The author incorrectly assumes that Johnny and Mary are free to tell their parents the Tale of the Cucumber. The practice is becoming widespread to require students to sign a non-disclosure statement pledging not to bring this sort of thing to their parents´ attention.

And that´s DoublePlusGood, comrades!

Our youngest child, then 10 years old, was taking social studies at a public school in a wealthy school district, at the 5th grade level. His textbook was mostly devoted to native american women from obscure pacific tribes who were weavers and potters. He had to learn their names, and he had to identify their works.


We decided to put him in a private, religious school, and repeat 5th grade. And when he brought his social studies text home from the private school, it looked very much like a college text in American Government. The book on political history, beginning with the American revolution. It described who our founders were, and how they put together the government. And it covered events and people up through the viet nam war, including the civil rights movement, and it identified those figures in black history who contributed to our America.
I was impressed. Our son learned how American government worked. And he is now a registered republican.

I came back from Russia and met three young teachers. They asked me about my trip and I told them that I had gone through Lenin´s tomb. They laughed and assured me I was mistaken. "After all", they told me, "he was killed in New York so why would they bury him in Russia?" They walked off laughing about how stupid I was. These were elementary school teachers!!!

The school the author is referring to is in a lousy area in Los Angeles County. I´m sure the collective IQ of the entire group, teachers and students is in the low 70s.

I wish the Americanthinker website would center their content. It is all on the leftside.

The article is correct in the dumbing down of the course work. I saw my aunts school books from the 1940´s and it was tougher then what I had in the late 60´s. I can only imagine how bad they are now.

It is very deliberate. The democrats do not want educated people. If they were they would vote republican.

I found this link. Free pdf download. Start with the Preface.
http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/

I don´t know about the rest of the book but in the Preface the person cites the cost of education. It was high when they wrote about it and it is way higher now.

If there are 30 kids in a classroom x the number of courses and we pay 10,000 a year for each child. Where does ALL that money go?

All that money, #5, goes to teachers´ salaries and pensions, and their benefits. The average teacher in my area makes $100,000 a year, and they don´t pay for their health insurance.

Education has been dumbed down incredibly. I am constantly amazed at how little the young people know. The usual answer why they don´t know is "they didn´t teach us that." But the curriculum DID find time to have a man from the local gay organization come in and tell the kids they´re free to visit their "clubhouse" and they won´t tell their parents, and they will provide transportation.

There is a lesson for all of us today in Deuteronomy 6.

If our children are ignorant, and their children are ignorant, it is because we, who know the truth, have not taught it to our own.

Even if everyone doesn´t have access to books such as the ones mentioned in this piece, we are without excuse when it comes to learning everything necessary to make strong, moral people of character. We all have access to a Bible.

The Bible was a textbook for many of our forefathers. It should be a textbook for us today.

In my short time in the halls of academia I came to the conclusion that anyone with any degree in education or psycho-babble should never have anything to do with the education of children, much less be left in a room with them without adult supervision. As a group or groups they are egotistical, arrogant, rude and dumb as a box of rocks. There are exceptions, but few and far between.

Very little of this insanity appears to be happening in my Red State area. So we drift further apart. The great political divide is being exacerbated by the great educational divide. And jobs continue to move away from the ´cucumber´ areas to the areas with traditional schooling.

And yet the fans of this corrosive rot feel absolutely free to lecture us on any subject, convinced they are intellectually superior. The fall from grace for America will be epic. What we are in now is the confusion before the storm hits. Like Germany in the 1920´s.