A Study in Education

What you are about to read was Originally published on Metropolis.Cafe’ when the site was but two weeks old. We felt that it is so timely to bring it back to the forefront. ~ Editor

April 5, 2016 ~ At the time the Constitution was written, education was not even considered a function of local government, let alone the federal government.

But the Federal Governments Department of Education’s shaky constitutionality goes way beyond that.

Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution enumerates the things over which Congress has the power to legislate. Not only does the list not include education, while there is no plausible rationale for squeezing education in under the commerce clause, We are sure the Supreme Court found a rationale, but it cannot have been plausible. Continue reading →

The Subversion of Education in America: Lesson #1

February 19, 2002 ~ I’ll bet you think that the problems with our nation’s schools are a fairly recent phenomenon. Wrong. It dates backs to the 1960’s. Those that have implemented the subversion of our educational system have sought to fly well below the radar of public awareness, depending on stealth and duplicity to achieve the wreckage that has already stunted the lives of thousands who have passed through it.

No other topic has evoked as much email as did our weekly “Warning Signs” commentary, Indoctrination, Not Education. Good. Time to wake up America!

In this and three other commentaries, I will walk you through the history of the problem with the help of an extraordinary book, “The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America” by Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt. The facts I will share with you are found in a fat compendium of research by this former senior official with the US Department of Education who discovered the mother lode, copied it, and fled. She is one of America’s unsung heroes. Continue reading →

Published in Village of the Damned on the first generation Federal Observer, January 28, 2002

Do you ever wonder why home-schooled children consistently do better academically than those passing through this mind-numbing system?

You had to know something was terribly wrong while you watched President George W. Bush stand at the podium and laud Sen. Teddy Kennedy. I thought he was going to stop talking just long enough to French kiss him. Nothing good can come of these two colluding on an education program and nothing will!

After you get through reading the 1000-page Education Bill, dubbed “Leave No Child Behind“, you will have concluded that the Federal government is now so fully in charge of your local school system that you have only one option. You will either home school your children or you will turn them over to a system that so mirrors the Communist model for education, they will belong to Big Brother long after they have left home to create their own families. Continue reading →

NOTE: It has been over eighteen years since Alan Caruba penned this column for publication. Was anybody listening? ~ Ed.

The President’s education plan, with or without vouchers, suffers from an essential defect. In the U.S. Constitution’s enumeration of its powers and responsibilities as regards “raising revenue” (Article 1, Section 8) you will find no mention of “education.”

While education is a national priority, it is more properly a priority of the parents of students, their teachers, and local school boards. The flaw in President Bush’s education plans is the US Department of Education, an agency that since the 1970’s has racked up a dismal record when it comes to educating the nation’s youth. The “national standard” of education being discussed ignores the most fundamental issue. Under the DOE a deliberate plan to dumb down American students has been in place for decades. No one seems willing to discuss this. Continue reading →

Editor’s NOTE: The following column by Alan Caruba was originally posted by Kettle Moraine, Ltd. Publications in March, 2012. Alan’s words are as direct and point-on as they were so many years ago. The late author’s referenced series, was published in it’s entirety on the Federal Observer, when it was but six weeks old. ~ J.B.

Back in 2001 I wrote a four-part series on The Subversion of Education in America and more than a decade later not much has improved. The causes are easily identified. One is federal control and the other is the National Education Association (NEA) which, despite its name, is a union.

Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey became a nationally known figure when he took on the teacher’s union for the way contracts with generous pension and health benefits were bankrupting the State. Other civil service contracts also came under review for the same reason.  Continue reading →

The following column by Alan Caruba was originally published by Kettle Moraine Publications on August 29, 2010, however it won’t be long before the end of summer, and the victims of the Fed-ucation Holocaust will be returning to the den once more. Alan’s words are as direct and point-on as they were so many years ago. ~ J.B.

The Blood-Sucking Educator

As the nation’s children return to elementary and secondary schools, it is increasingly essential that their parents and communities coast to coast realize how poorly served they are and how their learning environment is increasingly tainted by a socialist agenda.

Our nation’s schools have long been factories of boredom, centers of academic incompetence. High school graduation rates have been in a fairly steady decline. At its peak in 1969, the rate was 77 percent. By 2007 it was 68.8 percent.

In mid-August, The Wall Street Journal reported that “New data show that fewer than 25% of 2010 graduates who took the ACT college-entrance exam possessed the academic skills necessary to pass entry-level courses, despite modest gains in college-readiness among U.S. high school students in the last few years.”

What caught my eye was a quote from Jack Jennings, president of the Center on Education Policy, a nonpartisan research organization in Washington, who said that “if our kids aren’t dropping out physically, they are dropping out mentally.” Continue reading →