THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume VI, Issue # 31, February 12, 2004
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
THE "NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND" PROGRAM:
IMPOVERISHING EVERYONE & EDUCATING NO ONE
By Alan Caruba
Want your child to earn a salary equal to or more than the governor of your state? Want your child to be sought after by districts all
over the nation offering all kinds of financial perks? Want your child to hold a job where failure to achieve any real improvement in the
actual product, a student prepared to enter the workplace, has no affect on their job security?
Then put your child on a career path to be in the field of education, where he or she can rise to become the supervisor of a school
district! Why? Because, not only has the Bush administration backed a program, “No Child Left Behind”, created by the leader of
the Liberal wing of the Democratic Party, Teddy Kennedy, but he signed a bill that throws $49 billion at it. It mandates annual testing
via a national program of standards for all public school students in grades 3 through 8. It requires “steady progress” for each minority
group in our nation’s schools, as well as for “special education” students. It requires “reorganizing” any school that fails to meet
these mandates.
And the entire “No Child Left Behind” program is managed from Washington, D.C. Your local school board has diddlysquat to say
about your local school’s curriculum or standards. Neither does your state school board. The education of today’s children is entirely
controlled by the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, two labor unions that have a chokehold
on the U.S. Department of Education. Both unions will tell you they are entirely dedicated to students, but they are both entirely
dedicated to higher salaries for teachers and administrators.
As I am frequently wont to say, the word “education” does not appear anywhere in the U.S. Constitution. The Founders of this nation
understood that education was best served at the local level and somehow, prior to around the midpoint of the last century, America’s
local public schools managed to turn out students so well educated they created the world’s greatest economy, most powerful
agricultural system, a constant stream of technological advances, and what is arguably the most effective military fighting force on the
face of the earth.
Indeed, a 2000 federal court decision says, “The right to an education is not guaranteed, either explicitly or implicitly, by the [U.S.]
Constitution, and therefore could not constitute a fundamental right.” In short, education is not the prerogative, nor the job, of the
federal government and never has been. Throughout our history, public education has always been seen as the job of local government.
An American tradition, its value was recognized in rural communities and in cities from the very earliest days of settlement.
This began to change with the establishment of standardized college entrance exams. Curriculums began to serve the designers of
these tests, and educational bureaucrats began to enforce a curriculum tied to them. Since the 1960s, however, the deliberate
“dumbing down” of the educational system has consistently produced an annual crop of students who are deficient in their
knowledge of history, civics, geography, science, and other topics about which students in other nations, when tested, consistently
score higher grades. In short, America’s students, thanks to a system engineered by the NEA and AFT, have long since been
“left behind.”
What else can you expect from a system that prefers “new” math to memorizing multiplication tables and encourages student to
spell words any way they want? This is not to say that children don’t want to learn, but when you’re busy being taught that all
cultures are the same and equal, getting in line to be drug-tested or being required to take a mind-altering drug for being “too
active,” you tend not to learn the fundamentals of reading, writing and arithmetic, while, at the same time, learning a great deal
about “self-esteem.” This is an educational system that has been so strongly politicized it no longer reflects the real world.
For the record, every single one of the contenders for the Democratic Party's nomination as its candidate in the coming November
presidential election supported “Leave No Child Behind” and most called for throwing even more money at this effort to “improve”
education by testing, testing, and testing.
The NCLB program, no matter how lavishly it is funded and no matter how many tests are given under it, will fail miserably to
bring about an improvement in education provided by America's public schools. No, education is improved by letting teachers
teach, teach, and teach. They cannot do that if they must wear an educational straightjacket tied to goals set, not by a local
school board, but by federal government educrats. The term for the teaching method that is the centerpiece of NCLB is
“teaching to the test.” And any school administrator, classroom teacher, or university professor of teacher education who is
worth his salt knows and will you that "teaching to the test" is a very poor, unsound, and ineffective teaching practice.
So, while taxpayers can look forward to ever-rising property taxes to underwrite ever-rising salaries and other school expenditures,
the children in America’s schools can look forward to learning less and less of practical, necessary value for the conduct of their
lives.
Instead of science or social studies, they learn that all of the rain forests are disappearing or that there’s no place left for garbage
or that the air and water is unsafe. They learn that the members of some African tribe residing in mud huts are living “close to
Nature” because they don’t have electricity or can't use DDT to protect themselves against Malaria. Or that all the glaciers are
melting. They learn that the Founding Fathers were slaveholders and that Christopher Columbus’ greatest achievement was the
spread of disease to indigenous Indian tribes. They learn Socialism, disarmament, radical environmentalism, and to avoid making
any kind of moral or ethical judgment. Little wonder that home schooling is one of the fastest growing trends in America today!
And it’s going to get worse. The Bush administration has begun issuing grants to help spread a United Nations-sponsored
school program that aims to become a “universal curriculum” for teaching “global citizenship, peace studies, and equality of
world cultures”!
As my friend, Henry Lamb, an expert on the United Nations, points out, “No longer are American children learning about the
structure of a federal republic compared to a parliamentary democracy. No longer are children learning the difference between
capitalism and socialism. No longer are children being taught why the United States of America became the most powerful
economic engine the world has ever known. Instead, they are being taught that, with less than 5% of the world’s population,
the U.S.A. uses 25% of the world’s resources and produces 25% of the world’s pollution. They are being taught that the U.S.A.
is the #1 terrorist nation. They are being taught that the rest of the world is mired in poverty because of the greedy capitalists
in the United States.”
That’s right. Your child and future students in American schools will be taught that being a citizen of the world is more
important than being an American citizen. The curriculum is “a set of culturally neutral universal values to which all people
aspire,” based on human rights, equality of the sexes, and “open-mindedness to change and obligation to environmental
protection and sustainable development.”
Among the things sustainable development is opposed to are cars, air conditioning, logging, bio-engineered seeds that produce
crops with higher levels of vitamin content, higher yields per acre, and less need to reduce forestland for farming. Sustainable
development is opposed to property rights, the keystone of capitalism. It is Socialism on steroids. This is what your child or
grandchild is going to be taught because the Bush administration is pushing and any future Democratic administration will be
pushing a United Nations curriculum on the schools, instead of supporting an American curriculum!
But don’t worry, Big Government, no matter who’s running it, has plans to help you put your child through college with a
system of grants to pay for his or her tuition. You’re going to need those grants because the cost of today’s educational system
will have made it impossible to save enough money on your own. If this sounds like a plan to wreck individual freedom,
prosperity and America’s sovereignty, it is.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
More on Education & America's Schools
A Practical Guide to Homeschooling
Alan Caruba is a veteran business and science writer, a Public Relations Counselor, Communications Director of the American Policy Center,
and Founder of the National Anxiety Center, a clearinghouse for information about media-driven scare campaigns. Caruba writes a weekly
column, "Warning Signs," posted on the Internet website of the National Anxiety Center
(www.anxietycenter.com). A compilation of his past col- umns, entitled Warning Signs, is published by Merril Press. In addition
to Warning Signs, Caruba is the author of A Pocket Guide to Militant Islam and The United Na- tions vs. the United States,
both of which are available from the National Anxiety Center, 9 Brookside Road, Maplewood, New Jersey, 07040.
Copyright 2004 Alan Caruba
Published with Permission of Alan Caruba
ACaruba@AOL.Com
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THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
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Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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