*Prior to the war, the South imported a great deal of its food from northern and border states, as southern plantations were highly focused on production of such cash crops as cotton*
Yep, and tobacco and hemp. The only real food-staple crop cultivated in the South prior to Sumter in any substantial quantity was rice.
*Davis and his ilk couldn't even bring themselves to engage blacks in the Army because of the horrible precedent they thought that would set at a time when they desperately needed the manpower*
Save towards the very end, when the handwriting on the wall was all but a finished literary document. The Confederate Congress actually *did* pass an enabling act allowing for the induction of slaves into the Confederate Army, with the proviso that they would be manumitted after honorable service, presumably after a Southern victory. They did this, as I remember without looking it up, about three or four months before Appomattox--rather late in the game and militarily irrelevant in any event.
*The North, for the first part of the war, fought fought partly about union (especially, control of the Mississippi river) and partly about slavery (the NE abolitionists, who were a formidable political force in the North)*
And let it be remembered that most NORTHERNER'S held the NE abolitionists in about as much contempt as they did the Southern "fire-eaters" who where pushing for secession. Most of them considered the NE abolitionists to be just as big a bunch of troublemakers as the extreme Southern secessionists in South Carolina and Mississippi. Most Northerner's donned blue uniforms and marched south to fight to preserve the Union, not free slaves, *BUT*, the need to do this would not have arisen had slavery not been the catalyst for such polarized, irreconcilable differences between two large, politically & socially influential groups on either side of the Mason-Dixon line.
No matter how many other ways folks try to cut it, the fuse that lit the powder-keg of our Civil War always circles back to the slavery question.
It's far worse than you could ever imagine.
Deconstructing Public Education
Diane Alden July 26, 2002
Public education in America is a mess. No amount of money or fixing is
going to turn it around. Humanists, cultural Marxists, the
psychologically oriented social engineers and gurus are in charge. Those
who seek to deconstruct America, its values, its institutions and its
history, as well as its future as a sovereign state, are running the
show called American public education.
The Intellectual 'Gods' of the American Educational Wasteland
In order to achieve a temporary teaching certificate back in the late
'80s, I experienced what nearly every teacher in the U.S. today has to
learn or absorb. Included in my studies were the theories and
philosophies of education gurus like Jung, Carl Rogers, Abraham Maslow,
Adler, William Glasser, John Dewey, Wundt, Pavlov, B.F. Skinner and
Watson.
The problem, as I concluded, is that a little valuable information or
objective studies were mixed in with junk, the political, the
manipulative, psycho-sociological theory.
It is important for a teacher to know at what stage or age a child
learns what. But it is even more important that a teacher have something
valuable to teach. That is not what is happening in our public schools,
high schools or the colleges of education these days.
Rather, feelings, techniques, self actualization and the ever-popular
sensitivity training and "project learning" have replaced solid facts
and information and workable teaching techniques. You know ? the kind
of knowledge that children learned in most schools before the
radicalized '60s generation captured the culture and the schools.
These are the new totalitarians, who adopted psychological tools that
have created the dumbed-down, tuned-out, easily manipulated, irrational
people that most public schools turn out by the millions.
As I discovered in much of my course work, the gods of modern education
and psychology didn't simply stop with objective studies of child
development. They veered into an area where they had no business.
In the mindset of the psycho-social educational guru, the child became
an object, human capital, silly putty if you will, for creating a
political creature easily manipulated by those who think they know
better.
The manipulators are the kind of folks who believe that their
collectivist vision is what mankind needs in a collectivized, hive-like
world. All this is based on Maslow and Roger's theories, called Third
Force psychology. Third Force psychology gave us "stuff" like "values
clarification" and the wonders of "mastery learning" and these days it
has been recycled into "project learning."
Worse yet, however, is that the "stuff" foisted upon the American
educational system has replaced the teaching of absolutes or fact-based
learning. Manipulative tools like the Delphi Technique and Saul
Alinsky's political tools are used by the radicalized progressives, the
left and those who hate American society, Western cultural tradition and
its values and underpinnings.
That hatred is called many things, but it is recognizable in gender
politics and multicultural, diversity "training," as opposed to teaching
individual self-control based on Judeo-Christian ideals of right and
wrong, good and bad.
Before the mad '60s, civilized behavior, whether religious-based or not,
was the standard if not always the norm. That is not the case today.
Today's child has lost his moral moorings thanks to the success of the
descendants of Hegel and Marx who have captured our institutions and
used psychology to do it.
What replaced cultural standards and civilized norms of behavior and
learning is the mushy brand of non-judgmental "tolerance" of behavior
that goes against beliefs and traditions that have taken thousands of
years to evolve. Fuggedabout learning much of anything that is
teacher-directed instead of child-directed.
For at least a hundred years, the psycho-social educrats like John Dewey
or B.F. Skinner or Maslow and Rogers looked at the child as a pliable
being to be recreated as the new utopian man. This new creature would
fit into the brave new world collectivist and God-free social order.
Using whatever theory or fad these experts are pushing, the
psychologists, educrats, sociologists, political molders and
transformers of society crossed the line.
The experts have successfully convinced vast numbers of people that
there are no absolute truths or standards. Psycho-social theories or
systems take the place of what we formerly knew as truth, beauty, right
and wrong, knowledge and absorbing facts.
Just recently, a college professor informed me that his students were
having trouble with concepts like latitude and longitude. Worse yet,
they felt put upon when told they had to learn those concepts and apply
them to map reading. No one had ever demanded they learn to retain much
of anything to memory in any kind of structured fashion.
Mostly he was appalled that they argued with him about having to commit
something to memory in order to use it to solve practical or
hypothetical problems.
The professor probably knows his students are poorly educated because
educrats are pushing something called "project learning." That is
learning for the "real" world. As one of the booklets on project-based
learning states: "Learners who can see the connection between a
project-based task and the real world will be more motivated to
understand and solve the problem at hand. ... Project-based Learning has
the potential to increase a student's feeling of responsibility for, and
control over, his or her own learning ... you and your students engage
in a valuable discussion of learning goals, student interests, student
and teacher expectations, personal strengths and weaknesses, and problem
solving strategies."
Yeah, but do they know what latitude and longitude are? If any of them
were adrift in the Pacific Ocean, on their own, would they be able to
tell where they were when their "collaborators" were not within easy
reach? Probably NOT.
At least 40 percent of American students can't find simple geographical
points on a map, like the state or country in which they live. But by
gosh, the educrats tell us that "Project-based Learning has the
potential to increase a student's feeling of responsibility for, and
control over, his or her own learning." God help them if they ever get
lost or are asked to plot a course or read a map properly.
It would seem the only facts and truths being promoted or extolled in
many schools today are irrational and unstructured theories and "new"
socialized versions of math or science. Even taking to memory simple
things like latitude and longitude are discouraged. These subjects and
concepts carry with them the knowledge of absolutes.
There Are No Such Things as Absolutes
Many modern educrats, feminists and multiculturalists have also managed
to turn physics and math into psycho-social political subjects.
Feminists have complained that the study of physics is faulty because it
is based on patriarchal thinking handed down in Western culture. In
other words, what goes up may not come down. That is, unless it has been
vetted by Gloria Steinem or Susan Sontag and approved by NOW.
Feminists and the diversity and multicultural proponents of the new and
Not-improved education system want to dump Western or American culture,
and even physics is taking a bum rap because it evolved out of the
thinking of Western white men. How incredibly pathetic for feminists to
be so shallow and blind that they have politicized science.
But that has happened across the board. From environmentalism to
kindergarten science, it is all about agenda politics these days.
Fact-based solid information that might require memorization or
knowledge of absolutes is discouraged unless it serves a reformation or
socialization purpose. When science and math are deconstructed because
they are considered tools used by white men to control races, classes
and women, something is seriously wrong with our intellectual class.
William McDougall states in Academic Questions, Winter 1998-99, "Culture
to them is an artificial, malleable construct that is of no intrinsic
importance except for its utility in the struggle for liberation."
What is being promoted as educational material worthy of being taught by
"facilitators," who used to be called teachers, is a kind of mushy mind
pudding of feel-good unstructured information. It is junk information
that does not help as a basis for rational thinking.
Project Learning is one technique in handing mind pudding to American
children. It is very popular in many school systems nationwide.
Where did we get the educrats discouraging teaching of absolutes or
using memorization as a teaching tool? How did mastery or project
learning become the implement of choice by the "facilitators" in the
classroom? Who are the prime movers in the valueless, fact-free new
education system that has created a nation dumbed down to mediocrity?
One of the modern gurus is Dr. William Glasser. To Glasser and his
cohorts absolutes and facts are bad. Glasser believes that learning core
knowledge promotes individuality, which is bad. He prefers collaborative
and cooperative project learning, team playing, whereas a better idea is
to promote the collective man, which is a good thing.
To Glasser and others there are no right or wrong answers, but rather
many alternatives and right answers. Glasser promotes the no-failure
grading system as well as no rankings in superior or outstanding
individual achievement. Just this year we witnessed the fruit of that in
Massachusetts, where many schools did not have class rankings or
valedictorian or salutorian at graduation events.
Thanks to men like Glasser, Maslow, Rogers, Skinner and others, learning
in public schools has shifted away from what a student needs to know to
what a student decides they want to know.
In his own words, Glasser believes that children are "more comfortable
and less bored because it is accepted that they socialize while they
work in these situations, while it is not in their regular classes. It
is clear that students work and learn best in cooperative groups."
Education critic Lynn Studder has put the new system into perspective.
She concludes that educrats like Glasser who promote the Third Force
practices of Maslow and Rogers are not doing American children a favor:
"Without factual knowledge, a child has no basis upon which to initiate
an informed analytical process resulting in a reasoned conclusion. They
can only present an uninformed opinion; they are as computers ?
'processors' of information devoid of analytical capability. This is the
reality of 'critical thinking.' "
The individual does not need to know or understand facts or absolutes,
because he can always depend on his peer in the educational hive to help
him through a situation or problem. The individual is out, the hive
mentality is in. They call it cooperative and collaborative learning,
but some of us call it mob mentality, which we pay for and THEN call it
public education. Even a mob is made up of individuals. In the American
public school, more often than not, that mob is also a dumb mob.
By Their Fruits You Shall Know Them
William Kilpatrick is a professor in the School of Education at Boston
College, where he teaches courses in moral education and adolescent
psychology. His thoughts on the modern educrat are sad indeed:
"I believe that many educators in America don't have anything else to
teach. They aren't well versed in subject matter. Typically, they've had
many courses in education, but relatively few in history, math or
science. Typically, American teachers love children, but they don't have
a corresponding love of knowledge."
Furthermore, he states: "As a consequence they have very little to pass
on. So instead of teaching history, literature, science or geography,
the temptation is to sit around in circles with the children and share
feelings."
As an indication of our educational freefall into chaos, 43 percent of
fourth-graders, 31 percent of eighth-graders and 30 percent of
12th-graders read below "basic" levels, placing them in the illiterate
category.
Between 1990 and 1996, statistics show, one-third of the students in
grades 4 through 12 could not read and nearly two-thirds of them
couldn't read very well.
Achievement levels in history and geography were even worse, and the
decline began in 1963.
In today's modern schoolroom, about 41 percent of the school day is
devoted to academics. The rest of it is about socialization of some
sort.
Sandra Stotsky is a research associate at the Harvard Graduate School of
Education. She wrote "Losing Our Language: How Multicultural Classroom
Instruction Is Undermining our Children's Ability to Read, Write and
Reason." Her analysis of the state of education concludes that history
and civics books used in fifth-grade classes have deep-sixed mention of
inventors, explorers, soldiers and all presidents except Abraham
Lincoln. Many of the great achievements of Americans is excluded because
those Americans were white men.
The Not So Sacred Individual
"Christianity discovers individuality in the sense that it stresses
personal conversion," says Bernard McGinn, professor of historical
theology at the University of Chicago Divinity School. "This is a
crucial contribution to Western Civilization because it releases the
individual from the absolute constraints of family and society."
In "Body Snatching," Shirley Correll wrote:
Individualism is one of the first areas to be assaulted and removed. As
Outcome Based Education (OBE) is implemented, children are taught and
graded as groups. This method is called cooperative learning, and the
students are constantly pushed toward group think or collectivism.
Individualism is out and collectivism is in. This anti-American concept
is one of the most obnoxious of the socialistic leveling devices. It is
the individualism of America, carried out in the competitive free
enterprise system, which has offered the highest standard of living in
the world. However, as one observes OBE, the first thing one will notice
is that competition is to be eliminated, along with the rewards of
academic excellence. We eliminate programs such as the selection of
valedictorians and salutatorians.
And B.K. Eakman wrote, on page 111:
The major part of the groundwork was laid in 1879 at the University of
Leipzig, Germany, where experimental laboratories headed by Wilhelm
Wundt advanced the then-radical notion of man as a neurochemical
machine, a product of genetics and upbringing and not accountable for
his conduct, which was said to be caused entirely by forces beyond his
control. Wundt's students actually credited him with having divorced the
spiritual aspect from his studies. His pupils boasted that, following
the establishment of the first psychology laboratory in 1869, psychology
had become "a science without a soul."
Thanks to the gurus, the teachers and administrators who have fawned all
over the gurus, plus the billions poured into implementing failed
theories, we get test scores near the bottom of the international heap.
Our education experts seem to prefer it that way. If we stay at the
Bottom, that will require more money to "fix" it. So yet more money is
poured into the failed system. The Congress and various administrations
have no clue, and the teachers unions are about getting grants or
federal money to keep themselves in seminars and conferences and POWER.
The teachers unions have GOT to be the most self-interested bunch of
clods that ever walked the face of the earth. Totally in tune with
social engineers from hell, they forgot what teachers are supposed to be
about.
When teachers and their unions swallow the dimwitted theories, political
agenda and manipulative techniques of the psycho-social transformers of
American society, as far as I am concerned they are guilty of child
abuse AND sedition.
These theories, which came out of Third Force psychology, the human
potential movement, and Glasser's "choice" and "reality" programs, are
criminal in their failure to educate. But then, after all, the end game
is to recreate and change society, not to educate people.
Admitting Failure
Carl Rogers' former partner, Dr. William Coulson, says that out of Third
Force psychology came what is better known in colleges and universities
and school systems throughout the U.S. as values clarification.
In values clarification there are no absolutes, right or wrong answers.
In fact, perception is reality rather than a matter of standards, truths
and values as passed on through generations. The name of which he states
has been changed to critical thinking, problem solving, or decision
making. This is also what Dr. William Glasser has been promoting in his
panacea for education.
Toward the ends of their lives the creators of Third Force psychology
finally began to understand how much damage these theories had done to
society and to children. Too late, though, because these theories and
their bastard stepchildren were now enshrined in the way education works
in this country. They were adopted to politicize children, the family
and the institutions of this nation. Without homeschooling and private
schools, the children of this nation would be in worse shape than we
already are.
Call it "projects learning, mastery learning, Goals 2000, whatever. It
is still 35 years' worth of failure wrapped and rewrapped and recycled
into new titles.
The old biblical saying that by your fruits you shall know them holds
true in education as in anything else. The fruit of the Third Force and
human potential movement, the product of "choice" in regard to what
children want to learn or not learn, are failures ? but we just throw
more money at them and continue to recycle.
Personally, I think public education is beyond reform. Having taught a
few years myself, I know that unless a teacher teaches in a system where
they ignore the latest in teaching nostrums, the children are going down
the education rat hole. As the federal government has become more
involved, even at the local level, teachers no longer have the choice or
freedom to choose common sense over educational mind sludge.
Many teachers know this and hate it but are so afraid of losing their
jobs they just bite the bullet and go on with it.
Anyone who thinks it can be reformed is living in virtual reality.
Education is beyond reform. Reform takes too long. The only alternative
for parents is to yank their children by the millions from public
schools and maybe, just maybe, the educrats and federal government might
get the message.
Frankly, I would not count on it. Like all bureaucracies, as well as
those who "own" the failed ideas and policies, these people will never
learn from failure, they do what they do no matter what.
To admit failure would be to rock their world, and a lifetime of passing
on garbage would have to be admitted. That would indeed destroy their
self-esteem. But rather that than to keep on destroying America's
children.
http://www.newsmax.com/commentarchive.shtml?a=2002/7/26/014916
They are destroying your child's individuality and depriving them of a real education. It is a form of brainwashing in every sense of the word and quite deliberate.
Well, that explains some of the struggles I've had with my kids. Unfortunately I don't have the resources to homeschool or private school the kids - but that doesn't mean that I can't take an interest in what's going on and do something about it at home, y'know? This article gives me renewed initiative!