The Immorality of Government Schools
So you think
standardized testing is good? Have you ever asked what is the purpose of
standardized testing? Standardized testing is a tool to label and carve up
children into little groups. Standardized testing is an admission that all
children are not the same, but they need to be labeled and grouped by their
intellectual capabilities. The Utopian dreamers use the labels to exclude and
punish one group of children and include and reward another. Standardized
testing is not a creation of moral or humane people, it was created by the
bigoted and abusive Utopian dreamer. To embrace standardized testing is
arrogant, because it assumes that it accurately assesses every child in the
population. The immorality of standardized testing is that it can be rigged to
produce whatever outcome the Utopian dreamer mandates. Common Core’s legitimacy
is based on its nationwide standardized testing and it purposefully discards
the individual for the needs of the state.
There is no evidence
that standardized testing in government schools successfully increases literacy
rates. ‘The 1840 census indicated that the literacy rate in the United States
stood at 93% to 100%. It remained the same at least through the 1870 census and
the opening of the first public schools. By 1942 the literacy rate was measured
at 96% as the government tested 18,000,000 men signing up for service in World
War 2. These men were educated in the 1920′s and 1930′s. The first crack in the
literacy rate showed itself during testing of men for the Korean War educated
in the 1930′s and 1940′s. Literacy fell to 81% by 1950 and by the Vietnam War
with men educated in the 1950′s and 1960′s it fell to 73%.’ 1 A Department of
Education commissioned study of literacy in the United States reported in 2006
that 46%-51% of American adults scored below the threshold of functional
literacy.
Armed with this
knowledge the Utopian dreamer tells us that Common Core, standardized testing,
merit pay, longer school days, smaller class size, more homework, career
ladders, higher pay for teachers, compulsory kindergarten, and more preschool
facilities will reverse course. If these things could improve our schools then
we should be living in the Utopian dreamers paradise.
The National Center
for Education Statistics reports that spending per pupil has risen 277% since
1961 to a grand total of $610 billion per year (2009). Shall we double down on
the spending? When children were not badgered to read by government schools, we
had a 98% national literacy rate. Now that children are badgered into reading,
we have a 46% national literacy rate. Hmmmm …. My personal story is different.
My family provided my primary education, which was supplemented by government
school.
One of my earliest
memories was the day President Kennedy was shot, because we were sitting and
reading in a semi-circle with my first grade teacher Mrs. Dixon. Mrs. Dixon
asked each and every student to read aloud several paragraphs from our readers.
[Amish children are required to read the Bible aloud in church at the age of
eight.] A fourth grader burst-in and interrupted our reading session yelling to
Ms. Dixon that President Kennedy had been shot. I probably remember this event
clearly because Ms. Dixon became visibly upset and started to cry. We learned
to read using phonetics, which is much different than used today for reading
instruction.
Samuel Blumenthal
explains reading instruction today; “The traditional school used the phonics or
phonetic method. That is, children were first taught the alphabet, then the
sounds the letters stand for, and in a short time they became independent
readers. The new method — look-say or the word method — taught children to read
English as if it were Chinese or Egyptian hieroglyphics.” 2 The intent of the
Utopian dreamers in government schools was not literacy skills, it was
socialization skills to model children for the good of the state. Hence the
reason why there is a 46% illiteracy rate in the United States. The Utopian dreamer’s
plan is actually working well.
Every child is
different and learns things at different rates. Use driving a car as an
example. Driving a car is perhaps one of the most cognitively difficult skills
to master not to include flying. It requires eye hand coordination, an
understanding of the instruments, speed control, looking in all directions and
in the mirrors, negotiating around other cars, and anticipating incident
situations. Controlling a 2,000 lb deadly weapon with the equivalent explosive
force of three sticks of dynamite in the fuel tank is very complex. Yet
millions of people learn to drive with relative ease. Do any of you wonder why
learning to drive was so easy? It is due to the fact you wanted to learn to
drive. It is exciting and you apply vast amounts of mental energy to learn this
complex task. It is the same with music, algebra, history, English, and the
arts.
If your child is
extremely excited about music and has no interest in algebra … why should
he/she be required or expected to test the same in algebra as a science student
in another state? If a future electrical engineer tests high on math skills …
why should she/he be required or expected to test the same in history as a
budding lawyer from another state? Why should any student be required to test
for entry into a liberal arts college when they have absolutely no desire or
ambition to go to college. Maybe a child simply desires to be a car mechanic.
The standardized test abuses children by categorizing and labeling them in ways
that destroy their self-respect and self-ambition. Children are cajoled and
forced to learn things that they have no desire to learn and if they refuse
they are punished and labeled a problem student. No wonder there is an increase
in diagnosed dyslexia and autism. The punishing atmosphere in government
schools no doubt contributes, and ‘The Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention estimate that the number of children diagnosed with Attention
Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) has increased by 16% since 2007. Some six
million children aged 4 to 17 allegedly now suffer from ADHD, including one in
five high-school males. How are these children to be treated? Simple: Drug them
with the amphetamines Ritalin or Adderall.’ 3 We gleefully load up our children
with mind altering drugs thinking it is going to make them better.
<groan>
The creature we know
as government school is the brain child of the Utopian dreamer named John
Dewey. Dewey felt that “the one part of our identity that is the most private,
the mind, is really not the property of the individual at all, but of humanity,
which is merely a euphemism for the collective or the state. That concept is at
the very heart of the Orwellian nightmare, and yet the same concept is the very
basis of our progressive-humanist-behaviorist education system.” 4
The most immoral
change was the way children were taught to read. Since it had been ordained by
Dewey and his Utopian dreamer colleagues that literacy skills were to be
destroyed in favor of the development of social skills for the good of the
collective. That social skill is compliance. They purposefully set into motion
a system that would create illiterates and masses that obediently serve the
state.
The tolerance American
parents display constantly amazes me. They willingly send their children to a
big brick jailhouse, into a pressure-cooker of psychodrama, run by jailers they
do not know, and taught by pedagogues they do not know. They willfully allow
their children to be dumbed-down, punished, abused, categorized, labeled, and
shoved into little groups to serve the state. Once the children are labeled and
put into groups the pecking order emerges. The acute taunting, mockery,
intimidation, and despair due to the indifference of the machine turns into
horrifying reality.
Why do parents do this
to their children?
1Charles Taylor Gatto,
The Underground History of Amercian Education, Oddyseus, 412 pages, page 78
2Samuel Blumenthal,
Who Killed Excellence?, MISES Daily, September 1985
3The Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention
4Ibid.
About Bill Evelyn
Bill Evelyn was raised
in the village of Oaks in Valley Forge, PA. Upon graduation from university,
Bill entered the United States Air Force and flew F-4 Phantoms in the
Philippines, Korea, Europe, did an exchange tour on the USS Midway. Bill has
lived in Forsyth County since 2000, longer than any other place in his life.
Bill is active in the tea party and Republican Party.
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