Posted on 08/13/2003 3:04:46 PM PDT by Vindiciae Contra TyrannoSCOTUS
Twenty years ago this month, an ad hoc commission established by then-Education Secretary Terrell H. Bell released a report entitled A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Education Reform. The report quickly became the most widely discussed educational reform blueprint in American history. One sentence in the report summarized the commission's take on the status of American education: "If an unfriendly power had attempted to im-pose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war."
Although the report generated a landslide of attention and multiple reform efforts, our education system is still in crisis. We have not solved the problems identified in the report because the teacher unions have consistently blocked meaningful reforms. Teacher Unions vs. Good Schools -- May 2003 Education Reporter
A Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and author is warning that widespread ignorance of American history among students and teachers at high schools and colleges is a major threat to the nation's security.
According to McCullough, who is a past president of the Society of American Historians, American citizens cannot function in a society if they do not know who they are and from where they came. He said only three colleges in the United States require a course on the Constitution in order to graduate -- and those are the three major military academies (the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, the Naval Academy at Annapolis, and the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs). Senate Panel Hears that Ignorance of U.S. History Poses Major Security Threat
The Washington Times notes other speakers who appeared before the panel voiced similar concerns.
The Heartland Institute Where Do Public Education Dollars Go?
Author: School Reform News staff
Published: The Heartland Institute 06/01/2003
U.S. public education spent a total of $410.6 billion in school year 2000-01, according to Public Education Finances 2001, a March 2003 report from the U.S. Commerce Department’s Census Bureau. Out of each public education dollar spent, 85.4 cents went for current spending, 11.9 cents went for capital outlays, and 2.7 cents went for other expenditures.
The 85.4 cents for current expenditures was made up of 51.8 cents for instruction, 28.9 cents for support services, and 4.7 cents for other current spending.
The Commerce Department publication also reported $402.4 billion in total public education revenues for 2000-01. Of each public education dollar raised, 49.9 cents came from state sources, 43.0 cents came from local sources, and 7.1 cents came from federal sources.
Total school district debt outstanding at the end of the year was $201.6 billion, roughly half of annual revenues. Fall 2000 enrollment in public schools was 47.2 million students.
Finding: The five top reasons parents cited for homeschooling their children: "Can give a better education at home (48.9 percent); "religious reasons" (38.4 percent); "poor learning environment at school" (25.6 percent); "family reasons"(16.8 percent); and "to develop character/morality" (15.1 percent).
Sample or Data Description
Data from the 1999 Parent Survey of the National Household Education Surveys Program
Source
Stacey Bielick, Kathryn Chandler, and Stephen P. Broughman
"Homeschooling in the United States: 1999"
U.S. Dept. of Education, National Center for Education Statistics .
Vol. , Number . July, 2001. Page(s) .
Why Should Congress Abolish the Federal Role in Education?HSLDA | ... A Violation of the 10th Amendment
The federal role in education is a violation of the 10th amendment of the United States Constitution which states, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." Nowhere in the Constitution is the federal government delegated the power to regulate or fund elementary or secondary education. Department of ED: A Bureaucratic Spending Trough
In the face of stiff opposition, the federal government formed the Department of Education (ED) in 1979. Supporters promised that the ED would have a relatively small budget of only $14.5 billion and less than 100 employees. Today, the ED enjoys a hefty budget of over $32 billion and employs 5,100 people (89.4% of whom were deemed nonessential during the November 1995 government shutdown).1 The education spending rate since the department’s founding has risen three times as fast as non-defense discretionary programs (29.5% versus 7.9%).2 Federal Programs Actively Seek to Usurp States’ Authority
In 1989, most of the nation’s governors drafted a comprehensive set of federal education goals. These goals would center on a ten year plan to improve education by setting high achievement standards (federal standards) which states would have to meet by the year 2000. Thus, Goals 2000 began its unpopular legislative career. States would be given partial funding for the Goals by the ED. Several states (Alabama, New Hampshire, Virginia, and Montana) balked at the program, fearing the federal regulations which would naturally follow the money. This did not matter to the ED, who simply made the funds available directly to the local school districts regardless of the Governor or legislature’s position. Again, this represents a radical, unconstitutional usurpation by the Federal Department of Education. Federal Funds Create Red Tape
Although statistics show that only seven percent of an average school’s budget is subsidized by the feds3, local districts complain about massive paperwork and red tape required to receive these skimpy funds. A 1991 survey of Ohio school districts found that each district was required to fill out an average of 330 forms, of which 157 were from the state and 173 were from the federal government.4 The federal government, responsible for only seven percent of the budget, causes 55% of the red tape. The Cost
On February 28, 1996, Republican leaders in the House of Representatives held a comprehensive meeting on abolishing the Department of Education. House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-TX), flanked by Congressman Goodling (R-PA), McKeon (R-CA) and others, produced the results of an investigation by the Economic and Educational Opportunities Committee. The committee documented 760 unconstitutional federal education programs located in 39 separate agencies, departments, commissions and boards. The combined, unconstitutional funds totaled $120 billion! Further, the committee found that only six percent of these programs have as their primary function the teaching of math, reading, or science!
Goodling stated, "This massive list of federal education programs clearly demonstrates what many of us had suspected for quite some time that Washington is out of control and out of touch." Pointing out a huge stack of papers required for all the Education Department’s programs, McKeon remarked, "The Clintons say that it takes a village to raise a child, but that is only because it takes a village to fill out this paper work."
We are Christians, Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox, denouncing the Democratic party as constitutionally anti-Christian. DNC: The Godless Party, Practical Atheism - Touchstone, April, June 03
The thermometer results show that white fundamentalists have positive feelings toward Catholics. Their score of 62 degrees was identical to the average score that Jews gave to Catholics and significantly warmer than the mean rating given to Catholics by the religiously nonaffiliated or by secularists. Our Secularist Democratic Party (Long, Important Analysis)
For the average American today, as for the average individual in Nietzsche's Germany, it simply makes no practical difference whether God exists or not. This is true in spite of those polls that show that 98 percent of Americans believe in God. Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, and the Death of God
Now, 25 years later, I am ashamed to be a Democrat. More than that, I have come to fear my own party. Hatred and corruption - the roots of fascism - are on the march in America as they have never been before, and leading this march is the Democratic Party. Increasingly, mainstream Democrats are uncomfortable with what we see in our party. We may not have a real name for it, but we know it is dangerous. DNC Fascists -WorldNetDaily, Bob Just, July 25, 2000
Aldrich is afraid the Hard-Left might use American national security and our War on Terrorism as a veil for its goal of a massive authoritarian government. Book Review: Thunder on the Left by Gary Aldrich
The rest of the table demonstrates that secular voters and most religious minorities fell squarely in the Democratic camp. Secular voters favored Gore over Bush by an almost two-to-one margin. FT October 2001: America Fifty/Fifty
It was the issue of education which caused me to realize how far the Democrats had strayed from any semblance of being for "the little guy."
Education, more than any other issue, can be the "wedge" in peeling off voters from the Democratic Party. These voters would find themselves in agreement with the thrust of this article.
It's hard to argue with the truth.
I shall read it later tonight.
Off to make dinner!
When in the Course of EDUCATIONAL events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.(4)
[…]
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these STATES, solemnly publish and declare, That these STATES are, and of Right ought to be Free TO CREATE… Independent LOCAL SCHOOLS; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the FEDERAL GOVT, and that all political connection between them and the FEDERAL GOVT, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent SCHOOLS, they have full Power to…. do all other Acts and Things which Independent SCHOOLS may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
Depends on your job. What is it?
"The same is true of science. Although Christianity is often mocked as superstitious mumbo-jumbo, the reality is that everything in human history except for the Judeo-Christian tradition is superstitious mumbo-jumbo. Science, as we know it, was exclusively the invention of Christians. Aside from a few ancient Greeks - notably Pythagoras and Archimedes - science as an explanation for reality did not exist among the ancients."
"Islam produced a smattering of mathematical geniuses, but no great physical scientists at all. India and China were vastly wealthier and more ancient than Europe, but science simply did not exist in either of these ancient civilizations. The Amerindian societies of the Inca and Maya both achieved prodigious technological feats, but no science."
"More significantly - and this ties in directly to the complaints about Mel Gibson and The Passion - science arose exclusively out of Christian and not out of Judeo-Christian tradition. The mockery often made of medieval reaction to Galileo and Copernicus has produced a legend of intolerant Christians."
"It was rather specifically the tolerance of science, the tolerance of differences, the tolerance of those seeking fearlessly the truth of a loving God that made science the exclusive province of professing or at least nominal Christians. Galileo, Copernicus, Pascal, and Napier were all orthodox and serious Christians. Newton and Kepler were nominal Christians who were deeply concerned about religion. These men created science as we know it."
"The complete domination of science by Christians continued through the Middle Ages and well into the modern era. James Clerk Maxwell, arguably a greater scientific genius than either Newton or Einstein, was a profoundly serious Christian. Lord Kelvin, to whom we owe the law of entropy, chaos theory, the finite limits of thermodynamic activity (absolute zero), and most of the principles of thermodynamics, was equally pious."
"The immense and dramatic contribution of later Jewish scientists - Michaelson, Einstein, Bohr, Pauli and many others - did not come until long after Christians had created modern science. Medieval Judaism, like Islam and Hinduism and Buddhism and every other metaphysical system except Christianity, was hostile to science."
"Why does this matter?"
"Because one of the charges against Mel Gibson and The Passion is that reliance upon the Gospels is typical Christian hillbilly mentality - and yet this is the ... ... precise belief structure --- that created the vast majority of intellectual understanding of the modern world. Fidelity to truth, confidence that our truth is the shadowy outline of a loving Creator, and unprecedented genius which flowed directly from that confidence is the surest evidence serious Christians cannot be dismissed by serious critics as hayseeds or kooks."
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