Posted on 08/15/2019 8:18:03 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The California state seal declares “Eureka,” originally a Greek word that means “I found it,” and with good reason. After James Marshall discovered gold in the territory in 1848, the rush was on. By 1852, two years after California gained statehood, the population skyrocketed from 14,000 to 250,000. But times have changed, and people are now leaving.
California is the second most expensive state to live in and has the second worst overall tax burden, according to the Tax Foundation. As if that is not enough, California lawmakers want the district schools to focus on progressive grandstanding instead of serving as a ladder of opportunity for children. The state is neglecting the responsibility of public schools to equip students with the knowledge and skills they need for the future.
To wit, while 57 percent of black fourth grade students and half of hispanic fourth grade students cannot read at even a basic level, California Governor Jerry Brown signed a law in 2016 that required the state board of education to create a model ethnic studies curriculum, a project that is awash in ambiguous ideas and historical inaccuracies.
Start with the definition. The draft materials define ethnic studies as “the disciplinary, loving, and critical praxis of holistic humanity.” Confused? There is a helpful footnote that says, “Throughout this model curriculum, language is used that deliberately offers an alternative to traditional wording that could have a particular context within the dominant culture. More information about these terms can be found in the glossary.”
Parents will not know what their child is learning because the state is making up words, but at least there is a glossary. More harmful are the few intelligible ideas. As William Evers, a former member of the California Academic Content Standards Commission, recently pointed out in the Wall Street Journal, the model curriculum says capitalism is a “form of power and oppression” and such systems “dehumanize” people.
Yet as more nations have adopted free market ideas over the last 20 years, some one billion people, of different ethnicities, have been lifted out of poverty, a finding noticeably absent from the California draft curriculum. There is no discussion of the disaster that is Venezuela due to tyrannical socialism. Venezuela is mentioned in the sample teaching materials, though, in the lyrics to a rap song that include a helpful tip to “get out, Yankees, from Latin America,” which is provided in multiple languages.
Parents and students on both sides of political debates should object to this project. Conservatives will bristle at the inclusion of the revisionist history of Howard Zinn. Black and hispanic families, who overwhelmingly voted for liberal candidates in California, should ask why state officials are focusing on ethnic studies when the gap between white and hispanic eighth grade reading scores on a national comparison is 27 points, the fifth largest gap among states across the country.
Similar double digit gaps exist in both mathematics and reading between white students and minority students in fourth grade and eighth grade. These families in California should demand to know what lawmakers are doing to improve the likelihood that their children will have the most basic tools they need to succeed in school and in life.
California lawmakers are forging ahead with the new curriculum. State officials are accepting comments on the model until tomorrow, but lawmakers are considering a proposal that would require state university students to take an ethnic studies class before they graduate. State lawmakers considered a proposal last year that would have made ethnic studies a high school graduation requirement, but the proposal became an opt in program for a small number of school districts.
Meanwhile, parents and taxpayers are leaving California. According to “growth states” data from Uhaul, which counts the number of one way moving trucks going in and out of states, California ranks third from the bottom. A survey of state residents released earlier this year found that more than half of respondents are considering leaving the state because of the high cost of living. Families in California disgusted with the made up words in the new school curriculum will not be far behind.
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Jonathan Butcher is a senior education policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation and former education director at the Goldwater Institute.
Governments are very resourceful.
They now outsource the dissemination of their Propaganda to Government Worker Unions.
irony: it is in the american state that most resembles a socialist state that you will find the greatest degree of social inequality.
you’re either brad pitt, or you’re a homeless illegal alien living under a bridge.
Quite clearly, the word is:
Indoctrination.
No other definition fits what California and other liberal/progressive/communist states are doing.
When I called to inform the school superintendent that my children had lice in their hair, her response was that they recommend treatment when someone actually spots a louse in a child's hair, but otherwise they ignore the problem. My children had to be treated repeatedly for lice infestation.
One of my children had a severe dyslexia problem, but, though I informed the school authorities repeatedly, from kindergarten, they insisted that there was no problem until she flunked all of her 6th grade classes, required thousands of dollars worth of private psychological and neuropsychological testing to diagnose the dyslexia, and had to be removed from the California public schools and placed in an extremely expensive private school that addresses the problem of dyslexia.
When my wife asked me how the school authorities could have missed such a blatant learning disability, I observed that they're too busy teaching global warming, gay studies, and how to protest.
The public schools in California are doing what they were designed to do—train obedient servants of the totalitarian state.
Totalitarian states use mono-thought—all correct thoughts are taught to children, and incorrect thoughts are punished.
Free inquiry?—how quaint—a legacy of white male slave-holder rule!
Home school bump.
This free exchange of ideas and opinions was credited with American innovation, know-how, and prosperity.
Fast forward to 2019 USA. The opposite is true. US students are taught not to think but to conform. The free exchange of ideas and unfettered inquiry are outlawed and scorned. A student who challenges or disagrees with the teacher's contentions is severely penalized. "Facts" are taught--not ideas. A suffocating conformity of thinking and belief--a groupthink--is demanded of both teachers and students; any deviation from it is heresy. Anyone attempting to introduce heretical ideas is scorned at best, subject to violence at worst.
Such is the state of American education in the 21st century.
As a dad with a couple three kids in and out of the system I would say this is a lot of handwringing and pearl clutching
Furthermore as an engineer with three engineer in degree days I would say that math is not changed and I will be in charge of my children’s education as much is the system will thank you
Nothing new here. Our oldest daughter graduated from a good (or so we thought) California high school 15 years ago. To my dying day, the one thing I’ll remember most about her high school education is that she graduated and averred “I hate business.” Her greatest goals was to work the government.
We had some success turning that execrable attitude around. She works in a highly competitive industry doing market research for clients to help them win in the competitive marketplace.
Yes. That’s why I put “facts” in quotes, as I’m sure you surmised.
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