THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume VII, Issue # 3, January 5, 2005
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
CONTROL OF AMERICAN PUBLIC EDUCATION
BY THE U.S. NATIONAL GOVERNMENT
By Alan Caruba
THE NATIONAL GOVERNMENT'S CONTROL OF ELEMENTARY & SECONDARY EDUCATION IN THE U.S.A.: HOW THE
TAKEOVER OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS BY THE CENTRAL GOVERNMENT CONTINUES TO DEGRADE THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM &
"DUMB DOWN" ITS PRODUCTS, DESPITE AMPLE EVIDENCE THAT THE TRANSFORMATION IS OCCURRING IN WAYS WHICH NO
PARENT WOULD OR SHOULD ACCEPT
FULL STORY:
If your goal was to control the people of the United States of America and you were willing to be patient to achieve this goal, the
best way would be to gain control of America's public schools. The U.S. national government, aided and abetted by the National
Education Association (NEA), a teacher’s union, has achieved the goal of obtaining control of the pubblic schools, although, under the
Tenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and asccording to the fundamental principle of American federalism, providing for the
establishment, operation, and direction of institutions and programs of public education is a state and local function, rather than a
function of the national government. The results of the national government's control of the public schools, demonstrate that, year
after year, the schools are successfully producing graduates who cannot read and who lack other essential, basic skills.
Moreover, the public schools cannot begin the day with a prayer and, in a growing number of school districts, they cannot sing
traditional Christmas carols. Something is desperately wrong.
What are we doing about it? Nothing. Well, not quite nothing. The national government is throwing billions of dollars at programs it
knows are failures, while conjuring up new programs that are so frightening it defies the imagination.
Twenty million dollars in congressional grants will go to the New Freedom Commission to fund, among other things, universal “mental
health” screening and treatment of school children, a program that includes prescribing ineffective and dangerous medications. An
additional two million in grants was authorized for local educational systems and non-profit entities to treat teenagers judged to be
“suffering from mental, emotional, or behavior disorders.”
The U.S. Department of Education is spending $5 million on “Mental Health Integration in Schools,” as well as another million dollars
for U.S. Senator Teddy Kennedy’s early childhood mental health program, called “Foundations for Learning.” All this is a boon to the
pharmaceutical industry, but a horror for America's children and youth, whose mental health is NOT the school’s responsibility. It is
just one more effort to wrest control of a parent’s fundamental rights and responsibility over the welfare of their young son or
daughter.
It’s estimated that somewhere between six and seven million school children and youth have been administered mind-altering
medications. How many parents have been coerced or seduced into approving this is unknown, but some of these drugs produce
suicidal thoughts.
Children and youth in America’s public schools are not all suffering from some mental health problem, unless you include the
boredom that ensues from use of the “teach from the test” method, the method to which students are subjected in order to enable
them to pass the many standardized, national tests required by the No Child Left Behind program. In its first term, the Bush
administration has strengthened national governmental control over the public schools, neglecting and departing from the
aspirations of Ronald Reagan to actually rid the nation of the U.S. Department of Education.
The fact that the nearly 52 million children and youth in public schools do not all learn at the same rate is ignored. Any
information not reflected on the tests tends to get ignored because those test scores are tied to funding. NCLB is as cruel and
stupid a program as could have been devised, and it has cost American taxpayers some $50 billion. Not surprisingly, many school
districts have opted out of the program to avoid the stifling effect on their curricula.
The simple unavoidable truth, documented year after year, is that America’s school children and youth continue to perform poorly,
when compared to school children and youth in most other nations. Recently, a Trends in International Mathematics and Science
Study, a test of mastery of school curriculum content taught in all participating countries, curriculum content including chemistry,
physics, geometry and algebra, revealed that the test scores of U.S. fourth graders had remained stagnant and below average yet
again. The 2003 test results revealed that American eighth graders are just barely keeping up in mathematics, compared to students
at the same grade level in 44 other countries.
Recent National Education Assessments continue to demonstrate that only 31% of America's fourth graders are proficient in reading;
only 32% of fourth graders are proficient in mathematics; only 29% in science, and only 18% in American history. Virtually every
scholarly evaluation of history textbooks finds them terribly flawed and inaccurate.
Worse, the national government is funding a private group, the Center for Civic Education, which is publishing a proposed national
curriculum on the U.S. Constitution, a curriculum which , if adopted and implemented, would undermine a student’s understanding
of the Bill of Rights (one lone mention of the Second Amendment) and would subtly instill into school children's minds the concept
of world citizenship, as opposed to the concept of being a citizen of a sovereign United States of America. This standardization of
education about the U.S. Constitution teaches a version of political allegiance approved by America's "politically correct" Liberal
Leftist, internationalist elites and imposed on school children and youth through prograns of political indoctrination approved and
funded by the central government -- and nothing could be more un-American than that.
Remember: The U.S. Constitution makes no provision for the national government to be involved in education. That is a power that
belongs exclusively to the states and local communities.
Usurpers invading the sphere of American education include the United Nations as well as the U.S. central government. The United
Nations has gained a foothold in our schools with its International Baccalaureate program, underwritten by UNESCO. Writing about
the IB program earlier this year, one critic wrote her local newspaper to point out that “Administrators do not tell you that the current
IB program for ages three through grade twelve promotes socialism, disarmament, radical environmentalism and moral relativism,
while attempting to undermine Christian religious values and the concept of national sovereignty.” And, of course, we all want the
UN to be involved in the education of American children and youth, don’t we? NOT!
In 2002, American taxpayers, at the national governmental level, spent an estimated $108 billion on education. Nearly half of this
money was distributed by the U.S. Department of Education, but other federal departments, including Health and Human Services,
Agriculture, Labor, Defense and Interior, also spent large amounts of money on education. Fifty-three billion dollars of federal
money went to elementary and secondary school programs, and half of that sum was spent on programs under the Elementary and
Secondary Education Act (No Child Left Behind) and on special and vocational education.
And every school day, an estimated 3,000 secondary school students drop out of school. During the 2003-2004 school year, nearly
54,000 young people left without earning a high school diploma. Not that the diploma means much these days. Colleges and
universities routinely provide remedial programs to help students secure the skills which they were supposed to have acquired in
in the elementary and secondary schools (but didn't) and which they need in order to master the subject-matter content of the
courses taught in institutions of higher education.
What is the reason for this sorry state of affairs in American elementary and secondary education? Is it because teachers are
underpaid? No! The average salary for public elementary and secondary school teachers is $44,367. Salaries in the 100 largest
cities range from $25,409 to $84,310. To put it another way, teachers earn more on an hourly basis than accountants, computer
programmers, engineers, and architects.
Are class sizes too large? The average pupil-teacher ratio at public schools is 15.9 to one. For public elementary schools it’s 21 to
one, and it’s 23 to one in public secondary schools. Teachers are being encouraged to be “facilitators,” as students are organized
to teach one another. Apparently the notion of a teacher at the front of the classroom is just passé.
The list of educational deprivations of our nation’s children and youth is a long one, but the message is clear. The national
government has to get out of the education business! There is, intentionally, no basis for it in the American Constitution.
Schools are failing the children, and a radical return to tried-and-true pedagogic methods that educated Americans prior to the
1960s must become the standard again. Power over the schools must be returned to the states and local communities.
The National Education Association, a mainstay of the Democratic Party and a major part of the political and cultural Left in the
U.S.A., must answer for its funding and participation in political campaigns and its influence over achool curricula must end.
Until and unless this occurs, every student passing through the current educational system is being indoctrinated, not educated.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Education & America's Schools
A Practical Guide to Homeschooling
Alan Caruba is a veteran business and science writer, a Public Relations Counselor, Communications Director of the American Policy Center,
and Founder of the National Anxiety Center, a clearinghouse for information about media-driven scare campaigns. Caruba writes a weekly
column, "Warning Signs," posted on the Internet website of the National Anxiety Center
(www.anxietycenter.com). A compilation of his past columns, entitled Warning Signs, is published by Merril Press. In addition
to Warning Signs, Caruba is the author of A Pocket Guide to Militant Islam and The United Nations vs. the United States,
both of which are available from the National Anxiety Center, 28 West Third Street, Apartment 1321, South Orange, New Jersey, 07079.
Copyright 2005 Alan Caruba
Published with Permission of Alan Caruba
ACaruba@AOL.Com
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Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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