American Education, The Continuing Saga

By Rich Kozlovich 

 

Over the years I've publish a great deal of information about the ills of public and higher education saying two things.  Fixing Education in America is Job One, and Education in America is a Snare and a Racket.  Those files are profound and provocative, and there will be some duplicates if you go to those files, but bear with it, there's a lot there.  

My Take in one of these posts follows:

Where did all these misfits in education come from?  Academia!  And in California they've dropped their standards for teachers because they can't find enough teachers.  Why?  Maybe because normal people won't be a part of this insanity?  And this resistance by the normals isn't just in education. 

Education must become Job One in America.  It's been totally taken over by leftists, Marxists, socialists, communists, Democrats.....sorry....I'm repeating myself.....and if America is to survive education at all levels must be totally transformed, and that has to start at the local school boards.  Then expanding to the state boards of education.  To fix this it must become an organized national effort, and one the Republican party would do well to adopt and promote.   From there to the elimination of the Department of Education and any funding to universities, and tax their endowments that are worth billions of dollars.  

Force them to become for profit institutions that have to compete without government grant money or student loans.  Then as totally private businesses, it they wish to push their leftist agenda and compete for student dollars in an open market, that's their business.  But the government must be forced to stay out of it and not force these insane diversity, inclusion and equity programs that are doing nothing more than destroying the nation. 

And again: 

These leftist sit on high looking down their noses at those they view as neanderthals, but this is the result of leftism since it has no moral foundation except to gain power by any means necessary. Jonah Goldberg, before he went insane, wrote a great book called Liberal Fascism where he discusses the Frankfort School leftists who fled Germany, that had a far left fascist government, and infested America's universities with their radical lunacy, and then eventually their "students' rebelled against them. 

There are no boundaries to the left and they will tolerate no restrictions or values, except for the disruption of stable societies.  The left is only good at one thing.  Destroying a society in order to tyrannize it.  After that, nothing works and dystopia is the standard of life with the leftist elite living on high while everyone else suffers.

 

America must dismantle our education system, that must be "job one".  It can't be fixed, it must be dismantled. Eliminate the Department of Education.  End all funding to all universities.  Tax their endowment funds.  End all government sponsored or supported student loan programs.  Allow for vouchers at the local level.  End all public employee unions, especially teacher's unions.  Pass a law that unions must have regularly scheduled votes to be reinstated as the employees representatives, ending the tyranny unions now hold over employees.  Find a system to ensure retirement plans aren't embezzled, which both unions and corporations have been guilty.  

 

I particularly like this article: Is College a Racket? New Study Links a Surge in Graduation With Greed and 'Grade Inflation by Alex Parker, with a note from me saying:  

 

Apparently Alex Parker wants to make sure the world knows just how far down the rabbit hole education has fallen in America.  Here's a list of articles he published after this November 21, 2021 article.  Enjoy....if you can!

What we're experiencing isn't education, it's the propagation of insanity.  Leftism is a failed philosophy, and anyone who keeps promoting failure over and over again, is  perpetuating insanity.  Not one thing has happened to change my mind, and in point of fact, what's happening deepens my view that education as we know it must be dismantled, all of which is confirmed by the articles linked below

 

The Public Sector Union Can't Print Money, April 12, 2023 By Silvio Canto, Jr. - Chicago, Portland, Milwaukee, etc. are all a big mess.  It goes like this:   the taxpayers move out and the public sector unions elect their man.  So what happens now?  We will see, but this may be a blessing in disguise because the finances of these cities are going nowhere. I like what Stephen Moore wrote about the situation:

The nation’s 10 largest counties have lost more than 1 million residents since 2019. The biggest losers have been the counties that are home to New York and San Francisco and Chicago’s Cook County. Even Los Angeles County, the nation’s most populous county, with just under 10 million people, is now contracting.

Welcome to the real-world impact of progressivism. Instead of worker paradises, the Left has transitioned our once-shining cities into slums, murder zones, homeless encampments and boarded-up stores. They have become cults of economic and political quackery -- and tragically, few Democrats have the courage to speak out. They are worried about being called racists when the reality is that the victims -- of terrible public schools, high murder rates and an anti-business creed -- are the minorities they say they care so much about.

The three poisons of America’s leftist cities are 1) high taxes, 2) schools that don’t educate and 3) crime running rampant. 

Yes, and the good news is that the money won't be there. ..............

Second City Shamble, By Larry Sand February 25, 2023 - The teacher union-controlled school system in Chicago is an abject failure. The numbers are jaw-dropping. In 30 Chicago public schools, not a single student can read at grade level. In total, just 20 percent of 3rd through 8th graders in the Windy City are proficient in reading and only 15 percent are proficient in math. As such, it’s easy to see why students are bailing en masse. In fact, more than one-third of Chicago’s 473 traditional public schools are currently running at half-full or worse, according to data released in December. Douglass High School, which bills itself as “The Jewel Of The Westside,” has a capacity for 888 students, but just 34 are enrolled, and not one of them is proficient in reading. In the past 10 years, the city’s total public school enrollment has gone from over 400,000 to 322,000 and the bleeding shows no sign of abating. The spending hawks can’t claim it’s due to a lack of funding. When all local, state and federal dollars are added up, Chicago’s per student outlay is now $29,207...............

North Carolina parents should be wary of ‘School Choice’ bill, April 12, 2023 By Robert Bortins- Politicians in Raleigh want to transform our freedoms with House Bill 420, giving state bureaucrats more control over North Carolinians’ educational options, consequently driving up prices, reducing quality and innovation, and normalizing state welfare checks for the middle class and wealthy -- all in the name of “school choice.” But the fact is, North Carolina already has robust educational choices, and families are enthusiastically enjoying those opportunities. According to a 2022 report from BESTNC.com, approximately 16 percent of North Carolina families homeschool or attend private school. Families already have school choice, and this freedom allows for extraordinary educational innovation and entrepreneurship at a net gain to taxpayers. ...............

Randi Is Wrong Again, By Larry Sand March 25, 2023 - The president of the American Federation of Teachers makes a bunch of ridiculous and easily refutable claims.I have got to give Randi Weingarten a lot of credit. Every time I write about the president of the American Federation of Teachers and her relentless blather, I think that she cannot possibly sink any lower; yet she always manages to dig herself a deeper hole. Earlier this month, Weingarten penned “Kids Do Better In Schools With Teachers Unions,” an opinion piece for the Daily Beast, in which she claims to make “a factual case” for all the good that teachers’ unions do for children.  For starters, citing work by some left-wing think tankers, she asserts that teachers unions are associated with higher student achievement, especially for Hispanic and black children. Wrong! The teachers union’s essence is its collective bargaining agreement (CBA), which, as policy experts Rick Hess and Martin West write, is a vestige of the industrial economic model that prevailed in the 1950s when “assembly-line workers and low-level managers were valued less for their knowledge or technical skills than for their longevity and willingness to serve loyally as a cog in a top-down enterprise.” While CBAs may be the cornerstone of the unions’ raison d’être, these agreements have been a disaster for students.  “The Long-run Effects of Teacher Collective Bargaining,”...........

Are Public Employee Unions Unconstitutional? By Larry Sand April 10, 2023 -  “All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management.” The above caveat about government unions—usually known by the kinder and gentler “public-employee unions” (PEUs)—was not issued by Ron DeSantis or Donald Trump. The statement was made by progressive icon Franklin Delano Roosevelt.   But FDR wasn’t the only Democrat opposed to government unionization. George Meany, president of the AFL-CIO for 24 years, once said, “It is impossible to bargain collectively with the government.” Both men understood that the very nature of government makes it wrong for its leaders to enter into negotiations with any union. When government unions negotiate, they often sit across the table from people they helped put in office with generous campaign contributions. And when these unions go on strike, they walk out on the taxpayer............

X-Rated Ed,  By Larry Sand January 20, 2023 - Educator-related sexual abuse of children is escalating.  Pedophilia is proliferating in the nation’s public schools. Going back to 2004, a report prepared for the U.S. Department of Education revealed that nearly 9.6 percent of students are victims of sexual abuse by school personnel, and these are just the reported cases. Stop Educator Sexual Abuse Misconduct & Exploitation (SESAME), an organization that works to stop childhood sexual abuse by teachers and other school employees, disclosed that in 2015, about 3.5 million 8th-11th grade students, or nearly 7 percent of those surveyed divulged that they had experienced “physical sexual contact from an adult”—most often a teacher or coach. The type of physical contact ranged from “unwanted touching of their body, all the way up to sexual intercourse.” Even worse, when other types of sexual misconduct are taken into consideration, such as being shown pornography or being subjected to sexually explicit language or exhibitionism the number increases to about 4.5 million children (10 percent). SESAME also explains that one child sex offender can have as many as 73 victims in a lifetime..........

• (Editor's  Note:  You may wish to view these articles by Larry Sand dealing with the failure of education in America, all of which the left owns. RK)