THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA

An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume IV, Issue # 107, September 18, 2002
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
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AMERICAN PUBLIC EDUCATION & THE MAKING OF A BLACK UNDERCLASS
By Samuel L. Blumenfeld

Early this month, September, 2002, many thousands of black children entered first grade in public schools all over America where, inside of a year, many of them will become full-fledged reading failures and, thereby, future members of the black underclass. Of course, there is no reason why anyone with an education should be relegated to the underclass. But that's the rub. The system will pretend to educate, while systematically using teaching methods, such as whole language and invented spelling, that create reading disability and dyslexia, thus putting that child on the road to academic failure.

Thus, intelligent children who, with proper instruction, would otherwise become truly literate are relegated to the junk heap of our society because of a perverse elite that is hell-bent on dumbing down the nation. Black children suffer the most because their parents, who themselves have been dumbed down, are least capable of understanding what is happening to their children in the public schools.

In America we compel children to be subjected to wholesale educational malpractice with hardly a complaint from our intellectual establishment. The only people who genuinely care are socalled rightwing "extremists" who write books critical of the system, which are never reviewed by the academic community.

Here's what Professor Anthony Oettinger of Harvard University, a rabid advocate of dumbing down, told an audience of corporate executives in 1982:

        "The present 'traditional' concept of literacy has to do
        with the ability to read and write. But the real question
        that confronts us today is: How do we help citizens
        function well in their society? How can they acquire
        the skills necessary to solve their problems?

        Do we, for example, really want to teach people to do
        a lot of sums or write in 'a fine round hand' when they 
        have a five-dollar hand-held calculator or a word pro-
        cessor to work with? Or, do we really have to have
        everybody literate writing and reading in the tradi-
        tional sense when we have the means through our
        technology to achieve a new flowering of oral com-
        munication?
Of course, the original purpose of universal compulsory education was universal literacy. However, the academic elite is now asking whether or not everybody ought to be literate. But every parent who puts a child in a public school expects that school to teach their child to read in the traditional sense. But now we are dealing with teachers who ask "do we really want to teach people to do a lot of sums or how to read?" Since when do we now hire teachers who don't want to teach what parents expect them to teach? Every child that enters the first grade expects to be taught to read. What an incredible betrayal of a public trust to deliberately turn that child into a crippled illiterate!

But make no mistake about it. Even though the educators have no intention of teaching those children how to do sums, or write in a fine round hand, or read and write in the traditional sense, they still want them in the classroom for twelve years. What for? To turn them into abject failures.

Regardless of whether the child will be going to a better public school outside his or her neighborhood or to a charter school, chances are very good that he or she will be trained to read by one of the whole-language programs that produce reading disability and dyslexia.

How can this be, you might ask. Hasn't whole language been thrown out and replaced by intensive, systematic phonics? Unfortunately, not. The educators may not call their reading program whole language, but you can be sure that it will be whole language in a new disguise. The new program is generally referred to as "A Balanced Approach." It is all part of the dumbing-down agenda, which is the basis of our dumbed-down curriculum.

The reason why the schools are not teaching reading by way of intensive, systematic phonics is because there are virtually no primary teachers capable of doing so. Their training at college emphasized whole-language instruction. Therefore, even if they wanted to teach intensive, systematic phonics, they would not know how to do it.

The American public school system has become a sadistic trap for the unwary. It turns some teachers into sadists, who gain secret pleasure in watching the students they hate and can't control turn into failures. And, unfortunately, there is nothing in President Bush's education reform that will change this. Thus, the only solution for parents is to get their kids out and either teach them at home or put them in a private school they can trust.

More on Education & America's Schools

A Practical Guide to Homeschooling



Copyright 2002 SierraTimes.com



Reprinted with Permission from SierraTimes.com
August 25, 2002

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