By Alan Caruba

In 1983, the National Commission on Excellence in Education released a report titled “A Nation at Risk” that documented nationwide failure in American schools. Not much has changed since then and the federal takeover of school curriculums and testing methods has mercilessly continued with the Bush administration’s No Child Left Behind and the Obama administration’s Race to the Top.

They are the top-down approaches to learning that have played a large part in the continual “dumbing-down” of American education. Once the province of local school boards, innovative schools, and individual teachers, the education of children has been taken over by Big Government.

Making matters worse, amid the confusion of federally mandated education requirements, state legislatures are now straying beyond their traditional roles to tinker with schools in unprecedented ways.

A recent example of this involves two bills making their way through the North Carolina legislature – House Bill 766 and Senate Bill 479 – which focus on testing in that state’s public schools. While the motive behind these identical bills may seem to be to “improve” testing, the bills serve only to further dumb-down education through legislative micromanagement.

In the case of North Carolina, the bills not only order schools to administer a specific college admissions test to all students in the 11th grade—the ACT—it also mandates “diagnostic tests” for students in grades eight and 10 that will “align” with the ACT.
In effect, the North Carolina legislature is using the force of law to compel classroom teachers to teach to the test rather than providing a solid education.

Since there is a long established, respected alternative—the SAT—it further reduces the element of choice for local boards.

It begs the question, when does a legislative body possess the requisite knowledge to decide which test is in the best interest of students and their education? Isn’t that a pedagogic, not legislative, question?

Even the uninitiated could be forgiven for thinking that this legislation was rigged from the outset and reflects the best bill writing that special interest money can buy, but it gets even worse.

The North Carolina proposal requires that “students who do not pass the tests adopted for eighth grade shall be provided remedial instruction in the ninth grade.” Using legislative fiat to push weak students from eighth to ninth grade and expecting them to learn new material when they don’t know the old material is a sure fire recipe for utter failure.

Common sense says that not all students at all ages learn at the same pace. Some learn faster than others. Some students come from lower income brackets, are raised by single parents or even their grandparents, and face other socio-economic factors that lead to greater obstacles and fewer incentives to study.

Rather than face this simple truth and deal with it through an effective, flexible policy, North Carolina lawmakers would let struggling students sink even further behind as they are pushed to the next grade level with a vague promise of remedial teaching.
The real problem with such top-down, one-size-fits-all legislation is that, once passed in one State, it spreads to others and, of course, it has its origins at the federal level. That makes it attractive to lawmakers beyond the Tar Heel State where politicians are juggling shrinking state budgets and teacher layoffs with their need for popular poll numbers and reelection.

Education has become highly politicized, providing opportunities for special interests to inject themselves into policy debate. This deliberate dumbing down of education and students has afflicted the U.S. since the 1960s. It shows no signs of being reformed.
Former Attorney General, Edwin Meese III, said, “We must always evaluate policy proposals in light of principles like rule of law and the logic of our constitutional system. The Education Department’s sponsoring and funding of national curriculum runs counter to both laws of Congress and the wisdom of the Founders.”

The Founders who wrote the Constitution, knowing that the best education was locally determined and directed education, did not even mention the word “education” in that document. If for no other reason than this, the North Carolina legislature should scrap these education proposals and make a fresh start.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

 

WesternFront America

By J. D. Longstreet

I was somewhat busy yesterday, along with many other Tar Heels, dodging our second attack of tornadoes in less than a month. As a result, I had little time to think and write a commentary suitable for publication. But, as I continue to be troubled by the state of our public education system in the US, I decided to re-submit to the editors an article written back in 2005 that addresses my concerns about the horrible state of public education in the US.

Even though this piece was written six years ago, it could have been written today.

A great disservice is being done our youngsters today and until the parents of our kids decide enough is enough — and demand an overhaul of the American public education system — that disservice will continue and we will continue to produce graduates who simply do not measure up to the graduates of education systems around the world. It places America at a distinct disadvantage in, well, everything. It is, in fact, a matter of national security, let alone national survival.

Here now is the commentary I wrote six years ago. I hope it will stir parents to evaluate the quality of their child’s education in the existing public education system of America and pledge to take action on the behalf of their children’s future — and the future of America.

Please – read on.

The American Public School System Is A Failure And Should Be Trashed!
By: J. D. Longstreet
***********************

The Public Schools system of the US has crashed and burned! No longer are our children the best educated in the world. Now our scholars rank among the LESS well educated even among a few of the third world countries. This is a shame we have brought upon ourselves by inviting the Federal Government and the Unions into our schools.

One-room schoolhouses turned out scholars of unequaled accomplishment when compared to today’s graduates. A high school education, just 50 years ago, is the equivalent of a college degree today. Our Public School teachers are barely qualified to teach. But, they have a Union to see that they are paid well, whether the can teach or not! Oh, you thought teachers unions were for the welfare of the students??? Surely you jest!

Our local school boards have gorged themselves from the federal trough at the expense of local control of the curriculum and the rules and regulations.

Pupils are not challenged by the courses they study and fall short of goals set by the federal government. So, the schools are now “teaching the tests.” Indoctrinate the students in the questions and answers on the test in hopes of attaining the sought after number of students passing the tests. A well-rounded education is lost to the efforts to make a good showing on the tests.

Students are forced to remain in school even though they have no interest in what is being taught and are a distraction to that handful of youngsters who really do want to learn.

Self-esteem is the number one course of study. Our students are dumb as fence posts but, by golly, they think highly of themselves! They can’t read their diplomas but they sure do feel good about it!

So what do we do about it?

Take back our schools for a start. Refuse federal money and all the strings that go with it. If we have to teach school, again, in one-room school buildings, then so be it.
Test the teachers. If they have no business in a classroom, see to it that they are removed.

Make school voluntary. If a student does not want to be there, then don’t make them. This will allow those students who do wish an education to get one without the continuous interruptions by the bored kids who’d rather be someplace else.

Having a small percentage of illiterate Americans is preferable to an entire population of semi-illiterates!

Discipline? Yes. Expulsion. Period. Expel troublemakers for a few days, a few weeks, or a full school year, or even forever, depending on the infraction. Make school a serious business again. We owe an environment, suitable for learning, to those students who are there for the purpose of learning and making a better life for themselves, their families, and for our society.

We can take our schools back. We have to want to do so and we have to be ready to make the sacrifices necessary to insure our children a good education, not the pitiful excuse for an education they are getting now.

One of a parent’s primary obligations, as a parent, is to see that their children have a shot at the brass ring in life. The first, and most fundamental, step in that process is a solid education.

Government vouchers were killed by the teachers unions because they rightly understood that the public school system would crumble, and collapse, as parents pulled their children out of those near useless institutions and placed them in private schools where they, the parents, had some say, and some control, over the quality of education their kids were getting.

In my opinion, the public school system is near collapse — right now. I don’t think a collapse of the US public education system would be a bad thing, actually. When an institution is so badly damaged, that it no longer serves it’s primary purpose, it should be trashed and a new institution begun in its place. We desperately need to create an institution to educate our kids.

Parents, we owe our kids that! We owe them a chance to make the best of their talents. We owe them a shot at a good, solid, education. Get them out of the public schools and into a private, or parochial, school where there are qualified teachers who still have an incentive to teach our kids, the will to teach our kids, and the desire to teach our kids.
The public school system in America is a failure. It should be put out of its misery.

J. D. Longstreet

 

WesternFront America

It’s surprising that so few parents are concerned that some of Virginia 4th grade history teachers don’t appear to know much more about the subject than their students.

What appears to have been overlooked in the controversy over the error–filled 4th grade textbook “Our Virginia, Past and Present,” is a group of state–appointed history teachers supposedly examined the text before it was approved.

Ronald Heinemann, former history professor at Hampden–Sydney observed, “I absolutely could not believe the number of errors…How in the world did these books get approved?”

Easy. By a committee.

Virginia textbooks have to follow our home–grown Standards of Learning (SOL), which means major publishers — defined as companies with a main office not located in the owner’s basement, possessing its own printing presses and familiar with the term “fact checker” — don’t compete for Virginia’s business since our market is so small.

We’re a niche market buying books that cost niche to nothing.

When purchasing textbooks for the Commonwealth, price is the determining factor, which is why we are the largest customer of Five Ponds Press (Motto: Cheap! And No Wonder…).

Elementary school history teachers aren’t supposed to be giants in the field, but I think most parents expect teachers, particularly those evaluating textbooks, demonstrate enough interest in the subject to notice the book had more states in the Confederacy than existed in reality.

According to Charles Pyle, spokesman for the Virginia Department of Education, that would be expecting too much. “Teachers are not reading textbooks front to back, and they’re not in a position to identify the kinds of errors that historians could identify,” he explained.

But why not? Aren’t they familiar with the material? What happened to the “dedicated, underpaid professionals” who care so much for the children’s education in spite of cheap, penny–pinching parents?

Maybe the Richmond evaluators are of my generation, which has undergone a wrenching reappraisal of Civil War instruction. Originally our Civil War history consisted of an early attempt at SOLs called “The Lost Cause,” devised by Maj. Gen. Jubal Early CSA.

In Gen. Early’s curriculum the war was about “states rights” and tariffs. As for slaves — they were content, loved their masters, didn’t live from paycheck–to–paycheck like Yankee hirelings and avoided the crippling obesity that plagues modern–day ghetto dwellers.

It’s quite possible the committee was still coming to terms with the fact slavery was the cause of the war and that’s how Delaware snuck into the Confederacy.

And to give credit where credit’s due, committee members did catch the howler where thousands of blacks fought for the Confederacy, which is a bit like claiming German Jews helped defend the Fatherland in World War II.

Besides, the Ed department’s committee wasn’t supposed to get bogged down in a bunch of factual nit–picking. Its job was to see if the book conformed to the broad themes of the current SOL curriculum. Which evidently does not include accuracy, either in Jubal Early’s time or ours.

Summing up the situation in the eduspeak currently popular in education schools: We don’t want to teach a bunch of dry facts about the Civil War to our students. We want to teach them how to think about the Civil War. At the end of the year if a student knows who won and that Robert E. Lee was the 18th President of the United States, then they are good to go.

Besides, you get what you pay for and these books really are cheap. According to Ken Bassett, the Prince William County school district supervisor of social studies, “(Five Ponds) is willing to go to great lengths for our business. Their product is substantially less expensive than the committee’s next highest-rated competitor – very appealing in these lean economic times.”

And Bassett intends to keep the trains running on time and the books in the classroom. Since the students enjoy all the pretty pictures, what’s not to like?

Fuzzy math, meet fuzzy history.

Finally, before we close this week, I cannot resist an observation on last week’s Mean Green Bandit or Green Mean Bandit. Take your pick. This kingpin of crime burst into a Manassas convenience store brandishing a six–foot long tree branch and demanded Miracle-Gro. Or maybe it was money; accounts differ.

Anyway the clerk, unable to find a pair of loppers, grabbed a ball–peen hammer. Fighting ensued and the robber’s bark was stronger than the clerk’s might, consequently he escaped with the money.

I can’t decide if this incident is an indication that gun control laws are finally having an impact on crime; or this robbery is due to yet another failure of our environmental policies.

Michael R. Shannon is a public relations and advertising consultant with corporate, government and political experience around the globe. He’s a dynamic and entertaining speaker and can be reached at michael–shannon@comcast.net
http://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelrshannon
http://www2.insidenova.com/topics/types/person/tags/michael-r-shannon/

 

WesternFront America

I can’t tell you how many times that I’ve read blogs, from both ends of the spectrum, that talk about African-Americans as if they are a monolithic voting bloc that will ALWAYS vote Democrat. We’ve all seen the videos of African Americans thinking that Obama will pay their mortgages, or that they are going to get “Obama Money,” from his “stash.” Since these are well-publicized cases, they are influencing our perceptions about an entire group of people. So, the question is, is that all true?

And, if is it really that way, will it change? You see, I question both of those assumptions. While the voting issue is true, what is the basis for it? History tells us that that after the civil war, most African-Americans were Republicans, and the first African American Congressmen from the south belonged to the GOP. We also know that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a Republican. It is also true that Democrats were responsible for the Jim Crow laws, and that the southern Democrats resisted the civil rights era legislation vehemently. So, that leaves us with something that bears examining; why did African Americans switch to voting over 90% Democrat in every election?

To answer this, I think we again need to go back into history, and see what happened in the 60’s. Let’s start with some quotes attributed to LBJ.

“These Negroes, they’re getting pretty uppity these days and that’s a problem for us since they’ve got something now they never had before, the political pull to back up their uppityness. Now we’ve got to do something about this, we’ve got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference. For if we don’t move at all, then their allies will line up against us and there’ll be no way of stopping them, we’ll lose the filibuster and there’ll be no way of putting a brake on all sorts of wild legislation. It’ll be Reconstruction all over again.”

LBJ, Democratic President of the United States.

“I’ll have those n*ggers voting Democratic for the next 200 years.”

Lyndon B. Johnson to two governors on Air Force One according Ronald Kessler’s Book, “Inside The White House”

Those two quotes from LBJ are rather telling. For me, they point to a deception of action, as well as a deception of intent. Clearly, LBJ was suggesting that he could win the African American vote by making some promises, and delivering little…”just enough.”.

Obviously, these two quotes have been floating around for a long time, and many are going to suggest that they were never said at all. But, let’s take a look at what has happened, and see if what LBJ said has come to pass. After all, people can say many things, but it’s their actions that show their true intent.

Let’s take a look at some examples…

Welfare and the breakdown of the family:

The various welfare programs of the 1960’s had a tremendous impact on the African American family. Not long after the creation of these programs, the rates of fatherless families began to rise. They have continued to rise for decades, and now, over 70% of African American children grow up without a father living in the home. That was not the case prior to welfare, and the programs have been identified as the cause for this. As well all know, children raised in fatherless homes are many times more likely to have lower educational achievement, use drugs, and engage in other criminal activities. However, what has been done to correct it? Has the intervention of the government really made it better…or worse?

Or, was it, “…we’ve got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference.”

Education:

It is also well know that the educational system has failed our children. We also know that minority children suffer even more.

As for graduation rates…

The national graduation rate for the class of 1998 was 71%. For white students the rate was 78%, while it was 56% for African-American students and 54% for Latino students.

And for illiteracy…

September 2008

Graduation, Dropouts, and Preparedness

• African American high school students are notably falling behind their white counterparts in graduation rates, dropout rates, literacy rates, and college preparedness rates.
• In 2005, only 55 percent of all black students graduated from high school on time with a regular diploma, compared to 78 percent of whites.
• In 2005, the on-time graduation rate for black males was 48 percent nationally; for white males it was 74 percent.
• Nearly half of the nation’s African American students, but only 11 percent of white students, attend high schools in which graduation is not the norm.
• In 2002, 23 percent of all black students who started public high school left it prepared for college, compared to 40 percent of whites.
• On average, African American and Hispanic twelfth-grade students read at approximately the same level as white eighth graders.
• About half of poor, urban ninth graders read at only a fifth- or sixth-grade level.
• The National Assessment of Educational Progress reports that 88 percent of African American eighth graders read below grade level, compared to 62 percent of white eighth graders.

Now, we’ve seen successful alternatives, but “progressives” in the unions attack these, and when President Obama was elected, he shut down the DC waiver program, which greatly benefited mostly poor, African American kids.

Instead, the government makes many promises, and insists on spending more money on the same failed system. Essentially, they end up purchasing more failure.

Or, is it, “…we’ve got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference.”

Unemployment:

The U.S. Labor Department reported on Friday that unemployment for African Americans increased to 16.3% in August 2010 from 15.6% in July 2010.  The percentage point increase was greater than it was for Whites and Hispanics.  Overall unemployment climbed to 9.6% for the month of August from the July unemployment rate of 9.5%.

So, the unemployment rate is higher for African Americans as well. Of course, President Obama has promised to focus on this, but he has delivered nothing.

Or, is it, “…we’ve got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference.”

As you look at this, it is easy to conclude that not only has government action/programs made the situation worse, but they also seem intent on keeping it the same. I would hypothesize that there is a reason for this: If government can keep any group dependent, they can then extract support from that group. They create a circumstance in which a large segment of the population is keep poor and undereducated, effectively preventing that group from escaping poverty. Then, every election cycle, the Democrats come foreword and tell that group that the other party wants to kill them, jail them, and take away all of their benefits. By combining dependency, poverty, illiteracy, and hate, they can convince a group to vote for them every time.

In essence, I believe that the Democrats have intentionally acted in a way to “Cloward-Piven” a large segment of the African American community, by making them dependent on government assistance, and placing roadblocks for individuals in that community to be successful. After all, a person may want to succeed, but if they can’t get an education that provided even the most basic of skills, and they are penalized for any positive effort by a prohibitive loss of benefits, will that person eventually give up and not even try? And, what happens to that population of people after generations of the same? I think we can project the answer to that. As I suggested in the post, “Why Hope can Kill the Progressive Agenda,” people trapped in hopelessness for generations forget that there is any hope at all. In fact, we see the results of these policies on a tragically regular basis.

This is racist. Not the bed sheet wearing, ignorant redneck variety, but the soft racism of the nanny state and elites. Through all of this, I think the Democratic Party is just a racist as they always were. They simple present it differently (remember “calling it something else?”). They don’t believe that the African American can succeed, so they are content to “manage” him. Why provide good education if they can’t do well anyway? Why present opportunity and freedom when they don’t believe that the African American can use those to their own advantage? Just build housing, send in food stamps, and have horrifically inadequate schools, and leave them to poverty. Through the decades, it’s what they have done.

You know, “…we’ve got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference.”

So, I think the phrase “government plantation” is a completely accurate representation of the current relationship between our elitist government and the African American community. When you look at the totality of the problem, their actions show their true beliefs. In fact, the evidence becomes over whelming.

It seems like an insurmountable challenge, but I believe that there is incredible untapped human potential in the African American community. I say this because when good educational choices are available, African American children excel, just like any other group. Their scores rise to rival anyone’s, and all the negative outcomes start to decrease. So, it is safe to say that real education reform (ending government intrusion, union domination, and instituting real local control) would be the final nail in the coffin for the soft racist policies of the elitist left.

However, it wouldn’t end there. There are millions of people of all races that are caught in the poor education-poverty-crime-hopeless trap. To help them, or in some cases, encourage them, to escape, we’d also have to do a phase-down on the nanny state. Benefits would have to be restructured, yet again, to encourage success, and not penalize it. Caps and limits would need to be imposed to put an end to system-induced inter-generational dependency. That would be a difficult sell, but so worth it in the end.

The total effort would take nearly a generation to see tangible results, as it would take that long to begin reform, and educate a full generation of children. Once accomplished, however, the US would see a economic and cultural renaissance. As African-Americans, Hispanics, and other groups take their rightful place in our society, the US would be transformed. This would not be the “fundamental” government-forced change, but an organic one; based on ideas, innovations, merit, and creativity. Everyone would truly be able to advance to the limits of their own talents, skills, and persistence. We would cease to be a “hyphenated” society, as we would all be peers-truly equal in our opportunity, and respectful of the accomplishments of our fellow Americans.

Originally posted at Conservative Hideout 2.0 © Matt Ross

 

WesternFront America

“I am convinced that the battle for humankind’s future must be waged and won in the public classroom by teachers that correctly perceive their role as proselytizers of a new faith which will replace the rotting corpse of Christianity.” -John J. Dunphy, Humanist Magazine, January-February 1983

And you wonder why so many public officials hate the Ten Commandments and want any reference to Christ eliminated from Christmas? I don’t. They are the product of government brainwashing in public schools and further reinforcement of communitarianism in colleges and universities.

Back in 2004, I wrote a column, Department of Education must be abolished.[1] It was one of Ronnie Reagan’s campaign promises; one of many he never kept. Tragically for America’s children, that vile operation still exists while Americans continue to shove massive amounts of money into a failed, unconstitutional government program.

No where in Art. 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution does it give the Outlaw Congress the authority to take over education in this country. If the framers of the Constitution meant for the GENERAL government to legislate education, it would have been specifically enumerated in the clauses under Art. 1, Sec. 8. It is not because education is the domain of the states of the Union – an internal operation:

“Another not unimportant consideration is that the powers of the general government will be, and indeed must be, principally employed upon external objects, such as war, peace, negotiations with foreign powers and foreign commerce. In its internal operations it can touch but few objects, except to introduce regulations beneficial to the commerce, intercourse and other relations, between the states, and to lay taxes for the common good. The powers of the states, on the other hand, extend to all objects, which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, and liberties, and property of the people, and the internal order, improvement and prosperity of the state.” –Joseph Story, associate justice, U.S. Supreme Court, Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833

The bloated, corrupt “Federal” Department of Education became a cabinet under one of the biggest buffoons this country ever elected, Jimmy Caaa-ter. That sealed and doomed the finest educational system on this planet.

It’s also a massive hole in the universe the American people are fleeced to fund — including the illegal grants and loans made by the Dept of Education. None of it is constitutional. It’s not my responsibility to pay for your child’s college education anymore than it’s your responsibility to for your neighbor’s child to attend college. No, it’s not for the “collective good.” In a free, constitutional republic, it’s called personal responsibility. If you want a ‘higher’ education, you pay for it, not your neighbor with a gun to his/her head. Collectivism is a poison consuming this republic.

The Federal Department of Education is a monstrous, corrupt entity sucking down more than $66 BILLION BORROWED “dollars” just this past year alone for nothing. Students are coming out of college under educated and drowning in student loans. Doesn’t anyone ever wonder why college tuition shot through the roof after that cabinet came into being? Why, it’s simple: colleges and universities suddenly discovered they had YOUR blank checkbook at their disposal courtesy of the prostitutes in Congress. More money for education! Every child deserves a college education paid for by YOU!

If there were no longer all those loans, America’s young folks would not graduate buried in so much debt. They would attend a college they could afford. All those graduates have to look forward to is despair trying to pay off huge school loans while working at McDonald’s. Make it go away. Without your checkbook, colleges and universities would have to compete in the market place to attract qualified students. Let the free market work and you will see a huge adjustment in tuition.

Let’s not forget the millions of illegal aliens who attend the government’s indoctrination centers, stealing the resources of school districts short changing your child(ren). Illegal minors need to be deported right along with their parents and if they don’t like it, blame their parents, not we the people or naturalized citizens who entered our country according to our laws. The drop out rates for illegals is so far into the atmosphere, it’s pathetic. If you think it’s bad with all the illegals stealing from school districts nationwide, if the abomination called the DREAM ACT passes, it will be another major bomb destroying this country.[2]

Dedicated Americans like Charlotte Iserbyt have spent decades trying to bring the truth to the American people about the real agenda behind “public” schools.[3] Yet, parents across this country seem blind to the truth about who controls education in this country and what the ultimate goal is: creating the new Soviet man and global citizen:

“Teach those attitudes which will result ultimately in the creation of a world citizenship and world government. We can and should teach those skills and attitudes which will help to create a society in which world citizenship is possible.” William Carr, NEA (National Education Association) leader, secretary of of the Educational Policies Commission

Know what? I’ve read a thousand columns on education. Dozens of books by excellent writers. But, hear me: No matter how many zillions of borrowed dollars are poured into the Federal Department of Education, it will not educate America’s children. They will continue to be short changed because of massive corruption from the teacher’s unions protecting bad, unqualified teachers and subjected to social and political indoctrination. Time has shown this to be true.

Speaking of money, here in Texas, we the taxpayers fund state education to the tune of $47 BILLION dollars a year. Now, Americans pay state taxes to fund education in their state whether by a direct personal income tax or as here in Texas, through state sales taxes, gasoline taxes and local property taxes [as in most states]. On top of those taxes, we the people are then forced with a gun to our heads to pay twice for education: federal income taxes to fund the Federal Department of Education. Of course, we know not a penny in the taxes extorted by the IRS funds a single penny of public education.[4]

The Outlaw Congress goes into its new session next month. While the House is now controlled by Republicans, it’s also controlled by the “old guard” who had 14 years to get rid of unconstitutional cabinets and agencies. Fourteen years of a Republican controlled Congress and education only got worse. Eight of those years were under a Republican president, Bush, Jr. Nothing was done except more BS fed to we the people while astronomical budgets (more money for education!!!) continued to be signed off by the controlling GOP. The illegal senate is still controlled by progressive Demorats (socialists and communists) and RINOS who support federally run education. And, of course, we still have an illegal president camped in the White House who would veto any bill to get rid of that unconstitutional agency.

Yes, I am aware there are 111 individuals (candidates and incumbents) who declared during the campaign cycle they want the Federal Department of Education eliminated (list below). However, it isn’t going to happen because you still have 80% of the same political animals who got reelected. “Vote out all incumbents” died because of too many Americans with their hands out to mommy government.

Too many reelected incumbents are socialists and too many are Republicans who owe their financial backers who have a vested interest in making sure that cabinet continues to exist. No, abolishing the Federal Department of Education will not come from Congress, it has to come from the states of the Union. Think not? Here in Texas, the seed has been planted:

November 18, 2010. Dunbar seeks to nullify federal education laws

“Outgoing State Board of Education member Cynthia Dunbar offered a “parting gift” to her fellow board members in the form of a resolution declaring the U.S. Department of Education an unconstitutional bureaucracy with no authority to impose restrictions upon Texas or its school districts.

“No action was taken Thursday on Dunbar’s resolution, which states that education policy is outside the purview of the federal government granted by the U.S. Constitution so federal legislation addressing education is for naught.

“Therefore, the Education Department “shall be put on notice that any such unconstitutional directives given by it to the Texas State Board of Education will be met with the principle of nullification and the clear admonition of ‘Don’t Mess with Texas!’”

“Nullification is the legal theory that a state may deem invalid any federal law that the state finds unacceptable or unconstitutional. Most legal scholars maintain that nullification is unconstitutional.

“But Dunbar, who decided not to seek re-election to a second term, is an assistant professor of law at Liberty University School of Law and has more than once used her own knowledge of the U.S. Constitution to make a point through board policy.

“The resolution could be considered in January, when the 15-member board, including its five new members, next meets.

“Read a copy of the SBOE resolution (PDF).”

The problem — a big one — states reliance over the decades on federal money for education. But, wait — we already pay at the state level. Why should the fruits of your labor be stolen in Bison, Kansas, to pay for education in Louisville, Kentucky? You have no control over how those taxes are spent for one thing. Second, your state legislature makes the laws for public education overall which are adhered to and added on at the local level. There is no need for a federal cabinet except to advance the agenda of the global elite.

We know that state pension obligations are literally killing the states causing them to beg for more money from Washington, DC. Always the money, honey. Because of gross mismanagement of state budgets, state legislatures want that federal money. They’re lined up at the feeding trough stealing us blind – penalizing you and me for their failures – even when we don’t live in a state taking federal bail out money (also illegal). Money, not to educate your children, but to feed pension funds and support school districts drained by heavy bureaucracy and classrooms crowed with illegal aliens – an estimated some 5 MILLION of them.

The question is this: Are you ready to restore state sovereignty?

“It is a question all those supporting states’ rights initiatives need to ask themselves. Once answered affirmatively the struggle for educating others truly begins. It is easy to claim we support our sovereignty, to lend our voice to state resolutions, perhaps even support legislation with some teeth, yet how will we withstand the opponents who simply point to the dollars we are willingly cutting off?

“Glen Warchol ran what is perhaps the shortest piece seen in the Salt Lake Tribune in recent history. In 10th Amendment cold turkey he quickly leaves us with the truth about what we are asking for and how we must accomplish it. He describes a very brief conversation between U.S. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Rep. Chaffetz asked what it would take for the federal government to recognize the 10th Amendment rights of the states, a fair question asked to someone who could truly articulate the answer. “Stop taking their money,” is the answer Warchol reports and it is an answer known to be the true, root challenge. We must stop taking the money and mimicking the income tax system as a start to reclaiming sovereignty.”

I have a new state rep, Jim Landtroop. As soon as he’s sworn in next month, I’ll be politely hammering on him about many issues and education is in the top ten. If the states withdraw their support for that rancid cabinet, it will be a fiscal challenge, but one that must be undertaken. Either the states reject federal money or they will become nothing more than occupied territories under regional, world government. America’s children will continue to suffer while the corrupt teacher’s unions run rough shod over good, well meaning, qualified teachers kissed and blessed by buzzards in the state houses.

The states MUST do this no matter how painful because it is the right thing to do. If enough states refuse federal education dollars, the Outlaw Congress will have no choice but to continue to defund it until that beast withers and dies. Ask yourself some questions like: before the Federal Department of Education became a cabinet (1979), how come schools around the country were able to turn out highly educated students on very few dollars? How did America become so finely educated prior to the Federal Department of Education, but has sadly and tragically turned out two generations of young Americans who are so under educated, they graduate high school at third or fourth grade reading levels?

Return education to the state and local levels. Stop the social indoctrination programs and nonsense like “safe pink rooms” for sexual deviants brainwashed by activists passing themselves off as teachers. Get your groups and organizations together and hammer on your state legislature come January. I will be doing the same even though my daughter is long out of school and in fact is a teacher. I care about America’s children and want to see them get educated, not deliberately dumbed down, their minds washed clean and then propagandized by environmental greenies and other special interests. I am sick of being taxed to death at the federal level when I already pay a healthy amount here in my state for education.

As for illegal minors in state schools: The hell the state shouldn’t be able to determine citizenship status and deny access to our schools! Illegal minors are no different than their illegal parents. They have no right to even be on U.S. soil. They have absolutely no “right” to a free education paid for by the sweat of your labor. If the feds don’t like it, the states need to call their bluff. The time is over for tea and crumpets. The time is now for the state houses to either stand up or shut up. It’s up to all of us to make it happen within our states and forget the political animals in the Outlaw Congress.

Footnotes:

1- Abolish Federal Department of Education
2- Illegals are breaking the bank
3- The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Free on line
4- Your federal “income” taxes do not fund education – it’s funded by BORROWED fiat currency

Creating the new Soviet man here in America

I know time is in short supply for Americans who work or are trying desperately to find work, but it is important to get the facts. I do recommend these books (there are so many, really):

1 - The Teacher’s Union: How They Sabotage Educational Reform and Why by Myron Lieberman
2 - Kill Your Teacher – Corruption & Racism in Los Angeles City Schools by Rabbi Nachum Shifren

111 Republicans who favor eliminating the unconstitutional Federal Department of Education:

Senate (12)

John McCain (AZ); Saxby Chambliss (GA); Mike Crapo (ID);
Sam Brownback (KS); Pat Roberts (KS); Jim Bunning (KY);
Roger Wicker (MS); Richard Burr (NC); John Ensign (NV);
George Voinovich (OH); Tom Coburn (OK); Lindsey Graham (SC)

House of Representatives (63)

Spencer Bachus (AL-06); Don Young (AK-AL); John Shaddegg (AZ-03); Jeff Flake (AZ-06); Wally Herger (CA-02); George Radanovich (CA-19); Elton Gallegly (CA-24); Buck McKeon (CA-25); David Dreier (CA-26); Ed Royce (CA-40); Jerry Lewis (CA-41); Ken Calvert (CA-44); Dana Rohrabacher (CA-46); Brian Bilbray (CA-50); Doug Lamborn (CO-05); Cliff Stearns (FL-06); John Mica (FL-07); Bill Young (FL-10); Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (FL-18); Lincoln Diaz-Balart (FL-21); Jack Kingston (GA-01); John Linder (GA-07); Paul Broun (GA-10); Tom Latham (IA-04); Donald Manzullo (IL-16); Steve Buyer (IN-04); Dan Burton* (IN-05); Todd Tiahrt (KS-04); Ed Whitfield (KY-01); Hal Rogers (KY-05); Roscoe Bartlett (MD-06); Michele Bachmann (MN-06); Pete Hoekstra (MI-02); Vern Ehlers (MI-03); David Lee Camp (MI-04); Fred Upton (MI-06); Frank LoBiondo (NJ-02); Chris Smith (NJ-04); Scott Garrett (NJ-05); Rodney Frelinghuysen (NJ-11); Walter Jones (NC-03); Howard Coble (NC-06); Sue Myrick (NC-09); Peter King (NY-03); John Boehner (OH-08); Pat Tiberi (OH-12); Steven LaTourette (OH-14); Frank Lucas (OK-03); Bob Inglis (SC-04); Sam Johnson (TX-03); Ralph Hall (TX-04); Joe Barton (TX-06); John Culberson (TX-07); Mac Thornberry (TX-13); Ron Paul (TX-14); Lamar Smith (TX-21); John Duncan (TN-02); Zach Wamp (TN-03); Bob Goodlatte (VA-06); Frank Wolf (VA-10); Doc Hastings (WA-04); Jim Sensenbrenner (WI-05); Tom Petri (WI-06)

Senate candidates (9)

Joe Miller (AK); Ken Buck (CO); Linda McMahon (CT); Rand Paul (KY); Eric Wargotz (MD); Sharron Angle (NV); Rob Portman (OH); John Raese (WV); Mike Lee (UT)

House of Representatives candidates (27)

Jesse Kelly (AZ-08); John Dennis (CA-08); Gary Clift (CA-10);
David Harmer (CA-11); Mark Reed (CA-27); Robert Vaughn (CA-38); Mike Yost (FL-03); Allen West (FL-22); Rob Woodall (GA-07); Austin Scott (GA-08); Ray McKinney (GA-12); Brad Zaun (IA-03); Andy Harris (MD-01); Robert Broadus (MD-04); Tim Walberg (MI-07); Joe Heck (NV-03); Frank Guinta (NH-01); Charlie Bass (NH-02); Anna Little (NJ-06); Chris Gibson (NY-20); Ashley Woolard (NC-01); Bill Randall (NC-13); Steve Chabot (OH-01); Bill Johnson (OH-06); James Lankford (OK-05); Bob Hurt (VA-05); Keith Fimian (VA-11)

Devvy Kidd authored the booklets, Why A Bankrupt America and Blind Loyalty; 2 million copies sold. Devvy appears on radio shows all over the country. She left the Republican Party in 1996 and has been an independent voter ever since. Devvy isn’t left, right or in the middle; she is a constitutionalist who believes in the supreme law of the land, not some political party.

Devvy’s regularly posted new columns are on her site at: www.devvy.com. You can also sign up for her free email alerts.

E-mail is: devvyk@earthlink.net

 

WesternFront America

Most of the problems of modern public education originate outside the school building. The locus of the worst influences are schools of education that turn out teachers and administrators who have absorbed four to six years of fantasy–based theory and practice.

If these dreamy theories were confined to Ed schools the situation would be tenable, but that’s unfortunately not the case. Implementation of these fads and fancies does real damage.

The most recent example takes place in West Potomac High School, located in Fairfax County, VA, where Principal Cliff Hardison attempted to deal two body–blows to education standards by first eliminating the ‘F’ from report cards and following that with a policy banning zeros for students caught cheating on tests.

I don’t think anyone with a mere bachelor’s degree would have the necessary woolly–headed thinking process required to formulate and then implement two policies like this, so I’m guessing Hardison has at least a master’s degree in Education. Maybe even a doctorate.

Cheaters and the indolent were strongly in favor of these changes, once someone woke them and read the announcement. Unfortunately for Principal Hardison, outraged parents formed an organization called Real World, Real Grades to fight the changes. Parents were joined by teachers who could see how making high school an academic consequences–free zone would undermine their authority and the student’s motivation.

Evidently the backlash took Hardison completely by surprise (another indication of a man with a rich fantasy life) and he was forced to backtrack on both.

His explanation regarding his reasoning pretty much makes my point. Hardison is an acolyte of “mastery learning” one of the newer Ed school fads. Most parents were under the impression we already had a very successful system commonly known as grades for indicating “mastery” of a subject. An ‘A’ indicates complete mastery, ‘B’ somewhat less “mastery” and so on.

But in Ed school grades are “punitive” and can be “false” measures of what students know. So what’s “false” about an ‘A?’ At my house the son earns ten bucks for each ‘A’ on his report card and the grade is a useful rule of thumb for evaluating if he learned anything.

As for cheating, it is back on the forbidden list — along with bullying, drugs, weapons, OTC medicine, prescription medicine, traditional views on sex, traditional views on sexual orientation, traditional views on sex education and Christmas. Cheaters will once again receive a zero on their test.

Prior to Hardison’s backtracking, his views on cheating had been influenced by “grading experts” producing a belief on his part that cheating should “result in a disciplinary consequence separate from an academic consequence.” So under the new regime test cheaters would be given a chance to take an alternate test, but would also be denied privileges and be required to take an “ethics” study accompanied by a series of self–esteem booster shots.

This is the academic equivalent of allowing embezzlers to retain the money thereby keeping the incarceration consequences separate from the economic consequences. This soft tolerance for dishonesty also devalues the hard work of the students who studied for the test and made their grade without resorting to cheating.

This refusal to adhere to standards and recognize absolutes is not confined to secondary education. It permeates higher education, too. A recent study by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni revealed that students graduate from elite schools, including Yale, Brown, Cornell and Amherst, without being required to take any courses in math, science, history, economics, language, literature and composition.

Dean Katherine Bergeron, an apologist for academic apathy, told the Washington Post her goal is to teach students how to think, solve problems and change the world, not “download a compendium of facts.”

But what do students think about when they are ignorant of the basics of history, philosophy, economics and literature? It’s like building the most powerful computing hardware in the universe, yet not providing the finished product with any programming. You produce potential without purpose.
Closer to home, the redoubtable Principal Hardison suffered a setback but has not given up. This particular parent rebellion is only a small bump on the road toward his goal of a “smoother transition” to new learning and grading approaches.

In his public statement Hardison explains, “This initiative is a paradigm shift that conflicts with traditional grading practices… We will examine how we can avoid using grades punitively because our transformation into a Professional Learning Community (PLC) compels us to define essential learning, reward mastery learning, and tackle necessary teaching about responsibility and personal accountability in different ways than we have done in the past.”

Translation: I’m waiting for the furor to die down, so I can complete West Potomac’s transition to buzzword–based learning.

Michael R. Shannon is a public relations and advertising consultant with corporate, government and political experience around the globe. He’s a dynamic and entertaining speaker and can be reached at michael–shannon@comcast.net.

 

WesternFront America

As the nation’s children return to elementary and secondary schools, it is increasingly essential that their parents and communities coast to coast realize how poorly served they are and how their learning environment is increasingly tainted by a socialist agenda.

Our nation’s schools have long been factories of boredom, centers of academic incompetence. High school graduation rates have been in a fairly steady decline. At its peak in 1969, the rate was 77 percent. By 2007 it was 68.8 percent.

In mid-August, The Wall Street Journal reported that “New data show that fewer than 25% of 2010 graduates who took the ACT college-entrance exam possessed the academic skills necessary to pass entry-level courses, despite modest gains in college-readiness among U.S. high school students in the last few years.”

What caught my eye was a quote from Jack Jennings, president of the Center on Education Policy, a nonpartisan research organization in Washington, who said that “if our kids aren’t dropping out physically, they are dropping out mentally.”

The subject of education is important because they are the generation to which the future of the nation must be entrusted and “A recent study found the U.S. ranks only 12^th in the percentage of adults aged 25 to 34 who hold college degrees.”

The failure of our nation’s schools, to my mind, coincides with the creation of the U.S. Department of Education in 1979, signed into law by President Jimmy Carter, and which began operating on May 16, 1980.

The word “education” does not appear in the U.S. Constitution and, until the Department of Education came along, it was the responsibility of States and local communities. A government that has managed Conrail since 1976 without once making a profit should not have been trusted with the nation’s educational system.

I opposed No Child Left Behind when former President Bush proposed it and, like former President Reagan, I have long believed the Department of Education should be ended and that responsibility be returned to the States and local communities. The DOE exists today as little more than an obstacle to learning in the classroom and a giant funding machine.

The DOE is pretty much owned by the National Education Association which is not an “association”, but a powerful union, the largest with an estimated 3.2 members. The Democrat Party is heavily indebted to it for funds and campaign workers.

It is doubtful that most Americans know that, for the past several months, the NEA’s website has recommended that its members read “Rules for Radicals” by the late Saul Alinsky, a dedicated communist. If NEA members adopt its political agenda, the enemy will literally be in our nation’s classrooms.

It has not gone unnoticed that Obama’s “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act”, otherwise known as the “Stimulus Act” enabled the education lobby to suck up billions more from taxpayers.

The Act allocated $5 billion to early learning programs, including the failed Head Start and Early Head Start, child care and programs for children with special needs. It also allocated $77 billion for “reforms” to allegedly strengthen elementary and secondary education, including $48.6 billion to “stabilize” state education budgets. It was a Full Employment Act for teachers and school administrators.

Apparently those billions were not enough because on August 11, President Obama signed a bill authorizing an additional $10 billion to states for education salaries. The Senate was so concerned the money might be spent for other purposes it included a provision that the money could not be used for anything else.

It apparently was not enough because in July the NEA president, Dennis Van Roekel, was calling for a complete overhaul of the No Child Left Behind Act, one that is entirely test-based without any notice of the fact that individual children learn at different rates. He didn’t much like the Obama Race to the Top program where schools competed for grants if they demonstrated any improvement in learning and graduation rates. Another $3.4 billion in grants is at yet unspent. Roekel didn’t like the idea of competition.

Clearly, schools that are graduating students ill-prepared to go onto college and that continue to experience high dropout rates are doing something wrong. Putting kids into teach-to-the-test straight jackets is not working.

In a new book by Dr. Tim Elmore, “Generation iY: Our Last Change to Save Their Future”, the author who founded a non-profit organization, Growing Leaders, writes that “I have spoken to employers who told me they will never hire another new graduate. I have heard teachers say they can hardly wait for retirement since they can’t do a thing about kids today. I’ve had parents confide in me that they don’t know what to do with their kids except scream at them.”

Statistics published by UNESCO and the CIA reveal that, while American students spend twelve years in school, ranking them first out of a hundred, they rank fifteenth out of twenty-seven in terms of literacy. Their math and science scores are poor. They poll at 35%, fifth out of seventeen, for their dislike of school, and 61%, second out of seventeen, find school boring.

The schools are failing, the students are being cheated of the knowledge, skills and attitudes they need to become productive adults, and the U.S. government thinks that, if it just spends a few more billions, this will change. It won’t.

The federal government must get out of the education business, must devolve responsibility back to the states and local communities, and they in turn should refuse to deal with teachers unions in order to regain control over the education of the nation’s most precious resource, its children.

Alan Caruba blogs daily at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com. An author, science and business writer, he is the founder of The National Anxiety Center.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

 

WesternFront America

By: SARTRE

For well over a century, the systemic dismantling of traditional education is an essential objective of transforming America into a despotic dependency. Education is a process, not an indoctrination. Schools should be about tutoring in the methods of critical thinking. Sound techniques and competent teachers can assist learning development. However, it has been decades since public schools provided a positive function. Dysfunctional Public Education Is No Accident sums up the issue:

“Government schools have worked their socialization for several generations, with alarming success. Their objective is not the education of the individual pupil, but the assimilation of the next generation into society. The kind of conversion that is sought, impedes independent thinking. Areas of inquiry are now limited to ‘PC’ approved viewpoints.”

The “TC” mindset is an outgrowth of the “PC” culture. Government schools primary mission is to program underdeveloped minds with a State approved curriculum. The net result of this civic brain washing machine is a dumbed down idiot that is unable to function as an independent individual. Totalitarian Collectivism is all about the supremacy of the State and a genuinely educated population is the greatest threat to the regime.

Government schools act as community social welfare centers. Outreach and remedial education is not just for “special needs” students, it is a staple of the state syllabus. Can this reality be attributed to genetic defects alone? Blaming it on the drinking water just does not fly. The more money spent on public education, the greater the decay in intellectual standards.

Culture, media influences and peer group pressure all reinforce the limited world vision that is the hallmark of producing obedient servants. Instead of working the fields, these serfs supply a boundless stock of sheep to eat the grass of government addiction. Their function is to consume useless products and services by running up debt. Honest work is discouraged, while government employment is preached as an ongoing community service. Service to the State and servicing the corporate economy is the sure recipe to become a valedictorian.

Lost in this assembly line factory and pseudo erudite mess is character development and moral values.

The National Character Education Center provides 10 reasons to Cultivate Virtues in Schools.

1. Value-based schools and homes develop value-driven children.

2. Children who are clear about their values have minimum problems in decision-making!

3. Children learn how to respect others when there is a program on respect.

4. Cooperation and collaboration are priorities in a value-driven school and home!

5. Rules and laws alone will not improve our society!

6. When children encounter problems, schools with a values program have clear performance and behavior reference points.

7. A values program fosters personal responsibility and initiative in each child.

8. A values program will develop an understanding, an appreciation, and an acceptance of diversities in children and in their cultures!

9. Values develop inner strength and integrity, which builds a “you-can-count-on-me” generation!

10. A value-driven program develops children with a positive mental attitude who have determination and perseverance.

Sounds good, but the question is what kind of value-based education should parents allow for the education of their children? National Education is too important to allow government control. “The children of America are not wards of your collectivist vision. Parents must retain the ability to educate their offspring according to the values that they hold. The scam of a national education policy is the kiss of death for our Nation.”

A new Rasmussen Report concludes that sixty percent (60%) of Americans with children in elementary or secondary school say most school textbooks are more concerned with presenting information in a politically correct manner than in accuracy.

This point is timely with the recent Texas Board of Education approval of a new school curriculum, which influences all textbooks. Some of their additions include:

Question the Founding Fathers’ commitment to a purely secular government

• Cover the Judeo-Christian influences of the nation’s Founding Fathers, but not highlight the philosophical rationale for the separation of church and state

Stress the superiority of American capitalism while eliminating the word “capitalism” from the text

Refer to the United States form of government as a “constitutional republic,” rather than “democratic republic”

• Give Confederate president Jefferson Davis equal footing with Abraham Lincoln

The “TC” society is appalled at such heresy as constitutional restraints, which might be taught to young virgin minds. All that matters to the didactic validation masters is the official approval pedagogic propaganda. No, wonder that any challenges to the education establishment meet with vicious abhorrence.

The National Center for Policy Analysis refers to “a report out of Stanford University shows that parents like the idea of school choice and that children in the voucher system are more apt to stay in school, learn more and earn their high school diplomas.

The study surveyed programs operating in Milwaukee (which has two), New York City, Indianapolis and San Antonio. Together, the five programs are serving more than 7,000 students from low-income families.”

Here are some of the findings:

Two to three times as many parents of voucher-school students gave “A” ratings to their schools as did parents of public school students.

While children of low-income families tend to change public schools during the year — often at a rate of 20 percent to 30 percent of the enrollment — the rate for voucher students in Milwaukee was no more than four percent to five percent.

Voucher students attending religious schools (New York and San Antonio) made remarkable test score gains; but data concerning those attending secular choice schools is flawed or incomplete because of lack of information about family background.

In New York, 69 percent of voucher students are staying in school and graduating, versus 39 percent of all students in public high schools, and 29 percent in the high schools voucher students would have attended.

The teachers union reflects the notion that government schools are untouchable and parents or local government must continue unlimited funding for excessive benefits and extravagant retirement costs.

School Vouchers Long Overdue cites the mindset that creates this accountability disconnect. “Writing for the New York Times, Albert Shanker of the American Federation of Teachers referred to the potential of turning an education endeavor into a profit-making venture as the “threat of an educational industrial complex.”

Eliminating coerced government school attendance with a viable private sector educational competition could break the reckless cycle of pouring more money down the drain of “TC” brainwashing. Abolishing property taxes to finance destructive institutions of mass disinformation needs to become a national cause.

In an exhaustive and comprehensive study from the Cato Institute – They Spend WHAT? The Real Cost of Public Schools, Adam B. Schaeffer provides evidence of financial disparities.

“To put public school spending in perspective, we compare it to estimated total expenditures in local private schools. We find that, in the areas studied, public schools are spending 93 percent more than the estimated median private school.

Citizens drastically underestimate current per-student spending and are misled by official figures. Taxpayers cannot make informed decisions about public school funding unless they know how much districts currently spend. And with state budgets stretched thin, it is more crucial than ever to carefully allocate every tax dollar.”

He outlines aspects of the Financial Transparency in Education Act, as a needed policy. This formula uses a base state and education fiscal transparency model for legislation that is adopted by the American Legislative Exchange Council.

Schools need to become cherished institutions for cultivating natural instincts and curiosity for intellectual development. What Price We Pay For Incompetent Education illustrates a case study in a broken educational system. “Public education has become government schooling by the ignorant, administered by the incompetent. . . . Embedded in the very composition of its organization are the kind of personnel that create and perpetuate this bureaucratic tragedy.”

College and higher education experience is worthless when functional idiots are granted matriculation for the price of an average starter house. The student loan fiasco is just another tyrannical entrapment into a system of endless debt consumption with diminished benefits. As the economic prospects for our offspring evaporate, future progenies will seek the rewards of real education and avoid the snares of compulsory stupidity.

The Totalitarian Collectivists fear an enlightened populace. A populist political schooling, based upon traditional values, classical training, founded upon a comprehensive study of history; has the best chance of producing individuals of character and moral fiber. The American chronicle is grounded and based upon this foundation. The “TC” educational, politically correct, absolutism is anti-intellectual at its core. A purely secular government is a curse in the American Saga. The Texas Board of Education has its history right.

Related article:
TOTALITARIAN COLLECTIVISM PART 1 – INTRODUCTION
TOTALITARIAN COLLECTIVISM PART 2 -STATE

TOTALITARIAN COLLECTIVISM PART 3 – CHURCH

TOTALITARIAN COLLECTIVISM PART 4 – FAMILY

TOTALITARIAN COLLECTIVISM PART 5 – ECONOMY

Published originally at EtherZone.com : republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact.”

 

WesternFront America

Still Lessons To Be Learned.

Lincoln is credited with saying that the philosophy of the classroom in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next. Likewise, totalitarian movements such as Nazism and Communism expended considerable resources on efforts designed to sway the youth of their respective countries into embracing ideologies inimical to the self interest of the student.

Viewing himself in the pantheon of historical figures by which entire eras are remembered, Barack Obama also realizes the necessity of claiming the hearts and minds of the young if he is to transcend the chasm between that of mere government administrator or even head of state to that of an adored icon an entire culture or way of life is built upon.

Though the administration distanced itself from the original lesson plan and disavowed any purpose for the President’s broadcast address other than to tell students to stay in school, the fact that such a document was even formulated provides a glimpse into the worldviews of the influential at the highest levels of the bureaucracy and administration. Therefore, even if the misbegotten memorandum is scrubbed from the Internet and its existence denied to the same extent as the Star Wars Christmas special, it must still be scrutinized as part of the documentary history of the United States.

Despite however White House operatives might spin it now, the President and his handlers intended this speech to be more than a simple welcoming of the school year. Each section of the lesson plan revealed even more about the intent of the section that preceded it.

According to the section titled “Before The Speech”, teachers were instructed to have students read books about Barack Obama. For high schoolers, would the President’s operatives in the Department of Education endorse and applaud works of a contrarian perspective such as “Obamanation” by Jerome Corsi and “The Culture Of Corruption” by Michelle Malkin, or is the suggestion merely euphemism for laudatory tomes of a worshipful nature?

Another study question read, “Why is it important that we listen to the President and other elected officials?…Why is what they say important?” Just let the tone of that one mull around in your brain for a moment.

From the way that is formulated, what the question is calling for is unquestioning obedience. For if it didn’t, it would also be accompanied with a question sparking the realization that it is also important for elected officials to also listen to citizens.

In the section “During The Speech”, it is suggested in a roundabout way that, instead of looking critically in terms of what the President as a politician is trying to get over on or swindle from the American people, students should readily embrace whatever it is that the President is asking them to do. No where were students asked to question whether or not it is proper for the President to ask anything of them beyond the purview of his delineated constitutional authority.

It is bad enough for agents of the state to guide the student through a mental exercise with the largely predetermined goal of increasing the student’s fidelity to a particular presidential administration. It is even worse when plans are made to determine and catalogue the degree of compliance on the part of students.

In the lesson plan, teachers were instructed to have students record their thoughts on sticky notes and to write down their goals on index cards. Big deal, some might say, as such a format is quite transient and easily discardable.

Don’t be so sure. Often in the workplace, when management wants to gather intelligence on the mere laborers, workers are compelled to scribble our thoughts on post-its that are then collected after a staff meeting.

These are then either tacked on a flipchart for everyone to see or transcribed for later distribution as the minutes of the meeting. Had the original lesson plan been adhered to, what the students jotted down wouldn’t have been something simply graded in terms of how well it was thought out in terms of content or mechanics but something ultimately forgotten about as the educational process moved on, but these might have come back to haunt the students at a later date.

For example, in the section of the lesson plan titled “The Extension Of The Speech” teachers are instructed to collect what the students have written and to post these around the classroom where all can see them. Students are to interview (or in other words interogate) each other in order to create a supportive COMMUNITY.

In other words, educators are to establish subdued reeducation camps where students either denounce their classmates failing to live up to the expectations of the Obama regime or out of fear of peer pressure enunciate aspirations that are in compliance with the prerogatives of the group rather than their own or those of their respective families. In a system of secularized government education, even if I have no goal other than sitting on my rear-end after I come home from work and stuff my face with bonbons hour after hour, who is anyone to criticize me whatsoever?

Two of the greatest threats to the sanctity and authority of the family is a peer group and a government that do not uphold the corpus of Biblical values. As destructive as questionable companions can be as a bad apple can spoil the whole bunch, at least these won’t usually keep extensive files for decades to come used to determine future educational and occupational opportunities.

Had these assorted sticky notes, index cards, and related scribblings been collected as suggested in the original lesson plan they would have likely been forwarded surreptitiously to the Departments of Education and Homeland Security. For starters, they were already to be kept until a later date and redistributed so that teachers might be able to hold students accountable to these so-called “goals”.

But beyond academic criteria such as grammar and the application of facts to a formulated question, should public educators be given the authority to evaluate aspects of the life of the student beyond the classroom? Some might respond that concerns of the ruminations of students being turned over to be catalogued by the government is paranoid. But is it really?

One provision in the lesson plan suggested that students should be encouraged to submit two minute videos to the Department of Education’s “I Am What I Learn” contest “explaining why education is important and how their education will help them achieve their dreams.” And what if the student responds that education — provided one is able to rise above the swill urging intellectual conformity — will assist them in realizing that the vast majority of politicians are frauds and full of it?

Despite the fact that the government acting through educational institutions exercises a degree of power to the extent of altering the course of students’ lives, some are disturbingly blasé about Obama’s desire to wrap his tentacles even tighter around the minds of as many students as possible. This attitude can shockingly be found even among those claiming to be Conservative that really ought to know better.

In his 9/7/09 column titled “The Obama Controversy — What To Think”, Albert Mohler proved just how quickly some Christian leaders are willing to turn on their more discerning brethren in order to appease the sophisticated and curry favor with elites. In his opening paragraph, Mohler questions, “Why would a speech calling for students to remain in school and set personal goals for themselves incite any controversy at all? Is this just another eruption of the culture war?”

For a theological historian or historical theologian, Mohler exhibits a disturbing misunderstanding regarding the past, the so-called “orders of creation”, and the public role of believers in society.

Though an understanding of the Culture War has had to advance beyond belief in the infallibility of the Republican Party, shouldn’t Mohler realize that there are things worth fighting for and that much of the acrimony characterizing American culture today is not the fault of believers or other kinds of conservatives and libertarians wanting to mind their own business and to raise their children in a spirit of individuality and a religious adoration of the family’s own choosing.

The fundamental issue at hand here is just whom has God entrusted children to regarding those matters beyond mere survival. Ought a child’s worldview to be molded primarily by largely law-abiding parents or by a federal government that ultimately does not know the child and can only care about the child in the most detached and abstract manners?

Mohler writes, “At this level, the controversy is a national embarrassment. Conservatives must avoid jumping on every conspiracy theory and labeling every action by the Obama administration as sinister or socialist. Our civic culture is debased when opposing parties and political alignments read every proposal by the other side as suspect on its face.”

Is Mohler’s enthusiasm for gentility and manners going to do him any good when his children are forcibly hauled off for mandatory national service? Mohler might be willing to swallow the party line that the President intended nothing more for the day than to encourage students to strive for their best (efforts for which these youngsters will actually be penalized for as adults by Obama’s own policies), however, there is indeed evidence that the Obama regime did indeed have other intentions for the occasion.

The day President Obama enunciated his scholastic oration, the Department of Homeland Security announced it would be infiltrating the Girl Scouts. As part of the President’s “My Education, My Future” initiative, Secretary Janet Napolitano and the Chief Executive Officer of the Girl Scouts of America unveiled a new emergency preparedness merit patch.

To earn this honor, scouts must identify and prepare for potential emergencies, learn about local alerts and warning systems, and engage in community service. By themselves, these things are neutral.

However, what should concern the astute American is that the involvement of the Department of Homeland Security goes beyond the publication of a few pamphlets and workbooks. The initiative is to be administered by Citizen Corps, a division of FEMA.

Does anyone honestly believe the program is going to remain limited to memorizing public safety platitudes that are the contemporary equivalent of either “stop, drop, and roll” or “duck and cover”? Eventually, in the name of defending the Motherland and public health, at first girl scouts and eventually all children irrespective of whether or not they belong to these organized youth movements will be compelled to reveal to authorities what their parents prepared for supper, how far they drove the car on the weekend, and even if they have enunciated any reactionary perspectives such as salvation being found only through belief in Christ and marriage only being between a monogamous man and a monogamous woman.

Unsettling as Obama’s power grabs are, even more disturbing is the ease with which some grant Obama a free pass for the most ludicrous of reasons.

Contemporary mainstream Evangelicalism holds that since all people are equal ontologically irrespective of race, all people should be held to the same standard. From that flows the corollary that individuals should be held to the very same criticism.

However, according to Albert Mohler, our response should not so much be based on the objectivity of a specific truth but rather tailored to pander to the preferences of a particular group. Of the President’s remarks on education, Mohler said, “Let’s be honest here. Most middle-class white kids get plenty of these messages, starting at home. But might this message be particularly helpful for a child struggling for a role model or looking for justifications for his studiousness?”

In other words, middle class White parents should be made to feel guilty for actually taking care of their progeny instead of pawning them off on the social welfare system while they go off clubbing in pursuit of the parent of their next bastard child. If minority parents deliberately neglect their children, that is their own fault and White people are not obligated to take this unfortunate reality into account when formulating their own parental decisions. It is just as immoral for church officials to play on racial guilt as those in government.

It has been said that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. Provided a certain level of physical care is maintained, parents (not government officials, credentialed educators, or even eminent theologians) should be the ones to determine through what form in what manner values and the precious heritage of this great nation should be passed on to their respective offspring.

© Dr. Frederick Meekins

 

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…The Key to Defeating the Progressives

”The mental conflict that occurs when beliefs or assumptions are contradicted by new information. The unease or tension that the conflict arouses in a person is relieved by one of several defensive maneuvers: the person rejects, explains away, or avoids the new information, persuades himself that no conflict really exists, reconciles the differences, or resorts to any other defensive means of preserving stability or order in his conception of the world and of himself.”

-Encyclopedia Britannica

My post last year about kids defying the ACLU brought me back to a point I have been making for several years.  Socialism collapses in the presence of doubt.  In the examples of the fallen Soviet Bloc dictatorships, we see that once the people no longer “believed in” the state, and that their doubt overcame the fear of the state, the state collapsed.  When rhetoric and propaganda of the state and party were so completely disconnected from what the people could observe, they lost faith in the system.  This is instructive because it shows us the path towards defeating the POTUS and his socialist policies.

By my estimation, socialist states rely on three methods to control their populations.  The first is indoctrination.  In the US, they took over the public schools some time ago.  At each stage, children are exposed to, tested on, and pressured to exhibit, liberal ideology.  As many examples have shown, via lawsuits, students have been ridiculed, threatened with failing grades, and otherwise degraded if they deviate from the liberal mantra. Eventually, the children themselves are turned into a self-monitoring mob that reports, belittles, or attacks dissenters.   Using the peer pressure that makes children so susceptible, the left is very effective in “brainwashing” our youth.   These minions then go to the university, where they are further inculcated into socialism, and are then sent out to convert more minions.  If you wish to explore this further, look into how public school teachers and social workers are educated.  I believe that the idea here is to create an environment of “no resort.”  Either the child/student accepts and regurgitates the liberal mantra at every turn, or punishment will be swift and sure.  Those that have different ideas, or can see through the liberal point of view, are effectively silenced and rendered ineffective.

Additionally, the liberals have sought to expand their educational efforts to children at increasingly younger ages.  Their goal seems to be the indoctrination of children. To illustrate, let’s look at some quotes by prominent educators and others…

“The schools cannot allow parents to influence the kind of values-education their children receive in school; that is what is wrong with those who say there is a universal system of values. Our (humanistic) goals are incompatible with theirs. We must change their values.”

–Paul Haubner, specialist for the N.E.A.

“Among the elementary measures the American Soviet government will adopt to further the cultural revolution are…[a] National Department of Education…the studies will be revolutionized, being cleansed of religious, patriotic, and other features of the bourgeois ideology. The students will be taught the basis of Marxian dialectical materialism, internationalism and the general ethics of the new Socialist society.”

–William Z. Foster, Toward Soviet America, 1932 National Chairman of the American Communist Party (1933-44, 1945-57)

“Education is a weapon whose effects depend on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.”

–Joseph Stalin

John Dewey, called “the father of modern education,” was an avowed socialist, the co-author of the ‘Humanist Manifesto’ and cited as belonging to fifteen Marxist-front organizations by the Committee on Un-American Activities. Do the words (the father of modern education) now take on new meaning? Remember, Dewey taught the professors who would train America’s teachers. He was obsessed with “the group.” In his own words, “You can’t make socialists out of individualists. Children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society which is coming, where everyone is interdependent.”

The effort here is to control, from the earliest possible age, the beliefs and thoughts of the child.  Education is a secondary concern, if it is even a concern at all.  Knowledge and facts are secondary to that of the intended ideology.  If knowledge is indeed the currency of freedom, socialists must therefore carefully control what is taught, and competing opinions should be banished, and their proponents marginalized and punished.  Therefore, in any socialist or fascist state, education was among the first institutions to receive a complete conversion.  Curriculum was changed to reflect the new order, home schooling was banned, and private schools were either co-opted, or closed.  This is meant to achieve a “monopoly of ideology,” nothing more, nothing less.  Control the child and carefully monitor what they see and hear, and the end result (the “progressives” hope) is a complaint and brainwashed minion who will not question the state, as they will know nothing more than what they learned from the state.

To prevent their newly minted minions from hearing anything contrary to state approved messages, the elimination of dissent becomes necessary.  This is the second method to control populations.  Outlets and individuals that discuss “competing ideologies” are to be silenced.  In socialist and fascist states, strong-arm tactics usually accomplished this.  In the current age, regulation, ridicule, and punishment are used.  A bit softer to be sure, but the results are much the same.  One needs to look no further than Hugo Chavez to see this in operation in the 21^st century, or, for that matter, the actions of the left in this country.

The fairness doctrine, the effort to implement it and call it something else is a case in point.  As covered here, a board was appointed and given the task of making recommendation for broadcast regulations.  The board is stacked with leftist organizations.  Administration officials have been quoted as stating that the goal is…

It also was reported when a think tank headed by John Podesta, co-chairman of Obama’s transition team, mapped out a strategy in 2007 for clamping down on conservative talk radio by requiring stations to be operated by female and minority owners, which the report showed were statistically more likely to carry liberal political talk shows.

That report found the best strategy for getting equal time for “progressives” on radio lies in mandating “diversity of ownership” without ever needing to mention the former FCC policy of requiring airtime for liberal viewpoints, known as the “Fairness Doctrine,” a plan thrown out in the 1980s.

Knowing that the ‘Fairness Doctrine” is a loaded term, the liberals resort to “slight of hand” by calling it something else.  The desired result, however, is the same.

Going along with banning dissent is the control of the media.   The most convenient way to manage the people is to control the flow of information available to the public.  In totalitarian states, movies, music, print, radio, television, and even the Internet (with varying levels of success) are tightly controlled.  Everything that is read, heard, and seen is carefully presented to not only convey what the government wants the public to believe, but to also ridicule the opposition, and discredit any other ideas.  Information that might “confuse” or “discourage” (ie, the truth) the public is not permitted.

In the more openly totalitarian states, this is accomplished by direct ownership and control.  In the US, it has been achieved ideologically, by the same educational indoctrination scheme I described earlier.  As so many of us have observed, the MSM often ignores gaffes, crimes, inconsistent statements, lies, and failures of the left.  If the story is reported, it will often be minimized or misrepresented.   Many times, a person exposing a story or whistle blowing will be attacked, causing their character or motivations to be called into question.  Other times, individuals on the right will be openly ridiculed.  The entertainment industry is also involved, with TV shows, movies, and music echoing “progressive” political and cultural messages, all with the intent of providing the citizen with their regularly scheduled does of indoctrination.  The idea, of course, is to promote the agenda, as well as to marginalize dissenters, and at the same time, their messages.

A significant effect of banning dissent is to cause the individual to become discouraged, and eventually “give up,” reluctantly joining the “new order.”  The validation that one receives from knowing that they are not alone in their beliefs cannot be underestimated.  A group with shared beliefs is more powerful than an isolated individual.  Fear not friends, I am not talking about collectivism here.  This is simple psychology.   Besides the obvious benefits of “strength in numbers,” groups validate and empower their individual members.  If one knows that others will stand with him, he is more likely to make a stand.

This is, in my opinion, one of the primary reasons for the left’s attempts to silence the right.  If they can stop people from receiving the validation of the larger group, the right can be reduced into smaller groups that are easily ostracized, or into isolated individuals that will be no “threat” to the “progressive” state.  They want you to give up and become silent.   They know that if they can indoctrinate the next generation in the absence of dissenting opinions that have more worth, they will win.  They therefore want us to be silent and discouraged.

The third technique consists of the simple thug tactics used by the left.  As I, and others, have discussed, the left uses intimidation to silence dissent, attack other ideologies, and to punish those that speak out.   People are threatened, their employers are threatened (unless they terminate the target), and “protesters” show up at the schools of the children of those that have “sinned” against the left.  As Alinski put it, the plan is to identify, isolate, freeze and escalate activities towards the target.  Frivolous lawsuits will be filed; false allegations made, private documents will be made public, all in an attempt to punish the target. This is harassment and intimidation, as well as an attempt to ruin the lives and reputations of the targeted individuals.

This intimidation is also meant to send a message to anyone else that might speak out or otherwise resist.  “Unless you want this to happen to you and your family, you best keep your mouth shut!”

So, where does Cognitive Dissonance come into this?  It goes back to my first paragraph.  Many of the people in the middle – those that perhaps pay little attention to the news or current political situation – are about to experience more of the “progressivism” from the POTUS.  They will see more lies and deceit.  They will see more and more if their fellow citizens ridiculed.  If either Cap and Trade or the ObamaCare passes, the economy will be devastated.  Individuals that voted for the POTUS without examining his actual motivations, or people on the left that still have the ability to think (there are some), will experience a great deal of Cognitive Dissonance.  Also, kids and college students that have been spoon-fed the liberal mantra will experience discomfort when the plans that they have supported cascade the economy into failure.  This is the time that we, as Conservatives or Libertarians, will need to capitalize on this “theory colliding headlong into reality.”

How do we do this?

• Continue blogging, and share your blog with others.
• Contact friends and family that may have voted for the POTUS.  Show them the evidence.
• Collect evidence by download to show others.  I recently showed a liberal co-worker the video montage made by Verum Serum on ObamaCare.  I thought the person’s jaw would hit the floor.  Then, I showed her Margaret Sanger and Ruth Bader Ginsberg quotes.  She became upset.  If this continues, she will eventually question her beliefs.  All it takes is enough evidence.
• Download and store videos and articles that make our points.  If the POTUS ever does manage to control Internet content, a lot of the evidence against him will disappear.  Unless, that is, we save it!

This is starting to work.  Majorities now stand against ObamaCare.  The amount of people that think the Porkulus is helping is within the margin of error in the poll!  The discussion of ClimateGate is causing more and more people to question the AGW fraud.

It’s working because to promote their agenda, the “progressives” must lie at every turn.  They must create crises.  They have to fudge numbers, bribe officials, and contradict themselves on a regular basis.  To defeat the agenda, we simply must point out observable facts.  They may have the House, Senate, the White House, film, TV, music, the newspapers, the broadcast news, and millions of useful idiots; but we have the truth.  That, my friends, is the nuclear weapon in our arsenal.

I wrote this because I became a Conservative in this fashion.  I came out of grad school with a brain full of liberal ideology.  When I started working, I noticed that much of what I was taught simply didn’t match reality.  As time wore on, I became discouraged.  When some friends started introducing me to Conservatism, I initially resisted.  After all, Conservatives are all fascists, right?  I started to read, and listened to talk radio.  As time wore on, I educated myself.  No coercion, threats, intimidation, or indoctrination were required.  I simply saw that Conservatism matches reality.  If we can help others when Cognitive Dissonance hits, and it WILL, we can help defeat the left.  I find it ironic, and encouraging, that the billions that the left spends on public and college education can be undone by simple truths.

There are many people on the left that will never see reality.  While that is unfortunate, there is nothing that will convince them.  Either that, or they are “higher – ups” in the left that know that the policies are meant to cause a crisis.  I humbly suggest that they be left alone.  Their shrill and increasingly irrational reactions to the truth will serve our purpose well.

I have more on this topic, I’ll post it in a day or two.

Originally posted at Conservative Hideout 2.0 © Matt Ross

 

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