Nov. 26, 1997
At first, man was enslaved by the gods. But
he broke their chains. Then he was enslaved by the kings. But he broke
their chains. He was enslaved by his birth, by his kin, by his race. But
he broke their chains. He declared to all his brothers that a man has rights
which neither god nor king nor other men can take away from him, no matter
what their number, for his is the right of man, and there is no right on
earth above this right. And he stood on the threshold of freedom for which
the blood of centuries behind him had been spilled.
But then he gave up all he had won, and fell
lower than his savage beginning.
What brought it to pass? What disaster took
their reason away from men? What whip lashed them to their knees in shame
and submission? The worship of the word "We."
When men accepted that worship, the structure
of centuries collapsed about them, the structure whose every beam had come
from the thought of some one man, each in his day down the ages, from the
depth of some one spirit, such spirit as existed but for its own sake.
Those men who survived — those eager to obey, eager to live for one another,
since they had nothing else to vindicate them — those men could neither
carry on, nor preserve what they had received. Thus did all thought, all
science, all wisdom perish on earth ...
"Stupid is as stupid does."
Saw a piece of an argument in an education-related news loop I've
joined on the 'Net. One of my conservative colleagues sent out a message
touting a skills-and-drills program which is having amazing success at
teaching kids of all levels to read.
A retort came from a "class mother" who said she's volunteered
in the schools for the last seven years, suggesting that repetitive skills
and drills would turn the children into mindless, politically-indoctrinated
drones.
Well, before we note my reply to that thought, let's review a
few reports from schools around the nation about how our kids are "not"
being politically indoctrinated:
———
• The Associated Press reported Nov. 18 that some parents of
second-graders at Star Hill Elementary in Dover, Del., were just a tad
upset with their children's teacher, staged a mock marriage ceremony, pairing
students with others of the same sex.
Teacher Ede Outten said the ceremony was a creative way to get
pupils to promise to care for each other, comparing it to the TV character
"Barney."
Several parents expressed misgivings with the touchy-feely nature
and with the fact the ceremony could be misconstrued as promoting homosexuality;
one mother immediately withdrew her son from the school, and now plans
to home-school him.
The question went before that school district's curriculum review
committee, made up of administrators and teachers, which upheld the curriculum
unit by a 9-2 vote.
• A story in the Cincinnati Enquirer reports that Northern Kentucky
University hopes to have a suit by a former student dismissed.
The student, Denise Pangburn, sued the school because she didn't
get her degree in elementary education. She didn't get her degree because
she flunked a basic math course six times.
Pangburn claims she has a disability in learning math, and although
the school provided her a tutor, the school didn't provide her enough help
to pass the course.
• Here's an interesting piece: 35 years after becoming the first
black student at the University of Mississippi, James Meredith is creating
an institute to teach black males to abandon the use of black American
English, according to a Nov. 23 Associated Press story.
The institute will offer weekend, male-only classes to supplement
the curriculum of regular schools, in hopes of making the black male "...as
comfortable in the library as he is on the basketball court."
The goal is apparently to ensure that black males, historically
the most under-educated segment of society, learn to cherish scholarship.
• Either our erstwhile local mouthpiece for edu-fascism, the
Houston Chronicle, has slipped up once or twice recently, or they're actually
doing a little good old-fashioned journalistic research.
Witness the Nov. 20 edition, in which a commentary by Bruce Herschensohn
reviews how our children are being taught about their country: "More worrisome
is that in many college and high school classrooms, students are being
taught (perhaps the better word is indoctrinated) that the founding fathers
were simply contemptible — racist, sexist and indifferent to the poor."
The Monday, Nov. 24 edition even carried a story about University
of Virginia professor E.D. Hirsch, Jr.'s "radical" idea that teaching factual,
specific knowledge — "core knowledge" — is what promotes higher learning.
Interesting is the take reporter Lydia Lum had on the story:
that "many" educators in the Houston are big fans of Hirsch's, although
she spent much of the story quoting those who oppose his "Eurocentric"
curriculum.
Of course, the Chronicle also made a big deal about the recent
awards from The Annenberg Challenge to 11 Houston-area schools.
What the Chronicle's reporters and editors failed to follow up
on is that the private foundation's awards were contingent upon the schools
demonstrating they were fully in compliance with the national edu-fascist
agenda promoted by, among others, President Clinton, the Carnegie Foundation,
the National Center on Education and the Economy, and others.