Pop Quiz:
Who invented the following: Magnetic Telegraph, Cotton gin, Sewing machine, telephone and phonograph?
Through what waters would a vessel pass through going from England through the Suez Canal to Manila?
Name three rights given Congress by the Constitution and two rights denied Congress?
Name and give the capitals of all the states touching the Ohio River?
Who discovered the following places: Florida, Pacific Ocean, Mississippi River and St. Lawrence River?
If you got four correct you will progress to the ninth grade.
Plato’s Republic “elevates education from a personal tool to a societal pillar, guiding from ignorance to enlightenment and harmonizing individual and collective virtues.”
VI Lenin, totalitarian mass murderer, said: “Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.”
Nelson Mandela said: “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”
Promises made, promises kept
In addition to taking on the urban decay in our Capital President Trump identified the educational decay that has spread through our schools as an issue that required his ministrations. He campaigned on the promise to eliminate the Potemkin Village we know as the Department of Education (DOE). In 1979 his benighted predecessor Jimmy Carter made yet another ill-fated Presidential decision…he created the DOE. At the time the US had the number one rated educational system in the world. Today it is ranked in the mid-twenties. The first Secretary of Education was the little known nor long remembered Shirley Hufstedler, a Federal Judge from, not surprisingly, the People’s Republic of California. There is nothing on her curriculum vitae that would suggest that she had even the vaguest understanding of anything related to Education.
Our public schools have been on a downward, asymptotic trajectory since 1979. An uneducated and ignorant electorate is an existential risk to our Republic. Aristotle said: “The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living from the dead.” The decline proves, once again, that centralized decision making is a recipe for failure. The ongoing decline of the public education system is especially acute in urban schools…a continuation of the racist policies of the Democratic Party. It is a reminder of why the Democrats prohibited the education of slaves in the states that ultimately became the Confederate States of america…lower case intentional.
Our educational heritage…
Horace Mann
Mann was one of the first proponents of taxpayer funded public schools. He was the first Secretary of the newly created Massachusetts State Board of Education. He wanted better training of teachers and a strong communication program to ensure public support for his goals and objectives. Imagine how he would react to the products of our college departments of education which focus on producing political foot soldiers to inculcate students as to the joys of an authoritarian state. Please make Orwell fiction again.
John Dewey
One of the early setbacks to apolitical education was the influence of John Dewey. Dewey was a leader of the Progressive Educational Movement. As with all things “Progressive” the movement was characterized by vague and meaningless platitudes such as the “development of the whole child.” He did not advocate the development of basic academic skills. It was the gateway to political indoctrination in the classroom. Dewey was a devotee of “behaviorism”…a discipline embraced by Ivan Pavlov…Anita Ward call your office.
Anne Sullivan
Education is the creation of a thirst for knowledge, providing the tools for acquiring that knowledge, the ability to think critically and the ability to communicate, orally and in writing. You often hear complaints from the pedagogical class about how tough teaching is these days. Imagine the whining that any public school teacher would download if he or she faced the challenge that Anne Sullivan took on. Her one pupil was Helen Keller, blind and deaf from her youth. At the hands of Ms. Sullivan Keller became an author, a disability rights advocate, a political activist and lecturer. Sullivan was, in short, a brilliant and successful teacher. Recommended viewing: The Miracle Worker with Ann Bancroft and Patty Duke.
Jaime Escalante
Jaime Escalante is another example of a true educator. He joined the faculty of Garfield High School, a barrio school in East Los Angeles. He was horrified by the lack of student preparedness and the lack of a challenging curriculum. He told the school administration that he would be starting an AP Calculus program. He was opposed by the entire system. It was, he was told, a recipe for disappointment. He ignored them and the success of his students on the State AP exam became the stuff of teaching legend. Recommended viewing: Stand and Deliver with James Olmos. A truly inspiring story.
Here are some examples of the decline of American education…
The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD)
Purveyors of a one size fits all national curriculum based on the one world vision of Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum. The ASCD, founded in 1943 during the dirigistic administration of FDR, approves and pushes all textbooks that fit the political stylings of the Association.
Randi Weingarten
Ms. Weingarten was the President of the American Federation of Teachers. She is an educational wrecking ball with little or no interest in the customers of the public schools, i.e the parents and students. Under President Biden she was levitated to a position with the Department of Homeland Security. She will “support our mission to safeguard the American people, and help our country think through and prepare for whatever threats lie ahead.” Extra credit for those who can divine what that gobbledygook means. Captain Edward J, Smith was their second choice for the job she took.
.Madelyn Murray O’Hair
Our very own Robespierre who wanted any direct or indirect reference to God and religion removed from the public schools. She even argued the term “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance was a step too far. If she had her way dyslexic students wrestling with the word “doG” would be expelled.
National Education Association (NEA)
The NEA was founded in 1857 as a professional association. Since the 1960s the NEA has become the largest labor union in the United States. It represents public school teachers and other support personnel, faculty and staffers at colleges and universities and college students preparing to become teachers. In short, it became a monopoly and has adopted the bullying tactics of the union movement. It fiercely opposes parochial schools, private schools and home schooling…neither independent thinking nor any other unmonitored thinking is allowed. Critical thinking is absolutely forbidden.
And what has the DOE wrought…
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
DEI actually stands for Division, Envy and Intolerance…a tool for supporting the foundational principles of the Democrat Party…Ignorance, Dependence and Fear. Our President has done his best to put DEI on life support.
Artificial Intelligence
Reminiscent of Big Brother in 1984. Students can avoid research, eschew the development of written communication skills and mindlessly repeat whatever mis/disinformation has been programmed into ChatGPT. Allows classroom teachers to enjoy longer siestas during the school day. Recommended viewing: 2001 A Space Odyssey…what can go wrong.
The pop quiz at the beginning of the post is based on the eighth grade year-end graduation exam used at the turn of the 19th Century. There were six categories: Arithmetic, Grammar, Geography, Physiology, Civil Government and History. It would be surprising if 10% of today’s high school graduates could answer the 57 questions on the examination.
Not only do today’s schools fail to teach basic academic skills what they do teach is, like the 1819 Project, historically and politically inaccurate. The 1619 Project is a fictional portrayal suggesting that America is built on slavery. Such pedagogy is designed to perpetuate the division of the races in our country.
Without a basic knowledge of US history students have no perspective on the progress that has been made over the past 250 years. Students are not taught the truth about the history of the Democrat Party and it’s 200 year history of suppressing the rights of Blacks in America. They do not know about the legacy of the Ku Klux Klan, Jim Crow, the 1898 race riot in Wilmington, NC, the race based travesty that took place in Houston Texas in 1917 and the tragedy of Emmett Till. Without this perspective Leftists can the idiotic arguement that the Democrats and Republicans “switched” in the 1960s. It allows a CNN reporter to put forward the proposition that “Blacks have never had it worse than they do now” without even a whisper of dissent. An abject and destabilizing failure of education.
Thanks to Trump control of public education is being returned to state and local Boards of Education where it belongs, More importantly we might see a better informed electorate…Spanbergers of the world beware!
The next post, to be published on July 4th, will be a celebration of our 250th anniversary and an enumeration of the things that make America Great and maybe show that the word “Again” is superfluous.