Deconstructing Public Education

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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."

"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."

"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.

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.

But it is even more important that a teacher have something valuable to teach.

One of the proudest moments of my life took place at the end of my first week of substitute teaching at my local high school. I was subbing for an English teacher who had left me the usual busywork worksheets for the kids to do, "and send up anyone who talks." As usual, I did the worksheet with them in class, which took literally about 5 minutes, then proceeded to do what I do: Ask a political question like, "Who is the US Senate majority leader?" or "What amendment to the Constitution guarantees the right to keep and bear arms?". Sometimes someone knows the answer; more often no one does. This provides a great opportunity to start a discussion, which quickly devolves into a lecture on the real-world effects of governmental decisions and historical events.

So anyways, I walk into this English class, do this stupid worksheet, and ask my question. No one answers, so I gently berate the class for being so ignorant about something so important. Two students in the corner start talking with one another rather loudly. I'm just about to open my mouth to tell them to hush when my students start doing it for me.

"You two idiots shut up!" one girl says. "This guy knows a lot and you can learn something about the real world from him!"

Another kid chimes in: "Yeah, he's awesome. He actually knows what he's talking about, unlike Teachers X, Y, and Z."

Yet another: "Really. Now you two shut up so we can learn something."

Since that very moment I've regarded my job not as a mere occupation but as a holy crusade. I've learned that even the "stupid" kids, the ones in the SLD classes who are supposed to be "slow" or "troublemakers" are quite honestly desperate to learn. They realize this "public education" is the very foundation of their future lives. They understand that doing worksheets and watching filmstrips isn't helping them learn how to make or keep money. They know they are being fed horsesh*t by the vast majority of their teachers, fully 95% of whom are only interested in grimly clinging to their job until they can retire with a full pension and who approach every day with the enthusiasm of a week-old corpse.

It is that kind of who-gives-a-damn attitude I am at war with, and my war has already paid spectacular dividends. I've seen several dozen of my former students this summer, some of whom I only subbed for once. Without fail they come up to me, call me by name, ask me what I think about this-and-such or that-and-whatever, and tell me they hope their regular teacher gets a debilitating illness so I can teach them all year. THERE IS NO BETTER FEELING THAN THIS ON EARTH.

I don't make a lot of money, and my job is almost universally reviled (especially among "real" teachers, who hold themselves regally above me while they Xerox worksheets out of forty-year-old textbooks), but I wouldn't trade it for the world. School starts in one week here, and I can't wait to get back in there and start swinging.

Conservatives need to realize the public school system is not going away. The only way to make this monolithic system better is to infect it and take it over. Talented people need to stop bemoaning the state of public education and f**king do something about it.

I'm in there every day, fighting lies and opening eyes. What are you doing about it?

My program for California education:

Enforce the U.S. Supreme Court decision re Communications Workers v. Beck (487 US 735, 1988).
Assist formation of corporate service associations. Offer State funding for local school districts to divest into smaller, more personalized institutions.
Use the private and home education market to develop and test learning tools and services. Private validation services could assess product performance against product claims. School boards would be free to select guaranteed products for use in public schools.
Insurance on the guarantee would cover the cost of remedial education if the product fails to meet warranted performance.
Veto any bill requiring home and private educators to conform to State teacher certification standards.
Veto any bill requiring State supervision of home schools.
Analyze any Federal program for insufficient funds and unintended consequences suspecting unfunded mandates. Cite New York v. United States (505 US 144, 1992).
Publicly excoriate Bill Lockyer at every opportunity.

Thanks to HSLDA I am afforded the opportunity to live in a educational free state.

Indiana Law
Compulsory Attendance Ages: “Earlier of the date on which the individual officially enrolls in a school or… the beginning of the fall school term for the school year in which the individual becomes seven (7) years of age until the date on which the individual;

(1) Graduates;
(2) Reaches at least sixteen (16) years of age… and the requirements under subsection (j) concerning an exit interview are met enabling the individual to withdraw from school before graduation; or
(3) Reaches at least eighteen (18) years of age; whichever occurs first. ~ Indiana Code section 20-8.1-2-17.
Required days of Instruction: “For the number of days public schools are in session in the school corporation in which the individual is enrolled in Indiana: or… if the individual is enrolled outside Indiana for the number of days the public schools are in session where the individual is enrolled” (Generally 180 days) Section 20-8.1-3-17.

Required subjects: “Instruction equivalent to that given in public schools.” Indiana Code Section 20-8.1-3-34.
“A school that is:
(1) non-public
(2) non-accredited: and
(3) not otherwise approved by the Indiana State Board of Education;
is not bound by any requirements set forth in IC 20 or IC 21 with regard to curriculum or the content of educational programs offered by the school. “Indiana Code Section 20-8.1-3-17.

Home School Statutes: None

Alternative Statutes Allowing for Home Schools: A child may attend “Some other school which is taught in the English language.” Indiana code Section 20-8.1-3-17.

1. The child must be “Provided with instruction equivalent to that given in public schools” IC 20-8.1-3-34, However, IC 20-8.1-3-17.3 has removed all subject requirements (See Above). Furthermore, the state board of education has not been given authority to define “Equivalent Education.” Nor to approve home schools.
2. The Indiana appellate court has held that the Indiana Compulsory attendance law allows the operation of home schools. State vs. Peterman, 32 Indiana App. 665, 70 N.E. 550 (1904). Essentially, the court said a school at home is a private school.

The court defined school as “A place where instruction is imparted to the young… We do not think that the number of persons, whether one or many, make a place where instruction is imparted any less or more a school” Peterman, 70 NE at 551. The court explained further; “Under a law very similar to ours, the supreme court of Massachusetts has held that the object and purpose of a compulsory educational law are that all children shall be educated. Not that they shall be educated in a particular way.” Peterman, at 551. The court concluded “The result to be obtained, and not the means or manor of obtaining it, was the goal which the lawmakers were attempting to reach. The law (Compulsory attendance) was made for the parent who does not educate his child, and not for the parent who…. So places within the reach of the child the opportunity and means of acquiring an education equal to that obtainable in the public schools….” Peterman at 552.

3. In Mazanec v. North Judson-san Pierre School Corporation, 614 F. Supp. 1152 (N. D. Ind. 1985) (affd. By 798 F. 2d 230). A federal District Court recognized that parents have the Constitutional Right to educate their children in a home environment (at page 1160). The court wrote concerning the qualifications of home school parents that, “it is now doubtful that the requirements of a formally licensed or certified teacher… would pass Constitutional Muster..” (at page 1160) On appeal, the circuit court rulledthat a school corporation is not immune from a 1983 action for improper enforcement of compulsory attendance.
4. Parents must keep attendance records “Solely to verify the enrollment and attendance of any particular child upon request of the superintendent of public instruction or the superintendent of the school corporation in which the private school is located.” Indiana Code Section 20-8.1-3-23.
5. A private school administrator shall furnish, on request of the state superintendent of public instruction, the number of children by grade level attending the school.” Indiana Code Section 20-8.1-3-24.

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