[JohnHuang2]

Quote of the Day by Alberta's Child

[Fraulein]

Ping!

[.45MAN]

"Someone really is after us ... [the NEA and its affiliates] have been singled out because of our political power and effectiveness at all levels – because we have the ability to help implement the type of liberal social and economic agenda that [they] find unacceptable."

And we should be.... These people have systematically brought the education system in the country to it's knees.

In the past election the NRA was attacked for being part of the power that elected Bush.. It's time we attack the NEA for the dumbing down of American children. They have been in the background for many years undermining the education system in this country. A small group of leaders in the NEA control the large masses of incompetent members to vote the agenda they dictate.

[StDonTheBaptist]

bump

[Taxman]

Well done, John. Linda Bowles article is timely and right on the money.

Ms. Bowles comments that "Only an informed and outraged people can change this."

Our job is to "inform and engender outrage in the American public" about the issues important to Taking America Back!

If we are successful in our campaign to "inform and outrage America," we can, most assuredly, Take America Back!

But we have much work ahead of us. Keep up the good fight, my man. We are with you.

[Stand Watch Listen]

Here’s some links to some education threads (also containing numerous helpful links)

FReegards

Illiterate in Boston: Samuel Blumenfeld explains U.S.'s ongoing reading problem
Source: WorldNetDaily.com; Published: July 20, 2001
Author:Samuel Blumenfeld

NEA - Let our children go!
Source: WorldNet Daily; Published: June 23. 2001
Author: Linda Harvey

Why Do Schools Play Games With Students' Minds ?
Source: The Detroit News; Published: April 1, 2001
Author: Thomas Sowell

The Public School Nightmare: Why fix a system designed to destroy individual thought?
Source: http://home.talkcity.com/LibraryDr/patt/homeschl.htm
Author: John Taylor Gatto

Dumbing down teachers
Source: USNews.com; Published: 2/21/01
Author: John Leo

Free Republic links to education related articles (thread#8)
Source: Free Republic; Published: 3-20-2001
Author: Various

Are children deliberately 'dumbed down' in school? {YES!!!}
Source: World Net Daily; Published: May 13, 2001
Author: Geoff Metcalf {Interview}

New Book Explores America's Education Catastrophe
Source: Christian Citizen USA; Published: April 2000
Author: William H. Wild

Deliberately dumbing us down (Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt's, "The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America"
Source: WorldNetDaily.com; Published: December 2,1999
Author: Samuel L. Blumenfeld

Could they really have done it on purpose?
Source: THE LIBERTARIAN; Published: 07/28/2000
Author: Vin Suprynowicz

From the Littleton Crisis to Government Control link

The UN Plan for Your Mental Health link

[biblewonk]

These failures of our public education system are great. They show parents who actually care about their kids, a rarity these days I think, what they need to do.

[LibertarianLiz]

California came in dead last among the states.

This is really pathetic. California came in behind Mississippi and Alabama and Arkansas? What a wonderful legacy for Gray Davis.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Education union leaders are open about their mission to get more money for teachers and protect them from the consequences of incompetence as individuals and from accountability as a profession. As one union leader boasted, "as for the kids, they don't pay dues."

EXACTLY! They are the number one political force behind LIBERALS (just behind trial lawyers).

NEA To Support Non-Testing Measures, gay education, partnership with AFT -- The union has long warned against an overreliance on standardized tests, though Bush wants the test results to determine how much federal funding schools should get. The measure directs the NEA's lobbyists to fight for federal laws that allow parents to opt out of tests. It doesn't require delegations to lobby for state laws but promises union support for those who do.

TEACHERS BACK DNC WITH MONEY, MUSCLE [Excerpt]--In Iowa, New Hampshire, and other key primary states, teachers knocked on doors, staffed telephone banks, and helped get out the vote for Gore. In New York, members of the United Federation of Teachers helped distribute more than one million fliers for Gore in one day. In Massachusetts, the Massachusetts Teachers Association contacted each of its 90,000 members three times by phone and by mail, urging them to vote for Gore over Bradley………….

The teachers and their unions have long been a force in American politics. From 1991 to 1999, for example, contributions to the Democratic Party from the NEA, AFT, and the Service Employees International Union, which includes some education workers, totaled $6.7 million, making teachers by far the party's biggest donor bloc, according to the nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity. The largest single contributor to Democrats - the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees - gave $3.7 million in that period……..[End Excerpt]

[Lizavetta]

As one union leader boasted, "as for the kids, they don't pay dues."

Ahh, yes. I remember that line. It was from the late Al Shankar, union prez, and I believe the full quote was, "We'll start representing the children's interests when they start paying dues." Something like that.

[Don Myers]

bttt

[Don Myers]

Well, of course, the little darlings are having a problem with their reading, writing, and rithmatic. They are all under their desks studying for their sex ed class.

[politeia]

In the simplest of terms, the quid pro quo deal is this: In exchange for NEA money and votes, Democrat politicians will not allow consequential school reforms to take place. Only an informed and outraged people can change this.

Take it from one who wasted three years trying to reform one little elementary schol, it's not just the NEA and Democrats -- its also the average, run of the mill parent who stands in the way of better schools! To my horror and chagrin, I found that most parents of any political stripe would rather rationalize their good feelings about their child's school than take the real effort of going to meetings, researching and finding out the truth about public schools today. Inflated grades and feel good "Blue Ribbon" school awards do it for them. They ask nothing more of their schools than this. If they did, they would have to expend effort themselves to make something happen. Anyway, what does it cost them? Colleges today are going along with the program and lowering standards and even employers have to adjust their standards downwards -- or get Congress to let them bring in brighter foreign workers.

I have given up on school reform from within. The only thing that forces schools to change is competition. Parents who wouldn't take the trouble to check out schools themselves will follow those parents who do know a good school from a bad one. Once they have the ability to change their school, they no longer have an excuse for leaving their child in a bad school. Nothing is a better motivator than the feeling that little John down the street is going to a better school than your own child because his parents went to the trouble to get him in. Parent "peer pressure" then does its miraculous works to bring about accountability.

But the real opportunity of change without the requirement of superhuman effort has to be there. For this reason, vouchers may be the only reform that has a chance to significantly improve school performance and accountability. Personally, my ideal reform would be to take away the responsibility for education from the state and give it back to parents (along with their tax money) and the private sector. This would encourage more private sector schools (which I would imagine would be largely religious) and other imaginative -- we could even use the word "DIVERSE" -- approaches to education. It is amazing how education is the one human endeavor in which liberals think diversity is bad! There would, of course, have to be some safety net education program in the public sector if private initiatives did not step up to the plate to take care of everyone. This reform would be a great step toward recovering the competence of the citizenry to govern itself and would solve the problem of the role of faith in schools.

[fish hawk]

Ironic, this article could have just as well been written about Hawaii. Just remove "California" and put in "Hawaii" and you have it. Matter of fact I thought we were on the bottom in Education. Remember we are farther Left (west) than Calif. Out here in a sea of Liberalism.
I do love Linda Bowles, discovered her on my Calif. vacation in the Sacramento area and found her on Jewish World Review. She is right up there with Coulter, Noonan, Olsen etc. I just love our Conservative Women.

[Gritty]

...1983... a brutally honest report... "If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might have viewed it as an act of war."

Main Entry: ¹war
Pronunciation: 'wor
Function: noun
Usage: often attributive
Etymology: Middle English werre, from Old North French, of Germanic origin; akin to Old High German werra strife; akin to Old High German werran to confuse
Date: 12th century
...1 a (1) : a state of hostility, conflict, or antagonism b : a struggle or competition between opposing forces or for a particular end <a class war>

It was an act of war. It was an a secret war successfully overwhelming the American public by appealing to their emotions while simultaneously mouthing all the "correct" platitudes. It was carefully planned and waged by corrupt politicians, judges, unions, academics, major media and other Liberals. You know; the ones who are still in power!

This report was also written in 1983, so the country can't say 'we were never warned'. Just imagine how much worse the problem is today than it was then?

The marvel is, somehow America has survived (albeit tenuously) for as long as it has. But the big questions are, can America ever recover and what will it take to turn the situation around before the grievous wounds are fatal?

[Bump in the night]

Thanks for the post John!
amom --- Ping!

[meadsjn]

In the simplest of terms, the quid pro quo deal is this: In exchange for NEA money and votes, Democrat politicians will not allow consequential school reforms to take place. Only an informed and outraged people can change this.

So many people think that since their local public school is better than some other public school, it's their duty to support the public schools, regardless of the damage to their children and others.

The NEA/AFT dictates the agenda at every public school in the country, including charter schools. They allow enough variation on the theme to sucker parents and taxpayers into "keeping the faith", they'll even pretend to split their teachers union, to give teachers the impression that there are alternatives.

The only viable alternatives are (1) homeschooling and (2) private schools which hire teachers who know and can teach their subject material without injecting socialist (or other) indoctrination.

Unless the voters/taxpayers can remove all the liberals from all public colleges and public schools, there is no hope for reform. Since there is little chance of that happening, every effort should be made to vote away every taxpayer source of their funding.

[Artist]

FYI ping

[1Old Pro]

We need to get national momentum behind school reform just as we are united against terrorists. But how?

[Aquinasfan]

Two words: free babysitting.

After all is said and done, it all boils down to this:

The teachers pretend to teach,
the children pretend to learn,
and the parents pretend that
the teachers are teaching
and the children are learning.

[EternalVigilance]

Great piece, John...thanks for the heads up.

Bookmarked to read and study again later.