Are they totally incapable of coming up with a positive message. They could at least bring out their old ones like "Free love" "Got my acid and my Dead tickets" "Hacky Sack Rules!"
Posted on 11/04/2004 12:50:03 PM PST by Lindykim
by Phyllis Schlafly November 3, 2004
The flap over the Department of Education consigning 300,000 copies of "Helping Your Child to Learn History" to the dumpster is evidence anew that the Federal Government should have no role in education. Illiteracy and low scores in public schools are a national scandal, but it's hard to see how federal spending improves anything.
During the presidential campaign, both candidates vied with each other about how much federal money they would spend. John Kerry claimed that the Bush Administration failed to provide necessary funding for No Child Left Behind, and Bush spokesmen bragged that Bush "increased education funding more in four years than Bill Clinton did in eight years."
So what do we get for all this taxpayers' money? A case in point is the teaching of history. "Helping Your Child Learn History" was a 73-page booklet published by the Department of Education to give advice to parents of pre-school through fifth-grade children. The booklet gratuitously included several favorable references to the infamous "National Standards for United States History," even obliquely suggesting that President Bush supports those Standards.
When Lynne Cheney, the wife of the Vice President, spotted these references, her staff communicated displeasure to the Education Department. The Department then destroyed its inventory of 300,000 copies, or in bureaucratese "recycled" them. The UCLA professor who had been in charge of the National Standards project found this decision "extremely troubling." He called it "a pretty god-awful example of interference — intellectual interference. If that's not Big Brother or Big Sister, I don't know what is."
Note the inverted mindset of the typical academic. He thinks it is OK for Big Brother Federal Government to order students to study a revisionist, distorted, and inaccurate version of American history, but it is offensive for parents and citizens to demand that inaccuracies be omitted.
I suppose the liberals will soon be whining about "book burning," but as the media say, let's have a reality check. The National Standards for History was financed ten years ago by a $2 million grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to UCLA to write standards for how American history should be taught in grades 5 through 12.
The 271-page result, called National Standards for United States History, turned out to be so faulty as well as so anti-American that the Senate denounced it by a vote of 99-to-1. Lynne Cheney, who was NEH chairman when the grant was given, turned into a vigorous opponent, denouncing the volume as "politicized history," which it surely was. National Standards was not a narrative of past events but was leftwing revisionism and Political Correctness. Almost every event in American history was described as though it had race or gender motives and effects, and all ethnic groups except white males were portrayed as oppressed and mistreated.
The P.C. flavor was established right off the bat when National Standards taught that calendar dates should be identified as B.C.E. (Before the Common Era) or C.E. (Common Era), rather than as B.C. (as in Before Christ) or A.D. (as in Anno Domini). Leftwing bias showed itself in the skewed selection of historical figures. Dozens of obscure persons were singled out for study, while Paul Revere, Thomas Edison, the Wright brothers, General Robert E. Lee, Albert Einstein, Jonas Salk, and Gen. Douglas MacArthur were all omitted.
The anti-Communist Senator Joseph McCarthy received 19 unfavorable mentions, while students were told to study the influence of MTV, Madonna, Murphy Brown, and Roseanne, and to read Ms. Magazine and the writings of Betty Friedan and Margaret Sanger. The 1848 feminist Declaration at Seneca Falls was mentioned six times, putting it on a par with the Declaration of Independence and making it more important than the U.S. Constitution and the Gettysburg Address.
The late American Federation of Teachers chairman Al Shanker said that the History Standards was the first time a government ever tried to teach children to "feel negative about their own country."
After the national flap about the National Standards of United States History, the volume was slightly revised with cosmetic improvements. However, by that time the original volume had been shipped to school districts and book publishers, and no one knows which version is in more common use today.
Despite the discrediting of the taxpayer-financed History Standards project, it is obvious that the current crop of academic professionals is determined to drop the DWEMs (Dead White European Males) down an Orwellian Memory Hole and to replace history with Multiculturalism and Oppression Studies, featuring third-rate writers who attack Western Civilization as sexist, racist, and oppressive. Parents should check out the history books used in their local schools.
Phyllis Schlafly's new book The Supremacists: The Tyranny of Judges and How to Stop It is now available! Order online at 50% off retail price: http://www.eagleforum.org/
I hate what the PC and multicultural crowd tries to do to education. My son loved history in HS and passed the AP history exam. But he had to learn history outside of the class and text and then argue with the teacher and his classmates. History should be taught with a factual presentation, and I suppose it is too much to ask for a non-biased presentation. So lets get a mix of teachers to give the kids both sides of the arguement.
No Paul Revere? Next I suppose the battle on Lexington Green was not about protecting the colony arms depot at Concord? (Second amendment got us into the revolutionary war?)
I think you're wrong ... the only place I regularly see BC/BCE is in politically correct, leftist Scripture "scolarship" of the "Jesus Seminar" variety. I see BC/AD routinely in secular history.
OK. I could be wrong.
How about 'terrible infant' syndrome? :-) Personally, I prefer calling them what they are: sociopathic psychological bullies.
So do I. Even as an agnostic, I think BC/BCE is silly. They get rid of direct references to Christ in the abbreviations, but they're still counting from the year of his birth! If they want to be purely secular about it, they should pick an event like the founding of the first known human city, and call that "Common Year 0" or something.
bookmark
Doesn't matter how much money they have. Money does not make someone a better teacher.
I would agree with this. I am a teacher. What really matters are the ATTITUDES and EFFORTS of all parties involved. When the education of a child is a group effort for all involved, good things happen.
A little money spent wisely does not hurt. Our school used some extra money on a reading specialist this year which has been a really good use for the money.
She is sooo right! This is the garbage being shoved down the throats of students by many where I teach.
Not where I teach. I've never even heard of any of this happening anywhere around here.
he left basically destroyed one of the finest public education systems in the world over the past 40 years.
In my state, we have one of the best public education systems in the country, but it's the so-called right that wants to destroy it. Some of the legislators are on the warpath to push their liberal, big government political agenda on education and spend hordes of taxpayer money to do so, sometimes for their own or their friends' benefits with little to no accountability as to where the money goes. No, this is not in New York, but in a place that has ranked dead last for many years in funding (some $400 million below the next nearest place). It's not the last fact that I mind, it's the part about pushing the political agenda with the taxpayer money that I do.
E-mail or FAX the White House to disband the Fed. Dept. of Education. Reagan campaigned he would do it. Would that Bush could deliver on this one - FOR THE GIPPER!
In years before, I, as a teacher, probably would not have agreed with this statement, but with an educational "leader" who pushes a liberal political agenda and is willing to spend billions of taxpayer dollars to liberal special interest groups to do just that, I would mostly agree now. The current head of public education doesn't seem to be living up to his title. I think the federal money should be given to the states so that they can decide how to spend, rather than be hinged upon big government federal regulations.
Exactly!! A lot of times it seems this money is being thrown into a black hole somewhere. Just like all government spending, I would like to see where this money is being spent. I get steamed when I see teachers working second jobs during the school year and administrators giving themselves raises.
Education should be neither left nor right, just the facts, offer both sides and maintain objectivity where necessary, don't make an arguement for the Holocaust for example, just like there should not be an argument made for Cuban Communism. Teach what it is and has done, without the propaganda from either side.
Sorry, I wandered for a moment, be accurate at the expense of being fair.
"I've never even heard of any of this happening anywhere around here."
May I assume you teach at a K-12 school...it's rather difficult to blatantly teach propaganda to little ones...you would not get far although many do it surreptitiously.
I was referring to the college scene and the horrors of what is taught to students in college in the name of PC and Marx.
Since we're talking about necrotic brains...
Walking down the halls of cacademia today..I noticed some rather gloomy faces and I overheard the words "those evangelicals" spoken in hushed, conspiratorial but anger filled tones several times.
It's not just a matter of "just the facts". It also matters -what- facts are being discussed, and in what context. The phrasing is also key.
For example, the internment of the Japanese during World War II. When you're teaching the "facts" about that, do you mention that the vast majority of those who supported it were supposedly "tolerant" Democrats like FDR and Marshall? Do you mention that J. Edgar Hoover was one of it's biggest opponents, and Joseph McCarthy opposed it too? Ah, but that would skew against their desired narrative of those individuals in other issues, so it just gets dropped down the memory hole.
When I think back to what I was taught about McCarthy back in my day, I get angry. I can only imagine what it's like for the poor kids who have to deal with the -continual- garbage being shoved at them on a daily basis. It was bad when I was in school (and I'm only 35), but it's a thousand times worse today.
Qwinn
The students today have no concept of what it was like to live during the "Cold War", it was stressful because of the overwhelming sense of fear that we were taught to have of Communism, which was a good thing.
"I've never even heard of any of this happening anywhere around here."
May I assume you teach at a K-12 school...it's rather difficult to blatantly teach propaganda to little ones...you would not get far although many do it surreptitiously.
I was referring to the college scene and the horrors of what is taught to students in college in the name of PC and Marx.
I agree mostly with you. It does depend on the college. But you are right, I do teach at a k-12 school. I wouldn't even think of doing any of those types of things to my little ones. Again, I haven't seen it luckily, and hopefully never will. I do have some of the best students and parents any teacher could have and enjoy them immensely.
Posted by Former Dodger to moog
On News/Activism 11/04/2004 4:54:45 PM PST · 32 of 37
How has the "so-called right" damaged the system...by trying to stop the liberal agend
Education should be neither left nor right, just the facts, offer both sides and maintain objectivity where necessary, don't make an arguement for the Holocaust for example, just like there should not be an argument made for Cuban Communism. Teach what it is and has done, without the propaganda from either side.
Sorry, I wandered for a moment, be accurate at the expense of being fair.
Exactly!! A lot of times it seems this money is being thrown into a black hole somewhere. Just like all government spending, I would like to see where this money is being spent. I get steamed when I see teachers working second jobs during the school year and administrators giving themselves raises.
Ditto on that last statement.
My school district is the fifth lowest spending in the nation. My state spends the lowest amount on administrators in the nation and the lowest per student BY FAR. In the schools where I have taught, the money is spend wisely and even has parent input as to how it's spend. We have the highest class sizes in the nation. We have always been fairly realistic and have tried to save taxes in quite a few ways. Yet the bureaucrats want to take out more money to spend on their pet agendas with little to NO accountability, but often to benefit their friends or companies.
Are they totally incapable of coming up with a positive message. They could at least bring out their old ones like "Free love" "Got my acid and my Dead tickets" "Hacky Sack Rules!"
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