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Tuesday, August 31, 2010

DENNIS PATRICK: BACK TO SCHOOL

“School days, school days

                        Dear old Golden Rule days,

         Readin’ and ‘riting and ‘rithmetic

                        Taught to the tune of the hick’ry stick.”

 

Those were the days. Will Cobb and Gus Edwards wrote this refrain in 1907 about a man and woman looking back sentimentally on their lifelong friendship from early school days.

 

It’s been a long time since the Golden Rule (religious precept) presided; since reading, writing and arithmetic (traditional) dominated; and since spanking (corporal punishment) ruled.

 

Another year and another cluster of kids skip off to the halls of academia. Many parents are all too happy to relinquish their kids to the professionals for twelve years -- with a lot of sports thrown in for their viewing pleasure.

 

When most people speak of “education” they do not mean the classical cultivation of the mind, teaching the student how to learn via the trivium. Education for education’s sake seldom enters the conversation.

 

Education typically means something quite different. As a minimum, “education” in government schools means job training. Kids spend twelve formative years preparing for the work force. Simultaneously, they are socialized in the progressive pedagogy as “suggested” (leveraged by dollars) by the US Department of Education.

 

Long ago the US, via the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), adopted the Soviet style poly-technical pattern of education for American kids.

 

As early as 1949 UNESCO, strongly influenced by the failed Soviet Union, promulgated a global proposal for the revision of textbooks, especially history, and an initiative for “lifelong learning.” Those who supported the UNESCO changes regarded their effort as “forecasting” and “ planning.” Those for whom the changes were intended (especially the United States) regarded the effort as a “conspiracy.”

 

Twentieth century American education records a long, involved story. It segues through the creation of the US Department of Education by President Jimmy Carter to reward the National Education Association for their support in his presidential campaign. The story continues through the past decade with the School-to-Work and Goals 2000 initiatives.

 

No one would disagree that children should be taught something. Question is what should they be taught. That depends upon the answers to even more basic questions that government schools refuse to ask. Are we immortal? Are we God’s creation? Does God even exist? Without answering these questions affirmatively the sweep of American history, the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution cannot be properly understood.

 

But, by what authority does the federal government involve itself in top-down education in the first place? On this point the US Constitution is silent. The Founding Fathers took for granted that education would be left to the discretion of parents and the several states, not to the discretion of a central government planned and funded with billions of tax dollars.

 

The intellectual climate in America today may be assessed by academia’s focus on sexuality and simplistic sexual fads -- gay marriage, sex “education,” gender studies and do-your-own-thing promiscuity. At this rate, there is plenty of room for recovering academicians.

 

Again, what should be taught? Contemporary education could incorporate the latest shake-and-bake theories of education laced with politically correct themes of ethnicity, gender, self-esteem, revisionist history, adulterated literature and dumbed down science.

 

Or, should education embrace classical themes on which Americans built a vibrant beacon to the world including mathematics, natural and physical sciences, logic, classical literature and poetry, history, philosophy, economics and music.

It’s not a stretch to imagine that a government education monopoly that assumes kids’ minds belong to the state reeks of a totalitarian aroma. If true, this idea does not merit respect. Philosophy, theology, logic, music and art may not translate to “jobs” contributing to the Gross Domestic Product, but they do provide a firm foundation for a life well lived.

 

In the short span between 1607 through the early 1900s, America’s education produced multiple generations that built the greatest engine of democracy and finest economic dynamo the world has ever seen. Today, the progressive program of government pedagogy, the so-called linear path to enlightenment, serves more to confound than to clarify.

 

Dennis M. Patrick can be contacted at P. O. Box 337, Stanley, ND 58784 or (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

Click here to email your elected representatives.

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