THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume VI, Issue # 76, April 15, 2004
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
THE DESTRUCTION OF AMERICAN EDUCATION
By Alan Caruba
FULL STORY:
“No school left behind by a few absentees” was the recent headline of a news story that told of how President Bush’s “No Child Left
Behind” education bill is being “tweaked” because of its requirement that all students must eventually pass federally mandated tests,
when, in fact, nearly 300 middle and high schools in New Jersey fell short. In the third “adjustment” to the law since the start of this
year, Rod Paige, US Secretary of Education, announced in March that schools would be allowed to “average their participation rates”
over three years.
This takes into account that some students choose not to show up either at school or, not unexpectedly, to take the tests. The 2002
law requires that at least 95% of all students be tested on a statewide basis. New Jersey’s Assistant Education Commissioner deemed
the requirement “a killer for a lot of schools.” Rounding up those few who simply saw no value in attending school hardly seemed
worth it. Instead, schools will round out the numbers to meet the 95% mandate.
Would that we could “tweak” the entire educational system in America and make it work again. The reality, however, is that the thing is
broken. It doesn’t work. Year after year, children pass through it from kindergarten to twelfth grade, too frequently emerging into the
world functionally illiterate and with their little heads crammed full of Leftist and environmentalist nonsense of no value to anyone but
the puppet masters who have crafted programs designed to make them docile, easily manipulated little “citizens of the world.”
It is very hard to figure out just how damaged the overall system is. The news dribbles out in bits and pieces. Meanwhile, parents,
often both working, lack the time to focus on their local schools, except when their property taxes go up once again to support the
schools.
Here’s just a few pieces of news you may have missed.
Writing in August, 2003, Washington Times columnist, John McCaslin, noted that, “every school day, 3,000 secondary
students in the United States drop out. Once the 2003-2004 school year gets under way, nearly 540,000 young people will walk
away from the classroom without earning a high school diploma. The nation’s high school graduation rate is 69 percent, although
the number is worse in urban areas, where school districts graduate fewer than half of their students. Those who continue on to
college can find the going difficult.”
The typical Liberal answer to this problem was a proposed piece of legislation, “Pathways for All Students to Succeed Act,”
introduced by Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) that would fund the hiring of literacy coaches to strengthen essential reading and
writing skills. It apparently never occurred to the Senator that those skills should have been property and effectively taught in the
early grades. The failure to do so simply triggered a call for more money to be thrown at the failure.
A 2002 National Assessment of Educational Progress report noted that reading achievement of twelfth grade students had
declined over the previous five years, with 33 percent of senior boys and 20 percent of senior girls reading below the basic level.
This is a national disgrace and a national disaster.
Meanwhile, in this election year, the Landmark Legal Foundation has lodged a complaint with the Internal Revenue Service,
asking it to investigate the National Education Association, a union despite its name, for engaging in undisclosed political
activities and funding. The complaint alleges the NEA has used tax-exempt general revenue to fund political activities and has
not reported those expenditures to the IRS for nearly a decade. Labor unions are required to file a Form 990 tax return about
such matters. This teacher’s union has spent millions on political activities despite telling everyone that its primary concern is
the children passing through the system. Secretary Paige recently called the NEA “a terrorist organization.” And then
apologized.
A longtime observer of the U.S. educational system, Samuel L. Blumenfeld, calls it a criminal enterprise. He reminds us that the
April, 1983, National Commission on Excellence in Education concluded: “The educational foundations of our society are
presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a nation and as a people…If an unfriendly
foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have
viewed it as an act of war. As it stands, we have allowed this to happen to ourselves.”
“No Child Left Behind,” the education legislation cited above, is simply the extension and expansion of the Elementary and
Secondary Education Act of 1965. Thus, for nearly four decades, Americans have stood by while their entire system has been
systematically subverted and degraded to the point where there is hardly a statistic anyone can point to that demonstrates
anything but failure.
To put it in dollars, more than $125 billion dollars have been spent by the federal government, and the only result are children
who have been deliberately rendered ignorant of basic skills, the history of their nation, or the superiority of Western culture,
while, at the same time, being brainwashed with lies, e.g., the assertion that the environment is endangered and capitalism is
an evil economic system. This year, the Bush administration blithely gave a $1.2 million grant to the United Nations-sponsored
International Baccalaureate program, a program designed to make students citizens of the world, not proud citizens of the
United States of America. In the midst of our war on terrorism, the IB teaches “peace studies.”
“Our educators have also become legal drug pushers,” said Blumenfeld. The problem is so bad that, in May, 2003, the U.S.
House of Representatives passed the “Child Medication Safety Act,” a measure intended to prevent a parent from being
coerced into medicating a child so that child could attend school. The demand by teachers and administrators that children be
forced to take Ritalin, Adderal, and other mind-altering drugs is a national disgrace. “Why is 80 percent of the world’s
methylphenidate being fed to children?” asked Dr. William B. Carey, Director of Behavioral Pediatrics at Children’s Hospital
of Philadelphia, when he testified before a House panel.
In February, the Education Trust and Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, after consulting with higher education officials and
business executives in five states, released a report that said, “For too many graduates, the American high school diploma
signifies only a broken promise.” The diploma, they said, “is a ticket to nowhere.” It has become little more than “a certificate
of attendance.”
More than 42 million adult Americans are thought to be functionally illiterate. Education Secretary Page has described America’s
reading crisis as an “emergency of the first order.” He and every Secretary dating back to 1965 and earlier have had ample time to
fix the problem.
So, let’s sum things up. The present educational system does not effectively and successfully teach children to read or write well.
It does not teach history or civics well. Pocket calculators have replaced the learned ability to compute anything in any way. It
requires large numbers of those children to be medicated with mind-altering drugs. A growing number of school districts around
the nation are either in revolt or finding creative ways to fudge the numbers required by “No Child Left Behind.” The largest
teacher’s union is more interested in political activities than educational achievement. A high school diploma is too often a
worthless piece of paper.
There’s a reason why home-schooling children has become the desperate and heroic option of parents who want to insure that their
young sons and daughters receive good educations.
There’s a reason why the schools seem more concerned with teaching about things such as sexuality, cultural diversity, and
global citizenship. The reason involves a deliberate effort to render American school children & youth unable to compete in the
real world and disengaged from the values that underpin our society, and our nation’s survival and future.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
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 Nations 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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