The System Is the Problem

by Milo Markovich

President Bush’s new education plan that has been praised by most Republicans and conservatives as positive and long overdue has left me quite confused. Here is a man that has staffed his new cabinet with people who have built their careers either working for think tanks, government and corporations that are directly responsible for the state that public education is in today. These are the same sources from where the Clinton administration had drawn their staff. The federal government cannot "fix" education simply because the federal government is the prime culprit that has utterly ruined whatever remained that was good about public education. On this, most who are not financially benefiting from public education would agree.

What is surprising about the views of those people who would agree, is that most of them also agree that the federal government can not only fix the problem, but they are the only logical entity that should attempt it. Just as one would not ask a known child molester how to best protect children from child molesters, why do parents keep expecting the federal department of education (FDOE) to fix the problems in education that they have created? Granted, both department of education bureaucrats and child molesters know much about their respective fields, but their past performance and common sense should be sufficient to warn us all to keep our children away from both.

I believe this misconception that most well-meaning parents have is because they are not aware of how extensively foundation money has been intentionally used to influence and direct the FDOE to set policies over the years at the local level. The ongoing consolidation of local boards and concurrent strengthening of state departments of education has been no accident. This has been intentional and planned since the early days of the 20^th century. It has also been a primary tool of the socialist movement to condition the American population by psychologically conditioning the young minds of the children. The foundations and their elite corporate benefactors want a docile, controllable work force. So does a socialist government. The last thing the elite of this country want are independently-minded, thinking, competitive people who could ultimately ruin their free ride that they view as their collective birthright.

While this may seem an overly-strong view to some of view, let me say that I was among you not that long ago. What changed my thinking and opened my eyes was by reading some excellent books written by people who are not professional authors, but were directly affected by these changes in education. They or their children were affected so much, that they wrote books to share their new-found knowledge with the public. The ultimate hope is that once parents really understand the true nature and purpose of what passes for public education today, they will rise up to force changes at the grass roots level, and force the FDOE out of existence.

There are three excellent books I would recommend to anyone that knows in their gut that there is something systemically wrong with education today, but cannot quite identify it. There are many other books, but these should convince the most ardent scoffers among you.

The first is by John Taylor Gatto, The Underground History of American Education. I would read this first so you can get a good perspective of what and how large the problem really is. Mr. Gatto was a teacher in the New York City schools for 30 years. Beginning in 1961, he watched the schools become progressively worse institutions for teaching, and was effectively powerless to stop it. Many teachers who effectively taught academics in the 1960’s became problems for the progressive education movement and teacher’s unions if they refused to get "re-educated" themselves and go along with the new paradigm. Along with his personal story and wonderful real-life anecdotes, he provides the reader with a teacher’s eye view of what has transpired. He also places the last century in a proper historical context by showing how truly educated the average American was prior to "freely" available public education. Most Americans were self-educated, and we boasted a national 98 plus percent literacy rate. Americans were among the most educated in the world. Our citizens were incredibly self-reliant and innovative, and it didn’t cost one cent of tax revenue to accomplish this. Then along came public education to ostensibly improve it and make it more available to everyone.

The second book is by Charlotte Thompson Iserbyt, The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America. The third is by B.K Eakman, Cloning of the American Mind. You can read either or both of these, depending upon how much detailed evidence you need to prove to yourself that what has happened to public education has been a deliberate, orchestrated effort. Both books necessarily overlap in some areas. Essentially, they both document step by step, how what we have today has come about. Ms. Eakman was a techincal writer with a degree in education who originally wrote Educating for the ‘New World Order’ in 1991, which led to a more fully treated subject in this book. It shows examples of the tests used and are used today to assess psychological values of the students under the guise of academic testing. The National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) test that President Bush so strongly advocates is and has been a primary mechanism to get the socialist agenda into the local schools.

Ms. Iserbyt was a senior policy advisor in the federal Office of Educational Research and Improvement, part of the FDOE during the Reagan administration. She basically blew the whistle on how the government was planning to use automation technology to control and guide curriculum in the local schools that originated at the federal level (which is unconstitutional). If Mr. Bush is a strict constitutionalist as he claims, why is he so in favor of continuing to use the FDOE to further this agenda? Her book is a comprehensive history through each decade from the late nineteenth century to date of the education system, and the infiltration of it by these socialist forces using foundation money to accomplish their goals.

There are other good books on the subject that basically agree with and augment the positions of these authors. The problem we have in American public education today is very real, and very damaging to the fabric of our society. It does and will affect all of our futures, and not in a good way unless things change. These books show beyond the shadow of any doubt that the problems in education today will not be solved by throwing more money down the same rat hole. They also point fingers and show a provable motive as to why things are the way they are.

I would hope anyone concerned about the state of affairs in education today would take some time to better inform themselves on this issue, and certainly even more if you have children either in or going into the system in the future. It’s up to us because the system will never fix the problem - the system is the problem.

Copyright © 2001 LewRockwell.com