Replies

Here are links to various education threads (also containing numerous helpful links)

FReegards

The charade of education reform
Source: WorldNetDaily.com; Published: February 2, 2002;
Author: Dr. Samuel L. Blumenfeld
High Schools Fail Thanks To Grade Inflation And Social Promotion
Source: Toogood Reports; Published: December 5, 2001
Author: Vin Suprynowicz
WHY AMERICANS CAN’T READ
Source: Accuracy in Media; Published: December 4, 2001
Author: Reed Irvine and Cliff Kincaid
The Failing Teacher and the Teachers' Code of Silence
Source: CNSNews.com; Published: December 3, 2001
Author: Glenn Sacks
Time for outrage! Linda Bowles reports latest results in America's public schools
Source: WorldNetDaily.com; Published: November 27, 2001
Author: Linda Bowles
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
COOKING THE BOOKS AT EDUCATION
Source: Accuracy In Media; Published: June 5, 2001;
Author: Cliff Kincaid
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: February 21, 2001
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 Littleton Crisis to Government Control
The UN Plan for Your Mental Health The UN Plan for Your Mental Health

Our educational system will not have any opportunity for true success until basic morality is incorporated into the curriculum and includes the teaching of ethics as a required ongoing part of the curriculum from kindergarten through high school. This term is meant to convey principles of right and wrong, the respect that should be given to other human beings, the manner in which a person should conduct oneself and the need to establish relative value standards that guide such conduct. The mistake should not be made that in teaching a moral philosophy there is any legal infringement on the separation of Church and State or on freedom of thought. This teaching does not necessarily have any relation to religious teaching and its intention is to simply teach "proper behavior" and the difference between " right and wrong" and thus provide the rationale for being a responsible member of a free society.

I think you'll appreciate this. (It's long but worth every minute.)

The perils of designer tribalism [Excerpts] ..…He [Bruckner] understands that the entire phenomenon of Third Worldism is fueled by the moral ecstasy of overbred guilt. Bruckner is an articulate anatomist of such guilt and its attendant deceptions and mystifications. "An overblown conscience," he points out, "is an empty conscience."

………What Bruckner criticizes as Third Worldism, Sandall castigates as "romantic primitivism" and (marvelous phrase) "designer tribalism." What is romantic primitivism? In the words of Arthur O. Lovejoy and George Boas, it is "the unending revolt of the civilized against civilization."

………What Sandall calls romantic primitivism puts a premium on quaintness, which it then embroiders with the rhetoric of authenticity. There are two casualties of this process. One is an intellectual casualty: it becomes increasingly difficult to tell the truth about the achievements and liabilities of other cultures. The other casualty is a moral, social, and political one. Who suffers from the expression of romantic primitivism? Not the Lauren Huttons and Claude Lévi-Strausses of the world. On the contrary, the people who suffer are the objects of the romantic primitive's compassion, "respect," and pretended emulation. Sandall asks: Should American Indians and New Zealand Maoris and Australian Aborigines be urged to preserve their traditional cultures at all costs? Should they be told that assimilation is wrong? And is it wise to leave them entirely to their own devices?

Sandall is right that the answers, respectively, are No, No, and No: "The best chance of a good life for indigenes is the same as for you and me: full fluency and literacy in English, as much math as we can handle, and a job."

………Since the folly of locking up native peoples in their old-time cultures is obvious, but it is tactless to say so, governments have everywhere resorted to the rhetoric of "reconciliation." This pretends that the problem is psychological and moral: rejig the public mind, ask leading political figures to adopt a contrite demeanor and apologize for the sins of history, and all will be well. Underlying this is the assumption that we are all on the same plain of social development, divided only by misunderstanding.

But this assumption, Sandall emphasizes, "is false." And it was recognized as false by governments everywhere until quite recently. Around 1970, the big change set in. Then, instead of attempting to help primitives enter the modern world, we were enjoined to admire them and their (suitably idealized) way of life. As Sandall observes, "the effect on indigenes of romanticizing their past has been devastating." [End Excerpts]