Forced Illiteracy in America

There are numerous reasons why high school graduates and college students fail to read and write well. Blame can be attached to the schools for a portion of the reason. The National Educational Commission on Time and Learning found that most American students spend less than half their day studying academic subjects. The commissions two-year study found that American students spent only 41 percent of the school day on basic academics. Their schedules jammed with course work in self-esteem, personal safety, AIDS education, family life, consumer training, driver's ed, holistic health, and gym. The typical American high school student spends only 1, 460 hours on subjects like math, science and history during their four years in high schools. Meanwhile, their counterparts in Japan will spend 3,170 hours on basic subjects, students in France will spend 3,280 on academics, while students in Germany will spend 3,528 hours studying such subjects - nearly three times the hours devoted in American schools.1. I personally witnessed the dropping of academic standards when I graduated from high school in 1967 here in California. I was allowed to graduate having no writing skills and very little training in math. None of the instructors ever used the words Algebra or thesis. I found out more about what I was not taught in school when I went to college, discovering the gaps in my learning. The added hours that I spent catching up to my peers was equal to nearly four years of studies.

High schools today have such an overloaded agenda brought on by special interest groups that it is no surprise that our students are falling behind the students of other countries.

Doug Soderstrom, a Ph.D in Psychology, an instructor for 39 years at college level relates in an article on the "Dumbing Down of the American Mind" that when he began teaching in 1966 he actually required his students to read an entire textbook during the semester. And nobody got upset. Not the administrators, not the parents, nor even the students! However, today he goes on to write: if he were to do such a thing he would have an extremely difficult time getting enough students to enroll in his classes in order to keep his job. The problem: A very determined standoff between the remaining few teachers willing to maintain standards versus a generation or two of students who are nearly unwilling to learn, students who have "apparently gone on strike" with an attitude of " I dare you to force me to learn!" The result: The fact that leniency ( a lowering of academic standards in our country) has won out at the expense of quality education in that of our high schools as well as that of our colleges.2.

Any time that the lowering of standards is tolerated in any area, be it the educational system in America or in any area from yard maintenance to aircraft parts the country suffers. Degradation of a persons lawn is minor compared to the jet liner with 600 souls aboard plummeting to earth because standards were lowered and parts failed. Consequences are naturally different for each instance, I believe my point is made though.

"In addition, there is the dumbing down inherent in giving courses that are not college courses at all, but are designed to teach students what they didn't learn in high school. Sometimes these courses are called "remedial," but the institutions prefer euphemisms such as "second tier"

and "sub-freshman." Such courses were unheard of prior to 1939, and only three institutions offered them in 1964. Today such non-college-level courses are offered in 70 percent of the elite universities, and most of them award college credit."3.

"In those early years of the 20th century a radical shift was well under way, transforming a society of farmers and craftspeople, fishermen and small entrepreneurs into the disciplined work-force of a corporate state, one in which ALL the work was being sucked into colossal governments, colossal institutions an colossal business enterprises - a society whose driving logic was comfort, security, predictability and consensus rather than independence, originality, risk-taking and uncompromising principle. In the gospels of social engineering this transformation was leading to a future utopia of welfare capitalism. With the problem of "production" solved, the theoretical desirability can never really be a serious goal for a society seeking comfort, security, the intention of professional intellectuals and powerful men of wealth turned to controlling distribution so that a "rational" society, defined as a stable state without internal or external conflicts, could be managed for nations, regions and eventually the entire planet. In such a system, if you behave, you get a share of the divvy and if you don't, your share is correspondingly reduced. Keep in mind that a small farmer, a carpenter, a fisherman, seamstress or Indian fighter never gave undue attention to being well-behaved and you will begin to see how a centralized economy and centralized schooling box human behavior into a much narrowed container than what it normally would occupy and you will begin to see why intellectual development for all its predictability and consensus. Indeed, such a fate must be actively avoided."4.

In 1973 there was a court case: Rodriguez vs. San Antonio and the outcome was that education was not a fundamental right guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and ever since that ruling the states have scrambled for funding for the schools. Through property tax revenue and additional city and county taxes, bonds and loans, most school districts have stayed afloat with the small amount of federal monies available. As an example, federal funds for California's community college system for the year 2006-2007 amounts to only 3.1 percent or 279 million dollars when student fees of 26 dollars per unit would amount to 3.5 percent or 315 million. The California state fund, state lottery, and other local funds make up the remainder.5. The federal government sources in the Congress spout rhetorically of "no child left behind" and how the government is backing education and the truth is that appeasement of the population is the real consideration and being re-elected the main concern. "Bread and circuses" has come to be a derogatory phrase that can criticize either government policies to pacify the citizenry, or the shallow, decadent desires of that same citizenry. In both cases, it refers to low-cost, low-quality, high-availability food and entertainment that have become the sole concern of the People, to the exclusion of matters that the speaker considers more important: e.g. the Arts, public works projects, human rights, or democracy itself. The phrase is commonly used to refer to short-term government palliatives offered in place of a solution for significant, long-term problems.7. It would seem our modern population is concerned with little more than bread and circuses in solving the schooling issues as well as many others. I quote a person who walked the earth in the late 1st century and early 2nd and have given him credence because of the length of time his works have survived.

I do not have the time or the resources to fully document the phenomena taking place in America in reference to the intentional illiteracy being forced on people. Mrs. Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt has written a book called " The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America". Mrs. Iserbyt has documented the gradual transformation of our once academically successful educational system into one devoted to training children to become compliant human resources to be used by government and industry for their own purposes. This is how fascist-socialist societies train their children to become servants of their government masters."6. Being a mere student compiling a paper of this type, I have no credentials to wave and no alphabet to place after my name. I must put forth the ideas put forth by people more respected and learned than I to make my claims, points and premise. I take bits and parts of articles, papers, books written on the subject by people with Ph.d. after their names or more, if a person is published then it gives them more of an air of believability and it is that believability that I must attain if I am going to have people take any stock in my writing what so ever.

According to the findings of a local area study, the "Los Angeles Daily News" reported that " 53 percent of workers ages 16 and older were deemed functionally illiterate". It was found that "More than half of the working-age population can't read a simple form". LA Mayor, James Hahn, was quoted stating "it's an emergency situation" that could jeopardize our economy. A most interesting fact of history is that Americans were probably the most literate people in the world before the advent of government schools and compulsory school attendance. Since the U.S. was already highly literate when parents were allowed complete freedom in educating their children, the reason behind compulsory attendance obviously had nothing to do with academics. Neither was the problem one of economics, as there was not a shortage of charity schools. If the purpose was not one of academics or to help poor children receive an education, what was the intent behind the push for government schools and more importantly, compulsory attendance laws? This is an urgent question that begs an honest answer because with ever increasing government controls and compulsory attendance, American literacy rates have steadily plummeted. With the billions of dollars spent on education can this really be an accident?

In his 1932 book "Toward Soviet America", William Z. Foster, head of the Communist Party, USA, stated, "Among the elementary measures the American Soviet government will adopt to further the cultural revolution are the following: schools, colleges, and universities will be coordinated and grouped under the National Department of Education and its state and local branches. The studies will be revolutionized, being cleansed of religious, patriotic, and other features of the bourgeoisie ideology. The students will be taught on the basis of Marxist dialectical materialism, internationalism, and the general ethics of the new socialist society."

We can see that America has fulfilled Foster's socialist/communist objectives of a National Department of Education and in revolutionizing her schools into the Marxist philosophy of atheism and socialism. The fulfillment of these goals was brought about by a carefully crafted dumbing-down process that has brought about a nation of "functional illiterates".

Introducing new "reading" programs into American schools was a major part of this dumbing-down process to bring about socialism. John Dewey, often known as the father of modern education, was one of many socialists whose mission it was to bring about a socialist society through the educational system. Ignoring thousands of years of human history that show us that language is the tool of learning, Dewey stated in "My Pedagogic Creed", "I believe that the image is the great instrument of instruction." Dewey's great "genius" was taken into account in the Scott Foresman "Dick and Jane" books that used pictures with few words. There was a great push to get rid of the old phonics method and to get "look-say" like "Dick and Jane" textbooks into every classroom in the nation. Dewey knew that the new teaching methods would produce inferior readers, but the instruction he wanted children to receive wouldn't come about if they were intellectuals. He knew that high literacy was an obstacle to his dream of socialism because a person able to gain his own knowledge independently would learn to exercise his own judgment and authority. Dewey wanted the average American to have to rely on a socialist education elite for guidance and wisdom. So what were the results after the introduction of the 1930 first edition of the look-say "Dick and Jane" books? Within five years of the advent of these primers, they became the dominant "reading" textbook in our nation's classrooms. During that same time period, there was a myriad of documented reading disabilities that were described as a "whole new syndrome".

In April 1935 an article, written by foremost reading authority, William Scott Gray, was published in the "Elementary English Review", noting numerous reading disabilities that were never noted before: mental deficiency, defective vision, auditory deficiencies, congenital word blindness, developmental alexia, congenital aphasia, dyslexia, congenital alexia, strephosymbolia, cerebral dominance, handedness, eyedness, ambidexterity, emotional instability, etc. Dumbing America down through the "look-say" method went beyond the wildest dreams of its socialist promoters! Before the introduction of "look-say" methods, there were no "reading disabled" children. Organically caused dyslexia was so rare before the advent of these methods that most people had never heard of it. Even children who were not very bright or were culturally disadvantaged still learned how to read. Today, even many very bright children are "functionally illiterate" after 13 years of being government schooled. And most schools are still using the "look-say" method! Why would this be? The only possible answer is that functional illiteracy is the goal. Children learn in school what they need to know to "function" in a socialist society, but are not literate enough to gain the knowledge they would need to escape it. Socialism must be really great if they need to dumb us down in order to get us to quietly accept it. The socialist elites need us stupid so that we have no alternative to their socialist propaganda. Socialism has to be sold to us through emotion. It cannot withstand intellectual scrutiny.

The fact that most Christian parents still send their children to these atheistic government schools is a real tragedy. While some children have managed to learn how to read in spite of these so called "reading" programs, they have not been able to escape the atheistic (which is actually becoming pantheistic) socialist indoctrination.

For those who have had the insight to get their children out of the government school system and to either home school or send their children to private Christian schools, they still need to realize the dangers they face. Compulsory attendance laws are a great threat to freedom in education. These laws are what give the socialists the excuse to "oversee' your schooling methods. If not stopped, it will be through these compulsory laws that ALL education will be brought into line with the socialist propaganda. NO ONE is to escape this system. Notice that the new "No Child Left Behind" school bill signed by President Bush says NO CHILD, and these socialists do mean business. There are many states that already have laws that regulate private schools. While many have not been willing to impose those laws on church schools, there have been exceptions. Though it is a violation of the Constitution for government to regulate religion (it is also unconstitutional for the Feds to be involved in education at all), Nebraska regulates church schools that accept NO government money. Maybe at this time it is not a problem in your state, but what is going to prevent it from happening? The socialists will not let the Constitution get in their way of controlling ALL education. We can have no doubt that this usurpation of parental rights by the socialists will continue unabated all over the United States if we do not demand that compulsory school attendance laws be rescinded.

The functional illiteracy that LA Mayor James Hahn has called an "emergency situation" is happening all across the country, not just in Los Angeles. It is a monumental crisis that has been intentionally created by the socialists running our government schools in order to bring about a "new socialist society". It will be a society of anti-intellectuals unable to govern themselves and forced to pay homage to a socialist government that will control all human activity through its control of all basic human needs like jobs, education, housing, food, medical care and even water.

It is imperative that we get government out of the education business before it's too late. Private schools do a much better job educating and for much less money, too. They do a better job because if they didn't, they would go out of business. They do it for less money because they are forced to compete for students. The best thing about private schools is that they are accountable to parents for results where government schools are not! With our government education monopoly, the worse the results, the more money they extort from us! We need real free education where we are not forced to pay for a government education monopoly that produces such poor results.

Before the election of local, state or federal legislators be sure to find out where they stand on the issue of education. For the Federal government to be involved in education at all is in blatant violation of the U.S. Constitution. Don't fall for socialist con words like "choice" or "accountability" in education. In socialist doublespeak "choice" means you might be permitted to choose among several different government schools in your area (all of which are promoting the same socialist programs). "Accountability" means accountable to government, not to parents. Make it known in no uncertain terms that you want to take back the educational system that made America the greatest nation on earth -FREEDOM in education! 8.

There have been so many authors expounding on the subject of the dumbing down of America that I have found. Every one of them has laid down statistics to prove their points and referred to other people that have done studies and so forth and so on and on and on . My questions to pose them would be: 1.How do we correct the situation. 2. Is it too late to correct the situation and 3. Why was it allowed to creep into our society in the first place?

References:

1.excerpt taken from the book " Dumbing Down Our Kids: Why America's Children Feel Good

About Themselves but Can't Read,Write, or Add" by Charles J. Sykes

2. "The Dumbing Down Of The American Mind" by Doug Soderstrom, Ph.D.

3. Phyllis Schlafly Report April 1996

4." Nine Assumptions of Schooling - and Twenty-one Facts the Institution Would Rather Not Discuss" by John Taylor Gatto

5. 2006-2007 California Community College Funding at: http://www.edsource.org/sch_fin_commfund0607.cfm

6. "The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America" by Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt

7. From Wikipedia quoting Juvenal, a Roman poet who coined the phrase "Bread and Circuses"

in his play Satire X

8.NewsWithViews.com By Debbie O'Hara, October 5, 2004