“In keeping Americans ill-educated, ill-informed and constitutionally ignorant, the education establishment has been the politician’s major and most faithful partner. It is in this sense that American education can be deemed a success.”
Walter E. Williams
“Neither a state nor a bank ever have had unrestricted power of issuing paper money without abusing that power.”
“Men should not petition for rights, but take them.”
Thomas Paine
“To say that majorities, as such, have a right to rule minorities, is equivalent to saying that minorities have, and ought to have, no rights, except such as majorities please to allow them.”
Lysander Spooner
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The Department of Education was created in 1979 and now has an annual budget of $73 billion, with 5,000 government bureaucrats roaming its hallways. When you include all Federal, State and Local spending on public education it totals about $700 billion per year, or $13,000 per student. The Department of Education was created to improve the education of our children.
After 37 years and trillions of dollars “invested” in our children, see below what they have achieved. The public school teachers who have been on the front lines for the last 37 years work 9 months per year, earn above average salaries, get awesome benefits, and have gold plated pension plans – all at the expense of taxpayers. And look what they have accomplished.
The tens of millions of illiterate drones think they deserve $15 per hour because it’s fair, even though they can’t count to fifteen or spell fifteen.
STAGGERING ILLITERACY STATISTICS
California
According to the 2007 California Academic Performance Index, research show that 57% of students failed the California Standards Test in English.
There are six million students in the California school system and 25% of those students are unable to perform basic reading skills
There is a correlation between illiteracy and income at least in individual economic terms, in that literacy has payoffs and is a worthwhile investment. As the literacy rate doubles, so doubles the per capita income.
The Nation
In a study of literacy among 20 ‘high income’ countries; US ranked 12th
Illiteracy has become such a serious problem in our country that 44 million adults are now unable to read a simple story to their children
50% of adults cannot read a book written at an eighth grade level
45 million are functionally illiterate and read below a 5th grade level
44% of the American adults do not read a book in a year
6 out of 10 households do not buy a single book in a year
The Economy
3 out of 4 people on welfare can’t read
20% of Americans read below the level needed to earn a living wage
50% of the unemployed between the ages of 16 and 21 cannot read well enough to be considered functionally literate
Between 46 and 51% of American adults have an income well below the poverty level because of their inability to read
Illiteracy costs American taxpayers an estimated $20 billion each year
School dropouts cost our nation $240 billion in social service expenditures and lost tax revenues
Impact on Society:
3 out of 5 people in American prisons can’t read
To determine how many prison beds will be needed in future years, some states actually base part of their projection on how well current elementary students are performing on reading tests
85% of juvenile offenders have problems reading
Approximately 50% of Americans read so poorly that they are unable to perform simple tasks such as reading prescription drug labels
(Source: National Institute for Literacy, National Center for Adult Literacy, The Literacy Company, U.S. Census Bureau)
“We know now that in the early years of the twentieth century this world was being watched closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own. We know now that as human beings busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacence men went to and fro over the earth about their little affairs … In the thirty-ninth year of the twentieth century came the great disillusionment. It was near the end of October. Business was better. The war scare was over. More men were back at work. Sales were picking up.” – Opening monologue of War of the Worlds broadcast – October 30,1938
It was 77 years ago this week that Orson Welles struck terror into the hearts of Americans with his live radio broadcast of the HG Wells classic War of the Worlds. The broadcast began at 8:00 pm on Mischief Night 1938. As I was searching for anything of interest to watch the other night on the 600 cable stations available 24/7, I stumbled across a PBS program about Welles’ famous broadcast. As I watched the program, I was struck by how this episode during the last Fourth Turning and how people react to events is so similar to how people are reacting during the current Fourth Turning. History may not repeat exactly, but it certainly rhymes.
Not only are there 165 million members of the free shit army out there, but they are also the most ignorant mass of humanity in U.S. history. When you examine the statistics and see the results achieved by our government run union public school system at an annual cost of $10,600 per student, you have to wonder whether this was done on purpose. Did our owners purposely create an educational system designed to keep the masses ignorant, stupid and unable to think critically? Did they set out to keep us so stupid we wouldn’t be able to figure out how badly they were screwing us? Or is the mass ignorance in this country the result of individuals and families just not caring about learning, questioning, and having a desire to better themselves? Why study hard, work hard, and read books for fun, when the government provides the minimal level of subsistence to those who do nothing?
I believe it’s a combination of factors. Our owners and their politician puppets prefer an ignorant apathetic public who don’t understand math. It allows them to pillage the wealth of the nation and pass the bill to future generations. The selfishness and inherent laziness of a vast swath of the American populace is a perfect fit for the owners’ master plan. All is going swimmingly. It seems Fat, Drunk and Stupid is the way to go through life.
The kids are not alright
By Jack Kelly
The kids are in peril. The unemployment rate among Americans aged 18-29 is 50 percent higher than the national average. More than 43 percent of recent college graduates who have jobs do work which does not require a college education.
If the Obama administration policies which keep unemployment high are reversed, for most of us, the recession will end. But the kids will still be screwed, because they don’t know what they need to know to survive in the global economy.
The key is STEM education — Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics. The United States used to be the world’s leader. Today, we’re one of just three of the 34 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development where the kids know no more about these subjects than their parents did.
The kids don’t know much of anything else, either. More than half of high school seniors scored “below basic” in their knowledge of history, according to the National Assessment of Education Progress.
In a National Geographic survey, half of Americans aged 18-24 couldn’t find New York state on a map. Only 3 percent of high school students could pass the citizenship test foreigners take to become Americans, a survey in Oklahoma found. Only a handful of the roughly 6,000 students who’ve passed through his classroom know how to form a sentence or write an intelligible paragraph, a retiring high school teacher told Mark Morford of the San Francisco Chronicle.
“If you think education is expensive, try ignorance,” said Harvard University president Derek Bok (1971-1991).
Boy, was he right! For the monumental ignorance described above, we spend, on average, $10,615 per pupil in the public schools. That’s almost 250 percent more, in real terms, than we spent in 1970, when students were learning.
Kids today don’t even know how little they know. “Many students tell me that they are the most well-informed generation in history,” said George Mason University professor Rick Shenkman.
If we had more teachers, and paid them more, the problem would be solved, teacher unions say. Since 1970, the number of teachers and administrators in public schools has risen 11 times faster than enrollment. This has meant more union dues, more campaign contributions for Democrats. But students learn less.
Not because teachers are underpaid. Their compensation is 150 percent more than for private sector workers with similar skills, according to a study last year by the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute. On an hourly basis, teachers earn more than most accountants, architects and nurses.
There are many good teachers. It isn’t they who teacher unions represent. If we got rid of the worst 5 to 7 percent of teachers, that alone would lift our schools back among the world’s best, said the Hoover Institution’s Eric Hanushek. But it’s for that 5 to 7 percent that teacher unions go to bat.
About 30 percent of high school students studying math, 60 percent studying the physical sciences, are taught by teachers who did not major in the subject in college, or are not certified to teach it.
“How in the world can we expect our students to master science and technology when their teachers may not have mastered it?” asked U.S. News publisher Mortimer Zuckerman.
The retired or layed-off professionals who could close the gap are kept out of the classroom because they haven’t taken the dreck education courses the cartel has made prerequisites.
Schools of education are by no means the only reason why things are as bad — or worse — at the next level. Students are more likely to leave college with massive debt than with marketable skills.
For Democrats, support for “education” means giving teacher unions whatever they want. More Americans disagree. In Gallup’s annual poll in June, only 29 percent expressed confidence in public schools, the lowest level ever recorded. That’s down from 58 percent when Gallup first asked the question in 1973.
“How much ignorance can a country stand?” Mr. Shenkman asked. “There have to be terrible consequences when it reaches a certain level.”
We’ll find out soon what those consequences are, Mr. Morford’s teacher friend thinks. To “escape what he sees will be the surefire collapse of functioning American society in the next handful of years,” he’s considering moving out of the country.
JWR contributor Jack Kelly, a former Marine and Green Beret, was a deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration.
