THE DEMISE OF PUBLIC EDUCATION

I was educated in the public school system.  From kindergarten through the middle of the third grade I attended public school in Pittsburgh.  From the middle of the third grade through high school, I attended public school in Cincinnati.  From there, I earned two engineering degrees in a state university.  So, I am a product of the public school system.  My wife spent decades teaching in public schools.  She too was educated in the public school system.

One of the memories I have about public schools is that the core values that I was taught in the public schools matched the core values of my parents.  They were also reinforced by the church and the organizations to which I belonged.  We did not get mixed messages about life principles.  We may have strayed from them at times, but we had no doubts what principles were to guide us.

I was blessed by the public schools I attended.  Especially, the schools in Cincinnati did a splendid job.  They ranked very high in academic training and also physical fitness.  Early in grade school, we had city wide competition in gymnastics.  We were encouraged to participate in a wide variety of sports to keep us healthy.  Our high school was located across the street from the University of Cincinnati.  We were encouraged to take college courses that counted for both high school and college credit.  My high school education was so good that the first year and a half of college was mainly review.  To summarize, I am very pleased with the public school systems in which I was educated.

The public schools I attended in Cincinnati were highly integrated.  They were located in some of the oldest areas of the city.  The buildings were some of the oldest buildings in those areas.  The point is that the education I received was available to all students of every race and background.

Times have changed since the 50’s and 60’s.  Public schools had their own set of principles.  They were:

Parents have the responsibility to raise their children

Schools are to cooperate with parents to provide academic abilities to prepare students for success.

Schools impart knowledge and a thirst for learning for a lifetime.

Schools give students the tools to continue to learn for the rest of their lives.

Schools emphasized what it takes to be a productive citizen and appreciate our heritage.

Schools emphasized personal responsibility and accountability.

So, what has happened since those days?  A different mindset has moved into our universities and taken over the training of future teachers.  Teachers’ unions have developed extraordinary influence over the educational process and are led by people with a very different set of principles.  Parents are now viewed as pests who need to be controlled or ignored.  The education establishment sees themselves as the primary source for raising children.  Their purpose is to indoctrinate not educate.  Statist Collectivism is the ultimate goal of Public Education.  The motto of the public education is “of the state, by the state, and for the state”.  But statist collectivism has a fatal flaw.  It contradicts human nature.  That is why it has failed, does fail, and always will fail.  It demands people be compliant and submissive to a little group of pinheads that run the system.  The problem has always been for statist collectivists that people are not compliant by nature.  And they certainly aren’t submissive.  By nature, people love to make their own choices.  So, they rebel.  That is when the statist collectivists transition into dictators to crush the rebels.  We see it happening all over the world.  In spite of hundreds of years of watching statist collectivism fail, it is still being promoted by our educational systems.

But it is not the only thing being taught to our children in state run schools.  The world of education is full of fads.  It is much like the fitness world.  About every year a fad guru is brought into the school system to promote his or her own fad for indoctrinating students.  Presentations are made, books are sold.  Teachers are trained.  Then the new curriculum is used for about a year or two and another guru shows up and the process begins again.  The old materials are stored away to rot and millions of dollars of materials sit in the dark.

Here is a list of a few current trends of propaganda being pushed on students today:

Critical Race Theory

Racist Math

Post Modernism

Anti Americanism

Anti Capitalism

Gender Confusion

Neo Segregation

Muslim orientation

Anti Biblical Faith

Anti Nuclear Family

Marxism

Cancel Culture

Woke Culture

Notice how little emphasis is on academics.  With so much time spent indoctrinating our children, academics is almost forgotten.  Look at the test results for students attending public schools.  Then, compare that to the amount of money we spend on public education.  It’s no wonder that millions of parents are thrilled that teacher unions refuse to go back to work.  They don’t want those teachers anywhere near their children.  They want the unions abolished and new people brought in to really teach what is necessary and helpful to train their children to be productive citizens of this great nation.

What can parents do about the mess our schools are in? First, they have to unite to revolutionize public education.  The leaders of the educational system are being trained in how to suppress parents.  They learn how to get around parental opposition.  So, parents have to learn how to fight back.  Overwhelm the school administration with parental presence.  Go to the meetings.  Demand control over the curriculum.  Make it clear who is in charge of raising your children.  Pack the school boards.  Demand input as to who is hired to teach your children.  There are many wonderful teachers out there who really want to teach your children academics.  They are just as discouraged by the failure of public education as you are.  Form an alliance with them.

If the system won’t cooperate, take a close look at private schools.  If they are too expensive, demand school vouchers.  But, be very careful as to what private school you choose.  Do your research.  Some private schools are following the public schools’ example.  Many parents are choosing home schooling.  That is an option that is growing.  Parents are forming co-ops to help with home schooling.  Both private schools and home schooling mean sacrifice for parents.  Count the cost.

Here is the bottom line.  Public schools are broken.  The system has been hijacked by people with a whole different set of principles than the parents of students.  COVID has unmasked the putrid state of public schools in general and teachers’ unions in particular.  The people in charge of the unions are not qualified to have anything to do with our children.  I saw a quote from an educator this morning that says it all.  They said, “Public education isn’t educating our children. They are indoctrinating them”. 

The only practical solution is for the nation’s leaders to see the parents of America abandon the public schools as they are and demand change. 

I just finished watching a town hall meeting in Virginia near Washington D.C..  Students and parents and doctors shared the disaster public education has foisted on students during closing of schools.  Parents shared how they had organized and protested the abuse of their children by the public schools.  The school administrations refused to listen to them, but declared war on them.  Some parents became so fed up that they enrolled their children in private schools or began to home school them.  Did that cost them dearly financially and time wise?  Yes, but the peace they experienced being free to control their children’s education was such a relief from the torment of oppression from the public school that they were glad to pay the price.

Let the transformation begin! 

 

 

 

WHAT CRISIS?

Why do Dems not label the situation on the southern border a “crisis”?  It’s because it is not a crisis to them.  It is their dream come true!  They want chaos on the border…or anywhere else for that matter.  Chaos is their goal.  They celebrate when they see hordes flooding across the border and the agents are overwhelmed.  They also celebrate mobs attacking police, burning government buildings, looting stores, insane murder of black children in Chicago, etc.. 

Read the textbooks of the left and the statist collectivists (Socialists, Communists, Progressives, Fascists, Fabians).  They start by creating chaos.  Then comes anarchy followed by a demand from the masses for “order”.  The left promises order and rushes in with their totalitarian system and takes over and crushes the opposition with massive force.  We’ve seen the process over and over since the late 1800’s. 

How many times in recent years have we watched the news and wondered why the left seems bent on starting another civil war.  They divide us.  They fan the flames of hatred.  They push post modernism.  Why?  Because Post Modernism is chaos.  It destroys all the basic elements of civilization.  It under cuts  science, math, the judicial system, medicine, and government.  It denies truth and trumps reality with perception.  It is simply insanity. 

Why were the Dems so insistent on passing the 1.9 trillion dollar “Covid Relief Package” when only 9% went to Covid Relief?  It does not make sense. The result will be massive inflation and national debt and financial instability.  It’s a dream package for them because it will result in financial chaos.

So, when you just can’t understand when our leaders make insane decisions, remember chaos is their goal.  It is a necessary step for them to take complete control.  That’s what they have been taught for decades in our institutions of “higher” learning.  

Don’t lose hope.  We’ve been here before.  Woodrow Wilson tried to instill statist collectivism.  FDR’s National Recovery Act became a socialist nightmare for our country. Hitler loved it.  The Third Reich copied it. But WW II blew it out of the water.  Be encouraged.  Our Constitutional Representative Republic will be victorious over the insanity of the left once again.

 

 

MATH IS RACIST…ARE YOU NUTS?

For decades Liberals have accused all opponents of being Racists.  It makes no difference who you are.  You can be a Civil Rights leader, black, white, oriental, native American, you are labelled a Racist if you oppose a liberal.  Recently, Math has been labelled Racist.  What!!?  How is this happening?  Read on and I’ll answer the question.

The answer is Post Modernism.  I ran into this philosophy in 1960 when I arrived at college.  Post Modernism was being taught in the freshman Philosophy class.  I was enrolled in the pre-engineering program.  When you find out what Post Modernism is, it will be clear why I had a real problem with it.

The philosophy can be summarized by two basic points:  1) There is no Truth.  2) Reality is trumped by perception.  You can imagine the problem.  All but one of our classes were teaching us “Truths” and helping us discover reality.  The Philosophy class was telling students the opposite.  We ended up dismissing Post Modernism as absurd and we moved on.  I can’t remember one student who bought into it.  But, hold on.  It’s back!

Post Modernism is a reaction to Modernism.  Modernism goes back many years.  The essentials of our civilization are based on Modernism.  It held that there are truths and there is reality.  We all remember science classes where we learned “truths”.  They were called “laws” or “axioms” or “theorems” or “principles”.  These are statements of what was determined to be factual.  All sciences are full of them.  We memorized them, studied them and developed equations to measure them.  We applied them to useful applications of each discipline.  Post Modernism holds that all truth is relative. (Of course, that is a statement about truth that destroys the argument.) Post Modernists are telling our young people that there are no incorrect answers to math problems.  There are many answers.  Sane people would dismiss such an idea as absurd.  But, in our racially charged society, Post Modernists have cloaked their absurdities in Race to give them legitimacy.  They are claiming that only white people are Modernists and that Modernism is a product of white supremacy.  They assume all people of color should be Post Modernists and should abandon Truth because its Racist.

If our civilization were to buy into such a philosophy in big numbers, civilization as we know it would collapse.  Science would be meaningless.  Of course, as we are seeing, math would cease to exist. Medicine, Psychology, the Judicial system, would be in chaos. In fact, that is the goal of Post Modernism…Chaos.  That’s what all the riots in our cities are about.  They want to create massive chaos.  Why?  Because the only solution to chaos is complete totalitarian rule.  During times of chaos, the people will demand someone take control and straighten out the mess.  They will tolerate a dictator or totalitarian system to “fix” the problem.  This scheme is not new.  Statist Totalitarian leaders have used this plot over and over for centuries to grab power.

Post Modernism also explains the surge in the Gender Confusion Movement.  For them, perception trumps reality.  If you perceive you are a different gender than your birth gender, that becomes fact.  Society must accommodate your perception not the medical reality.  It makes no difference that medical science has found that almost all children who question their birth gender and think about being the opposite change back as they go through puberty.  That fact is ignored and the Movement demands that the child be given chemicals and operations that can’t be reversed at an early age.  It’s no wonder that doctors are calling such actions “child abuse”. 

As Post Modernism infiltrates our education system, we will see our civilization crumble into chaos.  Racist Math is only a small sample of the absurdities that will follow.  We must demand our teachers be Realists if we hope to survive.  Parents have to be informed as to what is being taught in the schools their children attend.  If there are signs that the flames of hatred and division and chaos are being stoked by the staff, demand change before it is too late.  Hold on!  I’ve just been informed that Oregon is looking seriously at altering its math program to remove “racism”.  What would be altered?  “Correct Answers” and specified processes to arrive at correct answers would be changed because some how they were developed by “white supremacy”.  Basically, what is being proposed is extreme racism.  The proponents of this nonsense are postulating that only white people are capable of handling math as it’s been taught forever.  They assume all other races are inferior.  Now, that’s real racism. And it is a blatant lie.  I’ve taught various courses in science and math to every conceivable race and all races are able to grasp and use it successfully. 

Consider how important basic math skills to our civilization.  Just about every job demands basic math skills…accountants, store clerks, mechanics, secretaries, administrators, teachers, truck drivers, etc. all need to do basic math.  Without basic math skills, nobody could pass an entrance exam into any field or institution or school.  Imagine how far a candidate for any position or school were to get if they answered a math problem with “there is no correct answer”.  A diploma from any Oregon school wouldn’t be worth a piece of toilet paper.  Graduates would have to immediately be placed on welfare because they couldn’t get a job. 

If you are the parent or grandparent of a school age child, you are in a very difficult position.  Many of the public school systems are broken.  Look what the teachers’ unions are doing to children during the pandemic.  Look at the test scores of public school grads.  Many of these people aren’t qualified to teach our children.  They shouldn’t be allowed within 100 yards of them.  They have traded in education for indoctrination into beliefs and practices that we have no desire for our children to learn.  They go to extremes to keep parents from knowing what is being taught.  Why?  They know there would be a rebellion.  So, what can we do?  We can put our children in private schools.  But that is very expensive and may not be nearby.  We can home school.  But we may not have the skills and time for that.  Vouchers are a reasonable alternative, but you will have to fight the teachers’ union for those.  Whatever you do, be informed.  Demand that you be given access to what is being taught in each class…yes, even math.  Organize parent groups to oversee what is being instilled into your children.  Get to know the teachers and administrators.  If you see a problem, speak up.  Remember, you are paying these people.  I wish you well.