More on American Miseducation

27 Thursday Jul 2017

Tags

America, children, education, learning, schools

As a writer few things are as irritating as hearing more and more people say something to the effect of: “I haven’t read a book in years. Who reads?!” It’s so bad that I actually find it difficult sometimes to explain to certain people what I do.

Saying one is a writer won’t do as it generally begets only stares and stupid questions. Further explaining how letters are shaped into words, those words forming sentences, etc., with the final product landing in a magazine, a book, or a blog doesn’t always help either. Again, “Who reads?!”

I’ve toyed with the idea of just telling those 2 or 3 (4? 5??) SD south that I’m a wizard, using powerful magic to do things they can’t understand. In reality it’s kind of the truth anymore.

And it’s not so much a problem of sheer stupidity as it is one of ignorance. People just don’t know because they’re no longer educated. Otherwise useful minds sit idle because they lack the spark plugs the schools were supposed to install. Today the mechanics have another agenda.

We’re now two or three generations into the new education. The results are disastrous.

Yesterday, via a VD post, I pointed out that, nationally, college IQ scores have dropped nearly a whole SD in the past half century. I checked the comments on Vox’s post later and found this:

This from USA Today:

In 1998, the number of high-school graduates with A averages was 38%.

In 2016, the number had risen to 47%. That’s nearly half of all graduates.

Curiously, SAT scores over the same period fell 24 points.

More students than ever, nearly a slight majority, earn “excellent” grades even as the whole IQ slips and SAT scores fall? Huh?

This is the dumbing down in action as expressed through the grading metric. The schools are cognizant of the fact of their failure and so they compensate by adjusting marks upward. And they have failed, by and large.

Back to my original gripe: they don’t even teach real language comprehension or use anymore. Linda Schrock Taylor explains:

Literacy failures continue to compound with each generation as mis-educators focus on everything except the core problem: The Devastation of Language and Literacy.

The vast majority of Americans no longer Hear, Speak, Spell, Read, or Write English with competency, let alone with skill. The destruction of Americans’ ability to precisely understand and use their own language is at the root of every problem that faces our nation: school failure; dearth of general knowledge; limited horizons; shallow, inaccurate thought processes; poor communication skills; unemployability; criminality; and the development of this shallow, polarized society in which we live. Still teachers are wasting precious educational time, and damaging young brains, with flashcards and sight word memorization.

We have no reason to expect any noticeable change, whether a Hobby Educator, or a Degreed Educator, is at the helm of the money wasting, regulation imposing, U.S. Department of Education. The True Educators have mostly died off or been spiritually beaten into silence. Thus far, no one in power has been willing to 1) accurately identify the Core Problem and its breadth, 2) agree to fund only proven traditional methods, and 3) demand absolute use of successful teaching methods. Only by doing these three things can America solve the Core Problem at each level and thus RESET the learning and intellectual abilities of all Americans: Preschool; Elementary; 6-12th Grades, and Adult.

If the kids (and adults) don’t know the language, they can’t read. If they can’t read, they can’t learn. Schools were supposed to be about learning. They’re not, not now. And God help the overly intelligent child trapped in one:

There is little room for intelligent, independent thinkers in today’s public educational system. The toll taken by Collectivist agendas on these Individualist types of children and adults is simply too profound; too damaging. Public education has lost sight of the goal of education. Educators rave on about how the STATE needs to make sure that children have their basic needs met before they can be expected to learn; all the while forgetting that historically children arrived, often underfed and poorly clothed, at drafty one-roomed schoolhouses where uncertified teachers educated individuals who would create and build one of the truly great civilizations on Earth. Now it is questionable whether most graduates are capable of understanding that which they have been bequeathed, let alone have the competencies and knowledge to restore and maintain America.

Once parents understand the dangers of, and the agenda and history behind, state schooling, many will refigure their budgets, reassess their priorities, and remove their children from a system where puppet masters with invisible strings pull all people and all policies towards Collectivism. The only hope is that the remaining Individualists will fight all attempts by the collective to ensnare their children and attempt to teach them to: share; hold back; fail with the group, underachieve; then willingly work to clothe and feed the lazy and the elite few at the top.

I detect in Taylor’s assessment a great optimism that the damage done may yet be reversed. I hope so. That was why I purchased Out of the Ashes, by Esolen, yesterday. I’m the introduction and the first chapter into it – haven’t even made it to the education section(s) – and it’s incredible.

In writing this I was thinking about including a quote from that but, honestly, every sentence is quote-worthy. It also hints at a latent optimistic appraisal of the situation.

For now, I suggest you get a copy. It’s well worth it. I’ll have more, and a review, once I finish reading the whole book. Reading: what a great thing.

literacy-map

Jalisa Danielle.

*The foregoing criticism obviously does not directly concern this audience.

Stupid Is As Stupid Does. Or Doesn’t. Or Just Can’t.

26 Wednesday Oct 2016

Posted by perrinlovett in News and Notes

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

America, children, education, learning, schools, society, stupidity

The other day I was mildly concerned about college students trying to find those elusive safe spaces. Turns out, that may be all they’re capable of. Either schools are not teaching or humans are becoming mentally retarded as the default setting. The esteemed Dr. Walter Williams explains:

Do you wonder why Sen. Bernie Sanders and his ideas are so popular among American college students? The answer is that they, like so many other young people who think they know it all, are really uninformed and ignorant. You say, “Williams, how dare you say that?! We’ve mortgaged our home to send our children to college.” Let’s start with the 2006 geographic literacy survey of youngsters between 18 and 24 years of age by National Geographic and Roper Public Affairs.

Less than half could identify New York and Ohio on a U.S. map. Sixty percent could not find Iraq or Saudi Arabia on a map of the Middle East, and three-quarters could not find Iran or Israel. In fact, 44 percent could not locate even one of those four countries. Youngsters who had taken a geography class didn’t fare much better. By the way, when I attended elementary school, during the 1940s, we were given blank U.S. maps, and our assignment was to write in the states. Today such an assignment might be deemed oppressive, if not racist.

According to a Philadelphia magazine article, the percentage of college grads who can read and interpret a food label has fallen from 40 to 30. They are six times likelier to know who won “American Idol” than they are to know the name of the speaker of the House. A high-school teacher in California handed out an assignment that required students to use a ruler. Not a single student knew how.

An article on News Forum for Lawyers titled “Study Finds College Students Remarkably Incompetent” cites a study done by the American Institutes for Research that revealed that over 75 percent of two-year college students and 50 percent of four-year college students were incapable of completing everyday tasks. About 20 percent of four-year college students demonstrated only basic mathematical ability, while a steeper 30 percent of two-year college students could not progress past elementary arithmetic. NBC News reported that Fortune 500 companies spend about $3 billion annually on training employees in “basic English.”

If this generation can’t use rulers, how long before some future cohort won’t even be able to speak? How, then, will we hear and understand their feeble cries for safe spaces and social justice?

stupid-chisel_wright-flickr-e1449677745878-370x243

The College Fix.

Given these observations, one sincerely hopes it’s the system and not the brains that have failed. Either way things are looking a little less than hopeful.

Death at the Academy

23 Wednesday Mar 2016

Posted by perrinlovett in Other Columns

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

America, college, culture, debt, education, freedom, government, internet, law, learning, Mississippi, political science, political theory, Second Amendment, students, stupidity, The People, University of Georgia

I used to want to teach law or political theory at the university level. Now I do not. Well, honestly part of me still does. However, I have come to the conclusion it isn’t going to happen anytime soon. For years – a decade or so – I had a search running at Higheredjobs.com. I recently turned it off.

After maybe 100 failed inquiry letters and several first (and last) interviews I realized there is a disconnect between me and the academic system. It’s a good thing. I would not fit in. I imagine being the only non-communist on the faculty might be uncomfortable. Less comfortable would be my students. As I have chronicled here modern university students are large toddlers, less concerned with learning than feeling safe.

There’s a new and better educational model anyway. It uses independence and technology for a new take on the classical school experience. Socrates and Aquinas would approve if they were still around. In their respective ancient days only those who desired to learn furthered their education beyond a rudimentary level.

Times had changed by the 1970s when my father was teaching at Mississippi State. The emphasis was primarily on learning but the post hippy culture was creeping in. Serious students mingled on campus with party animals. In the corners social revolutionaries plotted the future of safe spaces, inclusion, and sustainability (still not sure what they sustain – certainly not education). I remember the pretty girls and the copious amounts of coffee and cigarettes consumed by the faculty.

Times kept changing. By the advent of my tenure at the University of Georgia the counterculture was taking control. Still, those that wanted to learn could but it was frowned upon. I fell somewhere between the studious and the partyers. The pretty girls still got my attention. Things were worse in law school. There I joined, fully, the ranks of the studious. As a rebel of demented mental ability I sought out the fundamental theories and origins behind the law. I largely did so in secret and on my own.

Today the inmates run the asylum. Beyond math, science and engineering real learning is frowned upon. There’s a lot of frowning. Tell a pretty girl she’s pretty and you may be brought up on charges. Coffee still seems safe but nicotine is verboten. Say things like “I like guns” or “taxes are too high” or “people should work for a living” and the student crybabies will melt and the faculty will launch into hysterical tyrades.

To be a white man on campus results in treatment once reserved for the likes of Hester Prynne. Pride in Western tradition, morality and common sense are treated like leprosy.

The schools (as they are still called) waste resources on sports, safe spaces, counseling, women’s studies, black studies, gay black women’s studies and a host of other nonsense.

These are the universities mind you. From Harvard to Notre Dame to my beloved UGA the failure of education has spread like a cancer. The lower, primary schools (especially those run by government – most) are in even worse shape.

Notre Dame professor Dr. Patrick Deneen says even the best colleges, like his, are “committing civilizational suicide.”

“What our educational system aims to produce is cultural amnesia, a wholesale lack of curiosity, history-less free agents, and educational goals composed of content-free processes and unexamined buzz-words like ‘critical thinking,’ ‘diversity,’ ‘ways of knowing,’ ‘social justice,’ and ‘cultural competence.’

Our students are the achievement of a systemic commitment to producing individuals without a past for whom the future is a foreign country, cultureless ciphers who can live anywhere and perform any kind of work without inquiring about its purposes or ends, perfected tools for an economic system that prizes ‘flexibility’ (geographic, interpersonal, ethical).”

Frightening but accurate. What happened? What are the sane and the responsible to do?

Gary North did a fantastic job laying out the history and demise of American education. His conclusion is simple and right – “close the schools.” They have failed. They do the opposite of what was once intended. They are beyond the point of redemption. Close them all.

The public schools are in group two. They are likely to die, no matter what. The only economically relevant question today is this: “How long will voters authorize the tax money required to keep them on life support?”

– North, March 19, 2016.

He mentions the modern, better alternative, guaranteed to deliver real learning – the online education. The Kahn Academy is the largest school in the world with 25 million students. It’s free to anyone. There are others like it. They are beginning to take a bite out of traditional, failed schooling.

MIT boldly put nearly all of its courses online for free, for anyone. Some books will need to be acquired. There will be a small expense associated though many, many books are completely free on Kindle. Any ambitious young person with a laptop and a very basic comprehension of English and fundamental math can literally educate themselves at little to no cost and at their own pace.

There are a host of other opportunities online like Udemy. It’s an outfit or concept like this I may end up going with. Or I might just publish books and/or create my own e-classes in topics that interest me. The sky is the limit.

Educrats and silly professors are panicked because of this increasing competition. No time wasted waiting on the lowest common denominator to catch up. No boredom. No anti-western indoctrination. No crushing student loans of money illegally printed out of thin air.

No need to wallow amid a bunch of weak socialists in a dangerous environment. I recently noted the progress of Georgia’s H.B.859, a bill that would allow free people to legally carry firearms at state colleges. At present these schools are gun free zones – the type of places where the majority of violence occurs. It happens because criminals have a monopoly on force in such places. The bill would tilt the tables in favor of ordinary people.

As such, it is opposed by criminals and school faculty and staff lacking common sense. UGA law professor Sonja West wrote a hysterical piece for Slate decrying self-defense. Using backwards antidotal evidence and shaky psuedo legal reasoning she conveys her central thought: she does not like guns. At least not guns in private hands. It’s just terrible people might have a legal fighting chance to repel attacks; the Second Amendment be damned.

The hoplophobia and mania runs deeper at the Red and Black, UGA’s leftist student newspaper: “Donald Trump may be the 21st-century equivalent of Mussolini, but the real threat to democracy is right here in Georgia.”

That’s all I really need to quote. Having worn out the Hitler label the lefties are turning to Mussolini. The poor argument is that guns threaten democracy. Democracy is about as big a threat as one might contrive. Free people with guns are a check on violence and tyranny, democratic or otherwise. Pitiful.

There was a death at the academy. Learning died. Now the schools themselves are headed to the graveyard. I hope you will share this information with a young person and said person’s parents. Help save them from wasting time and money and from exposure to whimps, communists, and freedom haters. Help them learn and explore their world freely.

Valediction

24 Sunday May 2015

Posted by perrinlovett in News and Notes

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

2015, America, best and brightest, brainwashing, children, Cicero, civics, college, communism, Consitution, crime, debased, Dr. Seuss, education, freedom, future, generations, George Carlin, government, graduation, Jefferson, Jesus, John Taylor Gatto, law, law school, learning, new, news, old, oppression, prisons, responsibility, rights, schools, Second Amendment, slaves, Soviet Union, teachers

As I type this bit up I am listening to several of my friends discuss the graduation of their several children from high school. It’s that time of year. All across America eighteen-year-olds are preparing to say goodbye to lifelong friends, to embrace college, to join the workforce, and to become adults. It is a joyful time.

The local fish wrapper ran, today, a separate pictorial section dedicated to our young people, their early accomplishments and their future plans. In particular the paper dwelt upon the lives and missions of the valedictorians and salutatorians of local schools. These are young men and women who are poised to go far in life.

The news calls them the “best and brightest.” By the popular measure of educational achievement, this moniker fits. However, these words are today minced in a somewhat incorrect manner. “Valedictorian” and “salutatorian” come from Latin roots – valediction and saluation. The former is a farewell, the latter a greeting.

At ceremonies coast to coast these meanings serve a justifiable purpose. The valedictorian speaks first to bid the class farewell to the sheltered academic lives the members have known. The salutatorian then speaks to the promise of the coming years. Or, something like that.

Those acquainted with the works of John Taylor Gatto or who have children of school age, surely understand the decline of quality in American public education. Gatto was formerly New York’s teacher of the year (State and City). His distinguished career spanned decades. Now he speaks and writes of the critical need for drastic school reform. His writing is frequently published at lewrockwell.com. He is the author of The Underground History of American Education: A School Teacher’s Intimate Investigation Into the Problem of Modern Schooling (2000).

Gatto has related the American model of public education to Soviet-era brainwashing:

Two years before I ran across that Atlantic broadside, I encountered a different analysis in the financial magazine Forbes. I was surprised to discover Forbes had correctly tracked the closest inspiration for school psychologizing, both its aims and its techniques, to the pedagogy of China and the Soviet Union. Not similar practices and programs, mind you, identical ones. The great initial link with Russia, I knew, had been from the Wundtian Ivan Pavlov, but the Chinese connection was news to me. I was unaware then of John Dewey’s tenure there in the 1920s, and had given no thought, for that reason, to its possible significance:

The techniques of brainwashing developed in totalitarian countries are routinely used in psychological conditioning programs imposed on school children. These include emotional shock and desensitization, psychological isolation from sources of support, stripping away defenses, manipulative cross-examination of the individual’s underlying moral values by psychological rather than rational means. These techniques are not confined to separate courses or programs…they are not isolated idiosyncracies of particular teachers. They are products of numerous books and other educational materials in programs packaged by organizations that sell such curricula to administrators and teach the techniques to teachers. Some packages even include instructions on how to deal with parents and others who object. Stripping away psychological defenses can be done through assignments to keep diaries to be discussed in group sessions, and through role-playing assignments, both techniques used in the original brainwashing programs in China under Mao.

The Forbes writer, Thomas Sowell, perhaps invoking the slave states in part to rouse the reader’s capitalist dander, could hardly have been aware himself how carefully industrial and institutional interest had seeded Russia, China, Japan, and the Pacific Islands with the doctrine of psychological schooling long ago, nearly at the beginning of the century, and in Japan’s case even before that. All along we have harvested these experimental growths in foreign soil for what they seem to prove about people-shaping.

– Gatto, The Empty Child, Chapter 13 of The Underground History of American Public Education (2000).

“Slaves,” “people-shaping,” and “brainwashing” are alarming and damning. However, from my experience I find them succient and apt discriptions of American education.

I was lucky growing up. I had a slew of teachers, older and steeped in the traditions of real education – the old school way, who actually dared and cared to teach. I remember them fondly. Also, in high school, college and graduate school I possessed a hard-headed resilience and independence which plagues me to this day. You may sense in my writing.

Today schools are little more than prisons crossbred with day care centers. Our children are marched around like cattle by overweight nitwits. They are subjected to communist indoctrination and cultural immorality. State-worship is everywhere. Rules must be obeyed perfectly. Freakism of every strip is revered. God is banned from the building.

In all this idiocy the one thing missing is teaching – learning and educational experiment are vacant in our public schools. They are unwanted qualities among the people. As George Carlin used to say, the system wants people just smart enough to operate the machines and file the paper – they do not want educated people capable of free thought or consideration.

By the grace of God Almightly the “best and brightest” are often times exempted from this nonesense. Many possess those rebellious traits I hold dear. Many are allowed to pursue real studies in real academic subjects. These are statistical outliers. The other children, the majority, are treated like sheep and criminals.

A boy in West Virginian was recently ARRESTED for wearing a t-shirt which expressed support for the NRA and the Second Amendment. No-one was bothered by the shirt. The lad harmed none. However, the Second Amendment representing the last hope of freedom for oppressed people (like students), the shirt had to be banned and demonized. In an overreaction typical of modern schools administrators, the teacher and principal called the local Gestapo. The child was led away in handcuffs – for wearing a shirt.

The charges were later dismissed by an honest judge. However, great damage has been done. The boy’s mother is suing the school for violating her son’s civil rights. Go mama!

Long ago, public schools had civics classes. In those classes the Constitution, its traditions and foundations were taught. This included the second amendment and the necessary right and obligation of rebellion against tyranny. Revolution was celebrated. Today, as best I can gather, such thought or instruction would constitute a criminal offense. Our babes are taught the government is the end all and be all of human existence. Its supremacy and place must never be challenged.

This is a crime, in and of itself, equal with all the positive modern instruction concerning dependence, homosexuality, death culture, etc. Anything goes and is okay, our children are taught, so long as it does not make any sense. I imagine that math, being completely based on absolute truth, is completely absent from the new schools. Robots and foreigners can always add for us. This subtracts from the ability of our people to independently endure. It cries out for vengeance. Most ears are deaf to that cry.

Back to our new graduates … the fish-wrapper relayed to its readers how a valedictorian and salutatorian of a local high school treated their classmates to the verse and wisdom of Dr. Seuss. This is a commonality in schools these days. Oh, the places you’ll go… This small child’s book was read, in part, in one of my law classes. Maybe it was at our graduation. It was foolish and inappropriate.

(Dr. Seuss, keeping children and adults shit stupid since 1937. Google.)

What kind of world is it when the words of Jesus, Jefferson and Cicero are absent and replaced by the sophomoric rhymes of the kindergarten? Seuss is the level of the new school – childish, pointless, and optimistically vacuous.

Were I permitted to address a graduating class I too would present a Seuss book. I would introduce the Cat in the Hat. I would then rip it in half, throw it on the floor and proceed to tell the children that they were, that day, freed from one form of government oppression. I would congratulate them for surviving without arrest records. I would then extol them of the crucial importance of real learning. Never let schooling interfere with education. Never let education interfere with learning. Question everything. Accept no mastery. Put down with brutality that slavery prepared for your adult lives. I would never be invited back again.

Before I wrote about my experience in college and in law school. I ridiculed myself for opportunities lost and the system for lack of substance. Schooling is what one makes of it. I hope our future generations grasp this. I hope they reject the new theories of dumbed-down complacency. I hope they prosper. Congratulations to the Class of 15.

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Election

05 Tuesday Mar 2013

Posted by perrinlovett in Other Columns

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

2004, Bush 43, Congress, Constitution, Draco, elections, Facebook, free-speech, fun, GA, John McCain, law, learning, libertarian, Marietta, mistake, morons, oppression, Ralph Reed, Republican, Ron Paul, Rush, Supreme Court, torture

In 2004 I did a stupid thing. Despite my libertarian leanings I once involved myself with the local Republican party. I did this partly as a networking opportunity and partly as an attempt to side with the famous “lesser of two evils,” a political compromise if you will. As a result I wasted a lot of time at various party events, listening to irrational people ranting about hateful or pointless things. I learned a valuable lesson though and I have never placed myself in such a demeaning situation again.

Something funny (or alarming) did happen. I’ll relate to you now. I actually got a little bit of wisdom out of the whole experience. Maybe you will too. Mainly I learned the Party was useless and certain of its members and supporters were untrustworthy at best. This story relates to one of the chief events which taught me the lesson. Enjoy!

It was George Bush, the Dimmer’s, second Presidential campaign. I was invited to travel down to Marietta, Georgia to attend a luncheon seminar on the subject and what the “grassroots” folks could expect. The featured speaker was Ralph Reed of former “Christian” Coalition and political snake-oil fame. The event was held in a trendy hi-rise and the crowd was composed of typical Republican types – older white folks in suits and such.

(The Misunderstestimator. Google Images.)

Ralph went on and on about how Bush could and should win, if only us little people would do our part. I was more interested in the menu than the rhetoric for most of the meeting. Then I caught something Ralph said which made me laugh openly. I nearly choked on my scone. He was commenting on how hard it would be to win the re-election, or any new election for that matter, thanks to the Draconian and likely illegal provisions of the dreaded McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, recently enacted. He went on for a few minutes about the horrors of doing business under the new law and then opened up for questions.

You probably can guess what happened next. I couldn’t resist. I raised my hand early and when called on I asked, “Do you mean the same McCain-Feingold law authored by Republican John McCain? Ralph, reading my thoughts, nodded affirmatively but uncomfortably. I kept on, “You mean the same law passed by the Republican majority in both houses of Congress? Ralph began to sweat. At this point, several of the well-fed attendees looked up from their dessert dishes. I pressed on, “You’re talking about the law signed by President Bush, the same guy with the current troubles? Ralph was white and shaky. He had a hard time answering me. A few more of the Rush-bots began to listen.

I further inquired, “This is the law which Bush said was probably UnConstitutional, but that he’d sign anyway?” Ralphie swooned. I should have stopped but I just could not help myself. Most of the herd was still grazing thoughtlessly, but I had a large enough audience for my point. “Didn’t Bush sign the law only to say the Supreme Court would work out the details?” I asked. At this point Mr. Reed determined to leave early and stopped my questioning with a vague, “Uh, yeah…that law.” He didn’t want the suits to catch on if they could. There were no more questions.

As if by chance, or design, I happened to take the same descending elevator as Mr. Reed. I pressed a little further. I didn’t want to harass the poor guy but the fun was too good to let slip past. I asked rhetorically, “I guess it’s up to the Supreme Court, now?” Ralph began to turn green but responded, “Yeah. We’ll have to see what they say.” I ended the verbal water-boarding, “And, we can always count on them, can’t we?” I wish there was a video to corroborate my story.

The first time I was alone afterwards I laughed loudly for minutes on end. The ride home was unremarkable though. I don’t think the person I accompanied ever caught on to what I was implying. To her, whatever this new law was, it was just another part of the process – our team versus theirs. What it really meant was that the home team consisted of a bunch of F—ing Morons! I’ve never seen Ralph since and he won’t accept my Facebook friendship request. Bad memories I suppose.

The law turned out to mean nothing to the ticks and has since been largely over-ridden. The Supremes did make their ruling – a classic in my opinion. They pointed out the oppressive, free-speech limiting nature of the law, but concluded that since it pertained to the two political branches, and since those branches had approved it, the Court would too out of deference. So they did! As I said the law has been rendered moot for the most part. Politicians don’t mind stamping out the little people’s rights and opportunities, but they sure as hell won’t have any law impinging on their schemes.