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Posted on 10/20/2009 2:17:20 PM PDT by rabscuttle385
We would not have to ask the above question if public education had not become the great, costly, and tragic failure that it is. It has failed the children, but in reality it has not failed the progressives. They were the ones who engineered the dumbing-down process which parents and taxpayers continue to pay for. But it is the children who suffer in terms of becoming intellectually disabled, semi-literate, disoriented, frustrated, and terribly unhappy. But what is even a bit disheartening is that many liberals still believe that government schooling has been a noble experiment.
Perhaps Walter Lippmann, the great liberal pundit, best expressed liberal disappointment in the great experiment when he wrote in 1941, while World War II was raging in Europe: “Universal and compulsory modern education was established by the emancipated democracies during the nineteenth century. ‘No other foundation can be devised,’ said Thomas Jefferson, ‘for the preservation of freedom and happiness.’ Yet as a matter of fact during the twentieth century the generations trained in these schools have either abandoned their liberties or they have not known, until the last desperate moment, how to defend them. The schools were to make men free. They have been in operation for some sixty or seventy years and what was expected of them they have not done. The plain fact is that the graduates of the modern schools are the actors in the catastrophe which has befallen our civilization. Those who are responsible for modern education -- for its controlling philosophy -- are answerable for the results.”
Unfortunately, they have not been answerable for the results. In fact, if you read today’s slick professional education journals, you detect great pride in what they’ve accomplished. And of course, since the time Lippmann wrote as he did, we have had any number of wars — Korea, Vietnam, First Gulf War, Iraq, Afghanistan — with no end in sight. Not even Lippmann would have foreseen our war against Islamic terrorism. In fact, on September 11, 2001, the United States was attacked in a manner that no one could have predicted. It was worse than Pearl Harbor, and the reason why the terrorists succeeded was because what they planned and successfully carried out was too diabolical to be believed. It required believing the unbelievable. A well-educated people is supposed to believe the unbelievable when warranted.
There were many seductive arguments for free universal public education at the time of its first promotion in the early years of the nineteenth century. Horace Mann spoke of compulsory free education as the means of perfecting humanity, the “great equalizer,” the “balance wheel of the social machinery,” the “creator of wealth undreamed of.” Poverty, ignorance, prejudice, social injustice, and every other evil afflicting the human race, it was thought, would disappear.
Others argued that free education for all would help us preserve our way of life. Governor DeWitt Clinton of New York said in 1826: “I consider the system of our common schools as the palladium of our freedom, for no reasonable apprehension can be entertained of its subversion as long as the great body of people are enlightened by education.”
Daniel Webster, the famous Senator from Massachusetts, eloquently echoed those optimistic sentiments in 1837 when he said: “Education, to accomplish the ends of good government, should be universally diffused. Open the doors of the school houses to all the children in the land. Let no man have the excuse of poverty for not educating his offspring. Place the means of education within his reach, and if he remain in ignorance, be it his own reproach…. On the diffusion of education among the people rests the preservation and perpetuation of our free institutions.”
But of course neither Daniel Webster nor DeWitt Clinton could have foreseen what would happen to public education once atheistic socialists got their hands on it. We have seen a steady erosion of our domestic freedom to an ever growing dependence on government to solve all of our problems. Most Americans, living in a capitalist society, still cannot understand such basic economic concepts as supply and demand, or the meaning of the word profit, or how government can cause inflation with the printing press and thereby destroy the value of our currency. Even the President of the United States, a graduate of Harvard Law School, seems unable to understand some fundamental economic principles that govern a free, capitalist society.
It is important to note that our system of compulsory state-controlled education was not brought about by any spontaneous popular demand, for education was already virtually universal in America before it became compulsory. And most people did not relish the idea of paying taxes to support schools that were not really necessary. But the politicians and professional educators wanted government financed education because running successful private schools was not easy.
According to Prof. E. G. West: “The supplier of educational services to the government, the teachers and administrators, as we have seen, had produced their own organized platforms by the late 1840’s; it was they indeed who were the leading instigators of the free school campaign. Whilst conventional history portrays them as distinguished champions in the cause of children’s welfare and benevolent participants in a political struggle, it is suggested here that the facts are equally consistent with the hypothesis of self-interest behavior as described above.”
It has become abundantly obvious that all of the totalitarian states of the modern world have used the instrument of public education, with the willing cooperation of most public school teachers, to keep their people enslaved. School teachers, even in a free society, are not necessarily freedom fighters. They generally do what the government tells them to do. That’s the way they keep their jobs, particularly in a down economy.
Most Americans are not aware that our own compulsory education system was based on the Prussian model, which was criticized by wary citizens as being inappropriate for a free country. It was suspected that such a system transplanted to our country would not promote freedom. Horace Mann, who was most instrumental in getting America to adopt the Prussian system, addressed the critics. He wrote in 1844:
“If Prussia can pervert the benign influences of education to the support of arbitrary power, we surely can employ them for the support and perpetuation of republican institutions. A national spirit of liberty can be cultivated more easily than a national spirit of bondage; and if it may be made one of the great prerogatives of education to perform the unnatural and unholy work of making slaves, then surely it must be one of the noblest instrumentalities for rearing a nation of freemen.”
One of the great uses of history is to be able to study the foolishness of past leaders who today are upheld as great benevolent statesmen. Horace Mann is certainly one of these moral idiots who gave us an education system that has gradually dumbed-down the American people to the point where their enslavement is virtually assured. If under the present regime in Washington, the American people manage to fend off their enslavement, it won’t be because of anything they learned in the government schools. It will be because of a spirit of independence and love of freedom that is enabling them to rise up in face of a potential dictatorship.
Public education was not only unnecessary, it has become the major destructive force of American culture, a destroyer of academic excellence and moral behavior. The growth of the home-school movement has demonstrated that parents can become better educators than the so-called professionals. Our colleges of education are producing educators who have no idea of how to teach reading, writing, or even simple arithmetic. Their minds have been filled with a collectivist ideology that makes them unwitting accomplices in the enslavement of the American people. Unbelievable, but true. If you want to survive in today’s America, you’d better start believing in the unbelievable.
Dr. Samuel L. Blumenfeld is the author of nine books on education including NEA: Trojan Horse in American Education, The Whole Language/OBE Fraud, and The Victims of Dick & Jane and Other Essays. Of NEA: Trojan Horse in American Education, former U.S. Senator Steve Symms of Idaho said: “Every so often a book is written that can change the thinking of a nation. This book is one of them.” Mr. Blumenfeld’s columns have appeared in such diverse publications as Reason, The New American, The Chalcedon Report, Insight, Education Digest, Vital Speeches, WorldNetDaily, and others.
I would say that public education is a necessary evil, except that it isn’t necessary.
Post of the day!
"Ayers, now a tenured distinguished professor of education at UIC, works to educate teachers in socialist revolutionary ideology, urging that it be passed on to impressionable students.
One of Ayer's descriptions for a course called 'Improving Learning Environments' says prospective K-12 teachers need to 'be aware of the social and moral universe we inhabit and ... be a teacher capable of hope and struggle, outrage and action, teaching for social justice and liberation.
The Annenberg papers are quite extensive — 132 boxes containing 947 file folders with 70 linear feet of material. They undoubtedly contain more surprises regarding Obama's relationship with Ayers, one of many relationships Obama has sought to hide.'..."
Article: Annenberg Papers: Putting On Ayers?
http://www.ibdeditorial.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=304729375940845
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REVOLUTION: Voice of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA [Maoist]
[Revolution] Interview with Bill Ayers, Revolution #63, October 1, 2006:
"On Progressive Education, Critical Thinking and the Cowardice of Some in Dangerous Times"
http://rwor.org/a/063/ayers-en.html
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The RCP calls for the armed overthrow of the U.S. government...
From the website of the Revolutionary Communist Party (revcom.us or rwor.org) :
"Create Public Opinion, Seize Power: We are preparing minds and organizing forces for the time when there is a major crack in the system, whenever it comes and wherever it comes from: an opening that makes it possible to bring the future Revolutionary Army of the Proletariat (R.A.P.) into the field and wage a revolutionary armed struggle that actually has a chance of winning.
And we have said that building our party itself is the most important part of organizing forces for revolution. This is true now, and it is true looking forward to the creation of that future R.A.P. and the waging of that armed struggle.":
http://revcom.us/a/v20/1000-1009/1000/barw.htm
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"This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who's a professor of English..."
--B.H. Obama
YouTube Video:
The O'Reilly Factor confronts Bill Ayers:
October 24, 2008:
(note the red communist star on his shirt)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dP3uvK9gTIY
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This is tragically the truth. I know some very intelligent people that are ignorant about how our economy works and why it works.
“It has failed the children, but in reality it has not failed the progressives.”
Yes indeed. I think it enabled the results of last November 4th’s election. The NEA deserves a lot of credit for a Kenyan Muslim Communist Chicago punk ignoramus nobody to be posing as President of the United States.
In my fantasy world, the Fed gives up all it’s control and funding of “public education” to the states. Then the states can best decide what to do with “public education”. The answer may well be to privatize education while maintaining standardized testing. The states would then compete with each other to produce the best and the brightest students.
Many people with children tend to look for areas to live with the best school systems. It might very well change the demographics of our national population.
But think of the money it would save while also improving the education of our youth. Schools would have to advertise and perform on real budgets.
The quickest and most efficient and effective way to defund and disempower the Left TOMORROW is for every family that can homeschool or use private schools to do so.
Every child in public education is nothing but a cash cow, the vehicle for all kinds of federal funding, and a captive audience for the Left’s perversion.
This is why conservative candidates at every level need to continue to fight for school vouchers. Without vouchers, we condemn the least able, the most poor, and the perennially disenfranchised to criminally poor schools.
I often wonder what percentage of freepers send their children to public school. Has there ever been a poll?
Gee, yet ANOTHER issue those crazy Birchers nailed spot on over 50 years ago.
Sadly, now that the hour is VERY LATE, most of those who laughed at is then have stopped laughing.
“I know some very intelligent people that are ignorant about how our economy works and why it works.”
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Wrong! They may be pseudo intelligent or selectively intelligent but they are not “very” intelligent, very intelligent people understand the free market and the alternatives.
btt
I imagine most FReepers had public education. Mine was pretty good. My vote for the mess is the entertainment industry.
Introduce some competition.
No school can ruin an otherwise good education.
Eh. I'm not so enthusiastic about vouchers, since it still implies government control over where parents can send their children to school or what young Americans can study. In other words, vouchers are only Band-Aids on a gaping wound. I would rather that--
The Department of Education should be dismantled entirely.
Get rid of NCLB, as it federalizes what is the responsibility of individual parents and local communities.
"Sunset" the federal student loan program for college students. Any students who are still in the pipeline should be allowed to continue to borrow for up to seven years (depending on degree type), but no entering students should be allowed to borrow under the federal student loan program. The availability of cheap, government-backed credit has distorted the marketplace for higher education credentials (namely, undergraduate degrees) by essentially treating all degrees as equal when, in reality, different degrees and majors have different earning potentials. Federal loans have contributed largely to the persistent and dramatic increases in tuition and fees over the last three decades and have actually increased the percentage of graduating students who start their lives in debt.
At the local and state level, retain K-12 schools, merit-based post-secondary (vocational or "university") programs that are "high performing" (e.g., TJHSST in Northern Virginia). Establish a uniform set of standards (see the uniform set of test standards below) for these schools, and fund them in full.
Improve the quality and the security of public libraries, and explore widening access to major public research libraries through the use of digital technologies, using technologies that are open-source and based on open, public standards. Make course materials for undergraduate classes available for free over the Internet. Make available tutors (the equivalent of today's teachers) at local libraries, and allow tutors to set their hourly rates.
At the local and state level, establish a uniform set of tests that can be taken by individual students for a fixed per-test fee, and establish a uniform set of standards that constitute a "public education" (i.e., demonstrate competency on a number of tests, participate in an apprenticeship or hold a part-time job, etc.).
The purpose of public education is to provide citizens and other lawful residents with opportunities, regardless of their means, to improve themselves by gaining knowledge and skills and to become better people, i.e., people who will guard and defend the liberties and freedoms that have defined American society from its inception. That's the true goal of public education, and IMO, one that is consistent with the view of Mr. Jefferson.
Forget the traditional classroom with desks and a teacher. Make the information available for free in public libraries, organized of course, make tutors available on an hourly basis, and allow students to study on their own and pass certification tests. Lincoln studied by the fireside at night, in his spare time, and he became President.
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