The U.S. government published the dark
truth about K-12 schools in the famous "A Nation at Risk"
report of 1983. Here is that truth: if a foreign country created the
schools we have now, we would conclude that they were "an act of war"
against our children.
A Nation at Risk told us that the
simplest way to understand the mediocrity and malaise so common in K-12.
We shouldn't assume there is anything natural about this decline or
anything mysterious. It's a man-made attack by a vicious enemy who
infiltrated our schools and made them dysfunctional.
But what country would that be?
Spain? Sri Lanka? Samoa? Of course not. We all
know there's only one country with a tradition of aggressive meddling in the
internal affairs of other countries.
Let's take a look at Russian history after
World War I. When Lenin and Stalin finally conquered Russia circa
1919, they immediately turned their energies to conquering the rest of the
world – mainly the USA.
The Communist
International (aka The Comintern or the Third International,
1919-1943) advocated world communism. That means that everyone obeys the
Kremlin.
These were feverish and ambitious times.
The Communists organized innumerable congresses, front groups, and
ruthless plots around the world.
In the summer of 1920, Lenin sent out
his Twenty-One Conditions to all socialist parties.
He ordered Communists "not to trust the legality of the bourgeois
states." Savor that. Simply by saying so, Lenin obliterates
whatever silly ideas these countries have of being legal. No, they are
illegal, and thus reasonable targets of conquest by Communists.
The Comintern's founding
documents laid out that Communists must "use whatever means,
legal or illegal, peaceful or violent, might be appropriate to their situations
at any given time." In the summer of 1921, the Comintern explained
how the struggle could be transformed into "openly revolutionary
uprisings" – that is, civil war. Again, the Communists don't play
patty-cake. They'll drop a civil war on your head at the first
opportunity.,
Some Communist parties had secret
military wings or paramilitary organizations. Their purpose was
to prepare for the civil wars that Communists hoped to stir up and "to
liquidate opponents and informers who might have infiltrated the party."
Think about all that. Communists form their own armies and hit
squads right inside your country. If you let them, they'll do it.
In 1928, the Executive
Committee announced the Third Period, which
would last until 1935. The Comintern proclaimed that the capitalist
system was approaching its final collapse, and therefore all Communist
parties must adopt a militant ultra-left line. In particular, the
Comintern labeled all moderate left-wing parties "social
fascists" and urged the Communists to destroy the moderate left.
Translation: run-of-the-mill socialists and progressives were dead ducks.
You had to be a Commie's Commie.
The U.S. stock market crashed in 1929.
The Communists expected it and wanted it. Economic chaos was manna
for them. It confirmed that Marx was right, capitalism was doomed, and
the West was finished. The Commies would walk through the ruins,
transforming everything as they pleased.
This ruthless, go-for-broke attitude seemed
to crescendo among far-left commissars circa 1932. For example, more than
5 million people were deliberately starved to death
in Ukraine mainly during the years 1932-1933.
That's when the Education Establishment
struck at U.S. literacy with reckless force. They announced that phonics
was old-fashioned, that existing reading textbooks should be destroyed.
An untested, unproven method known as Whole Word was substituted. In
fact, this method was arguably chosen precisely because it did not work. Henceforth, ordinary children
learned to read at a slower pace. Functional illiteracy and dyslexia
became common features in elementary and middle schools. The majority of
children never became fluent readers, nor clear thinkers.
Now, imagine that you are a ruthless
ideologue ready to destroy all opposition. But you don't have much
power, and the target country refuses to surrender. What do you do?
You invade any sectors that don't defend themselves. You attack the
soft, easy targets: the media and the foundations. And, especially, you
take over education. You don't need a sophisticated paramilitary.
You just need a few thousand Stalinist professors eager to follow
the Party Line.
So the United States exhibited a weird
phenomenon. Communists (by whatever name) occupied small sectors of
intellectual territory scattered throughout the society. I would say they
still do. That is the simplest explanation for the incredible dysfunction
in our public schools.
Reading is the canary in the coal mine.
It's the lead indicator. If kids aren't learning to read in the
first grade, you know that a school is Occupied Territory. This was the
pattern in the 1930s and remains so. It's endlessly creepy that so-called
educators would try this stunt.
The mystery is less pronounced, however,
if you consider the origins and DNA of our Education Establishment.
Communist ideologues brought a thunderous, Mussorgsky-like intensity to
politics and social engineering. You agree to be transformed, or
they agree to stand you before a firing squad.
Just 20 years after the introduction of
Whole Word, its total uselessness was clear. Rudolf Flesch studied the
destruction and wrote a book called Why Johnny Can't Read (1955).
But our Cominternists went right on. Now this country has
40,000,000 to 50,000,000 functional illiterates.
As Communists like to say, you can't make
millions of omelets without smashing millions of eggs. That's a fine
summary of public school education in the United States for the past 80 years.
CODA: Here's a pretty irony. John Dewey, widely acclaimed as this country's
greatest educator, was "a card-carrying Communist, who went to Russia in
the 1920s, and convinced Lenin's wife (who could make decisions for education
in Russia) to use whole-word instruction to teach reading for Russian children.
She proceeded to implement it. That method of teaching reading was such an
abysmal failure, that it was dropped, because it made the Russian children
illiterate." Roughly in 1932, the Russians banished Dewey and his ideas from their country, at the same
time that Dewey and his gang imposed Whole Word on this country. QED:
Russia defended their children against this quack; Americans didn't and don't.
Bruce Deitrick Price explains theories and
methods on his education sites Improve-Education.org.
For info on his four new novels, see his literary site, Lit4u.com.
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/12/k12_occupied_territory.html#ixzz4RzYI9Rxa