America is collapsing on almost every crucial level. Our great universities, which were once fortresses of reason, are shamelessly producing men and women hell-bent on destroying what’s left of our free society with their destructive ideas.
In the last decade especially, teaching has become so significantly corrupted that many Americans accept it as the norm and even tolerate it. This collapse of the education establishment didn’t occur overnight. One of the significant contributions for turning a free country left was when educators began to romanticize globalism and attack American values.
The anarchy that I identified in my 1980s’ nationally acclaimed novel The Fire Within has spread to almost every government school (and more) in America. I believe that the inner-city schools was an experiment to uncover what would catch and could be used to break the once-great American school system. For it to take down a citadel of learning like our great universities, it had to slowly develop the right catch-all ideas. To support it and get the billions of dollars flowing to the schools, it drew the tears of every American with its explanations. Some of the explanations have become cliches today – parental neglect, inadequate financial support, lack of diversity, and even, of course, the hottest one of all, racism.
If you ask an educator, you won’t get the truth from them. Most of them are on the take. Many of those heavily credentialed men and women have the integrity of a slim-slam man selling snake oil. As a result, they do and say what they do best; they suppress the truth, and they aggressively provide a wholesome spin to whatever they are promoting to eliminate the derogatory. This is unfortunate. Our great schools, which should be uniting the country, are rapidly destroying it by creating generations of students, intellectually impotent, who are splitting the nation.
Any prominent leaders committed to open dialogue and freedom of speech are being silenced on major campuses against the organized movement to subvert freedom (most recently and dramatically, Charlie Kirk). Such activities are clearly being identified as a declaration of war against reason and freedom, and our great country. The very institutions that had peacefully guarded our freedom and nurtured our intellectual independence are justifying violence by nurturing chaos. Many of our great universities, like UCLA-Berkeley, stand proudly as examples, while generously financed by public and private money.
The justification for radical, on-campus anarchy is often so irrational that it makes you wonder what drugs the students must be taking to want to proliferate it. In a Los Angeles Times article, one demonstrator, disturbed by the negative news coverage of campus protestors, wisely stated that such continued news coverage would turn the public against the student movement. Unfortunately, the student didn’t realize that this wasn’t bad, but instead good. For those who have an independent, non-collective-thinking mind, it clarified the madness of what was happening under the cover of education.
This plot to take over the mind began stealthy and maybe even innocently with Horace Mann, the champion of free education. Today, we are seeing the result of public finance-education every time there is a campus riot. By allowing irresponsible educators to take hold of the schools and advance any crazy idea that they like without public support are surreptitiously (today obviously) advancing Alinsky-style anarchy. I am not opposing education. In fact, I strongly support it, but I support the right kind of education.
As a young man, educated traditionally in the forties and fifties, I wasn’t prepared for the modern classroom. In my day, the schools were orderly, not a fist-fighting, pill-popping jungle. Although I was sometimes smart enough to spot the mendacity and propaganda and the system’s proclivity toward extremism that was creeping into its messaging, in general the schools were a safe place for traditional learning, and I had from time to time some capable educators. Most students understood with a good education and hard work they could realize great dreams.
When I decided to teach in the sixties and seventies, I saw for the first time the raw reality of change, especially in inner-city schools. Understanding the cause for this rising breakdown of order didn’t come easily for me. It took time. It took considerable reading, thinking and testing to identify. Like so many teachers, I was concerned about the students’ disinterest in learning and their passion to run wild and to destroy with immunity. At first, I blamed administration for allowing school misbehavior until I woke up and realized that the administrators were in place, not accidentally, but because they were exactly the type of person the system needed to advance such chaos.
This was true, not just where I taught, but at other inner-city public schools as well. Many administrators were used like pawns, carefully chosen, to set in motion activities that would accelerate the disintegration of education. They did this by employing a myriad of activities, like mismatching teachers with subjects, encouraging student power, and supporting academic programs that would handicap learning. (Several examples of the latter included teaching the look-say reading method, a confusing new math system, and even the revision of history.) To give purpose to the chaos that followed, ruthless teachers who thrived in failing classrooms were hired to advance their political agenda, in lieu of reading, writing, and arithmetic, they loaded the students down with information, devoid of truth and knowledge.
When I finally passed through the cloud of deception, carefully created to blur understanding of the problem, I began to see a very dark force at play. Quite by accident I was saved. I came across Dr. Maria Montessori’s book, The Absorbent Mind, which was published many years earlier. This honest, and easy-to-read book immediately clarified what I needed to understand. Instead of advancing the moral relativity inherent in pragmatism, taught in most schools, Dr. Montessori maintained a philosophy of education that had profound respected for the moral and intellectual growth of each child. In my novel, The Fire Within, I have identified two diametrically opposing views of education, which I played out in conflict. I demonstrated by giving life to these ideas what would happen. After publishing my book in 1981, I went on the road with it. For over ten years, I vigorously promoted the book against considerable resistance. Through hard work and design, I appeared on many talk shows, locally and nationally.
I believed then, as I do today, that the surest way to societal salvation begins with the right educational philosophy. This can best be achieved through a school system, like many Montessori schools, which respects moral development and individual freedom. It is not only a very American idea, but it is also a very rational idea. Unfortunately, pragmatism, which basically conflicts with the Montessori system, has a stronghold on today’s education (a John Dewey contribution). Ending his stronghold isn’t going to be easy. It is often layered carefully in almost all the current programs.
The Daily Bell