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Educational Socialism in American Schools
Educational Socialism in American Schools
I had taught high school and middle school English and social studies in a public school system for thirty-four years, retiring from the teaching profession in July of 1999. Any observations, opinions and conclusions I make about Multicultural Education are not theoretical: they are pragmatically based on experience and my interactions with over four thousand students. And I have been scrutinizing and studying Multicultural Education for four decades now and have heard too-many-times the lackluster educational jargon originating from college professors and from misguided advocates of M.E., and quite frankly those “elitist arguments” have become rather redundant, hackneyed and monotonous, and to think that I once wholeheartedly espoused those ethereal Multicultural Education principles as an idealistic teacher beginning my career back in September of 1965.
Despite the “Happy Face” that supporters of Multicultural Education are attempting to promote and propagandize, one distinct adjective comes to mind whenever I think about Multicultural Education and that particular word is “insidious.” To the unsuspecting layman or college student “Diversity through M.E.” is a nifty catch phrase that sounds awfully noble and pleasant to the ears upon hearing its utterance, but the process known as Multicultural Education is actually quite detrimental to the implementation of effective American education. I deliberately describe the scourge as insidious because over the past forty years M.E. has imperceptibly and very cunningly been introduced, advanced and perpetuated by its militant proponents without the American public realizing exactly how harmful, how treacherous and how detrimental the seemingly benign terminology appears to be.
First of all, Multicultural Education never clearly defines and identifies itself to the American public for what it really is. U.S, citizens automatically equate and associate M.E. with Bilingual Education and ESL (English as a Second Language), which the clever campaigners for M. E. never lucidly delineate and differentiate. Bilingual Education and ESL are indeed definite, positive, beneficial and necessary programs in our American public schools. Those two activities encourage and facilitate the cultural “Melting Pot” ideal whereby immigrant and certain minority students learn English and ESL and are hopefully successfully assimilated into American society after two-to-four years of exposure to a new language and a new culture.
But Multicultural Education is the complete opposite and inverse of Bilingual Education and ESL. M.E. deceitfully and deliberately does not accurately distinguish itself from Bilingual Education and ESL to the unwary American public. Here’s what Multicultural education really is: It is an attempt to manipulate history, English, literature and science to make those subjects appear to all students that blacks, Hispanics and other minorities have contributed as much (if not more) to Western Civilization than Einstein, Jefferson, Washington, Thoreau, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Hugo, Twain, Newton, Steinbeck, Hemingway, Poe, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, H.G. Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle, Abraham Lincoln and other Caucasians have. Multicultural Education attempts to diminish the great “White” benefactors of the Western World while simultaneously elevating the works of obscure minorities to their plane. And the entire student body is exposed to and forced to suffer through this ruse in their various core curriculum textbooks and it’s not just ESL students and Bilingual Education learners being exposed to the ongoing brainwashing. And once the American public fully recognizes that important concept’ separating M.E. from Bilingual Education and ESL, Multicultural Education will finally be satisfactorily challenged and ultimately rejected.
Although the Multicultural Education academic elitists claim to be “visionaries,” they are in effect revisionists. Their impractical goal is to create a Utopian future by first rewriting the past and next changing the present. First relegate icons like Shakespeare, Cervantes, Jefferson and Newton and then give equal stature to James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Jesse Jackson and George Washington Carver. It is true that George Washington Carver remarkably found three hundred applied uses for the peanut, but the Multicultural Education activists want us to believe that the black scientist is just as important to American culture, science, technology and history as is Galileo and Thomas Edison. I don’t think so!
This is not to say that minority inventors and authors are not to be studied in schools. As a teacher I remember enjoying reading biographies of Louis Armstrong, Harriet Tubman and Ralph Bunche with my literature classes but if Multicultural Education advocates had their way that type of minority-oriented reading should constitute the bulk of the literature, history and science curriculums taught in our schools. And I truly admire the accomplishments of Colin Powell, Condie Rice and Clarence Thomas because they didn’t need any cause, movement or national organization to inspire them to excellence. They reached down inside and motivated themselves “as individuals” to strive for greatness, but many liberal socialistic Multiculturalists will call the three cited black achievers “Uncle Toms” since they have succeeded in the competitive American capitalistic culture on their own without a massive crusade or agenda advancing their individual attainments.
To get their way the M.E. elitists must shrewdly label and demonize traditional curriculum by calling it “Eurocentric,” which automatically connotes a bad moniker. The long-range objective of the M.E. masterminds is to first condemn “Eurocentric” history, literature and science and then to systematically dismantle “Western Civilization,” which is really what the stereotype “Eurocentic” means.
I have eight elementary questions that pertain to significant developments in the history of mankind to ask the Multicultural elitists:
1) Where did the concept of Democracy begin? (Clue: the city is the capital of Greece)
2) Where did the Renaissance happen? (Clue: a country that has cities Florence, Rome and Venice)
3) Where did the Age of Exploration and Discovery begin? (Clue: cities like Genoa, Lisbon and London)
4) Where did the Age of Enlightenment have its roots? (Clue: Cities are found on rivers Seine and Thames)
5) Where did the Protestant Reformation take place? (Clue: Main players were Martin Luther of Germany and Henry the VIII of England)
6) Where did the Industrial Revolution get started? (Clue: a country that has cities named Manchester, Coventry, Sheffield, Leeds and New Castle)
7) Where did the Atomic Age happen? (Clue: the country has an eagle and an old chap named Uncle Sam as its symbols)
8) Where did the Computer Age have its origins? (Clue: corporations named IBM, Microsoft and Apple inspired it to happen).
The phenomenal freedoms that Americans enjoy today are outgrowths from the eight Eurocentric eras enumerated above. The concept of Democracy originated in ancient Greece. The Renaissance liberated the human spirit and gave birth to cultural creativity. The Age of Discovery and Exploration sent men on great adventures to distant continents. The Age of Enlightenment led to the development of modern-day political philosophy. The Protestant Reformation loosened church authority and created an atmosphere where thinkers could contemplate and publish their works, scientists could freely experiment and inventors could create. This newfound freedom of thought and expression eventually led to the development of Constitutional governments where the rights of citizens were protected under law. This fantastic revolutionary “Western Civilization” liberty led to freedom of thought, which led to discovery, which led to technology, which led to progress and to our contemporary American (and European) way of life and high standard of living. But if the determined Multicultural Education zealots had their druthers, the eight important eras of Western Civilization would be diminished and relegated because they are “Eurocentric” while the accomplishments of minorities will be elevated, given accolades and praised in our public schools, thus dooming our students to perpetual mediocrity.
Now knowing the above-mentioned salient facts the majority of adult Americans would prefer having their children exposed to the same kind of “Eurocentric” education that they had received and understood as “Western Civilization.” Every mature U.S. citizen with any scruples wishes to have the culture and history of America expertly transmitted to the younger generation, for that particular function is the central purpose of schools besides teaching students’ vital skills in reading, writing, speaking, mathematics, science and thinking. But if the adamant M.E. crusaders had their way teachers would have to pretend that Western Civilization never happened and that minorities were equally responsible for the prosperity that America presently maintains and enjoys.
And those stubborn Multicultural Education advocates are very inflexible and quite obstinate too. They want you to believe that M.E. is a powerful new “science” and not a topic that should be comprehended as a “controversial issue” having an opposing point of view. The predecessor of this essay was entitled “Multicultural Education Means Mediocre Education.” I had submitted the first article to a professor that maintains an “Essays on Multicultural Education” website. The academic elitist refused to post my article on the basis that it was a prejudiced and biased view of Multicultural Education based on “stereotypes.” Well now, isn’t that a wicked contradiction! The M.E. proponents suddenly take on a “ban-the-essay censorship Fascist mentality” when someone who values Western Civilization dares to present an alternative position on their pet subject. And this is perhaps the greatest danger that will materialize should intellectual democratic elitist educators get their way: intolerance to other people’s points of view and a blatant violation of First Amendment freedom of speech rights. And the irony of it all is that Multicultural Education is masked, marketed and sold as “democratic education.” Such a canard is advertised as making American public school children more aware of “diversity.” I suppose that specific definition does not include diverse opinions or contrary philosophical positions about Multicultural Education.
Once the general public fathoms the true nature of the Multicultural Education’ fanatics’ motives I am convinced that the adherents and their movement will subsequently be soundly defeated. Their agenda (and they do have an agenda) is disguised as and masquerades as a necessary feature of “Educational Socialism,” which conceals itself under the mantle of “Educational Democratic Equality For All.” But if all students are equal, therefore no student could ever become superior, more wealthy’, more outstanding or more creative as long as he or she remains in a public school under the dominion of “Educational Socialism.” In the Multicultural Education Universe there can be no Valedictorians or Salutatorians because that type of academic honor discriminates against the masses and makes the average student (minority or otherwise) feel inferior. “Just try and blend in with everyone else! Let’s have a Melting Pot or giant salad!” is the watchword of the M.E. enthusiasts.
Educational Socialism and Multicultural Education are conveniently bolstered in classroom subjects with the implementation of a Neo-Industrial Education Factory-Oriented Classroom Model. Our American public schools are run like factories. Administrators and supervisors are the bosses, boards of education are the boards of directors, taxpayers are the stockholders, teachers are regarded as the employees in the system and the students are the products of a twelve-year-long manufacturing process. This educational factory model has been in existence for over a hundred years now and as long as it persists and as long as administrators are influenced by state-supported mandates like Multicultural Education, then mediocrity will in the final-analysis be the result. Schools are operated like factories and Multicultural Education will still guarantee a very nondescript product (the homogenized “salad-Melting Pot students” constituting the entire student body).
Now here’s where and why I believe that Multicultural Education will be vanquished. Multicultural Education proponents are generally also Educational Socialists. In addition to desiring to dismantle Western Civilization (calling it “Eurocentric”) they absolutely loathe capitalism, the indispensable economic engine of America. If it weren’t for “free enterprise” (capitalism) and the economic security that the accumulation of personal wealth affords and provides, then our great American democracy would be vulnerable to eroding and then decaying into civil unrest and gradually heading in the direction of anarchy. Think about it! Our free enterprise economy is what makes Americans truly free and the essential economic idea of “risk-reward” is hardly ever taught in our schools.
But Ivory Tower Educational Socialists think that “capitalism” and “competition” cause students to become selfish and greedy without sharing with others. They frown upon capitalism as being a negative influence because it engenders students becoming too egocentric and arrogant and therefore capable of being distinguished as achievement-oriented individuals from the rest of the group (their student comrades). Students are discouraged from thinking outside the box because then they would be an obvious danger to the system and a threat to the dominance of Educational Socialism. Blend in and be exactly like everyone else in the great Melting Pot. Don’t aspire to achieve more than your fellow students and never be exposed to the evils of capitalism and free enterprise. “Now let’s eliminate grades so that everyone can think and be on the same level at all times.” That is another immediate goal of these educational socialistic maniacs.
Capitalism (a wonderful concept of Eurocentric Western Civilization) is the great hope and foundation of any free and democratic society. Capitalism (Wall Street) is what gives the United States of America its stability and security. Heaven forbid if our entrepreneurs and risk takers are ever silenced! They employ people’, and these ambitious pioneers open new frontiers and establish new dynamic businesses and corporations. It’s all quite simple and “Elementary, dear Watson!” as Sherlock Holmes often states. Without capitalism, there would be no profits, no employees, no taxes being paid, no companies, no businesses, no government programs, no public schools, no colleges being financed and contributed to, and no wealth being created. Without capitalism the United States’ flourishing economy would soon deteriorate and go the way of the Soviet Union.
Thank Heaven that free enterprise is still the most vibrant and productive force in America! But please remember: college professors in general are liberal-minded and many of them are elitists that despise free enterprise while advancing the causes of Educational Socialism and of Multicultural Education. Instead of endorsing a hypothesis that postulates that America is a great Melting Pot where all public school students are equal (the same) American Education needs to get on the right track and instruct its students, “If you want to achieve individual prosperity become a capitalist and not a factory or office employee. You have the potential to become an employer and not an employee. Pursue excellence in everything that you attempt or do and never simply settle for being just like everyone else in a cultural salad! Dig deep down inside yourself and produce more than your peers! Become an individual and don’t settle on just being referred to as one!” But that inspiration will never happen on a broad scale as long as Educational Socialists (that hate American capitalism) and Multicultural Educationists (that resent “Eurocentric” history and literature) are at the academic helm and wielding tremendous influence over the fate of millions of American public school students. “Ambition” is now an absolute dirty word in American education! It suggests that an aggressive self-motivated student will distinguish himself or herself from his or her fellow students and grow and excel as an individual.
The elitist critics of free enterprise again use labeling to endeavor smearing and debunking capitalism, accusing the greedy method of being “trickle down economics!” But will someone please explain to me how gravity could be successfully defied by having “trickle-up economics?” And I boldly venture to state that most Multicultural Education elitists are also Educational Socialists.
In conclusion, only free enterprise (and our students awareness of and their belief in its greatness), a continuation of the teachings of Western Civilization and some sober realistic thinking will ensure the future of the United States of America. The public must first become aware that Multicultural Education is the problematic antithesis of this country’s past glory. But as long as Multiculturalists are powerful elements performing their harm inside American Educational Philosophy and Psychology, our public schools are destined and doomed to mediocrity. There’ will be no future Multicultural Utopia produced by the Educational Aristocracy (college professors, school administrators, school supervisors, curriculum coordinators, and State-Mandated Programs) as the academic boyars would like us to believe. Multicultural Education isn’t even a placebo let alone a civilization-saving elixir. Our only hopes for a prosperous future are Free Enterprise (capitalism) and the preservation of Western Civilization, two extraordinary disciplines that the educational elite (in general) ignore, abhor and reject.
John Wiessner
Author Jay Dubya (author’s initials)
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