As patriots rallied and King George prepared to teach his uppity colonist a lesson, the underpinnings of what would become the United States were already in place. One of the most significant was the country’s literacy. While not universal by no means, it was still enough to make colonial America one of the most literate places on earth. As Alexis Tocqueville would later observe, children even in the backwoods would learn to read with the Bible often being their main textbook. At the time of the American Revolution, when the common folk of Europe could often not even write their own names, Americans were reading books at a ferocious rate.

The education system in the U.S. was from the start family centered and directed by parents. When the country pushed westward one of the first things built in the newly minted towns was a school. Parents would hire the teacher, choose the books and make the rules. Only after the likes of John Dewey and other progressives got a hold of the educational system did things start to change.

Dewey believed the schools should be tools of socialization as much as institutions of learning. To him it was essential that progressive indoctrination to begin early if it was to have any real effect. Shinning the apple before it dropped from the tree he called it. To such an end, the progressive have worked to remove education from the purvey of parents into the realm of professional educators. To a great extent the reformers and their union cohorts have been successful. The result has been a decline in both in the value of the education received and how much education is valued.

The U.S. once the envy of the world is now 32nd in math and 17th in reading. While the United States has the highest percentage of people in the 55 to 64 age group with high school diplomas the present generation ranks tenth. Most of those that make it to college drop out, 57%, as compared to less than a 1/3rd globally (31%). To understand why one needs only to take a peek inside a modern classroom. In science the emphasis is often on the ramifications of global warming or plastic bags rather on biology or chemical reactions. Even math is often fuzzy in nature, with achievement de-emphasized in favor of just getting the idea. It is more important is seems to make a child feel good about their ignorance than risk lowering their self-esteem by trying to teach them something. Just as important as what kids are not learning is what they are.

In the modern classroom shinning the apples is in full force. Competition and reward is frowned upon, better everyone win than someone to lose. An attitude rooted in the socialist axiom from each according to his ability and to each according to his need. History is another subject so convoluted and rewritten that someone who went to school 30 years ago can barely recognize what is being taught to their children. One textbook devoted a whole chapter to Bill Clinton but barely just a few pages to the constitution. An advance placement text has seen fit to rewrite the constitution to have a more liberal tone. The founding fathers are often portrayed as old white bigots best forgotten. Morals, to the extent they are taught at all, are often consist of the proper method for putting on a condom. Is it any wonder young adults flocked to the occupy movement and embraced a man without the credentials to manage a department store let alone be president?

It is no coincidence that student achievement has fallen substantially in America since the advent of the Department of Education. The more control of schools and their curriculum has moved from local to the states and from states to federal control the less parents have had a say in it. Of all the predeterminers of whether a school succeeds or fails there is but one that stands out. Despite what unions and liberals might want people to believe that one factor is not money; it is parental involvement. Education is after all primarily a parental responsibility (Regardless of liberal claims to the contrary)

Today writing is being removed from the three “R’s,” being replaced instead by radicalization. The emphasis being to create children with the “right” attitudes, that being modern liberal attitudes. As a backdrop and a cover many states are raising language and math requirements while at the same time devoting less time to teaching these subjects. The result is a sifting process that leaves many students unable to acquire the needed skills either to graduate or for life. An unending progression towards creating a permanent underclass of government reliant dupes.

The current push to standardized high school curriculum called Common Core is but another nail in the American educational coffin. The Common Core curriculum pushes schools to adopt more “fuzzy math” gives pornographic reading assignments to high schoolers, tells grade school students the Bill of Rights is outmoded  and even teaches forth grade students about pimps. Such is the state of American education.

The founding fathers rightly saw a moral and educated populous as a prerequisite for maintaining a free society. As schools continue to put out more mindless drones and amoral sycophants the question must be asked, how much longer will the American republic stand?

The objections which are urged with reason against State education, do not apply to the enforcement of education by the State, but to the State’s taking upon itself to direct that education; …. A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another; and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, a priesthood, an aristocracy, or the majority of the existing generation, in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by natural tendency to one over the body.

John Stuart Mill

“The Conservative Mind”

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