2011 Politically-Incorrect Resolutions
The Pride of Solvency
I think the American people are not only scared of collective state and national debt, but sick of it as well. I mean by that abhorrence in the psychological sense—of reading that their governments are broke, of seeing public fraud and waste daily, of realizing that as they pay down their own private debts after 2007, so too they believe their governments could as well. Solvency has now become a matter of national pride.
Much of the elite trumpeting of “decline” and a “new multipolar world” and the “end of the American influence” derives from collective depression over owing $13 trillion in national debt, over seeing the Chinese posture with their trillions in American notes, over being typecast abroad as a spendthrift, out-of-control profligate culture. In other words, if my hunch is right, there is going to be increasing public pressure to balance budgets and pay off debt. Bill Clinton, fairly or not, remains popular today—despite the philandering, Monica, the disgraceful pardons, the serial petit corruption, and the unacknowledged role of a stingy Republican Congress after 1994—because as president he oversaw a few balanced budgets.
The desire for solvency will only grow even as we start to see progress: the more government is restrained from spending, the more we will want it to cut back even more. Too often we talk of debt in terms of GDP percentages, of only reducing the size of the deficit, rarely of simply balancing the budget in real dollars and paying down aggregate debt to ensure surpluses—if only for the psychological effect on a depressed populace. The first governor of California to achieve a balanced budget without raising the nation’s highest sales and income taxes will achieve celebrity status; the first one to cut the income tax to 8% and the sales to 7% and balance the books will be deified.
Monolingualism
I think the American people are ready for a radical break with the sixties past and would welcome an end to multilingualism in government messaging, voting materials, documents, etc. It is not just that receiving documents in the mail in duplicate or even triplicate, or being put on telephonic hold while another language starts up, is wasteful, but such repetition contributes to error and misinterpretation. What helps some in theory, hurts most in fact. There is also a growing collective feeling that creating a climate in which one can function without learning English is divisive, promotes sectarianism, and ultimately is deleterious to the non-English speaker. In private, please learn and use ten languages, from modern Greek to Mandarin; in government commerce and transaction, try English.
English only in matters of government communications would promote unity, save billions in government administrative costs, improve the employment skill sets of the immigrant, and remind our increasingly diverse body politic that we are committed to a single language. Bottom line: we have had over thirty years of separate but equal linguistic policy; it has been a dismal failure in causing unnecessary expense and confusion for the majority, disunity for all, and balkanization and second-class status for the minority speakers. It is time to go back to a single language before we start to resemble Europe around 600 AD when Latin broke down and a multiplicity of languages emerged in the general chaos.
The Problem is the Student—not the teacher, school, or administrator
We hear the usual reasons why our public schools are failing: poor schoolroom facilities, top-heavy administrative costs, teacher incompetence and unions, education department tyranny, and feel-good, “I-am-somebody” therapeutic curricula. All these pathologies surely conspire to thwart learning. As a professor for twenty-one years, who usually teaches somewhere each year as a visiting professor, I can attest to such contributory factors. But all that said, I think our greatest problem is simply today’s student and the familial environment that has produced him.
I went to largely Hispanic and impoverished elementary schools from 1959-67. The teachers, by today’s standards, were probably insensitive and unduly harsh. None of those classrooms had any of the glitz we see today. In September and May the non-air-conditioned rooms were often over 90 degrees. I can remember our second grade class was 44, with 5 folding chairs that we rotated in and out of, given the absence of desks. Instruction was mostly by rote, with ruler slaps for poor cursive penmanship. Art class consisted mostly of “drawing” in the sense that to the degree the finished product did not resemble what the eye sees, so we were berated for “bad” work. I could go on, but you get the picture.
There is no shame in todays culture.
None.
no shame, no pride, little honesty, and no respect except fear of people with power over your life.
We are all equal ants in every way. There can be no winners, no exceptional people, nobody more worthy of reward than others. If you are lucky, you may have your 15 minutes of fame; your fornication video may go viral on the internet; you may be the victim du jour on your local network; your crime may stand out enough from the others to get a mention on cable news.
This is the mental framework of 3rd world serfs, of people in marxist countries, of the entire world 300 years ago. When Doctor Hanson describes his travels through rural California, he is describing travels through the pre-American revolutionary world, 1950′s Russia or Cuba today.
It isn’t by chance. Your salivating leaders have designed it to be so.
Imagine if you could teach that we are not here by accident, and that a loving God created us and endowed us with rights and others with the same rights as us.
Imagine if you could teach that truth existed and was not subject to one’s feelings.
Imagine if you could actually read the Bible with trying to mock or discredit it.
Then you would have the schools of the 50s (and before) that produced that American men and women who made much of the world free and wealthy.
1. There is a “famous” United States Supreme Court case that held that Nebraska could designate English as the official language.
At the time of WW I, there was anti-German sentiment in Nebraska and some public school districts taught in German because of the number of students.
The Supremee Court upheld the right of Nebraska to declare an offical language. It is even in the Nebraska constitution today, but I can tell you from experience that Nebraska courts are over-run with non-English speakers.
So we just ignore the Nebraska constititution on a daily basis.
2. We need a provision of the bankruptcy code to allow states to file. Cities can file chapter 9 right now, but there is no provisions for the states.
We need to do this so BHO doesn’t bail out Illinois and California. Moral hazard at its worst.
3. Sen. McConnell deserves credit for stopping the pork bill last week.
4. Whenever I hear someone say “we are a country of immigrants” I want to correct him. We are a country of *legal* immigrants.
5. The solution to the school problems is simple: competition.
Hand out vouchers to parents. The Catholic schools would get repopulated in a minute.
The most succcesful educators in human history are the Jesuits. But one never hears mention of them and their system.
Why not?
We are a nation of *former* immigrants who became Americans. Can we still characterize ourselves that way?
It wasn’t America when the first of us got here, so the first settlers/pilgrims weren’t immigrants- it’s more correct to think of them as refugees.
And it follows, they didn’t become Americans- they created America.
Did you mean ‘former LEGAL immigrants’?
We were a country of exceptional European immigrants and are now a country overwhelmed by unexceptional Third World immigrants.
This reality is considered racism and bigotry under politically correct standards. It simply is the way it is and all the blustering about cultural relativism and all men are created equal cannot stop reality from intruding itself. This is why liberals are so dangerous as they will wreck America to prove a point that cannot be proven.
When reality itself is considered racist and bigoted, you are going to have overwhelming social problems in America and the West and we shouldn’t be surprised we have. Simple common sense is “profiling” and wanting to live in a nice neighborhood puts a KKK hood on you.
It’s polite stupidity to invite the Third World to live in America and a disaster already self-evident to those not blinded by liberal delusions of how the world should be rather than the way it is. Liberals look at Haiti and see a nation of physicist’s and intellectuals ham stringed by bad luck. In this sense, a black cat walked across the path of the Third World centuries ago.
Precisely so.
I think we passed the point of no return decades ago. We’ve been able to nevertheless persist because the core European-American cultural and civic fabric remained the baseline, but for how much longer?
Note that corporations can declare bankruptcy, but BO still screwed us all to bail out the UAW through the auto company bailouts/takeovers.
I’d support a law that FORCED bankruptcy and reorganization under certain specified conditions.
In the current law, creditors may force a bankruptcy upon an insolvent corporation which is unable to discharge it’s debt. The analogy here would be holder’s of a state’s debt, muni bonds and general obligation bonds, who are in receipt of a default. The problem is that the bankruptcy law, which is exclusively federal, currently does not recognize a state’s application. This might be fixed, if congress had the will.
Actually, even H.G. Wells acknowledged in his Outline of History the contribution the Jesuits made to education.
We are a nation of natives; most of us were born and raised here. The nation itself was formed by British settlers, not immigrants, who were Protestant, not Catholic.
No vouchers, just shut down the public school system. This will create a need for affordable private schools, and the free market will fill that need.
Let me try to un-perplex you!
When, as an English Language and Literature Teacher in Further Education, teaching adults, I would use a particularly apt quote, students would ask for the source. If I replied with a name they knew, Shakespeare, Churchill, Marx they would hurry to scribble down the quote! If I said Talmud, Augustine, Maimonedes they would sit there unmoved, since apt quotes cannot possibly come from religious sources!
That’s why nobody acknowledges the contributions of the Rabbis or the Jesuits in the methods and subjects worth teaching, for what possible good can come out of the methods used by those who believe in G-d?!
My trick: No more sources; Google the quote, but first write it down! For there is nothing more frustrating than having a particularly apt quote and yet being unable to cite the source; the choices are between mis-attributing and showing ignorance or not attributing and indulging in plagiarism!
“Oh reason not the need; our basest beggars are in the poorest thing superfluous: Allow not nature more than Nature needs, and man’s life is cheap as beast’s”…
“He who is convinced against his will is of the same opinion still!”…
“Everything is known, and yet Free Will is given”…
The State of Nebraska also made all teaching of the German language illegal, whether in school or elsewhere including at home.
Still want to praise Nebraska?
English immersion is a good method for learning the language. I’m not sure what “English emersion” describes. Perhaps a native English speaker who swears only to speak German, for the rest of their days?
Whether Hanson likes it or not, the US has been a multilingual nation from its birth. The 1st and 14th amendments don’t permit the government to coerce a single language on the people. Yes, it would be a great idea to get everyone fluent in English. But that requires tackling education. On which Hanson seems to have given up.
Children are programmed to learn language up to about age 10. This is hard wired in their brain. They will learn English simply by being in an English speaking classroom. If they do not learn English by that age, they will speak it with an accent unless they have speech therapy or “coaching” as an adult. When I was a medical student in east Los Angeles in 1963, my wife taught 1st and second grade in a nearby elementary school. The kids were about 75% Hispanic and came to school as neatly dressed as VDH describes. The parents were at back-to-school night and she quickly learned she had to be careful mentioning the child’s problems in school lest they come to school the next black ad blue. She was teaching the day Kennedy was shot and had to explain that to second graders. When I saw Spanish speaking patients in the clinics, the children were usually the translators for the parents. A lot has changed.
Whether Hanson likes it or not, the US has been a multilingual nation from its birth.
Correction – it has always had multilingual immigrants, mostly legal ones with goals of citizenship. Whether Russell likes it or not, they were self-motivated to learn English, in which they hoped to make their own way, and in which they demanded fluency from their offspring.
Our governing bodies were never towers of Babel, nor were the employers who gave them jobs. Until the grievance-purveyors and caudillo politics of the left poisoned us with political correctitude, that linguistic system worked. It can still work, if our disastrous immigration policies are corrected. Whether Russell and his ‘progressive’ cronies like it or not.
“The 1st and 14th amendments don’t permit the government to coerce a single language on the people.” COERCE??
I don’t think you read this piece too carefully. “In private, please learn and use ten languages, from modern Greek to Mandarin; in government commerce and transaction, try English.”
The Berkeley-trained activists in our community (not far from where Dr. Hanson lives) who coerced schools into providing bilingual programs and coerced parents into putting their kids into those programs did great damage to those children. Their siblings who learned through English immersion did far better in school and are doing far better in our society. If you don’t want people in our society to understand each other, please continue to promote multilingualism in government and commerce.
I believe that activists trained in American universities have contributed to the lack of respect for education which we now see locally among Hispanic immigrant kids (not that native-born kids are as interested in education as past generations). When learning English is characterized as knuckling under to “the oppressor”, it’s the kids who suffer.
As an award-winning high school Spanish teacher once told me about his school in Southern California, “The Latino immigrant kids don’t learn English. The Asian immigrant kids learn English, then they learn Spanish so they can communicate with their eventual employees”. There were proportionately far more Asian immigrant kids that white kids on the honor rolls. Asian immigrant parents showed up regularly to ESL classes, while Hispanic parents had a greater tendency to skip their classes when they had other priorities. He admired some of those priorities – closeness to family and friends – which is why he married a Peruvian woman (a Peruvian woman with a Chinese father). But past generations of Latino immigrant parents seemed to understand better the importance of educating their children.
The other phenomenon which he noted was the inversion of the traditional bell curve in educational achievement. Students were either highly-motivated “B+ to A” students or “D to F” students. There were very few “solid B and C” students. I wonder if this might have something to do with the emphasis on self-esteem rather than achievement in schools today? The kids at the top understand that achievement is important. The kids at the bottom know that they can have self-esteem with no effort whatsoever. Our criminal class has greater self-esteem than the general population.
Russell: Horsehockey. When my great-grandparents came to Michigan directly from Germany, they immersed themselves in their new community to learn the language. They spoke spoke German at home, but NEVER in public. Their community was helpful in being patient with them, as the entire community was made up of immigrants from many lands, but English was the common language, and it was never contemplated that they not assimilate to their new culture. Otherwise, what would have been the point of coming?
Sir, you are no gentleman.
“Whether Hanson likes it or not, the US has been a multilingual nation from its birth.”
Hanson, like myself, has no interest in what language you choose to speak. He makes that abundantly clear throughout his entire article. He simply makes the assetion that public discourse should be conducted in English. Nothing in your comment would support an argument to the contrary.
(Russell): “On which Hanson seems to have given up”
I could poke many holes in Russell’s post, but others have already ably done so. Rather, I would like to comment on what I see as a flaw in reasoning. I grow tired of responses wherein someone vaguely moralizes by first identifying a vast issue in it’s most general sense, and then accusing another of being unwilling to deal with it.
Here, Russell correctly notes that ‘education’ is problematic and in crisis. Notice that Russell doesn’t really offer any facts or stats on this, but simply assumes that anyone reading that would agree, and he is probably correct. Next, he accuses Hanson of wanting to give up, thus misrepresenting Mr. Hanson and creating a Straw Man fallacy. Russell does not offer solutions, just accuses Hanson of abandoning the field.
What a marvelous way of securing moral ascendancy while contributing absolutely nothing! Further, this trope could be amended to any issue; global warming, taxes, government spending. Isn’t this just one of the most common and successful political tricks? On the 1980s BBC Comedy YES MINISTER, this was referred to as politician’s logic: “We mus do something, THIS is something, therefore we must do it.” This line of thought has and is used to justify continuing no end of nonsense purely out of a moralistic belief that any misdirected action on a perceived need is a positive thing. Is it not this sort of thought that has led our nation into dozens of failed social programs, a failed drug war, military misadventures, and countless other boondoggles? Perhaps, if you have no idea what to do, sometimes the best course of action might just be to do nothing until you have some well-conceived hypothesis that might bear some fruit. In any event, I say we stop conceding the moral high ground to naive do-gooders who smugly claim that any action is better than none.
My Vietnamese next-door-neighbor speaks no English at all, yet his two young sons speak English more proficiently than most kids their age. Why is it that most Americans who complain about our lack of culture are the same ones who refuse to let us establish one? That the ones who “celebrate diversity” (whatever that means) are the same ones who would have us living as separate tribes, each with its own culture?
I don’t care what language(s) you want to speak in your daily doings – knock yourself out, the more languages the merrier.
HOWEVER, the Official Language of Law and Government in the US must be English.
Why? Because our law and legal traditions are based on English Common Law – comprising hundreds of years in which words and legal terms of art have achieved very specific and precedented meanings, and history of usage. To take a US Statute and literally translate it into another language, say a Romance language like Spanish, would result in a product that would not bear the same meaning and history/precedent. It would not, literally, be the same law, and would invite chaos in the attempt at equal application across the population.
Of course, if the goal were to have a separate law for each “cultural/linguistic group”, and no “American” law…
My father came to America able to speak 5 languages and none of them were English. He and his brothers learned to speak English, they went to school and spoke and wrote in English. I have no idea how to speak any language but English. And a smattering of Lithuanian on my mother’s side.
America can be as multilingual as it likes at home, but in the public square, English is our language.
Maybe you would like all airline pilots to speak the language of their home country, too, instead of English being the default language world-wide.
Much of the problem in schools comes from the families. When the family is dysfunctional the children will be as well. Perhaps its time to quit subsidizing dysfunctionality and to start putting a penalty on it. You live on welfare and have a child who goes to school? If they fail or are suspended for misconduct your welfare and food stamp allotments will be cut, and they will continue to be cut until the situation improves. Apply that to all kinds of government aid to the poor.
If the public is supporting you through their tax dollars they do have the right to expect a minimum level of responsibility for those who are sucking off their income.
No, it is not the fault of the family, the parents or the kids.
VDH is 100% WRONG here. It is the TEACHERS.
The parents had teachers who failed them. The welfare state tore the family apart because it had weak voters and weakened untaught parents it could work with from the sixties onward, spreading the doctrine of the Soviet disinformation campaign and the filth left over from the home grown propaganda of the thirties.
Good teachers would have overridden all the evils that tried to take us down. Bad teachers ensured that they prevailed.
Amen! “end anonymity and return to the old shame culture of identifying youths by name, at any age, once they come into contact with the criminal justice system?”
At the risk once again of becoming a broken record, all three of vdh’s themes today, debt, English, and schools are products of a deliberate, long-term attack on this country, it’s institutions, and it’s traditions.
Radicals could not defeat the US by conventional force, so they have been attacking from at least the late 40′s with unconventional tactics. The schools are what they designed. The conversion of the American melting pot into the the American frying plan is deliberate, and the most recent and probably even the most successful frontal assault on our liberities is the capture of the financial systems and the encouragement of unsustainable debt, at all levels from the individual to federal.
And these are but a few of the strategies and tactics used to bring down this country. To our shame, they have succeeded, certainly beyond the dreams of the radical architects.
But something happened since Nov 2008. People have begun waking up. The next 4 or 5 years will tell whether the awakening was too late or not.
As far as I can tell, the marxist’s only strategic blunder has been the overreach with their manchurian Obama. For people used to long-marches, it must have been irresistable to finally foresake the ever patient and suruptitious undermining of everything American and grab agressively for the pot of gold in one master stroke. But the spokeperson they created is also fighting the demons of the strangest life ever lived by a major American figure, and over the last 24 months, as he has finally had to act instead of proclaim, his flaws and his manias have become too obvious for even the slowly boiling lobsters in the pot to mistake.
And so we have our very own Stalingrad perculating as we speak.
I’m betting on the heirs of the greatest political geniuses who ever lived….not Marx, Lenin and Mao….Jefferson, Madison and Monroe.
While true as far as you go there are a couple more factors at play here.
First I suspect that virtually every reader here knew full Obama’s plans for this nation well before his election. We saw the overt duplicity of the media, not just in failing to vet Obama but in their immediate counter spin every time he went off message and answered a question that glaringly revealed his intent. The then sleeping voter, missed this or if they noticed something allowed themselves to be lulled back to slumber. Now they are not just awake about the left’s intent, they are furious about the media’s part in the fraud that was perpetrated upon them in 2008.
Second through out 2009 they watched as the democrats in congress passed a health care bill with arrogant utter disregard of the overwhelming opposition of the majority of the electorate. These “representatives” demonstrated complete disdain, disgust, and contempt for the people whom they are supposed to serve. Then when called to account in public forums they lied, fled and hid. No amount of spin could prevent that image from being drilled into the voters day after day after day.
So now the left finds themselves facing the wrath of an enraged electorate who have decided that the media mouth pieces who sold them this mess are as much the problem as the congress and administration and are no longer willing to listen to their lullabies. Indeed, it seems that the more the media sings their siren song, the more they enrage and disgust the electorate.
Yes they have over reached, and now the country has a choice. Early indications are that the majority are feverishly trying to change their nation’s course. Will they have the stomach for the hard climb back? I guess we’ll see.
Bless those saintly people of the past. Those days are gone for good, Doc. Time to sell the raisin ranch and move out of State.
Great job as always, Mr.Hanson. I’m a hispanic who immigrated to this wonderful country in 1964. My father came here before me in the 50′s. I’m a product of NYC public and private schools. You are 100% correct when you say it is the student who is a big part of the problem. My teachers in the public school would tell me that if I didn’t learn english, I would fail the class and fail in life also. And that got me learning english as best as I could. The wave of immigrants who came to this country back then did not disrespect the country who opened their arms to them. Now they only come here to live on the government dole and see how far they can get away with it, with help from the government workers themselves. I have seen it with my own eyes. The quality of immigrants, especially hispanics, who come to this country now really do not care about this country’s past or contribute to make this country better. When I suggest they learn english, learn about this country’s history and contribute to its progress, they ridicule me, saying that I should not spit on my origins, that I don’t really don’t belong to this country and they in turn call me a hispanic version of an “Uncle Tom.” One guy said, “They should learn spanish, ’cause we’re going to take over this @$&#.” The school system doesn’t help either. I asked my nephew what they taught him about American history. He stated that they said Christopher Columbus and George Washington were both evil men because they owned slaves. This was in a Rhode Island public school. They have destroyed our heroes and our myths. When you destroy those things a society ceases to exist, in my opinion. You should add that our children are lost due to not having someone look up to. Add the fact that many in this society think that they just landed here, with no past or don’t give a damn about the future. Add all that together and in my opinion it is just a matter of time when we slip into the good night. I’m reminded of the lyrics from “Somewhere over the rainbow”, which states, ” There is a land that I heard of once in a lullaby.” I feel we will just become a lullaby.
Children in America do have someone to look up to: gangsters and politically correct socialists. A swell combination that together prey on the middle class.
I agree. I am 66 and remember the good old days, and while I recognize there were problems, they pale to today’s. Maybe, just maybe, Americans are tiring of all of this debit, PCness and the public school system turning out undereducated young people. I know I certainly am as is my former school teacher wife who ran for the school board, but lost.
Our own sons didn’t turn out as we had desired, which was in part because they saw and responded to the fact that the pressure on the system by the students not to do anymore than necessary, or less, and make the school accommodate their wishes was succeeding. When my wife, the PTA president, and I, who was very active in helping the system such as cutting all the playing fields grass since there was no budget for it, wrote a letter to the principle on the fact that the lowering of the standards was impacting our sons; WE were then shunned.
Another anecdote; 10 years ago, as I watched soccer practice, the star player missed a shot and loudly scream the F word. I corrected him, especially since doing so in a game would be a penalty, and talked to the coach. He later did it in a game and guess what happened. The next year parents were not allowed to watch practices. Yep, that certainly fixed the problem.
But now I’m retired, a TEA Partier and, before that became so popular, I was a street activist against what is going on and I just don’t take any BS any more. So watch out America, there are millions of us now as the November elections showed.
I don’t know the answer either.
I grew up not too far from you in Chowchilla in the 1950s. I have fond memories of that small town, my childhood and the values passed on to me by my parents and the good folks of that town.
I was last there in 2004 and it was heartbreaking to see the decline. I can relate to your observations in your recent article on California’s decay.
I’m afraid it is too late to turn the tide. There is just too much ingrained welfare culture and, frankly, too many people who just don’t give a damn about being a good citizen and taking responsibility for their actions. This certainly is not unique to California.
I retired and moved to Oregon. I couldn’t stand it anymore.
Oh…the 60′s and all the narcissism that comes from those war babies: Sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll! Do your own thing! Who needs men? Marriage is so old fashioned. Liberate your sexuality!
Would Hugh Hefner, at 80+ be considered the “dirty, perverted” family member as he beds another 20 year old in the good ole days?
Peter Pan just might have been bisexual, right?
The family unit is not really all that important, now is it?
You Betcha it is!
God, I love Sarah Palin and her family values!
VDH writes,
“Much of the elite trumpeting of ‘decline’ and a ‘new multipolar world’ and the ‘end of American influence’ derives from collective depression…”
And,
“a large percentage of students comes into the system at an early age, and continues through out it, as anti-social, prone to rude behavior and language, disruptive and from environments where illiteracy, criminality and furor are not uncommon.”
In my humble opinion, neither the knell of decline, nor the sad state of our youth culture, our economy or our military posture are purely accidental. Rather they are in large part the results of direct policies and indirect tactics of the Progressive left over the last 40 years or so. These have been intended to deliberately weaken and divide the nation so as destroy the final obstacle to a global socialist regime. In other words, while he may be wrong on this or that point of detail, Glenn Beck is right to raise the alarm; and to point out that this president is in fact an agent of broad, deep seeded, multi-front conspiracy to break America. Many of us here see this, but it is psychologically difficult to grasp that the Dem government (and its MSM handmaiden) are now enemy entities, hell-bent on isolating, negating and immobilizing the traditional WASP source and center of American society. They say that they are patriots who merely have a more generous, humanitarian vision of America. But we can see from their serial deceptions, distortions and divisiveness that their motives are not so pure as they claim.
We gave some of our power back to the GOP in November to call the progressive left out onto the mat. Not to play patty-cake. Beware of Dems bearing compromise. Everything they utter is a delusion within a distortion wrapped in a lie. Indeed the whole theme of this administration can be summed up in a word: ‘deception’.
If the GOP adheres to our will, we will give them more power. If not, we will replace them too. But the race is on, can we restore the Republic before the demographic tipping point the Dems are trying to achieve is reached? It is one of only two chances they have. The other is that the divisions they are stirring, and the high-handed arrogance with which they are treading on us flares into civil war. (They imagine that kind of chaos would advance their cause, but that could backfire too!) All along I have dearly hoped that we can avoid that scenario, though I often wonder if it wouldn’t be the quickest and most decisive way to rid the the body politic of the terminal disease of Progressive leftism. Let us pray that some among those few brave, wise and focused patriots we have just sent to Washington will avoid the distractions and temptations and ‘compromises’ coming their way; and will instead concentrate on exposing the leftist rot that has infested the Democratic party, and much of the country besides.
But, until we have executive power, there is only so much we can do. That will come in due course, meanwhile the race is on…
What, then, do we do with the wrong type of kids from the wrong type of families or non-families, once they are barred or bounced from the system for the greater good of the other kids?
How about putting them on a 1000 acre site with a big fence somewhere out in the middle of nowhere in a northern state (where it is cold!) and they get some seriouis attitude adjustment training.
Do you remember reform school ? Maybe it should come back in some form. Many of them will end up in prison but maybe there is a way to divert some of them.
another problem w/ modern schooling is the “one-size fits all” mentality
you can put the kids that dont pan out in traditional schools into vocational schools/technical schools
not all kids are wired to succeed in the same way and vocational training is an excellent remedy that is missing in today’s educational system
Those that choose to follow the rules of Society will muddle through as best they can. It may take all their effort to simply survive but that’s how it goes. Those that choose to take a different path should find themselves incarcerated for a long time or suffer some other, more permanent, demise. You are ultimately responsible for the choices you make.
“I’ve sentenced kids younger than you to the gas chamber, Danny. Didn’t want to do it but felt I owed it to them.”
Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and I was in school, such problem students were expelled. There were private schools, wrongly referred to as “military schools” where a problem student was sent at his (in those days such issues were almost uniformly found among male students) parents expense. They were extremely strict and tolerated no bad behavior. Most often this was a choice offered by a judge as a last ditch effort to avoid reform school. They saved a number of bad actors.
Even these were rare. We had a number of, “problem” students in my junior and senior high schools. While they were known to be “trouble” they kept the trouble OUT of school. Any other course ensured immediate and unpleasant consequences. What ever trouble they cause was out side of the class room and usually dealt with by the legal system.
When the consequences of aggressive disruptive behavior are both quick and certain, you’ll find that even the most unwilling of students will avoid it.
Work houses, road crews, farm laborers.
Indeed, just one year of hard labor on a road crew or a farm will either teach them the skills needed to earn a living performing manual labor, or motivate them to concentrate on school so they don’t have to do something so physically taxing.
Dr. VDH Describes ancient memories when courtesy, a sense of individual responsibility, and attending school was required and a privledge. Unfortunately those in government have increasingly provided dismal role models for irresponsible behavior, spending beyond your means, and manipulating to “get something for nothing”. We now have a president who has centered his socialistic efforts on “victimology”. We are apparently victims of banks, Insurance companies, car companies, big oil, Doctors, pharmacies, other colors, corporate fat cats, the wealthy/successful, schools and anyone else from who he wants to extract union money, acquire votes and create dependency.. No surprise then that government welfare/blame mentality has “trickled down” to schools. The combined govermnent and university system efforts at pushing diversity are nothing but code for creating more victims, more control, and more votes. The more “victims” the more Democrats. Trying to turn this mess around seems near impossible yet worthwhile and essential for America to survive in a form that existed in years gone by. When do slaves become masters ? And how ? Dr. VDH for president would be a good start. Or whom would Dr. VDH suggest ?
We subsidize the behavior described here, so what are we complaining about…people are doing exactly what we have asked them to do; steal money, embezzle from those around you, expect free rides, never admit guilt, act irresponsibly, when caught deny, deny, deny, and when business people no longer trust you, run for congress, Senate and Presidency
Men that have used US military to overthrow entire countries for their financial gain we elect as president, We cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war against socialism and communism, but US entitlements are the largest socialist program in the world.
We place crushing burdens on the masses so the Banker elite can enjoy record bonus and profit from their embezzlement and criminal behaviors…
We watch while criminal syndicates run our government, military and industries….hopefully people open their eyes in time.
I’m going to top your political correctness, Professor.
A goodly share of those polite, well-behaved kids from bad neighborhoods knew, somewhere in the back of their minds, that their fathers would beat the living snot out of them when they got home if they seriously misbehaved at school.
I am very uncomfortable with that thought. I am no fan of child abuse. What respectable person is? But it seemed to work.
And it doesn’t any more. Plenty of data showing that kids subject to harsh discipline nowadays are pretty badly behaved. Could it be that we just don’t know how to make harsh discipline work any more? Or only parents who are a bit psychopathic themselves are willing to apply harsh discipline in our pervasively feel-good culture? Beats me. (So to speak.)
There’s a fine line between discipline and abuse, but there is a difference. Always discipline in cold blood, never in anger. Always define the limits first; never punish when they are not exceeded, always punish when they are (allowing good judgment to rule). You can’t be arbitrary, you must be predictable and fair. Traditionally, Dad would take son out “behind the woodshed” to meet out punishment. Once that was done, they’d shake hands and never mention it again.
Unfortunately, children – especially males – deliberately test the limits imposed on them to see what they can get away with. If the parents rely on the children’s “good sense”, the children will run wild. Once those limits are known and known to be enforced there is seldom a problem thereafter.
Thanks for another thought-provoking essay. A close relative asked for my help in converting her classroom to a white-board environment. After converting Middle School ‘Family and Consumer Science’ lessons into computer-based slideshows, I’ve seen evidence of the problem. The principal’s mandate to teachers was “entertain the kids, keep the parents happy and don’t give any failing grades”. I had to omit division, multiplication, percentages and decimal arithmetic from the lessons, as my relataive said, “Out of 180 students, only three or four have mastered basic arithmetic”. She also said, “The students refuse to read textbooks.” (How does one teach kids to balance a checkbook or to know the difference between accrued interest and simple interest if they cannot handle decimal arithmetic or percentages?)
The MSM and politicians are demonizing teachers as the problem. They are just killing the messengers. Before anyone can solve a problem, the problem needs to be studied in-depth. So far, I’ve not seen such a study.
I share the author’s viewpoint, however, there are rural areas in my conservative state where respect is still predominant, and the kids say, ‘maam’ and ‘sir’.
Half the parents I know are home-schooling, and their children socialize outside of the public schools in local sports leagues, the scouts, and 4H-related activities. Those students are grades ahead of their peers in local schools, but they are bright and are in two-parent traditional homes. It appears home-schooling is growing exponentially across the nation as the brightest kids are exiting the increasingly dysfunctional public school environment. Legalizing vouchers to a parent’s choice of private schools will free those who still want an education from the ridicule they now face from their peers, thus increasing the exodus, leaving only a core of uncivilized children in the public schools.
The MSM and politicians are demonizing teachers as the problem. They are just killing the messengers. 17. emmaliza
Don’t confuse mess-makers for messengers. Any teacher who insists on compulsory attendance and cooperates with a teacher’s union is a big, guilty part of the problem.
“Do not send a child to school who is anti-social, disruptive, or criminally minded. We need to create a shame culture in which the worst sort of social transgression (far worse than smoking) is to burden the public schools with children that were neither raised nor tamed.”
You’ve got to be kidding me, right? Don’t you understand that in today’s culture, EVERYBODY is a victim of something? It started with the Great Society in the 1960s and hasn’t stopped since. Every poor person or black person was a victim in society. Then the women’s movement added to that sense of helplessness. All women became victims to those lousy, evil, men. And you know what happened? The more we told all these people that they were “vicitms” of something, the more they believed it and behaved like victims. Rather than try to work hard to overcome any or all of their social and financial problems, they expected the government to take care of them. After all, if you’re a vicitim, then you don’t have to do anything because you’re “entitled” to have somebody take care of you, right? After that, our slide into sloth, hopelessness, and self-pity was stunning.
Today all kids seem to be “special-ed” kids with special needs, costing our public schools a fortune in additional costs. We have to cater to kids who don’t speak English, rather than have them learn the language. We don’t expect anybody to find a job anymore because being unemployed is always not their fault. So we will endlessly support people with unemployment, food stamps, public housing, welfare, special tax breaks, free health insurance, and whatever else the liberals can think of to keep people lazy and dependent on government.
When the Clinton administration radically cut welfare, guess what happened? Most of the people got off welfare and found a job. But what about hard economic times, you ask? It’s one thing to help a person out for a few weeks if they need assistance, but when you start drifting into 99 plus weeks of unemployment, plus tax breaks (which is basically welfare), plus free health insurance, it certainly does take the incentive out of working for a lot of people. I wonder how long these same people would stay out of work if they realized that their only option to surviving was going to the local church or Salvation Army? I wonder how long people would want to stay unemployed if people felt that being on government relief was much worse than having a job, any job.
During the Great Depressing people were literally begging for work. Today, many people would rather stay on unemployment than take a low-paying job, even though the low-paying job pays more than unemployment. And if throwing money at a problem worked, how many trillions of dollars have been spent on this “war on poverty” since it began in the 1960s and what has it gotten us? Are people any better off now than they were then? If anything, conditions are WORSE now in many public schools than they were then and kids are learning less while the family unit is almost non-existant. And with more and more single-parent homes being the norm out there, it’s no wonder kids have no structure or discipline in their lives.
If we don’t return to our conservative roots, we will end up like Spain or Greece. We’ll be broke, socially and morally bankrupt, and a weakened nation dependent on the kindness of more powerful strangers for our survival. Is this what we want for our future? Well, if we don’t change soon, that’s what we’re going to get.
Yes! I went to public schools from 59-72 in Tracy, CA & received a far better education than one would get today. NO one talked back to teachers & IF they did it was a ticket to get your butt whipped by the principal. No gangs, few drugs & parents actually controlled their kids as well as what they wore. Cops would scare young hoods w/ juvie which actually meant something in those days. AND everyone either knew English or learned it soon. Now look where we are!
I think attaching same to failure is a good thing. So is rewarding success. This type of behavior helps people find their strong points and quit wasting time on things they will never do well. A lot of physical activity is a good thing, but giving children the expectation that they will play in the NFL, NHL or NBA is really stupid. Why for every pro player there are tens of thousands of high school players. Not everyone should try to go to college. Why? It is just not useful for to spend the time and money for college if you will not be able to compete for a job after you finish.
Currently there is no stigma attached to any welfare program. Failure to advance in public schools does not happen, education may or may not happen. Schools that have 40, 50 or 60% failure rates are still funded with tax dollars. Success is to some extent punished. Progressive taxes are one example. Lack of performance grading in schools is another.
There is little possible chance for success if you don’t speak English in this country. You can live in a ghetto of some sort and live but you can’t move or work freely without English. No business should be required to have any other language signs or employ foreign language speakers. It may be to their financial advantage to do so but should not be required. All government business should also be in English. Drivers license tests are a good example. On the other side of the coin just try and demand that the Mexican Government do ANYTHING in English, won’t happen.
When I travel I try and learn some basic language skill to show respect the people in the host country. I also dress in a way that does not offend the citizens and try and fit in to the culture. After all it is their country and are entitled to be respected in their country.
“As a small start, might we end anonymity and return to the old shame culture of identifying youths by name…”
Too late. The kid would wear it as a badge of honor.
Some of the Big city youth gang-banger wannabees who moved into our state with their unwed mothers have rap sheets. As one incarcerated young mom put it, her son would have been killed had they stayed in Chicago, but here he could be a big fish in a small pond.
The kid was incarcerated at the time as well, I guess in his efforts to become that “big fish.” Glad we could help.
Your tax dollars at work.
Bill Clinton’s “balanced budgets” were only “balanced” because the federal government was allowed to spend the Social Security surplus. In reality, the federal government was actually deeper in debt after each period of Clinton “balanced budgets” because it resulted with more money being owed to Social Security.
Now that Social Security is in the red (and will probably continue to be for the rest of its existence), our pals in Washington will no longer be able to play this game. But that doesn’t mean the games will stop. Obama’s agreement with Republicans to extend the “Bush Tax Cuts” also calls for a temporary cut in the Social Security payroll tax. I suspect that this is, at least in part, designed to hide the fact that Social Security has gone into the red on Obama’s watch and, despite administration claims to the contrary, is stuck in the red.
And this is the problem with pop economics. It is probably better to have a large deficit and LOW total spending than a balanced budget and HIGH total spending. Despite its lack of intuitiveness, every thing we know about government spending suggests that most of the time it is high spending that is bad for the economy and not high deficits. The focus on deficits just makes it easier to delay necessary budget cuts while arguing for higher taxes.
Focusing on deficits leads to cutting spending at the wrong margins and increasing taxes unnecessarily.
Why the consternation? I remember the two room school (central valley, CA) with the teacher-principal. The two brothers riding to school on a mule. The ‘flowered’ shirts, dresses made from flower sacks (100 lb weigh). The slow learner in the lower grades, graduating only if able to meet the standards. NO disruption. Although rote learning was the standard, we learned much more.
I look in the mirror for causative factors. We are and always have been the problem/solution. The founders understood where the strength lie – the people.
The adage ‘if you want more of some thing, reward it, if less don’t support it’ has lead us to where we are now.
We understand what needs to be done, but do we have the will.
One huge part of the problem has been the growing influence of ‘Trash’ culture. I lived for many years in a country of the British Commonwealth in which most of the blacks were from Africa and the Indies. They absolutely detested ‘African-American’ culture. My African contacts, including the man (a first-name friend) who is arguably the second or third most powerful person in Uganda, say that the funniest thing he sees from week to week is the expression on the faces of ‘African-Americans’ when they finally realise that Ugandans consider them ‘white.’
Apart from skin colour and the fact that one is predominately rural and the other urban, Black Trash and White Trash are nearly identical. For example: inability to delay gratification, disparagement of education, a victim mentality constantly blaming others for their problems, a sense of entitlement, and a dismissal of those attempting to mainstream themselves in American culture.
There’s a reason Bill Clinton was described as the first “black” president — Trash recognised Trash and connected on the shared cultural values, thereby ignoring the most obvious difference.
What has nearly destroyed education is the willingness of the liberals now infesting that milieu to permit ‘African-American’ prison culture grunge — saggy, baggy shorts (no belts allowed), and the rest — to percolate up in to popular youth culture.
Along with it came some really bad attitudes, and parents in their attempt to be cool, accepted, and respected have quite willingly gone along with the transformation to show how ‘tolerant’ they are.
Over the years I taught at the university level (geology to civil engineers), the junior college level (business management), and the high school level (chemistry and biology). Several years ago I returned to the classroom as a high school substitute, but after two years of that I gave up in disgust.
I have worked with Grade 6 students in Haiti, educated under a tree because the classrooms were too full, who had a better command of their language, their history, and mathematics that at least 80% of your typical US Grade 10 students. The families have to PAY for school, and the students’ attitudes echo a culture long-vanished here in the States.
To our shame, and to our ultimate detriment.
Right on target as usual–I’ve taught from elementary to University and there are way too many students exactly as you describe–at the public school level it only takes one jackass student who faces zero consequences to ruin the classroom enviroment.
We live in a time of an embarrassment of riches and a dearth of shame, and even much personal responsibility.
Where is true spirituality? Not the CW downtown church Sunday only crap, but 24/7 humble daily living spirituality.
I think there’s a universal Law, expressed sort of as the product of PHYSICAL “stuff” and SPIRITUAL “non-stuff” = ONE.
So, the more economic things we have to play with and deal with, the less time we have to pay crucial attention to “things” that really matter—such as death, which ever sits on our personal “shoulder”, every instant, ready to rearrange all our THINGS.
Did you see or hear about the discovery from 1994, in Turkey, of a buried site from 10,000 years ago, or so, that was amazingly advanced, PER OUR ASSUMPTIONS OF TODAY, technologically?
I am convinced that over many thousands of years humanity has cycled through unknown numbers of devastating events, with only a few survivors left to start over again.
So, here we are, AGAIN—hubris rule humanity.
Indeed, to even BE human, these dark last days, the true form and process of this human condition, as Narcissus, or the completely (almost!) separate one, is in-your-face obvious, eh?
For those who want to save the world, here’s a hoary Indian analogy—man is walking barefoot in the thorny woods, and suffering therefore. He can either try to make the woods floor safe for his soles, or make some shoes!
Yes—True responsibility is PERSONAL!
Observe, AND understand. The world is ALWAYS going to hell in a hand basket, and the “youth” is always an abomination to their ancestors.
So be it!
My grandmother, born in central Illinois in 1910, had an official birth certificate… in German (it’s on my wall). So monolinguism of government is not a longtime concept.
Of course, to become successful you have to learn English. Simple as that.
There is no shame in today’s culture because there is no shame in American’s souls. They’ve been told to “celebrate” their diversity and unique qualities all their lives, and to “express themselves” regardless of who’s offended (that’t the other guy’s problem for being such a prude). Shaming tactics simply won’t work.
The problem with education today is that it’s a “right.” Like Canadian healthcare, no one can be denied. No matter how sociopathic the behavior, the “child” has a “right” to ruin the education of everyone he shares a classroom with.
The problem with this is that neither the dysfuntional children nor their dysfunctional parents ever receive “reality check.” Not until school is long over and the former child is unemployably, anyway. No doubt some teacher or principal has told them that the little sociopaths are ungovernable and unteachable, but these statements are without coercive force. There’s no check on the bad behavior.
What we need is a free market in schools, and schools to have the right to turn away students. If no one will take a student over his or her behavior, maybe finally the message will get through. Over time the culture will thus change back to one of polite behavior as schools are able to
In the mean time, I’m fine with public schools turning away students who refuse to be educated. No doubt this will give teachers the ability to punish kids are just voice opinions that are unpopular (such as the immorality of teachers’ unions), but that’s a price I’m willing to pay in the short run. The smart kid will just keep their mouths shut while at school and leave the editorializing for home and safely anonymous internet environments.
Some excellent ideas there, but one huge obstacle stands in their way — namely, the compulsory-school-attendance laws that exist in every state. As long as public schools have a quasi-monopoly on education, they have no more reason to improve than the domestic car makers had when they faced almost no foreign competition. Whether it’s crappy schools or crappy cars, the result of a captive market is the same. Even worse, public schools actually benefit from being overrun with unteachable sociopaths, since a) state funding is based on enrollment, and b) they can use those sociopaths as a pretext to demand even more money.
After the SCOYUS’ totally anti-constitutional Brown vs. Board of Education ruling came down in 1954, several school boards, noting that it applied only to public schools, voted to dissolve their districts. Nice try, but they forgot about the forced-attendance laws, and so were forced to re-open. Had their legislatures scrapped those laws first, they likely would have prevailed.
Even if we lived in a perfect educational world (one with no public schools), those forced-attendance laws are still evil and should be abolished because they are based on an evil assumption– that children are government property.
I have been a scoutmaster for many years and my best memories are from a decade in a small Wyoming ranching town. The boys were doing men’s work by age 12, were strong, religious, considerate, hard-working, responsible and mature for their years.
So there are exceptions, Mr. Hanson.
Sorry Victor,
But you are wrong. The schools are the problem, not the kids. Schools came to be the way they are about 1930. Each generation of parents who went through them became worse than the previous.
You are not critical of the kids. You are critical of the kids’ parents. Those parents went to public school. They were messed up a little more than their parents who went to public school as well.
Fix the schools – ie create vouchers and let things run on their own. As a result, each generation will be better than the previous until they achieve the character and understanding that kids had 3 generations ago. Creating a market in schooling will fix society – but it will happen slowly. The excellence you would like to see will probably take far longer than you and I have to live.
Schooling destroyed American society. But not immediately. It took over 70 years. It will take at least that long to fix it.
“What, then, do we do with the wrong type of kids from the wrong type of families or non-families, once they are barred or bounced from the system for the greater good of the other kids?”
We put them together with some highly trained Marine veterans, in their own little classrooms and remove the Self esteem component of modern education and replace with the satisfaction derived from actual accomplishment.
Public schools worked in those days because the parents, teachers and school administrators shared the same values on which our civilization was built. These days the teachers and school administrators are, more likely than not, hostile to the very basis of civilization, as are some of the parents. The solution: separation of school and state.
If you’re saying liberal remedies for all of society’s ills has been an abject, unmitigated failure I agree. But, despite the fact that California’s is the epicenter of liberalism, and then some, why would the state’s powers-that-be continue to sit on their hands about its problems? For years on end one governor after another couldn’t get the legislature to turn away from the disasterous trajectory that has landed California where it is now. Was their behavior a long running ‘gorge the beast’ strategy designed to force the Federal government to eventually bail the state out?
When I was in elementary school in the 1940s, we regularly had more that 40 in a class, although we did all have desks and books. Paddling did occur in the principal’s office, not publicly and not by the teachers. There was staying after school (parents were not notified – you just turned up late or ran home), suspension for a couple of days (no in school suspension), and expulsion (for really bad things). If you were expelled, your parents had to put you in private school or you were sent to reform school. Only one of my classmates was expelled and his parents could not afford private school so he was sent away from home, at age 10, to Lord knows what.
One thing I have seen. Kids in winning sports programs learn to obey the coach and how to work with other kids. I do not see the same values emphasized in the classroom, but I do see schools with winning sports programs having less problems in the classroom.
Money is the root of all evil. In this case, it is how public schools are funded. To get their dole from the state or the feds, educators will do anything to keep the miscreant kids in school. Discipline collapses.
We need to be shaming the parental units, too. Such that the published story would read, “David Smith, age 15, of 302 Broad Street, Selma, was arraigned today on charges of aggravated assault. Smith’s single-mother is Jane Smith, and his baby daddy is either Joe Blow, John Doe, or Amos Moe. Father undetermined with father’s name left blank on the family’s welfare application.”
And a fine of a couple of hundred dollars for each transgression might have the effect of focusing their attention, too. Not thousands of dollars, because (like car insurance), that would simply be too much to even worry about paying.
Shrinks can predict who will end up in jail by the subject’s age of 5. I wonder with the street murder rate the way it is, how many of them even grow up enough to GO to jail before they become dead.
Story in today’s LA Times saying that Meg Whitman lost the governor’s election because of the Hispanic vote. Which, of course, makes me really really eager to pass the next iteration of the DREAM act, allowing even more biased Latino’s to steal American elections.
(And gay marriage lost in California because of the black [evangelical] vote …)
While I respect the Professor, I cannot agree with his ideas because they are mostly jingoistic, xenophobic, and fail to accept the multiculturalism and diversity that is today’s reality. The idea of American Exceptionalism is one that is way past it’s expiration date. While the United States is still a good country, it is the height of arrogance to suggest that the U.S. Is better than any other country. In light of the fact that most other countries offer their people free health care, ban guns that allow people to avoid living in fear that they will be shot, are much more welcoming to immigrants than we are, don’t start illegal wars to appeal to it’s Bible-thumping religious right-wing fringe, and don’t allow its people to be infected by propaganda like that spewed by Fox News, I think we should get away from the old notion that we are so great and so much better than anyone else.
Your lunacy is hilarious.
What countries welcome a huge influx of immigrants invading their borders?
Mexico? Nope.
China? Nope.
And, dictators and tyrants take away guns from people so that they can’t protect themselves. Laws are only for the law-abiding. Do you honestly believe that removing guns from law-abiding people will keep guns out of the hands of law-breaking bandits?
You twit.
“The idea of American Exceptionalism is one that is way past it’s expiration date”
You’re probably right.
American slaves, European Jews, the people enslaved by the Japanese, the eastern european countries enslaved by the USSR, Israel, Taiwan, South Korea, Bosnia, Iraq…they don’t give a shit about American exceptionalism anyway. Once ‘diversity’ kicked in, things would have worked out for them in due course. At least, it would have worked out for the survivors; or at least, we would have forgotten about whatever the little problems were in the first place.
You should emigrate to a multicultural socialist paradise like Venezuela. You seem to hate your own country and only welcome ‘diversity’ if it suits you (Bible-thumping religious right-wing fringe). Nobody is stopping you from leaving.
The fullest expression of my arrogance is to assert wholeheartedly that the United States is indeed, and without any doubt in my mind, the greatest country in the world, and almost certainly the most remarkable social and political achievement in the history of the world. And the next expression of my arrogance is to sneer at you, Vinny, with contempt, for allowing yourself to write anything as idiotic as you have in a public forum.
“Jingoistic” and “Xenophobic”.
Like a trained seal the leftie vomits the for the hundred billionth time the Two Minutes Hate code words. Do you realise that you *are every other leftwinger*? How short the typical lefties vocabulary and how barren the depth of their mind is.
Don’t worry, you’re a high minded free thinking individual, you just happen to think exactly like, and post exactly the same comment, down to the exact wording as one hundred million lefties on the Internet.
This dear readers is a lefty who has been infected by osmosis. He doesn’t understand why he believes what he believes, in fact he doesn’t even know what the words “jingoistic” or “xenophobic” mean in the context of his post. But he has seen many, many hundreds of thousands of others use them and so without thinking, like an automaton he vomits this pre-processed, manufactured “comment” onto the page. Nothing is added to the discussion, but he feels like he’s made a political comment like a big boy.
Is there a single original thought in the typcial lefties mind? No. Why? Because The Man and supporters of The Establishment can be lazy in their minds, self assured that they are correct because all the “cool” people say so. There is no introspection as there must be when one is fighting against the established ideology to have their ideas heard and fortunately for us providence rewards the thoughtful and hardworking.
To the automaton: my country has the strictest gun laws in the western world,gun crime has not decreased at a rate any faster than before the laws were introduced.
You also advocate government censorship of ideas that you don’t like (Fox news propaganda, how amazingly original) yet if I called you a text book totalitarian you would recoil in faux horror.
Pull your head in child, there is no country the likes of which you describe that you would seek to live in.
Which one? Cherry or grape? I see you have consumed, maybe the whole pitcher, of Kool-aid.
Gee, Vinnie.. . . .if our country is sooo terrible, how come there are so many people wanting to come here, even risking their lives to do so? If you hate it here so much, why don’t you take your sorry azz to . . . .say, Russia, or Mexico, or Venezula. . . yhey don’t like the public owning guns in those countries, so you should feel safe there. . . . idiot!
I am an American citizen who currently works in Europe – what language do I speak with my customers here? English. English is the language of international business. VDH is spot on with this essay. Government and business set language standards. Parents are the ultimate arbiters of their childrens’ behavior. What parents consider OK will be what their children will exhibit in social/public situations. If what is acceptable in the classroom today is considered OK, I can’t imagine what they are getting away with at home.
Yes, shame can be quite a motivator – as well as fear. The sad thing is, for the majority of the children of this world, no one will care the most about them and their accomplishments than their parents. Society is harsh and less forgiving. For that reason, I believe it is better to fear/heed your parent’s opinion more than society’s.
The only language the current Regime is interested in, is ‘PARASITE’. And when they get control of the ‘means’ by which we base our existence, they will control the vote. And once they control the vote, they can eliminate that inconvenience also.
That’s all they want.
Ignoring reality is always dangerous – yet we have a county and exp. a school system where one MUST ignore reality to survive. One reality is that the ‘raw materiel’ of each year ( or at least the *processed* materiel – for all have been somehow processed via the system) is in decline. This is a cumulative function – be it flaw or function as one’s politics prefer.
Dare one flunk a student it will be the teacher who is called in to defend the decision and ‘prove’ that they did not do something wrong. And you may believe that it is indeed a trial where the teacher is assumed to be ‘guilty’ of bad teaching until they can prove otherwise.
Dare one flunk too many students? Best be wary. Should the failing students not match the general demographic – dare there be too many ‘oppressed minorities’ by proportion – then the teacher is to be presumed guilty of racial animus – a charge against which there is no defense as … and this is dogma… there could be no other reason while entirely fungable students should somehow fail disproportionately. And no, even proving that in each case the student DID factually fail will not answer – as that just ‘proves’ that the teacher viciously and maliciously ‘failed to teach’ in the proper and culturally sensitive manner. (Else why would the student have failed?) In fact, even the first failure probably proved that. Certainly the administration views a failing student as de facto proof that the teacher – who is required to ‘make’ them all learn equally’ – has failed to perform.
Over time the safest ( and easiest!) way is to demand little and settle for less. True, the student gains nothing, but they pass on for the greater part unaware, cushioned on ‘self esteem’, and in a few months become someone elses problem never to be seen again. That eventually many become the problem of other state agencies (prison or welfare) is sad in the abstract, but one has to put one’s own skin and income first.
Until it is safe to point out the obvious – until it is possible to say ‘he is stupid’ or ‘she is lazy’ or ‘he is just plain mean and hostile’ without losing one’s job and being shunned by one’s community – nothing is going to improve. Nothing, indeed, is going to change.
Because there is no problem TO fix, none to speak of.
I am sad to tell you that many of the problems that infest public shcools are found in equal measure in private Catholic schools. Parents who think their severely underperforming children can do no wrong. Teachers who submissively fail to keep order in their classrooms, because it inhibts creativity. Principals who fail to support high academic standards because it drives payin families out.
I aggree with the premise, in large part the fault is the student, but a close runner is the parent.
Also, look at how many children (mostly boys) are being drugged (often mandatory) for “Attention Deficit Dissorder”? It’s a disgrace and many parents have no choice about their child being forced to go to a public school and being forced to drug their child to ‘behave’ in school.
And how do good students even make it through school with a bunch of bad and disruptive students causing distractions and even dangers and the teachers have very little control over their own chaotic classrooms?
This is only going to get worse as more and more illegal immigrants fill classrooms and barely bother to learn to speak and read English or bother to put any effort into their academics. When third worlders bring their third-world mentalities to a country and refuse to assimilate nothing good can come of it.
My local schools brought their ‘D’ grade of last year, to a ‘B’ grade this year by learning how to ‘game’ the system.
If that’s not ‘creative learning’, nothing is. They are going to make very competitive Communists.
YES, finally, The truth will set us free. The parents and students are the problem. In the last 5 years I have seen a total lack of respect from high school students. Like VDH says it is not the majority but only a few per period, and that can ruin a class. They seem to think that we need to respect them first but they have know idea what respect is. We try in physical education to teach the old values and if they do not follow, we give out our own discipline (extra running,push-ups, etc). But when a kid tells you to F-off, we are supposed to use kids gloves because we don’t know how hard this kids life is. So he/she gets sent to the office only to be in your class the next day smiling at you. Quite frankly if this would have happen when I was in high school, not only would I spend a few minutes in the coaches office getting a piece of the coaches mind but when i returned home my dad would have given me some tender loving care. One day we will hold the parents and students accountable, but not anytime soon.
I think its more of the relationship between children and their parents. In a family that values and “enforces” education the kids are better behaved and focused on their studies. They are also more likely to dress modestly and not use bad language. Kids that have parents, or a parent, that do not value education nor take the long view of what it takes to succeed in our society are more likely to do poorly and get in trouble.
When I was in high school (I’m giving away my age) under the Jesuit fathers during the late 1930s, aside from four years of Latin, two of Greek, plus lots of history, two years of a “modern” language was required. Although my parents were born in the United States, my grandparents all came from Bavaria. When my parents did not want their children to know what they were talking about they spoke to each other in German. One night I asked my father (who had served in the United States army in Europe in WWI) to develop a conversation with me in German so that I could develop a speaking ability in the German language. My father’s answer: “No! That’s the Old Country. You are an American!.”
Sir, it is my privilege to read your post. With all my respect, best and cheers.
I’m sorry to hear that your father imposed ignorance upon you (though his motives were good). We’ve all got our stories! But you’re not recommending said ignorance, I hope–much less as a national policy?
Apologies to those of you who may have read this on another post.
What Changed in education from 40 years ago?
1. The priorities reversed
FROM:
- Teachers at the top, empowered and highly respected as a profession
-Administration supporting the teachers as they should
-Parents supporting the schools and teachers
-Students held to a standard and disciplined
TO :
-Students informed of their RIGHTS and the education bar lowered to create equality of outcome.
-Parents in defense of their children and AWOL with the schools and teachers
-Administration in defense mode and running schools based on cost analysis and top down management
-Teachers told what to teach and to be careful not to upset Johnny as the school doesn’t want a lawsuit and their profession denigrated for the general incompetence of the teachers. (Teachers leaving the system in droves after only a few years)
2. Pay distribution 40 years ago 60% teachers-40% administration. Pay distribution today 60% Administration-40% teachers.
3. Trial lawyers circling the schools like sharks in blood waiting for the nex incident involving the evil school and poor Johnny.
4. School systems as part of a national system and less and less controlled at the local level.
5. Administrators with PHD’s whose offices are often miles from the nearest school and many of whom have little or no experience in the classroom, yet instructing teachers on the new new best way to educate students based on findings at Harvard.
6. Parents frustrated, clueless, or uncaring sloths or all of the above.
7. Diversity as a mantra that claims to solve everything and solves nothing and only creates the realization among most that “Hey you aren’t like me, your different”.
8. If only we had more money everything would be better when in fact most of the midwest schools excel on significantly less money than the big city schools as in Los Angeles or innercity anywhere vs. midwest/other/Iowa schools generally. Why not go see why it works in Iowa/other/40years ago and not in LA/NY/NJ/Inner City,etc.
9. Brookings Institute (A Liberal Think Tank) says: ” we need three things to get people out of poverty 1) graduate ‘at least from High School”, 2)don’t have a child until you are married (OR ‘my emphasis’, until you are at least 20 and are committed to a life together, best you can make it I’d say), 3. get a job, work it, move to the next level and keep moving to the next level as best you can. This according to Brookings would RADICALLY reduce poverty. (I agree as I see folks in poverty “EVERY DAY” and none ‘RARELY’ that I see meet this 3 fold criteria, in fact usually none of this 3 fold criteria.) Amen.
Why not look back and see why we had the greatest education system in the world 40 years ago and are impoverished in education today. Granted it is not that easy to solve, not implying it is, but obviously the direction we are heading isn’t working.
If education continues on this track we are truly doomed.
I have two daughters, one 5 and one 11. I’m Navy brat and a veteran myself so have lived all over the country but now call Arkansas home. My children say “sir” and “ma’am” and can expect punishment for failing to address adults with the proper respect. I grounded my 11 yr old for an entire grading period for getting two C’s. So far this grading period she’s back up to all A’s and a single high B. I try to explain to her often that life is a competition and that to win requires a seriousness about education and I demand that she get no less than a B. She gets one hour of entertainment per night on school nights and that can be TV, Internet, or video games and only after her homework is finished and checked by me.
I also pay her an allowance, make her keep track of all debits and credits and I audit her once a month. Too many people have no respect for or ability to manage money, including me in my younger years, and I won’t have my girls repeat my mistakes or the mistakes of the spendthrift fools in Congress. I’m not going to raise a parasite or malcontent.
Though I admire Prof. Hanson this side idolatry (am currently wading through “Carnage & Culture”), I have a cavil with his praise of monolingualism. It seems to me that speaking only one language is no solution, it’s exactly the current problem: people who ONLY speak Spanish, Chinese, etc. Knowing those languages is fine, even their public USE is fine (contra Hanson), but knowing ONLY those languages poses obstacles to taking full advantage of our society and civilization. If immigrants were actually multilingual themselves, with English among those “multis,” there’d be no problem.
Rather than giving monolingualism a try, I’d encourage the prevalence of multilingualism, and especially its spread to immigrant populations. Bluntly put, monolingualism is a species of subliteracy, and I’d no sooner wish it on an immigrant than on my own hypothetical children.
As a teacher in an inner city high school, I couldn’t agree more, there is no shame among the kids and many of the parents for any of the behavior that goes on. Kids proudly tell of their experience in juvenile lock up, or of a parent who is in prison. Girls of 15 or 16 have no shame in their pregnancies (everyone of which I learned was hardly unwanted but instead desired or even planned). There is no shame in cursing out a teacher or in threatening a teacher. There is no shame in failing every course despite an incredibly low threshold for passing. There is no shame in high school juniors or seniors in having a third or fourth grade reading level or being unable to complete a simple addition or subtraction problem that the rest of us were able to satisfactorily answer at age nine. There is no shame among parents when a teacher calls home to tell them that their eighteen year old son or daughter can’t behave in a classroom.
Kids who fail to hand in a single homework assignment or complete any in class work will curse you out when notified of their failing grade. These same kids view their permitted twenty unexcused absences as twenty days off that they have coming to them.
There is no shame in any of this behavior among the vast majority of students and their parent (it’s absurd to use the plural.) When a student is learning and succeeding there is almost always two parents at home.
What’s the solution? It’s certainly not more money. But for starters we need to end social promotion. If a child can’t do fifth grade work then perhaps another year in the fourth grade is what they need. Also stop dumping kids into special education, lets face it some students just aren’t that bright and the “classified” designation seems to fall disproportionately on kids who can’t behave. Next, use the NCLB mandated high school standardized tests as an exit test, if you can’t perform eighth grade work by age sixteen, it’ time to say goodbye (remember what Ted Knight said in Caddy Shack “The world needs ditch diggers too). Finally end the agonizing over high school drop outs, when VHD was in school there was probably a high drop out rate. Having the worst students either academically or behaviorally leave school allows those that remain to learn. Some of this sound’s harsh but many a parent would welcome a school in which life was made difficult for the worst of the worst.
Whatever happened to Lewis Lapham and his “A portrait of the United States as Spendthrift Heir”?
Then came the Reagan era and he showed his true color…Harrumph! He didn’t see nothin’ yet!
“because as president he oversaw a few balanced budgets”
Tim Berners-Lee and Mark Andreeson had more to do with those balanced budgets than everybody in gov’t IMHO
Lewis Lapham was more correct than not; the future cannot be predicted VDH notwithstanding
The state of Indiana went bankrupt in the 1950s They had over investied in inftastructure and with the shift to Railroads could no longer pay the bonds.
This bankruptcy needs to be mined for procedure and theory this year 2011.
Kids learn their in school conduct in school. I think quite enough has been said about the leadership qualities of uniionized teachers. Just do not expect students who are trained to expect gross incompetents in the class room to know how to extract information from a reasonably competent professional.
I just saw this:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/12/the_college_diploma_fraud.html
Rather neatly puts a bow on the problem, don’cha think?
I also remember public school days. Blue jeans and tee shirts were unacceptable, not even really thought of. Button down shirts were the rule. On Friday’s we had a school assembly in the morning and every male had to wear a white button down long sleeve shirt, tie and dress pants. Classroom behavior was strictly regulated and kids pwere polite, respectful. My oh my how things have changed. I live across the street now from a HS. There is no standard of dress except maybe the sloppier or sluttier the better. Is there any correlation between how the kids dress and how they learn? I don’t know, but I’m betting there is somewhat. Something has gone seriously wrong with our society when we have School Police patrolling the streets day after day.
It is easy, for a foreigner, to tell an old school product from a new school product. They write properly and don’t confuse there/their/they are in their sentences.
Martin Peretz of The New Republic passed on this 8th grade final exam from 1895. How many of us could pass it?
http://www.tnr.com/blog/the-spine/79470/1895-8th-grade-final-exam-i-couldnt-pass-it-could-you
What I am sick of is the use of the term “The American People”…Every politician, newsperson, talk radio host etc… have used this term so damn much that it is becoming to me what the term “you people” became for the black community.
STOP SAYING IT, PLEASE!!!!!!
Dear Professor,
Where are you on START?
I certainly agree, you worried about what was going to happen to you as you waited for your no nonsense father to get home after you got out of line. Lets not forget those very humble Mexican immigrants with big families who took pride in speaking and writing good english and being American. Many of these families scrimped and saved to put every one of their kids through college.
A reminder what T Rex had to say about immigration:
Theodore Roosevelt on Immigrants and being an AMERICAN
“In the first place we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the man’s becoming in very fact an American, and nothing but an American…There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn’t an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag, and this excludes the red flag, which symbolizes all wars against liberty and civilization, just as much as it excludes any foreign flag of a nation to which we are hostile…We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language…and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people.”
Hey Dr. Hanson, take a look at this: http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/12/22/pradia.sentencing.drug.reform/index.html?hpt=C1
It scares the daylights out of me to see how many people think that competition and more private schools will solve the public education probem. I’m a conservative who works in the private school business — post-secondary vocational — and I can tell you right now it’s not the model you want.
Admissions “counselors” are sales people (I’ll let you draw out the comparison to its logical extreme) and admissions requirements are minimal. It has often been my misfortune to teach college level English composition skills to 30- and 40-year-olds who are entirely illiterate. And if they fail the class or drop out — the teacher who must maintain standards is held responsible, and loses raises, merit pay and his job; the admissions “counselor” who screeened the student and who knew full well he would fail is never held accountable; after all, “the sale” was made, and it was now the education department’s task to hold onto that sale for the eighteen months until graduation. Numbers are numbers.
When the adult students fail to come to class because they end up in jail, rehab or on the streets, the teacher is held accountable, not the student or the admissions counselor who knew from the start this would happen.
Also, when the 18- to 70-year-old students fail to attend the very classes for which they have taken out student loans, the teacher must phone them at home and plead and beg for them to attend, or else the teacher loses raises, etc. And if too many students drop out because of their personal financial issues or addictions or getting jailed (all the norm in our jobless ecoonomy), the teacher is held responsible for having a low retention rate, yet all the while must uphold eductaion standards.
To add insult to injury, at the end of each quarter, the students take an electronic survey to rate the teacher — who all the while has held up eduational standards that students may find too rigorous. A poor survey result often ends in termination. How rigorous do you think teachers remain after a few bad surveys and threats of termination from their superiors?
This private post-secondary vocational model is exactly what would occur if we privatize our pubic scools. Money would rule the day in the name of “competition,” admissions counselors would get rich, and teachers would lower standards just to receive positive end-of-quarter surveys in a desperate attempt to save their jobs because retention numbers always fall on their shoulders — even if the students dropped out because of illness, death, or the family moves away. In addition, imagine the financial aid nightmare that would be created when liberals demand “financial aid equality” for preschoolers, grammar and high school student loans.
Liberals have destroyed pour pubic schools, but I’m telling you now that free-market conservatives will also destroy private schools — just look to the corruption of the private vocational model for what not to do. In both instances the studenst rule the roost.
It is getting worst, before you would call a number and get the press dos nonsense, now incoming calls request a response. I do not respond since the caller obviously did not mean to call me or I press any other number since I may speak some other language. Really resent the Federal Government kowtowing linguistically. As a bureaucrat, in addition to the privacy act notice, a separate notice about the paper reduction act was also enclosed in all correspondence. Besides isn’t the other part of bilingual English!
The kids you grew up with became the parents of todays problem children. What happened? Did your generation become consumed with materialism and neglect their children? How did this entitlement society take hold to the degree it has? What was it about that 60′s generation that made them “anti-establishment?” They became todays leaders(elites) that continue to generate all the nonsense you refer to.
Monitor anyones cellphone activities from any computer or your own smartphone. You can view their email and sms messages sent and received, listen to calls made and received in realtime or recorded for later use, track the location of the cell user via the gps chip in their phone, you can even eavesdrop on their surroundings via the microphone on their phone, even when they’re not on it. 100% Impossible to detect. Great for monitoring kids, spouse, co-workers, partners, etc.
One account lets you track as many phones as you want.
Two month money back guarantee.
Zero learning curve.
Works anywhere in the world.
Your peace of mind is worth it.
http://www.thetemporalmechanics.com