Deconstructing Public Education

www.newsmax.com ^ | July 26, 2002 | Diane Alden

[Tailgunner Joe]

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.

[yendu bwam]

When our kids were in public school (we took them out some time ago), they were always being taught reading and writing and math according to some new theory that we were always assured 'educational studies' justified. The results were horrendous. And when that was realized, they went on to other new theories. At the same time, homework instructions sent home by teachers were hardly recognizable as English, with frequent grammatical errors. We also became quite used to correcting mistakes on tests and homework MADE BY THE TEACHERS in math, science, geography, vocabulary, and so forth. Finally, a strong attempt was made to inculcate our kids with enviro-religion, a disbelief in the greatness of our country, and every-kind-of-sex is OK ideas. We were appalled. I honestly believe that my grandmother, sitting in her one room schoolhouse with five grades at one time, learned more and in better fashion than today's kids in public school.

[TomSmedley]

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.

Bump

[thinktwice]

The only alternative for parents is to yank their children by the millions from public schools

Which, in most states, would probably -- at first -- result in imprisonment of parents and placement of their kids in worthless foster homes.

[Tailgunner Joe]

Not if they did it by the millions.

[thinktwice]

Ayn Rand had it right when she wrote ... "If men are to be ruled, the enemy is reason."

[maestro]

Wow!!

The Death of Darwin's British/American Bureaucracy!

Real Progress Possible?

[Ohioan]

American Academia was largely taken over from the top in the first half of the Twentieth Century. By the middle years, the most acclaimed Universities were all slavishly promoting the ideas of Fabian Socialist theorists, bent upon submerging America in an undifferentiated humanity. (See Myths & Myth Makers In American "Higher" Education.)

It is tempting to blame the whole problem on opinionated stupidity. But there is an element, which if not clearly definable as treason, is certainly its first cousin, involved also.

William Flax

[F16Fighter]

Excellent post...

Today's public high school grads by and large are under-qualified to work at car washes.

[txzman]

I have only one thing to say - GIGO (garbage in, ..etc...) I went to college to become a history teacher, but when I saw what they were doing to those destined for education, I was appalled. Teachers today are not taught what to teach, but merely how to conform to the mind numbing, upside down pyramid structure of the academic administration.

Fortunately my two daughters are not drowning in this mess.

[Irish Queen]

Thanks for posting this article. As a public and private school teacher of many years experience, I strongly agree with many of the points made by the writer. I began teaching in 1968. Every few years a new concept, program, philosophy, or curriculum would be proclaimed as the cure-all for the educational doldrums of that decade. Most of these "new" programs were simply recycled old programs with new terminology. It was as if the prime purpose of these curriculums and programs was to avoid having the children to actually learn anything. I call it the illusion of learning syndrome.

[Stand Watch Listen]

indexing

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

FReegards

Specious Science In Our Schools
Source: Toogood Reports; Published: July 9, 2002;
Author: Alan Caruba

SYMPOSIUM Q: Is the National Education Association Being Fair to Its Religious Objectors?
Source: INSIGHT magazine; Published: June 10, 2002;
Authors NO: Stefan Gleason ////\\\\ YES: Bob Chase

Public Sector Subverting Productive Industry
Source: Toogood Reports; Published: May 16, 2002;
Author: Henry Pelifian

History of America's Education Part 2: Noah Webster and Early America
Source: Sierra Times; Published: March 27, 2002;
Author: April Shenandoah

How Communist is Public Education?
Source: sierratimes.com; Published:March 22, 2002;
Author: Chuck Morse

History of America's Education Part 1: Johnny is in trouble
Source: Sierra Times; Published: March 20, 2002 ;
Author: April Shenandoah

Audit rips Georgia schools' curriculum
Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution; Published: March 11, 2002;
Author:JAMES SALZER

Why schools fail: Samuel Blumenfeld warns Bush's education legislation is ineffective
Source: WorldNetDaily.com; Published: March 2, 2002;
Author: Samuel Blumenfeld

Public School Isn't Like I Remember It
Too Good Reports; Published: February 28, 2002;
Author: Phyllis Schlafly

What Is Lacking In Our Educational System
Source: Too Good Reports; Published: February 28, 2002;
Author:| Ben Cerruti

The charade of education reform
Source: WorldNetDaily.com; Published: February 2, 2002;
Author: Dr. Samuel L. Blumenfeld

American public schools: Working just as designed
Source: WorldNetDaily.com; Published: January 21, 2002;
Author: Vox Day

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}

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

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

Deconstructing the Western Mind: Gramscian-Marxist Subversion of Faith and Education
Source: www.petersnet; Published: Winter 1997
Author: Frank Morriss

Littleton Crisis to Government Control

The UN Plan for Your Mental Health

[EdReform]

Bump & Ping

[jamaksin]

This is news?

Where is my McGuffey Reader + Primer + Cat/Butterfly?

[john in missouri]

When our kids were in public school... The results were horrendous... homework instructions sent home by teachers were hardly recognizable as English... We also became quite used to correcting mistakes... MADE BY THE TEACHERS... We were appalled. I honestly believe that my grandmother, sitting in her one room schoolhouse with five grades at one time, learned more and in better fashion than today's kids in public school.

This is exactly why we need to raise all teachers' salaries by at least 30%, build bigger, nicer school facilities, add lots more professional administrators and counselors, pass legislation to greatly restrict what homeschoolers can and can't do, mandate state supervision, teaching certificates, etc., and adamantly oppose vouchers or any other schemes which might take tax dollars away from our already struggling public schools, or which would allow parents to remove their kids from the public schools and pursue any other educational options.

[yendu bwam]

This is exactly why we need to raise all teachers' salaries by at least 30%, build bigger, nicer school facilities, add lots more professional administrators and counselors, pass legislation to greatly restrict what homeschoolers can and can't do, mandate state supervision, teaching certificates, etc., and adamantly oppose vouchers or any other schemes which might take tax dollars away from our already struggling public schools, or which would allow parents to remove their kids from the public schools and pursue any other educational options.

Good one. Let's just hire the followers of Mao, Stalin and Lenin instead!

[john in missouri]

Out of fear that my preceding post may be misread by some: that was entirely sarcastic.

And we have homeschooled our 4 kids since birth.

[Tailgunner Joe]

bump

[First_Salute]

One of the problems is the relentless writing of checks by alumni, to their alma maters, in willful ignorance of what said "mothers" are wreaking upon our communities.

"Public Education" has more money which it has wasted on "tools" than did the superior insitutions and systems prior to this national spending spree of the late decades.

To wit: the weather over Pennsylvania will make a good pilot out of you, should you care to learn, in either a C-123 or a C-17; but furthermore, the weather there will make a better pilot out of you in a C-123 than in an F-16. Great pilots have pre-existed sophisticated tools.

As have great teachers and many brilliant results with no more than a slide-rule.

"Public Education" has become a socialist pogrom teaching one thing: You are free because government persecutes whatever you believe or had been taught to believe is "intolerant" of you, "insensitive" to you, "excludes" you, is "mean" to you, and affects your lower- self-esteem in your virtual reality.

"Big Brother" will protect you from bullies; while you shine "Big Brother's" shoes.

That is the lesson.

[Saundra Duffy]

Here's the resolution we passed at the California Republican Assembly Board meeting two weekends ago, July 20-21. I'm kinda proud of it cuz I helped write it:

WHEREAS the public schools are more interested in indoctrining rather than educating California students, thus emphasizingpolitical correctness at the expense of the "3 R's", and

WHEREAS the teacher's unions, affiliated organizations and their allies on school boards statewide have sought to undermine parental authority and individual excellence, and

WHEREAS California State Law promotes homosexuality, the establishment of school-based clinics, comprehensive sex education, and abortion in the public schools, and

WHEREAS the teaching of American History and civics, including the U.S. Constitution, has been significantly compromised, and

WHEREAS California students perform abysmally in math, science and English, and

WHEREAS the family-related subjects of home economics and industrial arts (shop classes) are being eliminated in favor of school-to-career programs for ALL students, and

WHEREAS the Unz Initiative (to abolish bilingual education) has become law but is not being enforced, and

WHEREAS the teaching of art, music and physical education has been weakened, and

WHEREAS "special education" now means politically correct ideas of disability, not the traditional definitions,

LET IT THEREFORE BE RESOLVED that we, the California Republican Assembly, condemn the "dumbing down" and politicizing of public education, and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that we take a strong stand in favor of focusing on the teaching of traditional academics, and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the California Legislature implement the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in favor of vouchers.