Cheating Students of an Education

By Alan Caruba

It says something about the dreadful state of American education when “bullying” has become the greatest issue of the day.

As millions of American youngsters return to school, they continue to be indoctrinated with programs designed to teach that homosexuality is okay, that sex education is more important than history or math, and that they should care less about individuality than the group.

This is straight out of former Soviet-style education than an educational system that previously turned out generations who fought and won World War Two, contributed to a thriving economy, put men on the Moon, and were focused on achieving competence in reading, writing, and arithmetic. In 2001 I wrote a four-part series noting that the rot in our school system is not new. It dates back to the 1960s and earlier.

I got to thinking about this when I read a September 15th Wall Street Journal article, “SAT Reading, Writing Scores Hit Low” by Stephanie Banchero. “SAT scores for the high-school graduating class of 2011 fell in all three subjects areas, and the average reading and writing scores were the lowest ever recorded, according to data released Wednesday.”

In 2008, a Washington Times commentary by Dan Lips, an education analyst at the Heritage Foundation, noted that “Spending from all levels of government has soared. Today, the average student in American public schools can expect more than $9,200 to be spent on his or her behalf this year by taxpayers—a real increase of 69 percent over 1980 per-pupil spending. Yet this additional spending hasn’t meaningfully changed student outcomes.”

Lips warned that “it has become painfully clear that the federal government can’t solve the problems in America’s public schools”, but it is precisely the federal government’s takeover of the nation’s educational system that is the reason for the continual decline. It is yet another failed legacy of the Carter years, signed into law as a cabinet-level department in 1979, it began operation in 1980.

The statistics all reveal a long period of educational decline and the SAT scores are just one more example, but there are other indices, not the least of which is a huge dropout rate that has left countless Americans ill-prepared for any meaningful employment.

Meanwhile, there has been a relentless effort to infuse textbooks with a national curriculum as the result of the concentration by the “big four” textbook publishers. It has produced a one-size-fits-all approach to education nationwide, mostly geared to the dictates of only three states, California, Texas, and Florida because they represent about 30 percent of the K-12 market.

In 2001 the trend was already noticeable. “The result is an increasing trend toward texts that are long on visual gimmicks, short on factual information, and homogenized in content,” said that president of the Center for Education Reform, Jeanne Allen.

The introduction of “No Child Left Behind” that George W. Bush signed into law on January 8, 2002 has proved to be yet another top-down mandate that relied heavily on testing, testing and testing. Rapidly, teachers began to “teach to the test” in order to avoid the loss of funding to their schools.

Simply put, the federal government should get out of the business of education.

The regressive role of teacher’s unions was spotlighted when the then-new Governor of New Jersey took them on, insisting that teacher’s pay more for their pension and health benefits. The unionizing of teachers is as responsible as the federal takeover of education in America for the decline.

Recently, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said, “I’m tired of giving out fake diplomas” when he introduced a slate of education reforms of his state. The SAT scores underwrite his view that students are graduating from high school without the education they need to move onto colleges and universities.

Gov. Christie wants to focus on individual schools rather than districts as a measurable unit of success or failure. He wants to emphasize “outcomes” such as graduation rates, achievement gains. He wants to measure success by high standards that directly correlate to college and career readiness. He wants considerably less bureaucratic paperwork that requires more administrators than teachers. And he wants a clearly defined schedule for intervention in schools that are experiencing persistent education failure.

Something is amiss when students entering kindergarten are expected to have mastered reading skills that are supposed to be taught in the next grades. When did it become the job of parents to deliver five-year-olds to the local school with skills already in place that are the job of the school to teach? Why do these same children graduate from high school with horrid reading and writing SAT scores?

The education of today’s students has to be returned to the control of local school boards and those boards have to be freed from the demands of teachers’ unions that are interested solely in health and pension benefits, and the salaries of administrators and teachers.

Failing that and America will continue to have another generation of students that, since the 1960s, have literally been cheated of a proper education, no matter how much money is thrown at it.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

The Queering of America

By Alan Caruba

Queer, an adjective
1. strange or odd from a conventional viewpoint; unusually different; singular: a queer notion of justice.

2. of a questionable nature or character; suspicious; shady: Something queer about the language of the prospectus kept investors away.

3. not feeling physically right or well; giddy, faint, or qualmish: to feel queer.

Also slang for a male homosexual.

The Obama visit to New York on June 23 included a demonstration by GetEQUAL, a national lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) “civil rights organization” and Queer Rising, a New York based grassroots “queer equality organization” at a time when New York State is just one vote away from enacting a law to legalize “gay marriage.”

For millennia marriage has been recognized solely as the union of a man and a woman. No society has ever sanctioned “gay marriage” because to do so would be to undermine the keystone of society, the family.

For the first time in the nation’s history, we have a President who has lent his office to the advancement of the homosexual agenda, though it should be noted that former President Clinton attempted to do that when he tried to alter the military to the open acceptance of homosexuals in its ranks in 1993. After an outcry, this was modified into a “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy that Congress has since repealed.

Among the “czars” that President Obama appointed was Kevin Jennings, given the title of “Safe Schools Czar” overseeing elements of policy in the Department of Education. Jennings was and is a homosexual activist who will leave his office in July and return to Massachusetts. He has specialized in targeting children with the “gay rights” message through indoctrination in the nation’s schools that is intended to advance acceptance of homosexuality and its permutations as an acceptable lifestyle choice.

Let me pause to say that I have long regarded homosexuality as an abnormality that appears to occur in some people from birth. It is, in that regard, not a choice. Neither, however, is one’s race. I do not discriminate against homosexuals, but I do not accept the destruction of societal norms because some homosexuals demand it.

It is difficult at best to determine how much of the U.S. population is homosexual. As best as I can determine it ranges from one to three percent, with the latter being on the high side of such estimates. For years homosexuals encountered laws that conferred a criminal status on homosexuality. They also encountered many forms of rejection by the greater society.

Those laws have been repealed, but the rejection they encounter represents an increasing backlash as homosexuals have “gone public” to initiate the legalization of “gay marriage” and the introduction of “hate crimes” legislation that conflict with freedoms granted by our Bill of Rights. It has mutated as well into an alleged “anti-bullying” campaign in schools as if bullying has not been a part of every child’s introduction to the fact that bullies exist everywhere in one form or another.

Last year, Jennings helped introduce Bill 4530 in Congress that would require the normalization of homosexuality, transgenderism, cross-dressing, and other practices in the curriculums of our nation’s schools. His office received $410 million in FY 2011.

In California there is a bill moving forward to actively portray homosexuality in a positive fashion including a provision that textbooks must include figures and events in gay history. Former Governor Schwartzenegger vetoed the bill but Gov. Jerry Brown has indicated he would sign it if it passes this year. I am pretty sure this is not what the majority of Californians want their children to learn, nor is it a fit topic to teach.

On top of national initiatives, the United Nations Human Rights Council has passed a resolution condemning discrimination based on sexual orientation. Given that homosexuality is a crime in 76 nations this seems a reasonable step toward protecting those who, as I have noted, have no choice in the matter of their sexual orientation. It is, however, just a resolution, not a law.

I can speak only for myself, but I find all this activity to legalize “gay marriage” and to introduce a gay agenda into the curriculums in the nation’s schools a distinct threat to the fabric of a society based on the undisputed normality of heterosexuality. I am pretty sure the “straight” citizens of Boston and elsewhere find it offensive to host a gay parade.

I believe the greater society has a right to protect itself, its children and its military forces against these legislative intrusions, mandates and coercions to force acceptance upon it. If it continues, it will become one more factor in the destruction of America, a signal that its moral foundations continue to be eroded.

Candidates for elected office and those holding such offices should be challenged and removed when they advocate and vote for the queering of America.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Betraying Our History

By Alan Caruba

June 6, 1944 is a significant day in American history; the day that the Normandy invasion began, leading to the defeat of Nazi Germany. I was seven years old at the time and blithely ignorant of it.

Though it occurred 67 years ago, I am sure it is regarded as “ancient history” to the current generation in our nation’s public schools. In point of fact, the American Civil War had ended just 72 years before I was born, easily the lifetime of a man born at the end of that war or even one who had served in it.

June 6, 1944 marks D-Day and is the subject of many books and films, but many wars were being fought on the same day in different years.

In 1813, U.S. forces suffered a defeat by the British at the Battle of Stoney Creek in what is now called the War of 1812.

In 1862, during the Civil War, the Battle of Memphis was fought and the Union captured the city.

In 1918, during World War One, it marks the day the Battle of Belleau Wood resulted in the worst single day’s casualties for the U.S. Marine Corps.

In 1942, during World War Two, the Battle of Midway took place, turning the tide of war against the Japanese as U.S. dive bombers sunk a cruiser and four carriers in the Pacific theatre.

Like every single day of the year, a litany of battles and wars fills the history books and on any single day—like June 6, 1944—the lives of people and nations are changed forever in the ancient battle between good and evil.

It is understandable that children should be ignorant of history until they have been taught its highlights in school, but what are they being taught these days?

Most history books represent a national curriculum because what they include is determined by statewide purchases in Texas, California, and Florida. They account for thirty percent of the K-12 market.

In 2000, at the beginning of the decade, a study by the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation involving 1,000 teenagers nationwide found that:

• 22% could not name the country from which the United States declared its independence!

• 17% did not know there were 13 original colonies.

• 15% did not know the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776.

• 24% did not know who fought in the Civil War and 13% thought it was between the U.S. and Great Britain.

• 19% could not identify the three branches of the U.S. government.

• 31% did not know who wrote “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

The questions asked in the survey represented a fourth grade-level test for 8-9 year-olds, but this level of ignorance must also be seen against a larger figure. By the time it was administered, the U.S. had spent more than $125 billion on education over the previous twenty-five years. During that time SAT scores had dropped 37 points.

Is it little wonder that, in May 2011, the Bill of Rights Institute issued a call for support of civic education based on the discouraging results from the most recent National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP)?

The NAEP had found that fewer high school students reported being taught about the Constitution than in previous years. Only 67% reported studying the Constitution in 2010, down from 72% in 2006. “This leaves nearly a third of American students with no exposure to the Constitution, and 40% of those students are a voting age.”

So, yes, we should pause and recall the courage of those men who stormed the beaches of Normandy and we should keep in mind that it is not “ancient history.” Though that generation of soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines is passing from the scene, some still live. Some veterans of the Civil War were still alive when I was born.

A nation has to have a collective memory of the events that shaped it and a collective knowledge of its most important, essential documents. If the statistics about more recent generations passing through our schools are any indication, they do not.

That is an act of betrayal. I can’t prove that it is deliberate, but it surely does not bode well for a nation so poorly led by its elected representatives since June 6, 1944 that it constitutes an insult to the sacrifices and acts of valor that day represents.

© Alan Caruba, 2011