Inspiration for Americans Who Want To Reform Education

One of the depressing things about trying to improve US education is that the great majority of the country seems to have given up.

Mainly, you can credit the diabolical skills of our Education Establishment. They keep average citizens confused, divided, and overwhelmed by jargon and technical details. The people who should be our natural leaders -– doctors, lawyers, bankers, engineers, business executives-- probably are ashamed to admit they have no idea what anybody in education is talking about. Newspaper editors probably suffer from the same problem. So there is no deep coverage of education in this country, not at the popular level.

Anyway, just when I'm thinking there is not much hope because the Education Establishment is huge, rich, ruthless and relentless, I got two encouraging emails.

An organization calling itself the Virginia Beach Award Program said that Word-Wise Education (that's my DBA name) had been selected as the BEST in Virginia Beach in the prestigious field known as Educational Research! Basically, this seems to be an operation designed to sell plaques and such. Still it's the thought that counts:

VIRGINIA BEACH December 8, 2016 -- Word-Wise Education has been selected for the 2016 Best of Virginia Beach Award in the Educational Research category by the Virginia Beach Award Program....

Two days before that, I got an invitation from an Italian reform group to speak at their conference in Milan in March 2017. This is an honor. These people are an example of what we need all across our own country. They are fighting back against the tyranny of their Education Establishment and the tendency of the psychiatric profession to prescribe drugs to children whose only problem is that the school refuses to teach them to read in a proper way.

This Italian group, four years ago, went on the Internet looking for an expert on sight-words. They wanted advice on how to fight this problem in their public schools;.and they found me. Okay, that's one of the high points of my education career. But the sad part of the story is that nobody in the US has ever contacted me the same way. Meanwhile, sight-words are used in virtually every public school in America. It's just terrifying when you think about it. All of our leaders and ruling class, however you want to call them, have disappeared. And let a bunch of intellectual gangsters take over.

I really urge everyone in this country to consider whether they can do something locally in their city or state, more or less like what the Italian group has done. Basically organize around fundamental reform goals and then try to reach them.

Here is my article in American Thinker about this group. You might find inspiration. "Education Reform: Italian Group Shows Americans How It's Done"

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/01/education_reform_italian_group_shows_americans_how_its_done.html

Anyone who speaks out against the Dept. of Education and all of the other multitudinous and entrenched bureaucracies which control the propagandizing of children today in the name of "educating" them must be willing to be marginalized by the media and politicians.

Even as early as the Year 1886, such was the case. A man by the name of Zacharias Montgomery was denied an important post in the federal government for doing just that!

You will read some of Montgomery's words below.

With that said, those who love liberty must be willing to come forward to declare that it is better to be remembered for standing on and articulating enduring principles of right versus wrong, liberty versus tyranny, than to be praised by the mainstream media and so-called "progressives."

I am reminded of the words of Zacharias Montgomery in his 1886 Book entitled "Poison Drops in the United States Senate . . . ." Although his treatise dealt primarily with the public school question, the following remarks might be helpful to those who, today, are concerned by what passes for "public education," or, what Montgomery called the anti-parental schools.

Excerpts from Zacharias Montgomery:

"My countrymen, disguise the fact as we may, there is in this country to-day, and in both the political Parties, an element which is ripe for a centralized despotism. There are men and corporations of vast wealth, whose iron grasp spans this whole continent, and who find it more difficult and more expensive to corrupt thirty odd State Legislatures than one Federal Congress. It was said of Nero of old that he wished the Roman people had but one head, so that he might cut it off at a single blow. And so it is with those moneyed kings who would rule this country through bribery, fraud, and intimidation.

"It is easy to see how, with all the powers of government centered at Washington in one Federal head, they could at a single stroke put an end to American liberty.

"But they well understand that before striking this blow the minds of the people must be prepared to receive it. And what surer or safer preparation could possibly be made than is now being made, by indoctrinating the minds of the rising generation with the idea that ours is already a consolidated government ; that the States of the Union have no sovereignty which is not subordinate to the will and pleasure of the Federal head, and that our Constitution is the mere creature of custom, and may therefore be legally altered or abolished by custom.

"Such are a few of the pernicious and poisonous doctrines which ten millions of American children are today drinking in with the very definitions of the words they are compelled to study. And yet the man who dares to utter a word of warning of the approaching danger is stigmatized as an enemy to education and unfit to be men tioned as a candidate for the humblest office.

"Be it so. Viewing this great question as I do, not for all the offices in the gift of the American people would I shrink from an open and candid avowal of my sentiments. If I have learned anything from the reading of history, it is that the man who, in violation of great principles, toils for temporary fame, purchases for himself either total oblivion or eternal infamy, while he who temporarily goes down battling for right principles always deserves, and generally secures, the gratitude of succeeding ages, and will carry with him the sustaining solace of a clean conscience, more precious than all the offices and honors in the gift of man.

"History tells us that Aristides was voted into banishment because he was just. Yet who would not a thousand times rather today be Aristides than be numbered amongst the proudest of his persecutors.

"Socrates, too, in violation of every principle of justice, was con demned to a dungeon and to death. Yet what name is more honored in history than his? And which of his unjust judges would not gladly, hide himself in the utter darkness of oblivion from the with ering scorn and contempt of all mankind ?

"From the noble example of Aristides and of Socrates let American statesmen learn wisdom, and from the undying infamy of their cow ardly time-serving persecutors let political demagogues of today take warning."

So Zacharias Montgomery in 1886. Read his complete work at HERE.

I urge parents and others concerned for liberty to read his complete volume in order to realize this man's ability to see the consequences of what his fellow Americans were advocating in the area of education of youth.

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