What Are We Teaching Our Kids?

I would certainly agree with the lack of qualified teachers in math and science.

For those in California there is a little-known opportunity to take an exam and become a credentialed teacher in just a couple of months without going through a teacher certification program, if you can pass the Teaching Foundations Exam test, offered on August 7 at Wilson High School in Los Angeles. This exam is required by a 2001 law sponsored by Senator Jack Scott of Pasadena. You can read the text of SB57 at the California Teacher Credential website at www.ctc.ca.gov/intern/EarlyCompInternGuidelines.pdf

The exam is normally $145, but on this day only will be offered for $25. I have only seen one group promoting it, the CA Charter School Association. Many charter schools prefer experienced professionals from the real world, especially in secondary classes. For more information, contact the Charter Association’s Help Desk at (866) 411-2272.

Hurry, if you are interested. The deadline to sign up for the test is July 12.

Thanks for the stealth ping, Mike.

A republican form of government requires citizens who understand their country's history and values. We can't decide where America is going unless we know where it has come from.

Good luck. The part we’ve already traversed (our ‘history’) is becoming more overgrown and indiscernible by the day. You don’t want to look in your rear-view mirror. You’ll see nothing but busy little leftists sweeping dirt over the road, leaving you nowhere to go but forward (if you can call it that), and no visible sign of where you’ve been.

I have a piano student (I’ll call her Jane) who is easily the most innately gifted student I have ever taught in the thirty years I have been teaching (gifted not only in music, but in countless other areas as well). She will be entering her junior year of high school next month and has never received below an A on a report card, with the exception of a B+ in drivers’ ed. Her scores on standardized tests are off the chart. And her abilities are not limited to academics. She is exceptional in track, soccer and volleyball. She has a virtual photographic memory, and an astounding ability to critically analyze anything placed before her.

She is my last student on Wednesday evenings, and, since she now drives herself, she will often stay late and talk. We also occasionally enjoy presenting ‘challenges’ to each other (be they lateral thinking problems, difficult math problems, questions from IQ tests, etc.).

And what does Jane plan to do with her life? She wants to attend Harvard (nightmare #1) and she wants to be a trial lawyer (nightmare #2) so that she can finally put out of business the big tobacco companies (nightmare #3).

What is wrong with this picture?

(1) Jane’s parents, whom I know very well, love their children, but they don’t know the first thing about the faculty/curriculum agenda that rules almost all American institutions of ‘higher learning’ (especially the ivy-covered ones). And they don’t want to hear about it. They are impressed with the concept of an ivy league education, and they do not realize that what once were genuinely prestigious institutions have devolved into stagnant pools of leftist decadence and decay.

(2) Jane’s public education (which is occurring in a very well-respected rural Pennsylvania school district) is filling her head with bogus, pro-socialist, anti-liberty, anti-personal responsibility propaganda – and instilling in her a calling to use her gifts to right the social and economic wrongs that are brought about by the ‘evils’ of the capitalist system.

Over the years, I have at least partially helped to steer quite a few of my students to attend Grove City College (to my mind, one of the only two colleges in the country that does not submit to federal educational extortion, and still teaches the basis and magnificence of western civilization) – two of them are enrolled there now.

Yet Jane, whose potential is virtually boundless, has not been especially responsive to the gentle direction I have tried to offer in order to direct her away from the path she seems to want to follow. Her parents are Harvard-law-anti-tobacco-determined, and her public schooling has laid the groundwork for a left-leaning ‘save the world’ (and the hell with individual liberty or responsibility) mindset and career.

At the same time, I will occasionally talk to Jane about my interests in politics and American history. She is always extraordinarily interested in what I have to say about both, but, despite her intelligence and incredible eagerness to learn, she has absolutely no foundation (either parental or scholastic) in either. Just as some of the students described in this article, she knows virtually nothing about the real history of this country (but she can tell you about the injustices done to Native Americans, or the abomination that was slavery, or the American ‘atrocities’ committed in Vietnam, or Richard Nixon’s incomparably corrupt administration). In this area, I feel as though I am making some headway. At the very least, she is learning to ‘read between the lines’ of news stories, and she will now often question what passes for ‘fact’. I sense at least the beginnings of a healthy cynicism.

It angers me (more and more all the time) that the future career of such an extremely bright and gifted girl is most likely going to be devoted to leftist causes – so, indirectly (and without realizing it), she will be contributing, in her own individual but powerful way, to the demise of our republic.

And why will this happen? For the very same two primary reasons that this republic, if it falls, will collapse as a result of decay from within:

(1) Parents have abdicated their responsibility to instill in their children: (a) an appreciation for their roots, and (b) the power to critically analyze personal, social and political issues and problems, and seek truth. And the reason they have not provided such life-essential tools for their children is that they are too lazy and apathetic to have fostered them in themselves. How can one hand down to someone else something that one doesn’t possess to begin with?

(2) The American public and higher education systems have been hi-jacked by leftist/Marxist ideologues. And they are, in some ways, usurping (or being freely granted, in the worst cases) what were formerly roles filled by informed and involved parents/families. In the process, they are instilling in our children an ignorance of (at best) or a hatred for (at worst) capitalism and the foundations of western civilization.

So, as a result of two cancers: a form of parental ‘neglect’, and the indoctrination known as American public and higher education (and other diseases as well: the sickening power of the agenda-driven mainstream media, the unconstitutional corruption of all three branches of government – the judiciary in particular … etc.), many of the ‘best and brightest’ among our youth simply haven’t been fortunate enough to be regularly and consistently exposed to truth. So they often find themselves answering a call to put their minds and talents to work for ‘noble’ causes that really amount to nothing more than leftist ruses whose only eventual purpose is a global socialist utopia.

Only in America would we allow the deadly combination of apathy and traitors with an agenda to train our best and brightest to destroy the underpinnings that, for more than two centuries, have served as our guarantee of safety, security, sovereignty and liberty.

Before he passed away, my Dad (a World War II veteran) used to say, with profound sadness, that America’s best days are way behind her, and she has no one to blame but herself. I am my Dad’s daughter … and I echo his lament.

~ joanie (www.justiceandliberty.com)

The part we’ve already traversed (our ‘history’) is becoming more overgrown and indiscernible by the day. You don’t want to look in your rear-view mirror. You’ll see nothing but busy little leftists sweeping dirt over the road, leaving you nowhere to go but forward (if you can call it that), and no visible sign of where you’ve been.

BTTT