{"id":32915,"date":"2012-12-21T12:00:21","date_gmt":"2012-12-21T18:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=32915"},"modified":"2012-12-21T10:43:27","modified_gmt":"2012-12-21T16:43:27","slug":"we-have-met-the-enemy-and-they-are-where-we-educate-our-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=32915","title":{"rendered":"We Have Met The Enemy, And They Are Where We &#8220;Educate&#8221; Our Children"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A few years back, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?s=%22Your+Education+Dollars+At+Work%22&amp;submit=Search\">I reported on the &#8220;education&#8221; my daughter, Bun, got<\/a> in a summer &#8220;Economics&#8221; class at a Saint Paul Public School.<\/p>\n<p>Among the lessons she &#8220;learned&#8221; from the teacher:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>We\u2019ve had five black presidents: Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Harding and Coolidge were all afro-American.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>People are \u201cdisregarding their blackness\u201d to \u201creap white benefits\u201d: The teacher cited the \u201cone drop rule\u201d \u2013 people with \u201ceven a drop\u201d of black blood, so says the teacher, are black \u2013 and disregard their \u201cblackness\u201d only for the swag, apparently.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Minorities have &#8220;no rights&#8221;: the &#8220;teacher&#8221; didn\u2019t elaborate.<\/li>\n<li>\u00a0The teacher told the class that the government \u201cmay have blown up\u201d the levees in the poor black neighborhoods of New Orleans. He also said that White New Orleans put police on the bridge between Black and White New Orleans to send black refugees back to their deaths, as white people sat on the levees and watched the black people die. He apparently did an impersonation, in a \u201cwhite trash\u201d voice; \u201cHey, Bill, grab me a brewski; that n***er is trying to swim\u201d. Because, says the teacher, \u201cBlack people as a rule can\u2019t swim\u201d.<\/li>\n<li>The class studied a packet from Ebony Magazine; the first one is called \u201cA Child\u2019s View\/A Young Man\u2019s View\/An Elder\u2019s View\u201d of Obama; it was their considered opinion that most people who didn\u2019t vote for Obama were motivated by race. The class is also supposed to write whether they do or don\u2019t agree with Obama. According to Bun, it was intensely intimidating.<\/li>\n<li>\u201cHurricanes follow the path of the slave ships\u201d, apparently as God\u2019s punishment for slavery<\/li>\n<li>\u00a0\u201cSharks, to this day, folow the route of the slave ships\u201d, as a matter of evolutionary adaptation. \u00a0According to the teacher, sharks \u201cevolved\u201d to live in the subtropical trade wind zone because of the centuries of slaves being tossed overboard from slave ships.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I used to think it was merely an incompetent, crank teacher (who happened to be Afro-American) abusing his position.<\/p>\n<p>But after reading John Fonte at NRO <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/corner\/336022\/new-minnesota-social-studies-standards-america-ugly-john-fonte#\">reporting on Minnesota&#8217;s proposed new Social Studies standards for public schools<\/a>, I&#8217;m starting to think Buns&#8217; old teacher was merely ahead of the curve:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Nine years ago a group of history professors from the University of Minnesota sent a letter to the state\u2019s education department. They complained that the history\/social-studies standards for Minnesota presented American history too positively. The historians wanted early American history described in terms of \u201cconquest,\u201d \u201csubjugation,\u201d \u201cexploitation,\u201d \u201censlavement,\u201d and \u201cgenocidal impact.\u201d For these academics, the story of America primarily meant slavery for African Americans, genocide for American Indians, subjugation for women, xenophobia for immigrants, and exploitation for poor people.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And yesterday, the Department of Education held one of the pro-forma hearings that the bureaucracy always holds to give a rubber-stamp of &#8220;openness and transparency&#8221; before going ahead and doing what the DFL&#8217;s pet bureaucrats were going to do anyway.<\/p>\n<p>Here &#8211; b<a href=\"http:\/\/www.startribune.com\/politics\/statelocal\/184315721.html\">arring an unlikely ruling from an Adminstrative Law judge or, even less likely, a veto from Governor Dayton<\/a> &#8211; is what Minnesota&#8217;s schools are going to be teaching your kids, if they go to a public school, according to Fonte&#8217;s piece:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>For example History Standard 20 for the period 1870\u20131920 declares: \u201cThe student will understand that as the United States shifted from its agrarian roots into an industrial and global power, the rise of big business, urbanization, and immigration led to institutionalized racism, ethnic and class conflict, and new efforts at reform.\u201d [italics added]<\/p>\n<p>Less biased standards might suggest that \u201cthe student will understand\u201d that the growth of business enterprise, urbanization, and immigration led to greater prosperity for most Americans, including African Americans who moved to large northern cities and Ellis Island newcomers who chose to become Americans. Further, the period 1870 to 1920 witnessed tremendous technological development and inventions for which Americans are famous: including great advances in medicine; the promotion of public health (including a clean water supply and indoor plumbing), the sewing machine, typewriter, phonograph, and electric light bulb.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So we&#8217;d like to think.<\/p>\n<p>But &#8220;social studies&#8221; aren&#8217;t about history, or fact of any kind; the new standard are about indoctrination:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>But, American achievements are downplayed while the overarching theme becomes \u201cinstitutionalized racism.\u201d Of course, this logically means that the major \u201cinstitutions\u201d of American liberal democracy \u2014 the courts, Congress, the presidency, state and local governments, businesses, churches, civic organizations \u2014 and the entire democratic system and its civil society are racist and therefore, clearly, illegitimate.<\/p>\n<p>The stated purpose of the Minnesota 2012 standards is \u201cto identity the academic knowledge and skills that prepare students for post-secondary education, work and civic life in the twenty-first century. . . . Students need deep knowledge of this information in order to make sense of their world.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>While the 2004 Standards specifically examined 9\/11, the Taliban, Osama bin Laden, and terrorism, the 2012 Standards, incredibly, include no references to 9\/11, the Taliban, Osama bin Laden, the Iraq War, the war in Afghanistan, the Gulf War of 1991, or terrorism itself. Nor is there any hint of a global conflict with terrorists described either as President Bush\u2019s \u201cWar on Terror\u201d or President Obama\u2019s \u201cWar against violent extremists.\u201d True, there are two tepid references to the \u201cArab Spring,\u201d but this is hardly adequate to provide the \u201cdeep knowledge\u201d needed for students \u201cto make sense of their world.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>As I&#8217;ve observed for years, the last set of standards, from 2004, were bad enough; in my kids&#8217; time in the public schools, all they really were taught was slavery and civil rights.<\/p>\n<p>Read Fonte&#8217;s entire piece; it only gets worse.<\/p>\n<p>And I&#8217;m afraid we&#8217;ve finally gotten to the time when our public school system in Minnesota isn&#8217;t merely expensive, incompetent and befuddled. \u00a0With these standards, our school system\u00a0<em>is the enemy<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Forget about the &#8220;the terrorists have won&#8221; jokes; even most of the dumbest people know you need to resist those who are trying to kill you.<\/p>\n<p>But these standards? \u00a0They are the entire agglomerated intellectual and moral rot of the American left, wrapped up a cutesy &#8220;Raise Your Hand For Minnesota&#8217;s Kids!&#8221;-chanting package.<\/p>\n<p>My dad and both my mom&#8217;s parents were teachers. \u00a0If there&#8217;s a family out there where American public education was the family business, it&#8217;s mine.<\/p>\n<p>But the time has come where people who value what this country\u00a0<em>really\u00a0<\/em>means have to either abandon the public schools &#8211; <em>all\u00a0<\/em>our kids, every single one of them &#8211; or get serious about fighting for them.<\/p>\n<p>Me? \u00a0I&#8221;m torn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A few years back, I reported on the &#8220;education&#8221; my daughter, Bun, got in a summer &#8220;Economics&#8221; class at a Saint Paul Public School. Among the lessons she &#8220;learned&#8221; from the teacher: We\u2019ve had five black presidents: Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Harding and Coolidge were all afro-American. People are \u201cdisregarding their blackness\u201d to \u201creap white benefits\u201d: [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32915"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32915\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32917,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32915\/revisions\/32917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}