Thursday, March 27, 2014
The Poster Children for the Progressive Elite
First, a disclaimer. I am a white, older-middle-aged, middle-class, female, heterosexual, conservative Mormon. That should cover all the bases. I remember where I was when JFK was shot, when the Challenger blew up, and when the Twin Towers fell. I learned as a child that what a person did was more important than what was said, but that what was said (and how it was said) also gave an indication of the internal mindset of the speaker.
There's an old curse that goes "May you live in interesting times." These are definitely "interesting" times. The confluence of rapidly advancing technology, breaking down of traditional mores and societal expectations, and polarization between the major political ideologies has created a perfect storm. It seems well planned and perfectly executed. The institutions that we as a society once counted on--nuclear families, a generally stable economy, strong faith communities and a good educational system--have been gradually eroded away, becoming weak and ineffectual structures that can't perform their purposes. I believe there is an agenda at work here, one that is designed to destroy America as we have known it and replace it with something different.
Since before Woodrow Wilson, Progressives have been working quietly, behind the scenes, to accomplish this feat, gradually pulling apart what had been so carefully woven by our founders. In the past few years, however, this behind-the-scenes undertaking has moved out into the light of day, becoming bolder and more transparent in their endeavors. There is no "official" spokesperson for the Progressive party, but two men seem to have taken up the mantle, albeit unknowingly.
Of the many politicians on the Left who have been in the spotlight lately, one has stood out as a shining beacon of Progressive propaganda. His usual speeches consist of the half-truths, prevarications, misrepresentations, inaccuracies, aspersions and calumniations common to most modern politicians, but he is prone to truth-telling more than any of them. In fact, I have found more truth from him in the past 7 years than from almost any other politician.
I speak, of course, of Joseph Biden, our current Vice President. He is quite good at framing the Progressive agenda in smooth terms and can read a teleprompter as well as his boss. But he sneakily signals the truth behind the lies, cleverly disguised as "gaffes". When I first heard a Biden gaffe ("You cannot go to a 7-11 or a Dunkin' Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent.... I'm not joking."), I laughed along with all the others. As I heard more of them, I realized that these "mistakes" were actually speaking truth. When he said, in 2012, that Obama should be impeached if he unilaterally ordered an attack on a country that wasn't attacking us, it was the truth.
My father was fond of saying "the truth will out." Biden's inability to keep up the lies, his repeated slips of the tongue, show just how anxious he is to tell the truth. For example, the Left insists that they are not racist or prejudiced in any way, and that all racism is held in conservative minds. But, as the first quote above shows, Joe Biden is a racist par excellence. He is even oblivious to his basic attitude, as was my grandmother (God rest her soul), who firmly believed that blacks as a whole were dishonest, shiftless and lazy, but insisted that some of her best friends were black.
In another instance, Biden said, "If we do everything right, if we do it with absolute certainty, there's still a 30% chance we're going to get it wrong." That is also in the pantheon of Biden gaffes, but it's so obviously true. The Democrats weren't listening, but they should have been. The number of scandals plaguing this administration shows just how careless they have been about "doing everything right". Biden is the Left's blue collar Cassandra, his oracular pronouncements constantly misread and dismissed by his friends and his adversaries.
On the other hand, another fiery Liberal speaker, Harry Reid, has no such excuse for his verbal behavior. He seldom says anything he does not consciously intend to say. In August, 2012, he backhandedly accused Mitt Romney of not having paid taxes for the previous ten years, a criminal offense. In the face of heated objection to this smarmy characterization of a private citizen, he continued to hold to the story. In fact, Harry Reid's track record speaks for itself.
Reid is known for speaking his mind, which has made it very clear to Democrats and Republicans that he holds virtually everyone, including Barak Obama, in contempt. He comes across as the ultimate "elite"; no one is his equal, or even close to it. He feels comfortable saying anything scurrilous, defamatory or abusive about anyone, because he feels the truth resides in him, and him alone.
While Biden seems foolish and unable to curb his foot-in-mouth disorder, Reid presents as amoral and conscienceless. Biden doesn't know he's telling the truth; Reid thinks he is telling the truth. These men represent, I believe, two sides of the same coin.
In October, 2008, Barak Obama famously said. "we are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America." That also was the truth, and the majority of Americans simply smiled and nodded, bobble heads in front of the boob tube. Then we were surprised when our country's slide into oblivion, that started off slowly 100 years ago, accelerated to warp speed. The agenda is lies, repeated endlessly. Its proponents are well-versed in rhetoric and deception. But, as the poster children, Biden and Reid keep giving us what we refuse to handle, or come to grips with--the truth.
Friday, February 21, 2014
Common Standards, Uncommonly Shortsighted, Part One
I have been following the progress of the Common Core rollout for several months, and have been increasingly dismayed by the obviously poor standards, the threat of data mining by the Department of Education, and the increasing frustration experienced by my grandchildren as they struggle with nonsense math. Here is one of the things I've been pondering.
"National standards are good. Children can move from one district to another and have the same curriculum." I have seen comments like this posted to news stories about CC. It sounds good; seamless transitions for children's education no matter where their parents move, no trying to figure out what class to put them in, no having to "catch up" to a more advanced curriculum. I did my share of moving from one school to another as a kid. I went to a regular public elementary school in California until the 3rd grade. For 4-5th grades, my sister and I went to a small private school run by a retired teacher. I was back in public school for 6-8th grades, and then we moved from California to Michigan, where I graduated from high school. They were all big transitions for a kid, but the biggest for me was the move from a private school back into a public middle school. I had enough education to be put into the 8th grade, rather than the 6th, but my parents wanted me to be with my age group. So I was very bored with public schooling until I decided to teach myself. I wasn't considered "gifted", so those programs were out. I guess I was just "over qualified". I coasted through high school, practically living in the library. I read everything I could get my hands on, took tests when I had to, graduated with a B average, and went on with my life.
Transitions are never easy, but looking back on the experience, it wasn't the moves themselves that caused problems, nor was it the disconnect between what I already knew and where my classmates were. The problem was that I wasn't aware that I had any control over the different expectations for success in each school, different cultures, and different teaching philosophies. The private school (which was not an "elite" place in any form; Mrs. Covey's idea for uniforms was everyone in blue jeans, a white shirt and a navy blue sweater) was heavily invested in all their students learning all the material and being successful thinkers, with a narrow but very deep curriculum. The public schools were more broad in their outlook, with an emphasis on covering much material rather shallowly. I learned in both, but preferred the Covey method; it was the deep studying I had done that made it possible to for me to succeed. I don't see CC improving on any of that. What I do see is a poorly-thought-out curriculum that was never tested in a real school district, using untested pedagogical methods, and an insistence on a Rube Goldberg-style vague and complicated decoding of the simplest concepts and exercises.
But a much bigger problem I see looming on the horizon is similar to what I call the Monsanto model of agriculture. Over the past 60 years, the genetic diversity of our food crops has been gradually diminishing (another battle for another time). But this lack of diversity leaves us vulnerable to an entire worldwide crop devastation if a super bacterium or other pest burns through a non-resistant cultivar. There is little resilience in uniformity.
Our greatest strength as a people is our diversity, not of race or culture, but of knowledge. The seeds of knowledge children acquire in one area of the country are not the same as what are learned in a different area. When people move from one area to another, they bring their acquired knowledge with them, enriching and expanding the horizons of the people in their new locality. They all learn math, reading, etc. But they learn them with different emphases, with different styles, and with diverse outcomes. There are many proven ways to teach math concepts, writing styles, and reading strategies. Trying to enforce the "one best way" destroys that diversity, and discounts the very real differences between learning styles in children. This is a consideration that I have not seen in any discussion of CC.
What do we lose by having only one curriculum, one way to teach, one "best" of anything? What is lost (or could possibly be gained) by removing time to study great literature, history or the arts in order to study government pamphlets? How can one set of standards possibly cover all the different ways of knowing? Mrs. Covey's way of teaching and emphasis on certain knowledge structures was very different than the structure I encountered in the public schools. The different PS districts also varied in emphasis and style. For example, I learned about the Catholic mission system in California and its influence on the local history by reading, writing and studying. Aside from being a very good beginning to my interest in anthropology and religious thought, it helped me understand other parts of the society I lived in. Are children in California learning that now? Or are they busy reading the latest publication from the EPA on carbon emissions? Any national standard, even a very good one, cannot help but lessen that knowledge base and impoverish the experience of being an American. It weakens each one of us and leaves us, as a nation, with little resilience.
"National standards are good. Children can move from one district to another and have the same curriculum." I have seen comments like this posted to news stories about CC. It sounds good; seamless transitions for children's education no matter where their parents move, no trying to figure out what class to put them in, no having to "catch up" to a more advanced curriculum. I did my share of moving from one school to another as a kid. I went to a regular public elementary school in California until the 3rd grade. For 4-5th grades, my sister and I went to a small private school run by a retired teacher. I was back in public school for 6-8th grades, and then we moved from California to Michigan, where I graduated from high school. They were all big transitions for a kid, but the biggest for me was the move from a private school back into a public middle school. I had enough education to be put into the 8th grade, rather than the 6th, but my parents wanted me to be with my age group. So I was very bored with public schooling until I decided to teach myself. I wasn't considered "gifted", so those programs were out. I guess I was just "over qualified". I coasted through high school, practically living in the library. I read everything I could get my hands on, took tests when I had to, graduated with a B average, and went on with my life.
Transitions are never easy, but looking back on the experience, it wasn't the moves themselves that caused problems, nor was it the disconnect between what I already knew and where my classmates were. The problem was that I wasn't aware that I had any control over the different expectations for success in each school, different cultures, and different teaching philosophies. The private school (which was not an "elite" place in any form; Mrs. Covey's idea for uniforms was everyone in blue jeans, a white shirt and a navy blue sweater) was heavily invested in all their students learning all the material and being successful thinkers, with a narrow but very deep curriculum. The public schools were more broad in their outlook, with an emphasis on covering much material rather shallowly. I learned in both, but preferred the Covey method; it was the deep studying I had done that made it possible to for me to succeed. I don't see CC improving on any of that. What I do see is a poorly-thought-out curriculum that was never tested in a real school district, using untested pedagogical methods, and an insistence on a Rube Goldberg-style vague and complicated decoding of the simplest concepts and exercises.
But a much bigger problem I see looming on the horizon is similar to what I call the Monsanto model of agriculture. Over the past 60 years, the genetic diversity of our food crops has been gradually diminishing (another battle for another time). But this lack of diversity leaves us vulnerable to an entire worldwide crop devastation if a super bacterium or other pest burns through a non-resistant cultivar. There is little resilience in uniformity.
Our greatest strength as a people is our diversity, not of race or culture, but of knowledge. The seeds of knowledge children acquire in one area of the country are not the same as what are learned in a different area. When people move from one area to another, they bring their acquired knowledge with them, enriching and expanding the horizons of the people in their new locality. They all learn math, reading, etc. But they learn them with different emphases, with different styles, and with diverse outcomes. There are many proven ways to teach math concepts, writing styles, and reading strategies. Trying to enforce the "one best way" destroys that diversity, and discounts the very real differences between learning styles in children. This is a consideration that I have not seen in any discussion of CC.
What do we lose by having only one curriculum, one way to teach, one "best" of anything? What is lost (or could possibly be gained) by removing time to study great literature, history or the arts in order to study government pamphlets? How can one set of standards possibly cover all the different ways of knowing? Mrs. Covey's way of teaching and emphasis on certain knowledge structures was very different than the structure I encountered in the public schools. The different PS districts also varied in emphasis and style. For example, I learned about the Catholic mission system in California and its influence on the local history by reading, writing and studying. Aside from being a very good beginning to my interest in anthropology and religious thought, it helped me understand other parts of the society I lived in. Are children in California learning that now? Or are they busy reading the latest publication from the EPA on carbon emissions? Any national standard, even a very good one, cannot help but lessen that knowledge base and impoverish the experience of being an American. It weakens each one of us and leaves us, as a nation, with little resilience.
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