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American Education: Roots of the Problem Just as democracy, a generic substitution for the more specific, republic, is the word of the day in politics, so egalitarianism or multi-culturalism is the by-word in American Education. Egalité is not a synonym for democracy, as those with a vested interest in promoting the concept would have you believe. The standard dictionary definition of egalitarianism is affirming, promoting, or characterized by belief in equal political, economic, social, and civil rights for all people. The definition of Democracy is a government by the people, either directly or through representation by elected officials, the principle of social equality and respect for the individual within a community. Notice the striking difference. The phrase ‘economic rights’ in the definition for egalitarianism and the exclusion of the word ‘individual’, or to put it plainly egalitarianism is a synonym for socialism. It is equality gone amok, mob rule, multi-culturalism, and the primary reason why the American Revolution succeeded and the French Revolution did not. The State of American Education Few Americans seem to be deterred from their beliefs by attention to fact or detail. In the spirit of multi-culturalism, many are convinced that any opinion is just as informed as every other. Witness ‘man on the street’ interviews or the call in segments on C-Span. Wisdom is defined by how many subjects one can offer an opinion upon, and trivia contests and multiple choice answers measure erudition. Einstein once remarked, "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." The Public Schools Hitler is quoted as saying, "Universal education is the most corroding and disintegrating poison that liberalism has ever invented"1. He was talking, of course, of government or public schools. Americans have thrown money at public education for 40 years, and though the “innovations” fostered over those years have been adopted as historical and accepted as indispensable, we consistently fail to achieve the goal of educating children. Web pages offering materials to assist teachers boast of “attention-grabbing" solutions to stop or manage youth violence, school failure, truancy, dropping out, family problems, poor motivation, Asperger’s behaviors, apathy, bad attitudes, attachment disorder, ADHD, depression, withdrawal, peer conflict, classroom misbehavior, dropping out, independent living, anger control problems, delinquency, severe emotional problems, independent living, and even "girl's problems" like teen pregnancy. It's billed as information that no contemporary youth professional can safely be without. Notice that teachers are now called youth professionals, and one wonders when they get the time to teach? Prior to the 60s the greatest behavioral difficulties were unruly demonstrations when a teacher left the classroom, or the heinous crime of chewing gum. Now teachers must be social scientists, who are nimble enough to dodge bullets and teach at the same time. As a result of Progressive assault, History was one of the first things to disappear from public education. Although still taught in a pre-packaged, minimalist way in high school, except for a few pockets of resistance history has virtually disappeared from the elementary and middle school curricula. Paul Johnson, the British historian and admirer of American Culture, tells us that “The study of history is a powerful antidote to contemporary arrogance. It is humbling to discover how many of our glib assumptions, which seem to us novel and plausible have been tested before not once but many times and in innumerable guises; and discovered to be, at great human cost, wholly false.” History has been replaced by Social Studies. Why should the left fear history? It is because history teaches us that individuals, not the collective, are responsible for the advancement of mankind, for invention, art, and philosophy. The concepts of liberty and individual achievement have been sacrificed to “getting along”—i.e., egalitarianism, multi-culturalism, and the insistence that America is an inherently, intensely racist nation. Thanks to this indoctrination, few Americans are aware that the U.S. is a republic, not a democracy. The failure to teach history is only one way the collectivists have dumbed down education. Banishing the works of ‘dead white men’ from the curriculum has disconnected students from Western, Enlightenment values, and thereby reason itself. Add to this, the corrosive effect of Teacher Unions and you have a witch’s brew of tremendous consequence. Instead of qualified teachers, we have teacher qualifications. Seniority substitutes for qualification. Union rules now dictate who teaches what course based upon seniority. The most senior teachers pick which classes they would like to teach, whether they are trained in the subject or not. It’s a good thing the answers are in the back of the book. Private schools, which substantially outperform the public schools in every conceivable way, find no need for teacher certification. It is not news that the greatest minds that exist now or have ever existed, the greatest scientists, mathematicians, poets, writers, artists, and inventors the world has ever known would not be allowed to teach in a public school. In the “thrilling days of yesteryear” when “father knew best” Teachers were responsible for teaching; Principals supervised without guidance from administrators on high; and the job got done with nary a thought to blaming parents when students didn’t learn. A few kids dropped out who were not of an intellectual bent, but neither they nor their parents blamed others or worried about self-esteem. The dropouts took useful, honorable positions in factories, supermarkets or auto shops because that was what they preferred in the first place. There was no liberal guilt about a system that failed them or weeping and wailing that the world may have been deprived of a great scientist or mathematician (as if today’s system could produce one). We were grateful for a competent mechanic. On the University level A new right has emerged, the right not to be offended. The challenge facing today’s university student is how to be non-judgmental not only in personal relations, but in metaphysics as well. Popular among today’s professors is Umberto Eco who postulates something he calls syncretism, "the combination of different forms of belief or practice; such a combination must tolerate contradictions. Each of the original messages contains a sliver of wisdom, and although they seem to say different or incompatible things, they all are nevertheless alluding, allegorically, to the same primeval truth . . . there can be no advancement of learning. Truth already has been spelled out once and for all, and we can only keep interpreting its obscure message.” Reinterpreting that ‘obscure’ message accounts for today’s nihilist, anarchistic philosophers who spin great clumps of contradictory information into a lithified whole, as well as those convoluted conspiracy theories with which we are barraged almost daily. Young minds are taught that firmly held convictions and clear visions of the truth are ‘worthless hallucinations of the mind,’ and that truth and fact are judgmental. Eco delivers the coup de grace with, “The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity.” Another pearl in the diadem, Jacques Derrida assures them, “that [a] text is incoherent because its own key terms can be understood only in relation to their suppressed opposites.” In other words, what an author says is not what is meant; what he does not say is more accurately his point. Bathed in this ‘old world’ swill, our universities churn out students that believe there are no absolutes, that facts don’t matter and that everything is just opinion. They are told they may pick and choose the ideas that create their personal philosophy like items from a Chinese menu, one from column A, 2 from column B or vice versa. As a result, many young people lead aimless non-productive lives, feeling nothing but hopelessness. Some drop out, eking out a life on the streets, others become trolls in a relative’s basement, yet others adopt greed as their standard, but universally they eschew the dreary details of existence for a slow suicide of drugs, sex, and rock and roll. Devaluation of Academic Degrees The combination of insufficient standards and irrelevant curricula has conspired to inflate college degrees to such an extent that statist forces may be able to keep us in school until our 50s. It is interesting to note that what was a high school diploma in 1948, is equivalent to today’s Baccalaureate. From the 60s through much of the 80s, a BA was enough education for most tasks. Today’s BA is remedial high school, yesterday’s high school diploma. Employers now look for a Master’s. The Ph.D. is likewise affected, with students engaging in post-doctoral work. As standards continue to slip, more and more degrees will be required to compensate for what is not being taught on the level below. We will soon need a new degree; perhaps we could call a DD for Doctor of Doctoring, or better yet a Phdd, short for ‘fiddle about’ or ‘fiddling while Rome burns.’ Mark Twain wisely remarked: "I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." If we had any sense we’d return to the one-room school. 1-from Rauschning, The Voice of Destruction: Hitler Speaks ©2005 by Robert Davison Wolf, All Rights Reserved..
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