If American schools have been brainwashing our kids, how is it that they grow up and vote for Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, Newt Gingrich, and Trent Lott? The political spectrum in this country has moved dramatically to the right in the last 30 years. How can public school indoctrination be such a threat?
You are equating effort with result. Despite the best efforts of the education industry to produce armies of little leftie drones, they have failed. The reason is simple. How can one be an effective indoctrinator if one is a poor teacher, and our dismal test scores and international comparisons advise, loudly, that we have a lot of very poor teachers.
I believe we are headed for a society that is run by one group of folk, the home schooled, private schooled or the increasingly few in public schools that are getting an education while the vast majority of other folk, the normal public school grads, will be cubicle drones destined to be led.
The great existential danger to a democracy is that collective idiocy will destroy all the great accomplishments of generations past and bring down the entire nation in a vortex of stupifaction and self-indulgence.
A rather scary (and more extreme) example of the hijacking of education by propogandists, is that in Saudi Arabia by certain extremist sects of Islam. There, it appears the secular leaders made a deal with the devil to remain in power (for the time being) in exchange for handing over the tools of indoctrination and ensuring the eventual downfall of the nation they have been entrusted to guide and protect.
My son’s high school American Government text book lists two ways to amend the Constitution - the formal two stage amendment process and the “informal process”. The Informal Process is described as “Judicial interpretation and social, cultural and legal change...” That alone should tell you the mindset of those in charge of public education.
It seems likely that much of education is going to move online where the quality can be made consistent, measured, and improved. The athletic teams will dry up as the nanny state feminizes and risk-proofs away sports.
My son’s high school American Government text book lists two ways to amend the Constitution - the formal two stage amendment process and the “informal process”. The Informal Process is described as “Judicial interpretation and social, cultural and legal change...” That alone should tell you the mindset of those in charge of public education.
Maybe they should offer a third option. When Lincoln gave the Gettysburg Address, he was basically amending the Constitution by implying that the Declaration of Independence applied to everyone; ok, maybe not women. Amendments followed.
Isn’t the textbook just acknowledging that there is more than just one way to amend the Constitution or more accurately to achieve the effect of amending the Constitution? Adams, Lincoln and GWB have effectively amended the Constitution, at least in the short term with their various checks on civil liberties in times of perceived crisis. FDR, or whoever, did a job on Japanese American citizens in WWII. It’s not as if the only adjustments are “liberal” broadenings. The sword cuts both ways.
Public (Government) Schools should be abolished. Government dollars that fund education come with an agenda. Textbooks have to be approved by the Government to make sure that the “correct” agenda is written into them.
All the PC issues that are causing so much concern today are being brainwashed into our children through the Government controlled textbooks. This needs to stop. we need to go back to reading, writing, and arithmetic and do away with all that other garbage.
In a purely free education system, the Liberals would have the freedom to print their own textbooks and teach their children all about Sally dating Sharon, and the rest of us would be able to send our children to schools that teach them reading, writing, and arithmetic.
The problem with this scenario is that the Liberals would want us to pay for their schools too.
My son’s high school American Government text book lists two ways to amend the Constitution - the formal two stage amendment process and the “informal process”. The Informal Process is described as “Judicial interpretation and social, cultural and legal change...” That alone should tell you the mindset of those in charge of public education.
My first thought was, that is the most shocking thing I’ve heard in a long time. On reflection, though, one could argue that it is a correct description of what has actually happened in recent decades. Maybe it would be more honest, for example, to say flat out that Justice Blackmun et al. amended the Constitution in Roe v. Wade. I don’t think that’s what the textbook had in mind, though.
For what it’s worth, I read my girlfriend’s daughter’s high school textbooks back in Forth Worth, TX about ten years ago and found them pretty respectable. I did not find the bias I expected. The only example of bias I found was bias by omission.
In a chapter about the Aztecs, it went on about the greatness and sophistication of their civilization with not a mention of human sacrifice which was at the center of their religion. When I told the daughter’s boyfriend, he said that was impossible. The teachers would have included that if it had happenned, he said.
Of course, that’s just the kind of big, fat, slow pitch we old curmudgeons love that allows us to prove to the kids that we know more than their teachers.
Last year my youngest son was in fourth grade, one of the books they had to read and do a report on was about dropping the bomb on Hiroshima and it’s affect on one child. The kids did a report and had to draw a picture on this. What the book did not teach of course was why the decision to drop the bomb was made, or what atrocities the Japanese had committed. Too much information for a fourth grader to handle I was told when I questioned this. But apparently not too much to know that the little girl in the story dies of leukemia, and it is all the ugly Americans fault. No context to the story.
I educated my son myself, and afterwards went to his teacher who had also taught two older brothers as well as an older sister. This is a teacher I like a great deal. I asked her how it was that this book was taught the way it was without the proper context. Answer? It’s part of the curriculum this way. A cop out answer as far as I was concerned. I never felt the same way about this teacher again either, is she incapable of providing better context? Is she simply not allowed or what?
I am not in favor of stopping public education. Educating all of our citizens has a long history in this country. What I am in favor of is making the process different and that requires removing unions and such from the equation. Public schools as they sit now have a great deal to do with the conditions in this country in the late 1800’s, and the disinterest from the government, instead the interest of Rockefellers and their progeny John Dewey formed modern schools. If you are truly interested in what went wrong and what may be done to help fix it please go to this site. http://www.rit.edu/~cma8660/mirror/www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/12o.htm
John Gatto was awarded teacher of the year by New York twice, he may be tilting at windmills now, but he knows what he is talking about.
What is considered “Right” today was completely middle of the road 30 years ago.
30 year ago almost nobody approved of abortion on demand, or gay rights, or public employee unions, courts making law, gun control laws, ........go down the list of what the “right” believes and it is what most people believed 30 years ago.
There is a hard slide to the left across the board in this nation
The hard slide to the left has been omnipresent in the school system and media as long as I have been in it. Thirty years ago I was thirteen and in public school systems and the liberals were fresh off the heels of their love ins, Woodstock, and failed experiments at socialism. Their agenda was in full effect in the school systems and colleges. Time and Newsweek hated Nixon, blamed the coming ice age on the US and its fossil fuel consumption, and felt as though we should feel guilty about being number one. Not “Bill Maher number one” granted, but the number one that could eat any other country for breakfast and crap them out by recess. The number one where any individual could set forth and attain anything he wanted. The country that is called for when any other nation in the World is in trouble and needs the big guns. The number one that the left leaners want you to forget we are by loading us up with guilt for actually being the largest, most powerful, prime example of a living breathing democracy ever produced. Thirty years ago there was the same sense of self-loathing given to us by the media and teachers as today. The same sense of abortion on demand, special rights for groups be it gay, female, or ethnic, gun control, unions, and so on. Hell, every woman wanted to be called Ms and grow as much body hair as possible. Gay pride parades and bathhouses were the rage. Roe vs. Wade was recently passed. Veterans were spit on and told they had killed children. To me, the same type of left leaning people that are prevalent today filled the media and the schools then. The more things changed the more they stayed the same.
Lance
“Many want to clone their own views into their children, even if they are against cloning. I have more a free enterprise view where the students should be exposed to many ideas . . .”
I wish we could successfully instil the concept of exposing stuident to many ideas upon the “book burners” who are obsessed with preventing our students from being exposed to “radical” ideas like Intelligent Design.
I will concede that yes the textbook may simply describing how the Constitution has been changed but I assumed the purpose of the textbook was to explain the way our Government is supposed to work - not how it’s been bastardized.
We tend towards things we love; at one time this included God, family, and country. Now we teach our children that these are bad things: they are suppressive, confining, controlling, and limiting. They point to history to support their claims. It isn’t a surprise that children grow up feeling disconnected from the world.
I know we were talking about primary or secondary education, but in higher ed moral relativism is the real evil of the times. It’s hard to make an argument for religion, politics, or decent human behavior when “right” and “wrong” or socially constructed misnomers that represent the racist and evil United States.
