendental idealism the subject in
general not a particular subject, but the universal structure of all subjects
is the basic element of reality. This
universal subject, the transcendental self, is the precondition of any
knowledge of an objective world.
Kant's successor Johann Gottlieb
Fichte postulated a creative Ego as the ultimate source of reality, which
generates all change and all knowledge.
Fichte's theory was elaborated in G. W. F. Hegel's absolute idealism.
For Hegel reality is absolute Spirit or
Reason, which manifests its development toward total self-consciousness in
every aspect of experience from nature to human history.
The English Hegelian F. H. Bradley argued
that ordinary experience is fragmentary and contradictory and therefore
appearance; reality, the Absolute, is a unified totality, which can be known
only through a unique and absolute, perhaps mystical, experience.
[4]
These were the people; this was
the style that allowed young Americans to dream of similar possible achievements. History may be written by academics, but they
rarely create it. Until now…
- Aristotle Greek philosopher BC 354 – 322
We the people have become, “Me
and my peeps”, with many natural citizens unable to do the menial things like
balance a checkbook, find a job, and hold a decent conversation. Our youth has become less charitable and have
become angry out of frustration giving rise to the domestic unrest and civil
disobedience causing alarming crime rates and overpopulated juvenile detention
centers. The lies and myths that have
been told to our youth in so many of our learning organizations have maimed the
legacy of America so much that to change the course would take generations to
turn around. Do we really want to leave
a legacy of, “No Hope for the USA”, youths that have no understanding of their
right as a citizen of the United States and are at the mercy of others that
would do them harm because of their lack of confidence? For there is only one evil to our Republic
and this is “IGNORANCE”, because he who is unaware of ignorance can only be
misled by his knowledge.
I remember my first run in with
the law and thus the reason that I became more aware of political endeavors of
our supposed political guardians. It was
the day that I got my driver’s license.
I got a ticket. Still being a
minor, I went to court with my Mom where I learned my first rule of law in a
courtroom. I tried to explain my defense
but to no avail, it fell on lady justices’ deaf ears. My Mom could only comfort me as the words
rolled off the Judges tongue, ”Ignorance is no defense of the law”. What an education! I thought, “They didn’t teach me that in
school”. The important lesson that I
learned that day was that one should be attentive to know the rules and meanings
of the laws so that the laws will not harm you.
This changed my learning plan and made me aware that I needed to be more
assertive with my search for knowledge and to scrutinize the sources of
information more closely.
With all of the information and
sources available in the past 30 years, what I still can’t understand is that
in today’s day and age, the 21st Century, the fact that there is
such a high illiteracy rate among our nations population, not just children,
but people as a whole, and that children are allowed to be pacified into the
next grade level because of education board quotas, threats of discrimination
lawsuits, or problems from some pro-active group; either through affirmative
action or federal monies being granted for student based quotas.
Then it occurred to me that most
Americans, mostly parents of this generation, probably have not read any of the
great writings of this countries early history let alone heard of them, namely
the Federalist papers, the Articles of Confederation, even our own Constitution
and those writings that were written to argue against the patriot and
Republican movements. For the Americans
that have, they read it to learn how America is a solid enlightenment to social
government and the freedom of this country’s people. Some of our enlightened educators have tried
to hide these facts and essays from our learning students. Instead of preparing students for the defense
of the republic’s political situations, they are letting a new history be
written in the place of the factual in order to subvert the intention of our
form of government.
In Thomas Jefferson's words, the States are "the most competent
administrations for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks against
anti-republican tendencies”.
The State of
education
Because the Tenth Amendment to
the U. S. Constitution reserves to the States all powers not specifically
delegated in the national (federalist) government, public education in the
united States is fundamentally a state responsibility. In 1794, the states began slowly, creating a
department of education and enacting laws defining control and finance of
public education within its own borders, beginning with the establishment of
the board of Regents of the University of the State of New York. Although final authority resided with the
state governments, the dominant American tradition has been one of a
decentralized administration. The most
significant unit of educational authority has been the local school district,
the boundaries of which usually coincide with those of a city or town.
American education in practice
has been mainly, although not exclusively, the responsibility of the state and
local governments, in fact, the word education does not even appear in the U.
S. Constitution. Thomas Jefferson and
Benjamin Rush and others wanted the expansion of education because they knew
that education was necessary to guarantee that the newly won freedoms would not
be lost through a passive or ignorant citizenry. As the new American families moved to take
advantage of free land, the old educational patterns broke down, and new forms
were generated. As a result, Americans
began to delegate greater than ever, educational responsibility to the schools. But aside from teaching knowledge and skills,
reformers saw the schools as the logical place to indoctrinate the federal
republican idealism. In the 1820’s,
universal education was an idea that was held by only a few visionaries. But the United States in the 1830s had a
greater diversity in social and economic status, as well as in religious and
moral values. Enter Horace Mann, an
educational reformer that wanted, through educational ways, to build a
distinctive new society.
Horace Mann (1796-1859) is seen
as the father of American Education.
Mann had little formal education as a youth, gaining a lot of his early
education by reading books at the town library, where he learned enough to be
admitted to Brown University. After
graduation in 1819, he taught for a while, studied law and then entered
politics, where he soon became a rising star in the state assembly. Between
1837 and 1848, Mann became the best-known educator in America, and the
best-known American educator throughout the world.
To the diversity of social and
economic status, Mann wanted to introduce the "common school"; that
is, a school common to all the people that would provide a common and unifying
experience. Mann wanted to eliminate the
religious and class distinctions implicit in this dual system. Mann saw the school system as a promulgator
of class distinction where the students would be pitted against one another by
their difference in curriculum in the schools.
The common school would be commonly supported, commonly attended and
commonly controlled; its ultimate goal would be sociological and national
unity.
On the surface, this seemed
good-natured but as we see now, that we are in the future, this has allowed the
sociological to overpower the educational fundamentals.
Mann's faith was total. There were no restrictions, at least in his
mind, to what the common school could do.
He believed that the traditional curriculum could be universalized, and
that culture, previously reserved for the upper classes, could be democratized
or fairly balanced. In 1837, to the surprise
of those around this rising star of the state assembly, Mann was appointed
secretary to the board of education.
Through his post on the board, he influenced the educational system not
only of the state of Massachusetts but also of the entire United States. The basic skills of reading, writing and
arithmetic were just the start; over the decades, society has assigned many
other skills previously learned in the homes to be taught in schools. Now we have the secular and morally
dysfunctional “Department of Education”.
Although the board’s powers were limited at the time, it was able to
affect public opinion regarding school problems. Mann's only instrument was the Annual Report
he wrote, Mann’s 12 annual reports when he was the secretary to the Massachusetts
board of education are a record in which he set forth his vision of what
education should be in a free society.
This strongly influenced the evolution of modern education by meeting
educational needs.
Mann, as a result of his
scholastic agenda, was then elected to the United States House of
Representatives to fill the vacancy caused by the death of John Quincy Adams,
where he served until 1853.
In Mann’s 12th annual
report, the culmination of the series, Mann contemplates the demise of the
educational system in America.
“And hence it is that the
establishment of a republican government, without well-appointed and efficient
means for the universal education of the people, is the most rash and
fool-hardy experiment ever tried by man. Its fatal results may not be
immediately developed,--they may not follow as the thunder follows the
lightning,--for time is an element in maturing them, and the calamity is too
great to be prepared in a day; but, like the slow-accumulating avalanche, they
will grow more terrific by delay, and, at length, though it may be at a late
hour, will overwhelm with ruin whatever lies athwart their path. It may be an
easy thing to make a Republic; but it is a very laborious thing to make
Republicans; and woe to the republic that rests upon no better foundations
than ignorance, selfishness, and passion.”
Mann goes on to say that a republic may grow in
numbers and in wealth; its armies may be invincible and its military power may
strike fear in the heart of nations around the world, but if the Republic of
America is “devoid of intelligence” it will eventually “rush with the speed of
a whirlwind to an ignominious end”.
Mann also adds this to his contemplation of an ignorant
United States of America.
“However elevated the moral
character of a constituency may be; however well informed in matters of general
science or history, yet they must, if citizens of a Republic, understand
something of the true nature and functions of the government under which they
live. That any one who is to participate
in the government of a country, when he becomes a man, should receive no
instruction respecting the nature and functions of the government he is
afterwards to administer, is a political solecism ( a mistake).”
Mann knew the dangers of
introducing the constitution to the classroom without a common and proper
teaching platform, because of the different renderings citizens held of the
constitution. He feared that teachers
and instructors would be chosen on account of their party affiliation: “or that
teachers will feign affinities which they do not feel”. Given the chance teachers would invent ways
to look attractive to those that are heading the school boards and even teach
falsehoods in which they do not even believe in so that they would be kept or
hired. Mann also knew that if the “tempest” of political strife were let loose
on the “Common Schools”, ‘they would be overwhelmed with sudden ruin.” The schoolroom is a theater for party
politics and Mann wondered with “what violence will hostile partisans struggle
to gain possession of the stage, and to play their parts upon it!” Mann’s solution was to elect prudential;
committees in each state that would make the political decisions for the school,
thus taking the fight out of the schools and placing them in the streets and at
the ballot box. This reasoning demands
that the school districts would be responsible for their own political viewed
school and course of study. This of
course gave the Federal government the opportunity after the Civil War, during
the Reconstruction period to take on a larger role in public education,
attempting to ensure Southern States would rectify the inequalities caused by
slavery. The lines between public and
private remained blurred much longer in higher education than in elementary
schooling mainly for the reason that the elementary and secondary schools
funding was provided by local money and a closer look by school boards and
parents controlled what the local schools were teaching.
Previous to the Civil War, it
had been planned to expand college attendance.
The Morrill Act of 1862
established land-grant colleges enabled this to happen. By 1867, just after the
Civil War and during the period of reconstruction the House of Representatives
created the Education and Labor Committee.
Congress first authorized the Department of Education along with the US
Office of Education in 1867, eight years after the death of Horace Mann and
thirty years after his appointment to the position of secretary of the board of
education of the state of Massachusetts.
The department was just supposed to collect and disseminate information
on education.
I find it interesting that all
of these committees and departments were enacted almost 30 years to the date
after Horace Mann’s acceptance of the seat on the Massachusetts Board of
Education. 30 Years allows for a total
of three sets of students to finish the 10th grade. So, it might be safe to say that there were
some of Mann’s educated graduates that had been elected to Congress by that
time. Since this gave a generation of
instruction to students and the student’s children, it only follows that there
were those that grew up learning the thoughts of Mann and permitted this style
of education to become stronger and more developed. As Lincoln said, “The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the
philosophy of government in the next”.
In 1874, in a Michigan Supreme
Court decision involving the city of Kalamazoo, it was clearly established that
communities could use local property taxes to support high schools.
Since then local property taxes had been the
principal means of raising revenues for both public elementary and secondary
schools, dependence on this tax, however, meant that the wealth of the
communities in which children lived determined the quality and extent of the
schooling available to them.
In the
early 1900’s, in order to help poorer communities, many states began to
supplement local tax revenues with state programs to aid public higher education.
In the 1950’s and ‘60’s, when state funds
were dramatically expanded, general state revenues also largely financed such
programs.
In 1958, the National Defense
educational Act
, and in 1965 the
Secondary Education Act expanded the federal involvement in the local and state
school systems.
Then in 1971, a landmark
decision by the California Supreme Court (Serrano vs. Priest) determined that
reliance on local property taxes to finance public schooling violated the
California State constitution.
Equalization
of educational expenditures among the school districts of a given state became
a major educational issue.
The
possibility arose that in years to come public schooling in many states might
be completely funded through states governmental programs instead of the local
property taxes.
The Secondary Educational Act of
1965 was revised in 1981 and became the Consolidation and Improvement Act. Due to the conservative efforts in the House
of Representatives and the advice of President Ronald Reagan the revision gave
each state more control over the allocation of federal funds for programs with
educational purposes and preventing the federal governments Department of
Education from total control of state education. The Consolidation and Improvement Act of 1981
is now the “No Child left behind Act of 2001”, enacted by President George W.
Bush to close the achievement gap with accountability, flexibility, and choice,
so that no child is left behind.
Moreover, Mann set the balance
of the school on sound teachings with teachers that kept the “faith”, but the
faith has changed. In Mann’s own words,
he poses the dilemma of all history.
“Surely, between these extremes, there must be a medium not difficult
to be found. And is not this the middle
course, which all sensible and judicious men, all patriots, and all genuine
republicans, must approve? --Namely,
that those articles in the creed of republicanism, which are accepted by all,
believed in by all, and which form the common basis of our political faith,
shall be taught to all. But when the
teacher, in the course of his lessons or lectures on the fundamental law,
arrives at a controverted text, he is either to read it without comment or
remark; or, at most, he is only to say that the passage is the subject of
disputation, and that the schoolroom is neither the tribunal to adjudicate, nor
the forum to discuss it.”
Horace Mann concludes his last
and final annual report stating “it will
come to be universally understood, that political proselytism is no function of
the school; but that all indoctrination into matters of controversy between
hostile political parties is to be elsewhere sought for, and elsewhere
imparted...” There is no place in the school for converting students to one
form of the government or the other.
Today we have very liberal professors and teachers that skew their class
syllabus to invoke a certain theme that manipulates the student to a
predetermined outcome.
The last throw of the report is the statement that we must
not commit old errors and must not tolerate the harmful zealots that preach
that their way is the only way and anybody that disagrees is mistaken. Mann finishes off his report with his
blessing of the search for new truths “--thus, will the only practicable
method be adopted for discovering new truths, and for discarding, --instead of
perpetuating, --old errors; and thus, too, will that pernicious race of
intolerant zealots, whose whole faith may be summed up in two articles, --that
they, themselves, are always infallibly right, and that all dissenters are
certainly wrong, --be extinguished, --extinguished, not by violence, nor by
proscription, but by the more copious inflowing of the light of truth.”
Seek the truth. Let alone a new truth. How many times do we have to hear that
one? Seeking the truth is a fine idea
that should be encouraged but you had better start looking yourself when others
say they’ve found it.
Sincerity is no attestation of
truth. Because someone sounds convincing
and seems to have all of the answers is the reason that we must consider the
evidence before leaping blindly into some new fad or fashion of the truth. Truth was what was sought by the great minds
of societies: Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, and Jesus. (Yes, Jesus was truth in Himself, but I am
trying to be sensible to all readers.)
They searched for truth by interpreting the evidence. Today, too often ideology and fanaticism
stand in the way of truth. Those who
once were described as radicals are today described as liberators; malicious
malcontents become instant visionaries.
Their vision is not obstructed by truth; they cannot see it.
Horace Mann has been charged by
some of those that are opposed the public school system with the plight of the
American educational system. Though not
intentionally, Mann did allow the disreputable path of our educational
facilities to be combined with those of the federal government. Horace Mann had good intentions to ensure the
education of children in the United States and that children would be taught in
a similar way across the country. This
modern day national education system is far from the intention of Mann I am
sure and has become a scary Orwellian thought or Star Trek like “Borg
collective” learning system that frowns on individualism and radical
thinking. Anything that is not in line
with the curriculum in our schools today is seen as radical and cannot be
tolerated to disrupt the other students.
Accordingly, who have become the intolerant zealots now? This whole methodology is against what is
granted as a freedom by the very nature of first Amendment in our
Constitution. This was a clear-cut
change to how the educational system started out to be because for years
preceding Mann different religious organizations had been the main
establishment of the educational system.
Horace Mann himself was supposedly a Calvinist and by all accounts had a
high affection for religion. Maybe this
all changed when he took his trip to Europe to study the educational systems in
those countries? After all, it was about
the time that Karl Marx was spouting his absurdities. Marx’s “Communist Manifesto” was published in
1848 and his followers were out in the streets declaring the new order of
things.
How the trust was won
During its history, the Office
of education has acquired responsibility for aiding public and private schools
at all levels.
The guise that this
department authoritized itself is that its major purposes of the Department of
Education is to ensure equal educational opportunity for all and to improve the
quality of that education through federal support, research programs, and
information sharing; a definite change from just the collection of
information.
This was the goal of Mann,
which conforms to the beliefs of Jefferson?
Now these are amiable goals, but this is not the centrist group that
Mann had thought it would be, but now has more recently morphed into a platform
by which an offensive assault by the liberals has been launched, unchecked and
able to do as it pleases with the ACLU
at its side (We’ll learn a bit more about the ACLU later in the book).
The Department of Education assists the state
and local school districts with racial integration, bilingual education,
underprivileged, and disabled students.
Again, this is amiable but this is how it gets what it wants, by holding
the purse strings of those school districts that could not operate without the
funds that it promises to provide if certain measures are met.
Mann’s theoretical followers capitalized on
the fact that American schools had a profound faith in education as a means to
achieve increasingly complex individual and social goals.
They also didn’t like the fact that
American’s had a remarkable faith in mass schooling and that it was implemented
through largely decentralized organization, unlike the educational systems of
other countries which are usually directed and financed by the national
government, where manipulation and control of the curriculum that the students
would follow ensured that the majority of students would take the teachings as
gospel.
Mann learned on his visit to
Europe that a centralized government could wield a lot more power to control
the subjects that are taught in the school systems and he could remove the hold
that religious schools had on education.
The competition among protestant denominations was one reason for the
founding of hundreds of colleges.
Although, religious convictions motivated the creation of the earliest
colleges, among them Harvard (1636)
,
William and Mary (1693), and Yale (1701), despite their religious origins, many
of these colleges received public assistance and were eventually stripped of
all of their early religious activity.
Because these reformers were
storming ahead with their scholastic agenda of public funded education and
agendas that were different from the beliefs of citizens in areas of the United
States they received opposition and in 1925 those that opposed the public
school systems urged the Supreme Court ruling (Pierce vs. Society of Sisters, a
Roman Catholic diocese) that states could not compel children to attend public
schools. In the hundred years that
followed, the rise in high school attendance was one of the most striking features
of American education.
Things really started to change
in the 1940’s both during and after World War II.
Mass higher education began with the
introduction of the G.I. Bill
, which
flourished in the 1950’s and ‘60’s.
On
March 3, 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson approved Public Law 358, the
“Veterans Readjustment Benefits Act of 1966,” Home and farm loans, job
counseling, and an employment placement service were other benefits
provided.
The education and training
program went into effect on June 1, 1966.
It was retroactive, providing benefits to Post-Korean veterans, who
served between February 1, 1955, and August 4, 1964, as well as to Vietnam Era
veterans, who served between August 5, 1964, and May 7, 1975.
For the first time in GI Bill history,
service personnel also were eligible for GI Bill education and training while
they were on active duty.
This program
ended on December 31, 1989.
During the
years of the program, a total of 8.2 million veterans and service members
received training, as follows:
¨
5.1 million in colleges
¨
2.5 million in other schools
¨
591,000 on the job
¨
56,000 in on farm training
VA spent more than $42 billion
during this time to provide educational assistance.
The current programs that are
available revolve around,
38 U.S.C.
Chapter 30, and
10 U.S.C. Chapter 1606, of the Montgomery G. I. Bill
and the
Montgomery G. I. Bill -
Selected Reserve Educational Assistance Program (MGIB-SR)
– MGIB was enacted not only to help with the readjustment of discharged service
members, but also to support the concept of an all-volunteer armed force.
With this in mind, a provision was made to
allow certain veterans with remaining entitlement under the Vietnam Era GI
Bill, to qualify for MGIB benefits if they continued their active duty.
There have been phenomenal
progressions in our school systems in a century by making education readily
available to families in the United States.
In 1880, only 2.5 percent of American youth of high school age graduated
from a secondary school. In 1990 about
75 percent of American youth of high school age graduated from a secondary
school of which more than 41 percent of U.S., high school graduates enrolled in
institutions of higher education graduated.
More than any other educational institution, the public school was a
place of custodial care of youth who had no plans and nowhere else to go,
moreover, at their most idealistic, meeting the societal objectives of social
mobility and equality of opportunity.
Along the way, Mann’s educational vision has been twisted and bent over
periods of time so that it is only his vision by namesake.
The ruin of a “Good
thing”
With all of this funding and
increase in attendance and graduation, are the students really getting the
education that they need?
Public schools have been facing
declining test scores since the mid 1960’s, poor performance, high functional
illiteracy rates, watered-down curriculums, and declining standards, and yet no
one sees any correlation between these statistics and the expanded role of
public schools as socialization centers performed by the federal government as
surrogate parents acting as a local power.
Public education has become all things to all people, and academics are
suffering. It has become so focused on
providing nutritional, medical, psychological, religious (or religious
resistance), and social care that it has lost sight of its original purpose and
that is to educate. Public schools are
no longer places of learning however they are set up instead to be social
service centers that, according to Sharon Robinson of the American Educational
Research Association (which is another special interest group bent on
psycho-babble that is run by government official’s wives that have nothing
better to do), “accelerate progression toward the day when reform is guided by
the joint efforts of researchers, practitioners, parents, social workers,
health professionals, law enforcement officials, members of the business
community, and other civic-minded citizens.”
The International Child of the Future
“Every child in America
entering school at the age of five is insane because he comes to school with
certain allegiances toward our Founding Fathers, toward his parents, toward our
elected officials, toward a belief in a supernatural being, and toward the
sovereignty of this nation as a separate entity. It’s up to you teachers to
make all of these sick children well by creating the international child of the
future.”
That was said by Chester
Pierce, a Professor of Educational Psychiatry at Harvard. - speech
at the Childhood International Seminar in Denver, 1972:
(The central planning of the
burgeoning collectivist state located in Washington, D.C.)
Parents, along with some educators,
professionals and legislators, have been battling the directives of those
bureaucrats and politicians who are forcing on the states Outcome Based
Education, Goals 2000, School-To-Work, Workforce Investment Act, invasive
student surveys, whole language, revisionist history, and
"integrated" math. (Integrated
math teaches that there is no right answer; there is little deduction grounded
in mathematical skills requiring the "boring" work of memorization or
learning without depending on a calculator.)
Public education is fading away, and while it is doing so, it is taking
a whole generation of children with it.
The problem lies within the very foundation of public education, the
Department of Education has the notion that education itself entails parenting
and raising children instead of just educating them in a performance type
curriculum. The public schools have in
effect coerced parents into letting go of their children and have in fact
attempted to become the families themselves.
The result of parents giving the authority to public schools to raise
their children has been devastating.
Elementary, Secondary, and High Schools are supposed to be accents of
parents and families of the community and not an operational arm of the federal
educational collective.
My daughter attends a public
school that depends on federal monies in order to operate and carry out its
normal duties of a school including textbooks.
I am very active with the schools activities and have seen first hand
the strings that are attached to the funds that the school receives. The school is continually obligated to
conduct surveys and other reports that have nothing to do with the education or
the advancement of the students. The
reports and surveys are more concerned with the student’s sociological and
psychological attributes. The federal
money that is divvied out to the school first passes through the hands of the
School board; the school board then allocates the money to all of the schools
in the district (the school district in this case is the whole county), there
is then a competition between the schools.
Needless to say, the school that my daughter attends loses out on a lot
of the money because of the lack of political pull within the boundaries of the
school. Many of the School board members
have students in other school boundaries and they receive the larger amount of
funds for their supplies. Since the conception
of the “No child left behind Act,” there has been a concerted effort by the
school, as a condition of the NCLB Act, to include more activity that includes
the student’s parents. I do not have a
problem with the parental activity, but the lack of parental activity. The problem lays in the attitude that has
been instilled in those parents that have been conditioned by the system to
rely on the school as the all-encompassing citadel of sociological and rearing
of the students.
Treat with great caution the people who teach your children. It’s one thing to have your child instructed,
it’s an entirely different thing to have them manipulated.
My daughter is 10 years old and
just took one of these surveys. The
students in my daughter’s class are 9 and 10 year olds. All of the questions were closed questions;
meaning they required just a “yes” or “no” answer. Here are some of the examples of the questions
that are on the surveys:
§
Do you think that the school is clean?
§
Are there problems with children bringing
weapons or drugs to school?
§
Do you think that your teacher expects you to go
to college?
§
Do you think that your teacher expects you to
finish college?
§
Do you think that your school bathroom is clean?
§
Do you like math?
§
Do you like your teacher?
§
Do you like to work in groups?
In a socialistic system, (our
current public educational structure) there is no competition; therefore, there
is no incentive for improvement or innovation.
Public schools have a monopoly on the education market. Private and charter schools are only allowed
to compete on a limited level because of high costs.
Is there a solution?
Not under the existing
structure.
The only viable solutions that
can be seen are either complete privatization of the public school system, or,
barring that, school vouchers. Competition
improves quality, and until we see public schools having to fight for their
funding, we will see no improvement whatsoever in the educational system. When the government is no longer a factor in
education and parents get involved with the school programs and politically
change the landscape that is in our schools today, only then we will see a
difference. One way that has been
recommended is the practice of school vouchers; with vouchers, parents no
longer are chained to a horrible underachieving district and allows a choice
so, if all efforts to change the district have been tried, they can take their
money and children elsewhere.
Media an our school of Thought
I saw this on a web site as I
was conducting research for this book, after a lot of thought, I came to a
decision; I decided to not use the writer’s thoughts, instead I decided that
all of those that have not seen it before; should. It is an interesting read, not only for the
writers perspective but also he is right in his thought and his perfect
demonstration of how subtle the takeover has been for the liberal media and the
socialistically viewed.
Report #4
From: Dave Screwtape
To: House Democrats, Senate Democrats, Democratic National Committee, Friendly
Publications
Subject: We Control the Future
I know that after the first two installments of my reports on why we're
winning, that many of you are encouraged to continue the fight against the
Republicans with vigor, knowing that long term victory is ours. The Republican Congress and Bush's approval
ratings are merely temporary setbacks.
The most encouraging fact is that we control the future of this country
as we shape and mold America's children.
The first way we do this is through the classroom. Lincoln once declared, "The philosophy
of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in
the next”. This fact ought to have
Republicans quaking with fear.
More than ninety percent of American students attend public
schools. The vast majority of
principals, teachers, and superintendents support our party, a fact I relish.
Most remain unafraid to push children to begin thinking progressively,
to be aware of the threats to the environment, to be concerned about the
proliferation of handguns in America, to support acceptance of homosexuality as
an alternate lifestyle, to realize that America was a dark and evil place until
the 1960s, and to stand with feminist principles and ideas. These teachers are heroes and we need more
like them. They are the key to our control
of the next generation.
Sadly, too many teachers believe it's only their job to teach the
basics such as reading, writing, and history.
They need to get in line and realize that we aren't supporting education
merely out of the goodness of our hearts; we expect results! They are to be recruiters for the Democratic
Party not mere pedagogues.
Conservative teachers are a minor annoyance. Most stick to "the basics" and will
never dare be controversial. Those who
do reveal any bias are dealt with properly.
We can't have science teachers challenging the validity of evolution or
choosing Bible storybooks for their class.
This is America! We have a first
amendment to prevent people from forcing their religious viewpoints on the rest
of us.
In general, most Conservatives simply give up teaching, because they
know we are winning and they can't stand it.
They can't stand to see a whole generation lost.
At college, we have even more success.
Those students that are most willing to learn listen to the voice of
their professors as if it is the voice of God.
This fact has not gone unnoticed with college professors who take every
opportunity to move the leaders of the future in our direction. I commend teachers who are able to use an
English class to push students to support abortion. I laud those who find a way to bring up gay
rights in Criminal Justice class. You
are true heroes who help insure the future of our party for years to come.
Teachers are heroes, but they are not the only ones helping to secure
our control of the next generation.
Hollywood is doing its part as well.
Generally, we heap praise on shows like "Nothing Sacred" and
movies like "The Contender" but these are merely the Sunday morning
sermons that encourage the congregation.
The real evangelism for this party is done in children's television.
Our entertainment media is at its best when it's subtle. Cartoons that encourage environmental concern
and opposition to development can help begin the process of molding a child
into a supporter of the environmental movement, which in turn can mold him into
a Democrat. Thanks to these programs,
many children loathe developers, loggers, and their ilk while they like
environmentalists.
A very special thanks also has to go for those writers who manage to
put a dig against the Republicans in the midst of an entertaining program. I remember a few years ago, watching a black
family sitcom where one character commented to an intelligent boy, "You
could do anything. You could grow up to
be a Black Supreme Court justice who isn't a sell out.” This was a good swipe at Clarence
Thomas. As with the best assaults on the
Republicans, it was a "hit and run".
The plot continued on without a beat as if the writers hadn't just
attacked the integrity of a Republican Associate Justice of the Supreme Court!
The best thing about these efforts is that most parents, including
conservative parents remain oblivious to the message that their television is
preaching. They're too busy letting the
television baby-sit their children to actually pay attention to the messages
they are being sent. The parents then
wonder later why their children became liberals.
Yes, it's nice when Hollywood
makes movies for us ("The American President" and "The
Contender") but it is a far more successful as a tool to turn the minds of
the young to our cause. Despite the
immediate political climate, the entertainment media and the public education
system will guarantee long-term political power and success.
Regards,
Dave Screwtape
Adam Graham writes the Screwtape Report. The Screwtape Report is written from a
Democratic perspective by a conservative in order to reveal Democratic strategy
and thinking.
Present day educators ignore the
fact that the Bible was used openly in public schools for over 150 years. Our educators instead teach tolerance rather
than truth; and tolerance, as we have seen, is being preached by those that
fail to practice it. The word tolerance
as used by the politically correct crusaders simply means that I have no right
to object to what you do, but you have a right to object to what I do and what
I think, or even what you think I do and think.
What they’re asking us to tolerate, of course, is their own intolerance,
it has weakened our nation, and if reports are accurate, fewer than 36% of
today's primary and secondary students are even able to read the Ten
Commandments.
A good example of the flawed
reasoning, which hopes to use legislation to restore what hypocrisy lost, was
published in 1995 by a prominent, well-intentioned religious organization,
based in Colorado. Boston professor
William Kilpatrick, who probed the question of moral illiteracy, wrote the
article, “Why Johnny Can’t Tell Right from Wrong”. He wrote, “The tale is told of an ancient
King who devised an experiment to discover what language a child would speak if
left to develop on his own. He ordered
two babies taken from their natural parents.
They were raised by deaf-mutes and deprived of any other contact. The results were that neither child learned
to speak any language.”
Notice the following warped path
our educational guru’s have come up with as Kilpatrick’s analogy
continues. “If this sounds like
something that could only happen in a darker age, think again. In the late 60’s, American educators
undertook a similar experiment on a much larger scale. Instead of two children, the test included
tens of millions”. The subject was not
language, but morality. Public schools
were filling the void with a new brand of “relativism” borrowed from Karl
Marx. More than anything else in modern
print, this bit of skewed logic speaks to a fundamental blindness that has
crippled spiritual leaders, and too many in the congregations, for centuries. Religious hierarchy discovered that they no
longer controlled the critical teaching of moral precepts. The amazing thing about it is Horace Mann,
the father of modern education, used no force to fill the new public schools,
beginning in 1840.
Patrick Henry in his book “Age
of Man” writes of the need for an educational system that is open to all and to
the education of all.
“By adopting this method, not
only the poverty of the parents will be relieved, but ignorance will be
banished from the rising generation, and the number of poor will hereafter
become less, because their abilities, by the aid of education, will be
greater. Many a youth, with good natural
genius, who is apprenticed to a mechanical trade, such as a carpenter, joiner,
millwright, shipwright, blacksmith, etc., is prevented getting forward the
whole of his life from the want of a little common education when a boy.”
“After all the above cases are provided for there will still be a
number of families who, though not properly of the class of poor, yet find it
difficult to give education to their children; and such children, under such a
case, would be in a worse condition than if their parents were actually
poor. A nation under a well-regulated
government should permit none to remain uninstructed. It is monarchical and aristocratical
government only that requires ignorance for its support”.
James W. Skillen wrote an
apologetic letter that projects the tolerant view of our early political
founders such as Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, that is the need for an
educational structure that provides an incentive and the inestimable value that
our children mean to our posterity.
Dr.
Skillen has authored and edited numerous books and articles, including:
A Covenant to Keep:
Meditations on the Biblical Theme of Justice, Recharging the American
Experiment: Principled Pluralism for Genuine Civic Community, The Scattered Voice:
Christians at Odds in the Public Square
November 1991
Education and Religion: Here We Go Again
By James W. Skillen
Toward Genuine Freedom with Justice in
Education
Our argument is on behalf of a
fundamental, pluriform transformation of the structure of American schooling
that can do justice to all. This is
something entirely compatible with the First Amendment, though not with the way
that amendment has been interpreted by many of the Supreme Court Justices since
the 1940s. What will such a
transformation mean?
First of all, the obligations
currently resting on parents and guardians to rear their children should be
respected with non-discriminatory protection.
As a right of conscience and parental responsibility, all parents should
be allowed to select the agencies of their children’s education without any
financial or legal penalty. Parents, not
the state, hold the principal responsibility for minor children. Fair treatment of all parents should mean a
proportionate investment of public educational dollars in every child.
Among other things, this means
that the highly inequitable distribution of current educational tax dollars,
based on residential districting, should be ended. Further, the highly disproportionate
distribution of school funds to government-run schools must be stopped. A system of equitable, statewide (or even
nationwide) distribution of educational dollars to each school-age child
(whether directly or indirectly) regardless of the school he or she attends
should be established. Whether the tax
monies are raised through a property tax or some other means, the method of
distribution should not be based on the class or residential neighborhood of
the child, as is now the case. Since
religious and other conscientious convictions of parents and their children
must be respected under the First Amendment, governments have no right to
require schooling of all children and then discriminate financially against
those tax-paying citizens who choose religiously qualified schools for their
children’s education.
The First Amendment should be
interpreted to require the protection of citizens’ freedom to exercise their
religious convictions without inhibition by government except where government
must act to protect the lives, liberties, and properties of all citizens. If, because of conscience some parents want
to educate their children in Catholic, or Protestant, or Jewish, or Muslim, or
some other faith-guided schools, then the First Amendment’s protection of their
religious freedom should govern the distribution of public dollars so as not to
discriminate against them.
Once we recognize that
government need not own and run all the agencies of education, then
government’s support of schooling for its citizens in a variety of different
school systems can be seen as completely compatible with First Amendment
requirements. The only danger to the First Amendment arises (as it does now, in
fact) from government giving its financial and legal support to only one
religious or ideological system of schools to the exclusion or disadvantage of
others. Whether 5 percent or 95 percent
of public funding goes to support religiously oriented schools, no infringement
of the Establishment Clause exists as long as those schools are freely chosen
by citizens without compulsion or special privileging of any of them by
government. Once the distinction between state and society is made; once the
distinction between school and government is accepted; then the ability of
government to treat all families, all schools, and all citizens fairly becomes
possible. Government has important
responsibilities to fulfill in securing the just treatment of all
citizens. But government measures that
properly aim to protect citizens and public life should presuppose both the
independence of families and schools as well as the right of parents to choose
schools for their children free of any financial or legal discrimination.
CPJUSTICE
Copyright © 2003. All rights reserved. (174)
Socialist Agenda in
our Schools
Much has been written about British diamond magnate Cecil Rhodes,
founder of the Rhodes scholarship. We
will learn a lot more about him in the following chapters. Briefly, he was
dedicated to establishing a socialist one-world government controlled by a
small group of elite, a worldview he received from John Ruskin, his socialist
professor at Oxford. After making his
fortune in diamonds, Rhodes established a secret society in the form of a
scholarship to promote this ideal should it fail to materialize before his
death. Rhodes biographer Sarah Millin
wrote: “The government of the world was Rhodes’ simple desire.” What we have mostly learned about the Rhodes
Scholarship is that it is a base, along with the Carnegie foundation to
establish educational institutions and change textbooks and teaching methods to
promote internationalism and socialism, to fill prominent positions in the
State Department and control foreign policy, treaties, and foreign trade, and
to promote the United Nations and its socialist agenda.
Europeans, under the guise of educational
advancement, have hidden a worldwide army of men with the ideology of Cecil
Rhodes imbedded in their hearts and minds.
Just like, he planned. It is
important to realize who is shaping the planet toward progress without
oppression.
In practice, this is an attempt at world peace
through world tyranny. The methods that
have been used in attempting to attain this goal have been to fund the Federal
Council of Churches and church peace movements, to establish educational
institutions and change textbooks and teaching methods to promote
internationalism and socialism, to fill prominent positions in the State
Department and control foreign policy, treaties, and foreign trade, and to
promote the United Nations and its socialist agenda. Every child in the United States is being
taught by their liberal teachers a world-nation view that the United Nations is
the great peacemaker, by bringing all of the nations of the worlds together and
to iron out their differences. In
reality, what the countries of the United Nations want to do is to see that
America is no more. In their misapplied
way of thinking, if the United States of America were not around then it would
be easier to promote the peace of the world.
More than 150 years ago, J.S. Mill wrote in On
Liberty:
"If the government would
make up its mind [only] to require for every child a good education, it might
save itself the trouble of providing one.
It might leave to the parents to obtain the education where and how they
pleased, and content itself with helping to pay the school fees of the poorer
classes of children, and defraying the entire school expenses of those who have
no one else to pay for them.... A
general State education is a mere contrivance for molding people to be exactly
like one another... and… establishes a despotism over the mind.... All attempts by the State to bias the
conclusions of its citizens on disputed subjects are evil…."
In this new educational system
in the United States of America our students are given to myths as fact and to
separate doctrines from the truth to erase what once was an amazing American
history that has now become, somehow, politically incorrect.
With our Education, So goes our
nation.
For the avid reader:
For the Greater Expectations
National Panel,
Judith
Ramaley
Assistant Director for Education and Human Resources,
National Science Foundation
Panel Chair
Andrea
Leskes
Vice President for Education and Quality Initiatives, AAC&U
Director, Greater Expectations, Panel Member, ex-officio
The Association of American
Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) released October 2002, this report of the
Greater Expectations National Panel calls for a new focus on excellence to
better prepare students for the twenty-first century. The report recommends the creation of a New
Academy characterized by high expectations, a focus on learning, commitment to
demonstrated achievement, intentional practices, and an engaged, practical
liberal, not political liberalism, but a more vast education for all students.
The panel's deliberations,
summarized in this report, have led to a recommendation to rethink what we
should expect from, and how we should provide, college education in the
twenty-first century. The report
challenges all stakeholders to unite for collective action, creating a coherent
educational system designed to help all students achieve the greater
expectations that are the hallmark of our time.
The panel concludes that change
is urgently needed. Even as college
attendance is rising, the performance of too many students is faltering. Public policies have focused on getting
students into college, but not on what they are expected to accomplish once
there. The result is that the college
experience is a revolving door for millions of students, while the college
years are poorly spent by many others.
Despite years of efforts to
improve, secondary education in many school districts continues to be seriously
deficient, resulting in students who are underprepared for college-level
work. State-mandated tests—the
centerpiece of the school reform agenda—often reflect a limited interpretation of
learning, overemphasizing memorization of discrete facts at the expense of
deeper understanding and its application.
Faced with many pressures, including high stakes testing and financial
constraints; schools place too little emphasis on the analytical, integrative,
and practical skills graduates need.
There is also a disturbing
misalignment between high school exit requirements and college entry
expectations. Few colleges regularly
share with secondary schools what incoming first year students should know and
be able to do. "College" courses
in high school (as well as remedial courses in college) have proliferated,
despite the absence of guiding principles about what characterizes
college-level learning. Many colleges
and universities have begun to encourage more in-depth, investigative, or
research-based learning even in the first year, but high school and many
advanced placement courses continue to feature broad surveys and superficial
"coverage.” The senior year of high
school, which ideally should emphasize the intellectual skills expected in
college, is wasted for many students.
Other barriers to quality
include professors trained and rewarded more for research than for teaching, a
prestige hierarchy built on reputation and resources rather than on educational
success, and a lack of meaningful or comparable measurements to assess
student-learning outcomes.
I can believe that. In
addition to dumbing-down our college students and failing to educate them in
the history and Constitution of the United States, colleges are pumping their
captive audiences so full of this P.C. mumbo-jumbo that they’re good little
citizens of the state when they graduate. They’ve been taught to believe that
government is good so that when government moves to take away more of their
freedoms, they won’t resist. They’re the perfect foundation for a socialist
state.
[1]Copyright (c) 1997 Grolier Interactive Inc.
[2]Copyright (c) 1997 Grolier Interactive Inc.
[3]Copyright (c) 1997 Grolier Interactive Inc.
[4]Copyright (c) 1997 Grolier Interactive Inc.
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) a national
organization, founded in 1920, that seeks to enforce and preserve the rights
and civil liberties guaranteed by the federal and state constitutions. Its activities include handling cases
opposing allegedly repressive legislation, and publishing reports and
informational pamphlets.
The first separate building
for worship at Harvard University was Holden Chapel, built in 1744. The college soon outgrew the building, which
was replaced by a chapel inside Harvard Hall in 1766, then a chapel in
University Hall in 1814, and finally Appleton Chapel was built in 1858, Morning
Prayer attendance was compulsory during this time. When attendance became
voluntary in 1886, the College was left with a building that had become too
large for the Morning Prayer services and too small for the Sunday services.
“I cannot tell you that Hitler took Austria by tanks and guns; it would distort history.
