Posted on 10/19/2002 7:09:57 AM PDT by George Frm Br00klyn Park
WorldNetDaily / Commentary
Henry Lamb
What are your kids learning?
Posted: October 19, 2002
1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2002 WorldNetDaily.com
Geography was once taught in the fourth grade. Mrs. Howard, a sweet little lady with blue-gray hair, started each year by teaching her students how to spell: "George Eats Old Gray Rats And Paints Houses Yellow." She would announce the phrase and then make the entire class repeat the phrase aloud. Yes, she also subtracted one point for every misspelled word on every paper – even in her geography class.
She taught about the great explorers and the lands they discovered. She brought to life Marco Polo, Lief Ericsson and Sir Francis Drake. She made the pyramids real and told of the mysteries of the Incas to her wide-eyed students.
My, how things have changed. I've just reviewed a portion of a middle-school text entitled, "Geography: The World and its People," published by McGraw Hill. Here we find lessons about:
• Eye on the Environment: Danger – Ozone Loss
• United States and Canada: Trash
• South America: The Disappearing Rain Forest
• Europe: Pollution
• Russia: Chernobyl – Nuclear Disaster
• Southwest Asia: Water – A Precious Resource
• Africa: Desertification
• Asia: Habitat Loss
• Great Barrier Reef: Trouble Down Under
This is geography?
Each lesson comes with a statement of the problem, solutions and a list of "what you can do." The "solution" to the trash problem in the U.S. and Canada says:
"Environmentalists want paper manufacturers to pay a tax on each ton of new paper produced, which should encourage the use of recycled paper."
The "what you can do" tip says: "Boycott fast-food restaurants that do not use recycled materials for packaging."
Each lesson follows a similar pattern. One lesson says: "Support International Green Cross – an environmental protection group organized at the recent Earth Summit." This, of course, is Mikhail Gorbachev's outfit that seeks to put his stamp of approval on "sustainable" products. There is a big circle on the same page that says: "Equal Rights for all species."
This is the clap-trap being taught in geography classes in public schools.
The text was reviewed and approved by the National Geographic Society and a dozen "Multicultural Consultants." One of the three authors, Richard G. Boehm, was one of seven authors of the "national standards in geography," prepared for Goals 2000.
It's the same in math classes, in history classes and in all classes. Our kids are being brainwashed instead of being taught the fundamentals that will prepare them to compete in a free society.
Robert Hillmann's book, "Reinventing Government," details how and why our public-education system has been transformed. The process has been underway for decades and is so deeply entrenched that an education revolution may be required to stop it.
Parents protest to their local school boards, who say they have nothing to do with what's in the textbooks. Textbook publishers publish what school districts purchase. Teachers teach what the state requires. The state requires whatever produces federal funds. The teachers' unions determine what the federal government requires.
Home schooling – and private schools – may be the revolution that collapses this public brainwashing system.
The objective of public education today appears to be the preparation of society to accept the notion that the "public good" – as defined by government – is more important than individual achievement, and that whatever government does, advances the public good.
Individuals who are forced to suffer the pains of public policy should do so willingly, in order to advance the public good. The people in South Florida, for example, who are being forced off their land, should be happy to receive whatever the government decides to give them. After all, restoring the Everglades is a "public good" far more important than the dreams and hopes of any individuals.
What's frightening is the number of people who have already been brainwashed into believing that individual rights, and individual achievement, do not matter – what matters is whatever government decides is the public good.
Organizations such as the Maple River Education Coalition, and others, are fighting an uphill battle trying to inform parents about what their children are learning. The hill is even steeper at the state and federal levels. Those who control the curriculum also control the funding. They now have firm control over what children are taught, and they are not about to relinquish that control.
Today, we need teachers like Mrs. Howard, who was more concerned about her students' education than their beliefs and their "politically-correct" activities. These teachers are an endangered species in the public-education system. They are, however, finding refuge in the nation's private schools. On with the revolution!
Henry Lamb is the executive vice president of the Environmental Conservation Organization and chairman of Sovereignty International.
THIS article at WND
Amen to that, my friend! You have hit upon the heart of the issue.
The DOE must be declared unconstitutional as STEP ONE toward saving our schools.
Read it Eska.
This is the control loop with TEACHERS' UNIONS at the apex. It's why the NEA was started in the 19th Century.
Horace Mann and John Dewey were committed socialists and students of Marx. The system had to start with an excellent free product in order to gain market share. Once they had it, the NEA leadership slowly took it down. If you want to save public schools, vote out the union leadership. If you can't get it done, don't bitch when home educators work to collapse the system.
Frankly, it can't be saved.
All species? I killed probably tens of thousands of ants not too long ago, so I supposed those wackos consider me a mass murderer.
Peter Singer - father of the animal rights movement said “Christianity is our foe- if animal rights ideas are to succeed we must destroy Judeo-Christian religious traditions”.
No government has any business providing or intruding into the education of people's children. It was one of the first steps in the incremental process toward a totalitarian state.
Politics and education don't mix!
Your child's future is in jeopardy!
form the Autonomist's Notebook.
School Reform Links from USABIG
Hank
Hatch Amendment Letter - Parental Consent Form for use in the Public Schools
Oh I'm doing my bit for public schools by providing them the standards of competition that they will have to chase. My kids will be done with high school level work before they are twelve. We'll start a college level curriculum in certain subjects before then (particularly mathematics). In history and literature they read the classics (with a thumb in a good world atlas): Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides, Cicero... They LOVE this stuff. My hope is that by the time they enter college at 18 they'll have two to three majors at least half complete with at least two years' worth of college level math, physics, chemistry, accounting, and economics under their belts.
If the pubelick skewels don't like eating our dust maybe they'll get with the program. If they want to learn something maybe they'll ask how we do it.
When they supercede the main purpose of the subject matter.
Geography: 1. the descriptive science dealing with the surface of the earth, it's divisions into continents and countries. 2. the physical features, esp, the surface features of a region, area or place.
Public schools cannot be saved. They must collapse. There is no reason that every function now served by public schools cannot be done better and cheaper by the private sector. If the parents want to own the company and tax themselves for the purpose, fine. Get the State and Feds out of the loop. It's not worth the money.
Absolutely! This is going on in our communities today, as the EPA 'encourages' communities to develop Greenways plans and Watershed plans in exchange for commmunity development grants.They say it's for the environment, but all the planning requires government control of all use...
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