A time line of the socialist/communist takeover of the American educational system
Today’s blog post is brought to you courtesy of frequent and long time reader, infrequent commenter, and trusted friends IRL: tarkas
Tarkas sent me an email with a copy of the 1999 book, the dumbing down of america by Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt (you can download the entire 738-page book for free at that link, or you can buy the 2011 updated and condensed version here
Here’s the email that tarkas sent me along with the book:
This might be a worthwhile post on your blog.
This is a time line of the socialist/communist takeover of the American educational system. I was a high school teacher from 1986-1989, took a bunch of graduate level education courses and never knew how much of the “foundation” of our modern teaching philosophy and techniques had been based on progressive thinking. The whole system is slanted towards producing a “Globally conscious and useful human”. You know ….Obamaites
One thing that the “educational elites” did not figure in, in the utopian socialist collective new world order, is the “religion of satan” that old Moh fabricated about 1500 years ago The fools thought that if everyone was educated properly there would be peace and prosperity for all. They failed to recognize what was in their own evolutionary teachings, that the strong survive and the weak perish. If that is not the rough blueprint for capitalism I will eat my shirt. Collectivism works for ants, bees, and termites. But even insect colonies wage war for vital resources and the best come out on top.
Really this old lady has put together a great piece of information here. Plan on homeschooling Cash. Start cruising half price books for old (pre 1950) text books and encyclopedias. I have old school books that go back to 1870 or so, you are welcome to them.
You have a fine looking boy, don’t let public education and TV get a toehold.
With all the best intentions from a successful father of 3 (tarkas)
Much thanks, tarkas. I don’t know how we’ll do it yet, and I suppose I have about 5 years to figure it out, but our goal is to home school young Cash.
I despise our educational system and the modern profession of teaching* as much as I hate anything about progressivism. And for exactly the reasons you mention and that are laid out in detail in this book.
I want to raise my young man to be a critical thinker, a self-reliant and self-assured boy who takes responsibilities for his own actions, successes, and failures; a boy who deeply loves his country, freedom, and liberty (and dogs, hunting, fishing, building forts in the green belt, and all the other things boys are supposed to love); a boy who understands that nothing is free and he is owed nothing, that anything worth having is worth busting your ass for; a boy deeply versed in what makes this country great, as opposed to the current academia-approved and revised American history that teaches young boys that white men are the scourge of all evil in this country and that wealth and success are evil.
I don’t want to send my boy off to an institution where they’ll attempt to feminize the boy out of him and suggest we dope him up on mood altering drugs and chemicals to cure his “ADD” and all the energy and fearlessness that is naturally inherent in little boys.
Dammit — we named him freak’n Cash Jennings Cooper for reason. If I’d wanted a little girly man, who shares his things because he’s been told that he MUST share his things rather than because he WANTS to share his things, a boy too timid to question the absurd ramblings, lies, and distortions of history of their patchouli-brained teachers, I’d have named him Francis. If some teacher ever stands up and says something as stupid as “war never solved anything,” I want my boy to get up and set her straight and argue that, Oh hell yeah…war has solved plenty of shit.
As noted in the book, the only way to restore educational freedom, put education back into the handsof parents where it belongs, and destroy the Left’s attempt of creating their dream socialist society is to “get the federal government, with its coercive policies, out of education completely. The billions of dollars being spetn by the federal government to destroy educational freedom must be halted, and that can only be done by getting American legislators to understand that the American people want to remain a free people, in charge of their own lives and the education of their children.”
* Standard disclaimer: yes, I know there are some damned fine teachers out there, and there are some damned fine conservative teachers, too — I know and am related to some of you. But you’re fighting a losing battle with your hands tied behind your back against the institutional liberal machine of academia.
** The updated book includes the final, but long-planned, institutionalization of three activities, relatively new to the reader: (1) the use of unconstitutional tax-supported (public/private partnership) charter schools run by unelected boards. These schools use non-graded Skinnerian computer instruction to train for the planned economy (school to work); (2) global values-changing education, including International Baccalaureate programs and (3) restructuring of our nation’s representative governmental structure, using regionalism (socialism) with its unelected councils (soviets), and communitarianism.
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Robbie, I remember this incident like it was yesterday because it made me go “WTF?”
I was in a Subway in a small town in the county next to mine on inaguration day in January, 2009. I noticed that the place was pretty busy for 2:00 p.m. I had this conversation with the cashier, a young girl about 19:
Me: Wow! You’re pretty busy today for this time in the afternoon.
Cashier: Yeah, we always are on a holiday.
Me: What holiday is it?
Cashier: President’s Day.
Me: President’s Day?
Cashier: Yeah.
Me: Do you know when President’s Day is?
Cashier: Yeah, today.
Me: No, it’s in February.
Cashier: Really?
Me: Yeah. Are you in high school?
Cashier: No, I done graduated.
Me: When?
Cashier: Last year.
Me: Didn’t they teach you in high school when President’s Day is?
Cashier: Nah, we didn’t learn that kind of stuff.
Me: Didn’t you study the Constitution in high school?
Cashier: Un-huh.
Me: Did you study Government?
Cashier: Nah, just History and English and that kinda stuff.
Me: Well, how did you do?
Cashier: I graduated with honors.
Me: Thanks, have a good day.
This 19 year old is was not exceptional. She represented what we are churning out of our schools. If it were not for the cash register telling her how much to give me back out of my $20 bill, she would have had to take her shoes off to count back my change.
Texas has the largest population of home schoolers in the nation. There is a reason for that. Go to the Red Apple Project website and look at the stats on our school districts and you will understand that our school systems have been dumbed downed so that kids who don’t apply themselves or kids who can’t speak even workable English won’t feel bad about themselves (self respect now being more important than being able to function in the adult work because you can actually read and write and add more than single digits).
The funny thing was that when I attended a seminar in San Antonio dealing with education/school reform that promoted vouchers (the money following the child, not the school districts) the room was filled to the brim with Hispanic parents who wanted better educations for their kids and wanted to sent them to parochial schools with rules and regulations that the kids had to follow.
On January 10, 1963, Congressman A.S. Herlong, Jr. of Florida gave a speech on the floor of the House thaat outlined Communist goals in America:
17: Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of the teachers’ associations. Put party line in textbooks.
18: Gain control of all student newspapers.
I have a niece who’s daughter has never set foot in a classroom, except for one time, to take the SAT at the age of 12…she scored 1400. She will be entering college at 16, is a prodigy on the piano, is now taking up the violin, is in her fourth year of learning one foreign language and is beginning to learn another. She is a bright, engaging, interesting and interested person, besides being very outgoing and very sweet. I would hate to think how her wonderful mind might have been wasted if she had gone the traditional route to education, instead of home schooled.
She is also learning a new skill at the age of 14 from her grandfather, pistolero.
I’ve had a mixed bag when dealing with homeschool families. Some have been very pleasant and some were downright elitist (if you didn’t homeschool then in their view you were worse than dirt). And I don’t have any kids and won’t have so I will never have to personally deal with this issue.
But given some of the horror stories I’ve heard from public schools (the worst one being a young man who committed suicide after being bullied and where the school did nothing — I know his grandparents personally, they run a local charity that I’ve supported for nearly a decade), I can see why it’s become popular.
The homeschool lobby in Texas is quite strong and the state law is very supportive of homeschooling (especially after a Texas Supreme Court case, Leeper v. Arlington ISD, which affirmed the rights of parents to homeschool). I provide the following link to the largest homeschool advocacy group in the state, the Texas Home School Coalition: http://www.thsc.org/HomeTHSC.aspx?Id=HOME They are a bit more religiously oriented than you (Robbie) have admitted to being but they provide a wealth of information on what you need to do to begin and how to deal with any intrusive school district or CPS personnel who may cause problems.
Thank you much for that link, Mark. I have a lot of homework and planning to do over the next few years.
Empirical evidence trumps gut feeling.
Here’s an interesting research exercise. Look up the top ranked countries in terms of educational standings, particularly in math and science. Then:
1. Research the country’s relative political leaning.
2. Research whether the country’s educational system is primarily public or private.
Mind you, this exercise is rhetorical. An analogy would be if a bunch of 6 foot 8 guys were crushing a 6 foot 2 player in basketball, and the player’s coach concluding that he is obviously too tall.
Here’s my analogy to a socialist educational system:
– Five guys get together for a beer. Each one of them has at minimum one FACULTAD under their belt. They begin discussing world matters and succeed in forging an informed discussion. Then they begin to discuss their particular disciplines and each of them has no clue about specific matters related to that discipline.
Here’s an actual example: in order to be granted a medical facultad in Europe, a physician has to learn (and is tested) on how to repair an x-ray machine should the “need” arise. That same wanna be physician has to learn obscure Latin names for medical disorders and medications. Broad learning philosophy you say. I say “Jack of all trades and master of none” philosphy…
Socialist educational systems force its students to become global rather than local Mr. Han. Would you not consider a balanced approach?
Here’s my analogy Mr. Han:
Five guys get together for a beer. Each one of them has at minimum one FACULTAD under his belt. They start discussing world matters ewach is smarter than thou. Then they start discussing their particular disciplines and don ‘t have a clue.
An actual example: in order to be granted a medical facultad in Europe, a potential canidate has to learn (An is tested) on how to repair an x-ray machine. That same candidate will spend infinite number of hours learning obscure Latin terms for disorders and medications. Make a comparison to the requiremenmts of a medical degree program in the US.
European and socialist educational curricula are 90% global and 10% local. My preference would be a more balanced approach…
The Progressives have succeeded, the current under 40 population in the United States has been thourghly indoctrinated there is no use to attempt to have a intelligent discussion with them. They have all the answers and if you have a different view that varies from their orthodoxy they imediately shift into personal attack mode completely ignorning all incovenient verifiable facts refuting their ignornance.
Anything that is left of center just like progressivism, is an idiocy. No worries however, these progressive libtards will cry crocodile tears for their stupidity I assure you (but not on my shoulder and hopefully not yours either).