Our Schools and Education: the War Zone in America: Truth Versus Ideology

By James R. Lake

In the ongoing saga of bureaucratic control, misuse of money and personnel, lies, and failures, not of the children but of the leaders, educators,and businesses that control education, author James Lake firmly presents the truth versus the ideology in this comprehensive book. Throughout Our Schools and Education: The War Zone in America, he includes the problems bureaucrats create and what we can do to reclaim our schools. He shows workable and realistic solutions to help answer the pressing problems facing our children. He invites everyone, teachers, parents, and the young and old, to be part of the positive effort instead of adding to the existing dilemma buy doing nothing, allowing the bureaucrats to continue to control massive amounts of money meant to help our youth. This book is an eye-opener and should be read by every American that believes in the educational traditions that have made our nation great. With the help of teachers, parents and communities we can set aside the educational socialism forced upon us by Washingto D.C. and revers our present direction, returning education to our communities. We must maintain the America that our parents knew and created and not succumb to being a one world government. We will teach our youth to love America and to cherish our history and what America has stood for. The key to this is our support for what is right for our children and our nation. Our schools must teach the three "Rs" but also history, science, the arts, technology, vocational classes, and give our youth a very broad and realistic education. We must not teach to a test nor national standards. This book exposes the problems and gives answers to the needed solutions that every parent and teacher should be aware and active in their implementation. >i>Our Schools and Education: The War Zone in America identifies the problems and presents the solutions to these issues so that educational socialism will be done away with and our communities will once again control and direct our schools, reestablishing and maintaining the greatness that has been our nations. May God bless America.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 27, 2009
• ISBN: 9781462810567

James R. Lake

About the Author Jim Lake is an experienced educator, school administrator, and university instructor. He is also a successful artist who has created and shown his works of pottery, watercolor paintings, and pen and ink drawings for the past thirty years. He is expanding his many talents to include writing. He hopes that youth and adults alike will enjoy his book of illustrations and be inspired by our memories of having a Real Pal. Jim and his wife are the proud parents of six children and have nineteen grandchildren. They reside in Central California.

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Copyright © 2009 by James R. Lake.

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Contents

Introduction

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Conclusion

The Beginning

Appendix I

Appendix II

Appendix III

Appendix IV

References

I dedicate this work to my wife Jane, the strength and love of my life, our wonderful children Samantha and Skip, James and Stacy, Jeanie and Gary, Benjamin and Shawn, David and Andrea, and Peter along with our twenty grandchildren. With my family I must also include and thank many individuals that supported me in this work: Mitch Jang, Fred Maher, Howard Knadler, Tom Crocket, Cyril Ward, Bill Guggemos, Bill Mortimore, Bruce Vieira, Peter Hamilton, Mike Razavi, and Carnell Edwards, along with the countless number of youth and parents with whom I have had the privilege to work and to improve our schools.

I give special recognition to Phil Clark. Phil passed away in May, 2009.

He was a brilliant educator and good friend.

Introduction

It is time to address the problems that face our schools and present workable and realistic solutions. There is hopelessness and great concern about our schools expressed by many people. We as a nation must become pro-active in establishing effective and functional schools. There are solutions and answers that work. These solutions have been present and used in various areas of our nation for years but have been set aside by the educational elite and the think tank universities and businesses as they try to put their ideologies into education and tell us what is best for our youth. The educational underlings, principals, vice principals, teachers, and the occasional superintendents keep their mouths shut, usually out of fear for their jobs, like any industry, while the educational elite move forward with program after program, using think tank figures and statistics, acting like they know what to do. The fact is, they do not know. We are in a big business with all of the forces and power that any bureaucratic business possesses. This is one of the dominant problems. The fact is few people will speak up. We have empowered those that have the title of superintendent, board member, professor or other appellatives that relate to education and are allowing them to waste large amounts of money and destroy one of the most sacred things in our nation, our schools.

This is not an intellectual study for the educational bureaucracy but a factual exposure with solutions. It has been written to inform you, the public, the non-educator, the parent, the voter, and those who want to know what is actually happening in education and what can be done to improve the teaching of our nation’s most precious resource, our children.

This book of educational facts and truths contains numerous references for those that doubt the information. If the reader needs proof, he will most likely not understand the content within these pages, but the references and written sources are included. The typical educator that supports the current direction of our schools will not agree with this book and will attempt to deride it and prove it wrong. This is a common practice of liberals and socialists that are destroying all that we hold dear. This is a sad fact in politics and education. The reality is that they will use statistics that supports their position, and will labor to make what they are doing appear to be for the good of the nation. It is not! They are perpetrating lies and controls over our great nation and must be stopped. It is time for common sense and honesty, not references. Our Schools and Education: The War Zone in America will explain what should be in place so our children will be successful and prepared for life beyond our public school systems, supported by numerous explanations of the problems. Education is not and cannot be the fix-all for our society. It cannot take the place of the family, nor can it continue on the path it has been headed and be successful. The information herein has been taken from extensive research spanning a period of over fifteen years. Truth is truth and does not need a reference. We rely too much on the wisdom of man and too little on the wisdom of God and our founding Fathers. You will find this to be a refreshing treatise of truth and common sense that most people in this beloved nation of ours will recognize.

How can the youth in our schools compete with the collapse of the traditional family unit, sexual promiscuity, violence, the drug-alcohol use which exists among our school age students and the fact that our schools are now a political football? They are subject to every whim of the political and media voices. Along with the presences of the social decay of the family is the internal and external decay of the actual educational mechanism. Our government bureaucracies, with their growth and consuming power at the state and federal levels are creating a never-ending list of mandates and programs that complicate teaching. With the promise of funds to the districts and schools, when those schools adhere to federal and state requirements. They are taking the essence of local control from educating our youth.

The correct teaching of young people and the government’s idea of education are at opposite polls. The gulf is widened between effective schooling and educational mediocrity as our communities lose control of educating their children. The attempt of our politicians and social reformers to use education to cure the ills of our society is an unrealistic use of the sacred task of teaching our youth. There are many examples of this type of effort in past history that has failed; John Dewey brought about Progressive Education which evolved into the Gary Plan, named after Gary, Indiana, and the effort to create robot-like workers for the factories. In 1917 it was dropped because of protests and riots in New York City on the part of emigrant parents that wanted their children to be taught more effectively. The science and math reform of the 1950’s that Jerrold Zacharias designed and educators across America tried to use only confused students and teachers. Class size reduction has been declared a failure by many leading educators such as Fredrick Hess. New math, from Nicholas Bourbaki and his associates, was pushed upon schools in the 1960’s as a new and creative way for kids to learn mathematics more rapidly and was a total failure. Title 1 was put in place to close the educational gap between the economically disadvantaged and more affluent students and was declared a failure in 1998 by the United States Department of Education. In May of 2008, Polly Curtis, the education editor of the Guardian stated that we have returned to progressivism with Pupil Centered Learning and it is destroying our schools. The list goes on and on.

We are told that, on the average, our youth do not read, write, use mathematics, or even work well with others to the degree that most parents, business people, and the general public thinks is acceptable. The blame for these shortcomings has been placed squarely in the lap of our schools, particularly our high schools. This study addresses this dilemma and exposes the real issues and problems that are destroying our schools. The politicians with their rhetoric, the professional educators, and the negative and arrogant out-of-control media, continue to try to hide the truth. The public needs to demand something different, but those who have damaged the system are still in charge. The solution is not that difficult if the aforementioned entities would allow teachers to teach and communities to control their schools.

Over the past forty years America’s public schools have abandoned traditional methods of teaching and replaced them with philosophies and programs that have hampered learning. The reality that a new program is not the answer has not occurred to the educational bureaucracy. We find that our kids are not being taught what we once called the basics of education nor are they responsible for themselves as students. We are concentrating so much on language arts, reading, and math that we have left behind what is a well-rounded education that supports learning and strengthens education and life of every child. Because of this current direction many of our children do not know who our Founding Fathers were or what they did, how to solve simple mathematics problems, how a bill becomes a law, or the basic parts of speech. Most cannot name two vice presidents and many do not know who won the Civil War or when and where it was fought. Textbooks have been changed and altered so that very little is taught about traditional history. Politically correct education, stressing ethnicities and watered-down truths now fill our textbooks. Even the once traditional authors are no longer used in classrooms and less known authors of diversity are used in the attempt to be politically correct. One study reported that students who graduated from high school in 1900 knew far more about America and our history than students who graduated in 2006. Many of our youth cannot repeat the pledge to our flag. Many schools do not require that it be recited at any time.

Very few young people are prepared for work and life which follows high school. Even in, what would be called good schools, with reading and mathematics their main emphasis, you will find as many as forty percent of the students do not read at grade level. Then there are those who are working hard with children who come from poor families to teach them so they achieve as well as those who come from surroundings that are more affluent. Some of these programs work when they get the parents’ support but most often they too fail.

One of the saddest realities is that there are many educators who believe that the traditional concepts of reading, writing, and learning, along with respect for America and apple pie are outmoded and are no longer of value. They contend that many of the things such as rote memorization drill and kill, and know it before you go on, things we once held as necessary and important, are no longer needed. When you combine this belief with state and federal mandates and credential requirements that manage teachers by fear and inappropriate methods of control, as well as waste countless taxpayer dollars on programs that do not work, combined with politicians who use education as a political ping-pong ball, we are faced with serious problems.

What we have are students who are less proficient in their education than their parents. The federal government and states have demanded that school districts have standardized tests and to score in a respectable area teachers must teach to those tests to attempt to show that they are doing the job. They have left the broad spectrum of educational subjects and centered in on scoring high on tests, hoping to show the public that they are making progress in reading, writing, and math. To accomplish this many schools have removed or decreased elective courses that were once fundamental such as art, music, and shop, classes that kept students interested in being in school. The concentration now is on having the student do better on the tests. This is supposed to translate into the student being better prepared in life after high school.

In an attempt to solve what is a dilemma within our schools, politicians and bureaucrats push for more programs, national standards and standardized tests using the same measurement for all students. While education grows as a political ping-pong ball, parents are being turned off by public education because of the many negative accounts given by the media and the many perceptions that schools are failing. These parents are turning to the state for answers rather than to the local community. In some states there is very real discussion about retaining students until they know the material at specific grade levels. This will lead to dummying down to an extreme degree. What has resulted from these many programs to raise test scores is more confusion as to what is best for our children and what educational methods work. All the while, our schools have become less safe and our children have become disenfranchised from family values, self improvement, and learning.

Until education is simplified and standards are in the control of the parents and school districts the problems will continue to grow. We are dealing with a different student population than what is being revealed by those in charge. As a nation, when we test our students we are testing every student. Other nations test the high achieving students, and consequently it is reported that our youth do not perform as well as other nation’s kids. Given the students that are tested, that is not true, but our kids are not doing as well as they once did. The problem is that the educational leaders and politicians continue to make education big business and use it as a tool to secure their jobs.

Private, parochial, church, and charter schools are growing in enrollment as it is advertised that public schools continue to fail. Hearing this, parents and taxpayers believe that schools are not doing a good job educating our youth. The programs that politicians and educators design are not the answer. More money and more government involvement is not the solution. It is a fact that test scores most often depend upon the parents and the homes students come from and not from a particular program. There are realities about statistics that are not complementary to those who bring them together and report on the numbers. Taking into account the degree of variation of any measurement or survey, the entire nation is worse off than before they actually had the tests and the continuation of new programs. Again, to meet desired test results, schools and districts are teaching to the tests and turning away from the traditional liberal arts education, which introduced students to the world of information and vocational opportunities and are now only concentrating on language arts, reading and mathematics. From elementary school to high schools, art, music, industrial arts, wood shop, metal shop, drafting and numerous other classes which would normally lead to careers for our youth, have been set aside, making room for the demand to improve test scores in the three specific areas.

In 2008 the State of California and its governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, after two years of California’s industries encouragement, technology and vocational education were returned to the schools but mostly in word only. Now, with the severe problems with our economy and no money available to accomplish necessary tasks, technology may once again be a thing of the past. The program is complicated and has a great deal of bureaucratic busywork attached and is not changing much of anything in our schools. This has been done in other states as well. The problem is, once schools receive money for restoring technology to the schools, where do they find teachers? If they find teachers, where do the funds come from to sustain the programs? The renewed technology interest is like someone giving you a Leer Jet. It is nice to have an airplane like a Leer Jet but how do you take care of it? Where do you get the money to maintain it? You do not! Unless our entire educational system takes a step back, removes the federal mandates and the costs involved with them we will not be able to restore education to a reasonable level of accomplishment. Much of the public wants the tax money spent on schools to go wherever the students attend. The voucher system will eventually become a reality and will help education. The teacher’s unions will continue to muster support in trying to keep their schools as they are and not allow schools of choice and the voucher system to be used. The unions often do not represent the majority of the teachers and their opinions. They have become political supports for liberal and personal agendas. Because of what the government is doing to us our schools are not improving. Go into a store and find a young person to wait on you and see if they are competent to be in the business world as a common cashier. Most often, you will find they are not prepared. Many do not have the social skills to contribute positively to the world of work. In addition, our government is pushing and demanding narrow academic preparation for our youth, specifically in reading, writing, and math.

The public has given educational leaders an open door to do whatever they want, with few constraints. School superintendents and principals are given a high degree of trust by the public even though they have not earned it.

For some reason, many teachers do not realize that under the new programs, leadership, and direction, education has been changing for the worse. We have wanted to trust our educators, but now, with the general condition of our public schools, most people, even politicians, do not know how to turn it around. Thus, taking the easy route they turn to new programs and biased legislation waiting for the supposed leaders to come up with another program to save the children. When you combine this with the decay of the family as a traditional basis of our society and a growing educational bureaucracy, our school system is being destroyed.

With teacher tenure and the resulting difficult process to remove ineffective teachers, the problems are compounded. The teacher’s unions along with weak school districts and ineffective leadership have left the fox in charge of the hen house. There is no magical solution to the conditions which we now find our schools. However, keeping in mind what Covey wrote in his Eighth Habit about people blindly following leaders, there are things which must be done to stop the downward slide.

We know education needs fixing but we keep hiring the same people that broke it to fix it! If you think about it, that is very foolish. The fox never repaired the hen house so that it would keep him or his kind out! Educators, who have created the bureaucracy and who continue it, are not going to put themselves out of work! We continue to have faith in educators that we should not afford that honor. Poor leadership and teaching on the part of some contribute to the problem, but the greater problem lies at the top with politicians and school boards that allow it to go on.

The Federal and State Department of Education, politicians, food services, book companies, school suppliers, teachers, contractors who make their living building and refurbishing schools, and administrators all want their jobs at the public’s expense. However one looks at it, education is big business. It is time that parents and voters face what has been happening. Money is wasted and wrongs are committed at the expense of children yet the bureaucracy continues to grow and the communities and parents do nothing to change it. Small and large school districts are at the mercy of predator administrators who lack ethics and play politics without making any improvements. In 1930, there were 140,000 school districts across our country. Today we have less than 14,000. The centralization and control of education is an actual and real effort on the part of government. In the middle of this past century, one in sixty-five people served on a school board. People took interest and were involved in their schools. That was why schools were effective. That has changed as government has grown and the centralization of our schools has become an accepted way of life.

Kids only go through school once. When we do not provide a true and effective learning environment but only an experimental lab to see if the next program will work we are not doing our job. We are slipping farther into educational socialism, wherein the government controls our schools as well as what is taught. Meanwhile the schools are producing students that educationally know less about America, our history, science, art, music, vocations and how to act and be successful in life, than any generation in our history as a nation, but they do learn about socialistic equality.

As people seek solutions to problems, they must be told the truth of what exists within the bureaucracy of education. It is only through honesty that parents and the public can learn what can be done to support and change schools. The issue is, what is the truth? Good people run for school boards but once elected it is as though a transformation for the worse takes place and they become rulers. Promises to make change are forgotten, and the students and parents are left to struggle with inadequate education, improper spending of taxpayer money, and more bureaucratic programs that do nothing to help kids learn.

Large school districts are often the most preyed upon by ineffective district superintendents, school boards, and the media. Lou Dobbs, in an interview with Nancy Grace on the Nancy Grace Special on national television in May, 2007, was adamant that the United States needed a national curriculum. He stated that our youth were being cheated and were falling behind other nations. Mr. Dobbs could not have been farther from the truth and is an example of the misdirected media. Both he and his host emphasized that our minority kids cannot go to college; that they cannot afford it, and that they needed the schooling. This was an interesting put-down of our educational system, when the fact is, now more than ever before, minorities and youth with financial needs can go to college. It seems to be forgotten that we only need twenty percent of our youth to have a college education! Everyone needs to read and write but that does not mean a college education. They need a trade, a work ethic, a vocation, and the ability to interact in a positive way with others, a thing called citizenship.

The media is biased and prejudiced against traditional conservative life. Educational socialism has been taught and supported in our schools. A great deal of this begins in our university systems that have a large number of socialists and even communists teaching at that level. The book, The Professors has given an interesting exposure as to how many anti-American professors are actually teaching our youth, instilling in them philosophies that would make Karl Marx very happy. Freedom of speech is one thing but having communists and devout socialists teach our college students, of which some will become teachers of our children, is a stressful issue. Once again the liberal politicians and educational think tanks have a profound and negative impact on our children.

We hear of international leaders talking and planning to take socialism further, to establish the United States of North America and One World Government. There was a time when these words were simply set aside as radical statements by a very few. Today those worlds are being worked upon to come about. Nelson Rockefeller admitted to his agreement for the One World Government as have many other powerful supposed leaders. Socialism is the beginning to achieve that goal. This study will not address the efforts of these powerful people to establish the One World Government but the plan is in place. It is not a joke, nor is it fallacy. It is real and the socialization of education is one of the parts of the plan to achieve that goal. Trade agreements, currency, military and other programs will follow. If you do not know it, NATO soldiers are quartered in our country and by next year soldiers from Mexico and Canada will be able to enter America. There are now beginning programs that will combine education between our American youth with children from other countries. We are headed in a direction that will destroy the America that we know and that our Forefather established. This study is centered solely upon education… a beginning of this terrible plan. The other aspects of this plan need addressing and may be found in your local book stores. It is time that we the people pay attention to what is been done to our great nation. We will start with education. It is time to awaken and face the truth and to not be passive.

Equality is an individual thing. The fact is that no two people are equal. Someone can always do something better than someone else. Should education be forced to be equal across the states and the nation, bringing all the standards down? If one district can do better than another school district then so be it. Yet the Federal Government will give more money to the weaker district, trying to make them equal with the higher performing district. Why not give the same percentage to all the districts or more money to the more successful district and schools. Why not reward success? The hundred billion dollar fiasco called Title 1 has been openly declared a failure. That was the program that was supposed to equalize poor kids with wealthier kids. It does not work. It was declared a failure in January of 1998. The article was in the Los Angeles Times on January 17, 1999, reported and written by Ralph Frammolino. Yet, Title 1 continues to this day after forty years of failure. Something is wrong with the thinking that continues such a program.

Education is intrinsically connected to all segments of our society, politics, religion, economics, and family. Thus, it is a natural arena for political wars as well as a place for individuals and companies to get rich. Because of its vulnerability it must be controlled by the community and parents. The government bureaucracy is the wrong control of our children. If the government wants to do something have it make sure that kids get textbooks at reasonable prices and the states do not cause the cost of building schools to skyrocket because of state regulations that do nothing but feed a hungry bureaucracy.

There will be portions of this book that you will find familiar, proving the axiom, nothing is new and that all of us have had many of the same experiences and impressions as to what is happening. What these memories will do for you is to help reveal solutions to many of the problems that exist in our schools. We had some effective programs that should be returned to our schools. Vocational education, extensive history classes, classes on citizenship and proper conduct, strong discipline and high standards of student conduct should all be returned to our schools. These concepts are as old as Plato and his teaching the youth of ancient Greece.

Dollar for dollar, education has been, and continues to be, a poor investment, yet next to parents, it is the most important influence our children have. In many cases, it has a stronger influence on our society than our churches. Ministers and church leaders need to know this and become verbal and active to regain their place of importance.

With all the programs and money that has been expended, very little has improved, as education slips deeper into problems of uncertainty and failure, more new programs come to our schools making someone very rich and doing little to improve anything. When the federal or state government returns a dollar to a school district, approximately fifty percent or less actually gets to the student and the school. The rest runs the growing bureaucracy at the state and county level. All the while, the federal government takes more and more control of our children’s lives. Contrary to Hilary Clinton’s statement that it takes a village to raise a child, a village, or a community, should not be raising our children. The community can do things to protect the family and support what happens within its boundaries but not in the arena of raising a child. The family should raise the child, and the school and school system should not be taking the place of that effort.

Standardized tests with standardized curriculum are the newest government intrusion. The standardized testing, national standards and No Child Left Behind are not working. Whose fault is it for the educational failures? When the new programs fail, and they will, where to from there? Schools will continue to teach to the tests in an effort to show improvement because the government says, Do it!

There are many connections between education, politics, national trends, and crime. Another thing that no one seems to admit is that the media has a direct and negative impact on our society. With its portrayal of violence and the destruction of the American family we must all understand its impact and seek solutions. We, as a people, must understand there are answers to the practices, ailments, and problems which destroy our schools and affect our kids.

If our schools were a private business they would have been bankrupt a long time ago. No one would buy the programs because their results have been unacceptable. Keep in mind that public education, when it was instituted, was designed to accommodate the poor and to provide workers for the wealthy and their businesses. The lowest common denominator of success and expectations were instituted. Those who established public education did not want the people to know a great deal, only enough to do what they, the government and those in control, wanted the workers to know and to do. Maybe we have not changed a great deal since the late eighteen hundreds. This could possibly be the reason why home schooled students in the lower grades, kids mostly taught by mothers not trained to teach, out-perform public school students with credentialed teachers in standardized tests. Something is seriously wrong with public education and we must fix it. Our greatest sin in education is that we have let it become a self-perpetuating bureaucracy which does not do what we know it should do. Maybe the answer is too simple and the bureaucracy cannot accept the fact that it is hurting kids and failing. The fact exists, the servant has now become the master and that is wrong!

Educational socialism is not the answer. It is destructive to America and our Constitution and everything that has made America great. If the liberal mentality prevails in our schools our nation will literally decline to the levels that Rome and the various other great nations did when they collapsed. Education is not mentioned in our Constitution but is left to the states to develop and direct. The constitution will be mentioned in this report because education does deal with the teaching of the standards and laws mentioned within it. Anyone in a leadership position that believes that socialism is good and that America must be the same as the rest of our world should not be representing the people of this nation. Education has become a central seeding place for socialism and a world order of equality. The only problem is, most of the nations of the earth do not believe in that philosophy and what will result is a weakened America.

In the late 1800’s, Wilhelm Wundt’s philosophy that children were empty vessels and what you put in them was the central concept in creating generations of socialized Americans was a driving force with many industrialists. The plan was for these youth to react like robots and follow directions to work in factories and meet the wants and desires of the elite. Thus we have our schools of today that have been clearly outlined in Paolo Lionni’s book, The Leipzig Connection. He states it repeatedly, educational socialism does not work. It is destroying America.

Our current educational systems have removed traditional truths and have replaced them with socialistic concepts. An example of this was the National Standards for United States History, compiled and published by the University of California, Los Angeles. It contains very little about George Washington or Abraham Lincoln and what made America great but a great deal of the negative conditions put upon ethnically diverse people. These concepts are in print and are used across America. The present educational leadership is endeavoring to change the direction of educational thought about who we are and where we should be going as a people. This is an injustice to the American people!

There is nothing wrong and everything right with what is great about America and being proud of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Yes, there has been much suffering by many people in America. However, when you take the truth of what has happened across the globe and throughout history, America is a great place. The lies that are hidden in respect to other nations and people are a sad statement about educational theorists. America is a wonderful nation, and it is the only reason that the socialists have the opportunity to be vocal, yet they are destroying the very hand that feeds them and allows them to disagree with our past and present history. This is an interesting reality.

What is the truth about education and our schools?

A truth is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. It is a verifiable fact and in accord with reality. It does not change! Many people in our society attempt to discard truth and to change it to meet their own ideologies. Regardless of their wants, efforts, or even what might be in place, truth is truth. It is often not in place or followed. As a nation we are moving away from truth and toward individual’s ideologies. What we call a fact can change, depending upon what is believed or accepted at a particular time. Statistics change as to the person or persons that gather them. Concepts and programs change depending on who administers them and how the media reports them.

The following are truths about schools and education: 1. Schools, next to families and religion are one of the most important parts of our lives. 2. Our young never go this way again and what we do in our schools influences them for life, for good or ill. 3. School administrators and school board members most often do what they think is right for the kids and the schools, regardless of the actual needs of the children and the and wants of the parents. 4. Politicians have made education a tool to be used to get votes and to control our communities and society. Their common response is what is best for children but that is rarely the case of what they do. 5. Education is a multi-billion dollar a year industry. 6. The educational bureaucracy is growing and education is not improving. 7. The media does not report the truth as to what is happening in our schools about test scores or the effectiveness of our school system. 8. What is most important in our schools and in teaching is not stressed and that is citizenship and respect for others and self. 9. Most families and parents do not understand what is going on in our schools. Schools cannot take the place of families. 10. The faith that our leaders expect us to have in them has neither been founded nor earned, yet many people follow them blindly and without reason, turning to the media for their informational source for the quality of the individual. 11. Education is not complicated. When it is made to be so, something is wrong! The complications rest with the bureaucracy that is out of control and growing! 12. Our teachers are not treated or paid as professionals but should be. 13. The requirements for credentialing are a money making source for universities and colleges and are most often ineffective and not directly applicable to teaching. 14. Historic facts are available that show public education was established to provide a workforce that would follow directions and be worker ants for big business, and to this day it has not changed. Educational socialism is in place and moving forward. This is not good! 15. Education codes across America direct our schools to teach values, morals and good citizenship yet we have stopped doing so. The philosopher Kant claimed that morality required a belief in God, freedom, and mortality. In our school we need to have values and morality taught. This alone causes many people to argue and take an oppositional view, which hurts our schools and our children’s education. The Bible and God do not need to be taught as a specific religion in our schools, but with the foundation of our Constitution, being the Bible and Christianity, we should not discard them as has been done. Is it okay to teach about and encourage socialism, agnosticism, abortions, and that alternative life styles are just fine but not about faith in a Higher Being directing our lives and that America is America because of Christianity? Even a devout Muslim who lives in America should be grateful for America and our freedoms.

What is truth and what is an ideology?

An ideology is a doctrine, opinion, concept, or way of thinking of an individual or a way of life. It is based on assumptions or thoughts and is supported by what some consider being factual information but it is an opinion.

The ideologies’ of our politicians, school administrators, school boards, colleges, and universities’ educational think tanks, and the media dictate what and where we go with our schools, regardless of the actual need or results.

The existentialistic philosophy that there are no universal truths and that man’s existence is based only on free choice is one of the major opponents to an effective school system. Politicians, bureaucrats, and others that hold themselves to be educated have adopted this, and other liberal mentalities have stepped forward and espouse this concept, damaging so much of what we hold dear.

The discussion of what is truth has gone on since the beginning of time. Regardless of the existentialistic philosophy or the pragmatism of John Dewey, the thoughts of Machiavelli, Nietzsche, Immanuel Kant, Wilhelm Wundt or countless others there are truths that apply to education and our children that these theorists and others like them missed and were wrong. Despots, criminals, dictators, socialists, and evil people cannot live with the truth! Our nation was founded on eternal truths with the basis in God and the sanctity of our country. One might say that a truth is a fact that does not change in spite of what others many want. The majority of the media’s practice is to make information such as is presented in this book to appear to be extreme and radical. The fact is that what is contained herein is true. To take an opposite position and put forth incorrect information and lies shows how far the media has gone to control all of us, pushing and publicizing its own agenda, making the truth appear radical and extreme.

This book will have some repetition as you read through these pages. It is important that you remember and tie the many concepts and issues together and are able to see and understand the entire picture of what we are dealing with in our schools.

Education as it is presently being pushed upon America is at the heart of the effort to make us the same as the rest of the world, controlled by an elect few, but it can and must be stopped. It is a war; a war without guns but every bit as serious as any conflict we have ever fought as a people. Wake up America. We must win this one . . . we cannot lose! The question is, Are the kids worth it? You know the answer! Welcome to Our Schools and Education: The War Zone in America, Truth Versus Ideology. It is time for all of us to deal with the truth and set aside the words of those that want to change our nation. Things are not good. Those that want to change our nation will sound like they are faithful Americans but their programs will take us into socialism and into combining governments with foreign nations. Let us not let this happen. We are headed into socialism and it will destroy America. We have elected many socialists to governmental positions. It is time to wake up and understand the direction we are being headed.

Chapter One

The Problem

Be careful of government and the things it gives. Nothing is free.

—Professor Gene Schummacher

If our schools and our educational systems continue their present course and practices, our children, as adults, will be less capable of managing their world in a productive and effective manner than any generation in the history of America. We have a complex society with wonderful conveniences and pleasures, making life very pleasant. It is an exciting time to be alive, yet we have numerous negative forces and conditions that are serious threats to our freedom and are difficult to solve. Because of the weaknesses within our social structure, the disintegration of the family, the loss of traditional values, and the decay of our school systems, brought about by the intervention and control of government, and a mentality leaning toward socialism on the part of many leaders, our children are not being prepared for handling realistic responsibilities of caring, respecting, managing, and directing their lives in positive ways. Change for the worse within our nation is guaranteed unless the current direction of education is altered and we reestablish a reasonable school system, returning to traditional values. Our schools and the education of our youth are caught in a cultural war of political correctness and a very direct push by politicians and educational theorists leading us to socialism and away from the values and morals on which our nation was founded and which must continue to be taught in our homes and schools.

As Diana West revealed in her book The Death of the Grown-Up our youth are being exposed to the adult world far too early in their lives. She explained that we have a generation of parents that want to be youthful and have discarded parenting, letting their children make adult decisions. When you combine this with the problems that are developing in our schools because of government control we have serious issues. It is essential for parents to spend time with their children and to be in control of the family.

With the many educational changes put in place by our federal government we are continuing down a path of failure. Dr. Hirsh-Pasela, Professor of Psychology at Temple University, expressed her fear that kindergarten has become the new first grade. Because of federal requirements, kids are not given time for play and creativity because of the government’s decision to shove facts on our students, fearful they will fall behind the youth of other nations.

Not many years ago schools across America gave students a well-rounded education; reading, writing, and mathematics along with learning about our nation’s history, studying the world of science, art, music, vocational skills, and numerous other areas of interest, helping them to recognize the importance of contributing to society, and becoming well-rounded citizens. We are now in an educational environment of academia pressing forward with the three R’s and little else under the guise of competing with foreign countries and their student test scores. With the new demand from our government for standardized testing we have abandoned the many areas that taught our children how to reason and interact with others to becoming robotic with language arts and mathematics. Education has changed and so has the result of what our schools once did for our nation’s children. Across America our schools are now teaching to the test so our youth can have higher test scores. There are colleges and universities that are saying vocational classes, agriculture courses, the arts, and even athletics and sports are not necessary at the high school level. Many universities no longer require a student to take classes in American History to qualify for graduation. Our world of education has changed.

With this comes another serious problem in finding and retaining qualified teachers. It is not uncommon for school districts to hire teachers from foreign countries by phone interviews and even videotaped observations. Teachers from other countries are being given jobs without face-to-face interviews, placed in our schools and given the responsibility of preparing future leaders and productive Americans. A district in northern California recently hired twenty three uncredentialed teachers from a foreign land by watching these people teach on video tapes. Other school districts have gone as far away as Spain and the Philippines to find teachers.

Along with this the stress of government requirements grows and many experienced teachers are tired of the rhetoric and the useless programs they are directed to implement. They are not bad people or bad teachers, but to survive they take a step back in their own effectiveness and energy levels. Keeping them effective, refreshed, and not distracted in teaching is a serious issue.

Districts around America are now giving incentives to math and science teachers to teach in their schools. Guilfors County in North Carolina gives a $10,000 bonus to algebra teachers to sign with their district. Similar programs exist