Thread: Progressive Education Corrupted The People / Constitution

Publius Huldah's Blog

How Progressive Education and Bad Philosophy Corrupted The People & Undermined The Constitution of The United States

By Publius Huldah.
March 6, 2011

Throughout human history, the prevailing belief system changes from time to time & place to place; most people unthinkingly absorb whatever happens to be the prevailing dogma of their time & place. Here, I will show the radical differences between the philosophy of our Founding Era and the philosophy of today. And when I have done so, you will understand why our Country is declining and what you can do about it. In a nutshell, the Enlightenment philosophy of our Founding Era, which was based on Reason and the recognition of the existence of Fixed Principles, was taken away from us; and replaced with the subjective philosophies of Pragmatism & Existentialism, both of which reject Reason and deny the existence of Objective Truth & Fixed Principles. These are now the prevailing dogma of our Time; and unless we promptly repudiate them, we will fall.

Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, & John Jay (authors of The Federalist Papers), and others at the Federal Convention of 1787, embodied the best aspects of The Age of Enlightenment. They were well educated, exquisitely knowledgeable in statecraft & political philosophy, embraced the concepts of Objective Reality & Fixed Principles, knew Logic, and could think. George Washington, a man renowned for his Moral Character, which was based on Judeo-Christian ideals, presided over the Convention.

The Fruit of the Philosophy, Religion, & well-trained Minds of our Framers was a Constitution which ordained and established a Federation of States which united only for THE LIMITED PURPOSES enumerated in the Constitution: national defense, international commerce & relations; and domestically, the creation of an uniform commercial system: Weights & measures, patents & copyrights, a monetary system based on gold & silver, bankruptcy laws, and mail delivery. 1

Progressive “Educationâ€

Publius, the problem with America isn't Americans. When you get past the frailties of your own dumbed-down education, you'll understand that Americans are in fact the most moral, dedicated, logical, reasoned and hard-working people on earth, who live, breath, fight and die for the preservation of both their constitutional principles and their blessings of liberty.

This nation wasn't formed to create a people conscripted to your beliefs, Publius, and the people of this nation haven't sacrificed almost everything for more than 400 years to have their descendants listen to you or anyone else try to degrade US today.

Do we have some problems? Sure we do. Do we need to make some corrections and get our country back on track? Absolutely.

But babble such as this:

[quote]Thanks to progressive “educationâ€

Like it or not morality, standards, values are in decline within the USA that of course does not say we don't have good people but certainly times have changed, it has affected our economics due to greed. Simply capitalism cannot exist in a society without morals otherwise you have communism, no doubt in my mind we are fast moving in that direction.

Overall for me is the large issue that our education systems has provided the youth an easy out simply do what makes you feel good and sadly many of these folks are now in charge of the "good" people.

I do agree public schools need total change or eliminated and taken over state by state under private authority however our colleges need a huge makeover also the liberal progressives have all but destroyed some well known institutions in my opinion.

While the writer may not have totally been correct it was very close.

oldguy wrote,

I do agree public schools need total change or eliminated and taken over state by state under private authority

This troubles me a bit. I like the idea of states and localities taking back the control of THEIR schools, but the private part I am troubled with. Seems the local control would be best and would help to instill local values. Private interests could be the same as now under the umbrella of the feds, control from afar. Private interests will reflect just that, private interests. Should those private interests be, and remain local, then perhaps that could work. But if the private interests were to go national and have shareholders and stock interests,....

Would these private interests be secular in nature?

If we were to go backwards and unravel the progression, we would eliminate the federal control and roll it back to state control, and then the localities would have more control with oversight from the state. The control issue would become a wrestling match between the local officials and the state officials and thereby reflect more of the local input. YOU harvest what YOU sow. JMO

I thought the article itself was decent, could have used a bit of tweeking here and there, but, overall hit the nail on the head.

Won't it be a wonderful world when all religions, especially Christianity is wiped from the face of the earth and then we will find Universal bliss led by proper authorities that will know what is best for society?....(extreme sarcasm)

quote(This troubles me a bit. I like the idea of states and localities taking back the control of THEIR schools, but the private part I am troubled with. Seems the local control would be best and would help to instill local values. Private interests could be the same as now under the umbrella of the feds, control from afar. Private interests will reflect just that, private interests. Should those private interests be, and remain local, then perhaps that could work. But if the private interests were to go national and have shareholders and stock interests,....quote


Totally agree with you and in my first post what I should have said is state control with private options, I simply want the feds out of the public school they have one agenda and that is turning out mindless socialist robots who vote for the democrat party.

I know it's difficult for many working parents but I would do all possible to remove my children from public schools.

Originally Posted by roundabout

oldguy wrote,

I do agree public schools need total change or eliminated and taken over state by state under private authority

This troubles me a bit. I like the idea of states and localities taking back the control of THEIR schools, but the private part I am troubled with. Seems the local control would be best and would help to instill local values. Private interests could be the same as now under the umbrella of the feds, control from afar. Private interests will reflect just that, private interests. Should those private interests be, and remain local, then perhaps that could work. But if the private interests were to go national and have shareholders and stock interests,....

Would these private interests be secular in nature?

If we were to go backwards and unravel the progression, we would eliminate the federal control and roll it back to state control, and then the localities would have more control with oversight from the state. The control issue would become a wrestling match between the local officials and the state officials and thereby reflect more of the local input. YOU harvest what YOU sow. JMO

I thought the article itself was decent, could have used a bit of tweeking here and there, but, overall hit the nail on the head.

Won't it be a wonderful world when all religions, especially Christianity is wiped from the face of the earth and then we will find Universal bliss led by proper authorities that will know what is best for society?....(extreme sarcasm)

I've studied this education issue a little over the past few years and in some depth recently and what I discovered is that there is a fabulous business model for K-12 in the Christian schools, not the Catholic schools which are much more expensive, but in the non-Catholic Christian schools.

What I learned was that most of these schools have tuitions that are well below $4000 a student, offer quality special education instruction, have great graduation rates, do well on college test scores and offer services like before and after school that take much of the confusion and rat race out of getting your kids to and from school safely. They also offer discounts for the second and third child from a single family, offer a very broad array of activities and sports and serve as an ideal model in my view for a school voucher program of an average of $4,000 a student for regular classroom and $8,000 a student for special education instruction, which has turned my clock from supporting public schools as we know them today.

Under this plan, it wouldn't matter whether the school was a religious school or not, the vouchers could only be used for regular non-religious activities and any religious education the school might offer would need to be after hours at an additional charge to their parents and could not be mandatory. The schools would be private businesses, profit and not-for-profit, subject to all laws including civil rights and business laws, so no student could be denied entry to a school based on race or religion, etc.

Schools can also offer more than what the business model provides based on the voucher system, and they would be free to charge additional tuitions at their sole discretion so long as if they accept vouchers for part of the payments, they do not teach religion during the regular class day, don't use any of the voucher money to fund it and do not discriminate against students of a different religion or no religion.

Schools that want to be religion based would still be free to have private school without accepting vouchers the way it is today. But what the Christian school business model proves to me beyond any doubt whatsoever is that we're spending as a nation $600 billion a year on K-12 and wasting $300 billion a year of it and rendering less than satisfactory results.

So, to me, it's time to let the private sector turn this mess around, improve the results, cut the costs in half, and train the work force we expect them to hire when the students graduate. And yes, these private corporations would over time go "national', each would have their own specialties, facility style, size, locations and so forth. As a result there will be many more schools, smaller schools, within walking distance, on the way to work, or near where parents work. Students will have many more opportunities in these smaller schools to be involved in activities that interest them and the environments will be far more appealing to students which together will make school both a fun and important part of their lives and something they'll look forward to each day.

Using modest school vouchers to privatize education in the US will de-politicize, de-religionize and de-fund what I have concluded is a public school failure.

Judy, I am somewhat perplexed and perhaps a little shocked at your analysis of the situation and your suggestions.

You admire the Christian school program both fiscally and the results of such a model, yet wish to take the results and remove the impetus that gained such results.

Christian parents KNOW what they are doing when they send their kids to a such a school. It is not the money or the fiscal methods that achieved their desired results. It is the teaching of Christian principles which yield the desired results which you so admire. If you remove the faith from the school, you will be left with a shell of the former and the success that was achieved will wither away.

Part of the fiscal success is Christian charity. The teachers in those schools teaching, are there because that is where they find the atmosphere that they see to be so beneficial to their time and efforts. As the parent expects of the outcome, so does the teacher. There was no misunderstanding from the get go. How could they be wrong? They both, the parent and the teacher wanted the student there because of the expected outcome of a Christian based education. The Christian morality taught at such a school is not found in one of the secular text books.

Further the problem with taking part of the success which you recognize and turning it over to business interests is, that, business interests will always be just that, business! The bottom line comes before all else as charity does not well in the business world other than for promotional gains. The object of any business is to gain business shares, to grow. Try and legislate controlled growth of any business and you will end up with a Fannie, Freddie, or AIG model.

Our founders understood well that a education without theological teachings was no education worth having. Morality cannot be legislated or bought, or sold.

JMOs

oldguy wrote,

I simply want the feds out of the public school they have one agenda and that is turning out mindless socialist robots who vote for the democrat party.

I agree, totally. As was the template written for such an outcome.



[/quote]

Originally Posted by roundabout

Judy, I am somewhat perplexed and perhaps a little shocked at your analysis of the situation and your suggestions.

You admire the Christian school program both fiscally and the results of such a model, yet wish to take the results and remove the impetus that gained such results.

Christian parents KNOW what they are doing when they send their kids to a such a school. It is not the money or the fiscal methods that achieved their desired results. It is the teaching of Christian principles which yield the desired results which you so admire. If you remove the faith from the school, you will be left with a shell of the former and the success that was achieved will wither away.

Part of the fiscal success is Christian charity. The teachers in those schools teaching, are there because that is where they find the atmosphere that they see to be so beneficial to their time and efforts. As the parent expects of the outcome, so does the teacher. There was no misunderstanding from the get go. How could they be wrong? They both, the parent and the teacher wanted the student there because of the expected outcome of a Christian based education. The Christian morality taught at such a school is not found in one of the secular text books.

Further the problem with taking part of the success which you recognize and turning it over to business interests is, that, business interests will always be just that, business! The bottom line comes before all else as charity does not well in the business world other than for promotional gains. The object of any business is to gain business shares, to grow. Try and legislate controlled growth of any business and you will end up with a Fannie, Freddie, or AIG model.

Our founders understood well that a education without theological teachings was no education worth having. Morality cannot be legislated or bought, or sold.

JMOs

These are not volunteers at these schools I examined, they are well-paid professionals. Perhaps you're thinking of the Catholic schools that often times use nuns and priests to teach for free? That model doesn't work at all for the general public, but the Christian school model does.

The Christian principle that I admire for vouchers is their business model and the quality of the curriculum, the sincere interest in the students and their well-being, and if this is because they're Christians, then so be it, that should not change at all, but I believe it has far more to do with the freedom to establish a school that meets the needs of the students and the desires of the parents. 76% of our population is Christian and the vast majority of the other 24% subscribe to Christian conduct, so not reaching religion during class time should not be a problem for these schools or any other following their example.

I've done the math on $4000 vouchers and it works. The majority of the US is Christian, roundabout, so whether you're a Christian working for a Christian school or a Christian business person working for a school following the Christian business model shouldn't make any difference.

As to morals, behavior and all that, there will be no restrictions for policies and procedures for the private schools so long as they don't violate any business laws or discriminate against students or applicants based on race or religion, etc. Otherwise, the private schools can set whatever code of conduct or behavior they want just as they do now. They can even hold prayers if they want to before school or after school and teach Christian principles if they wish. They just shouldn't be able to use the vouchers to teach religion classes during regular class time because that would be taking away from the basic curricula required to be an accredited school. If they want to teach it in addition and charge extra for it after hours, then that's fine too so long as the classes aren't mandatory.

Remember, when we do this, there will be many religions wanting to use the vouchers to teach their brand including Muslims. I just don't think it's appropriate for the vouchers to be used to teach any religion or any brand of one whether it's my Christian religion or someone else's Muslim or Hindu or Buddhist or Sikh or atheism or any other type of religion.

Thanks for your clarifications on some of your thoughts Judy. I agree with your original assessment, Christian schools as models are to be viewed and examined and admired. Their success warants attention.

Judy wrote,

These are not volunteers at these schools I examined, they are well-paid professionals. Perhaps you're thinking of the Catholic schools that often times use nuns and priests to teach for free? That model doesn't work at all for the general public, but the Christian school model does.

The Christian charity that I was refering to, was not teachers working for free. Christian charity can come in many other manners. Extra effort on the parts of the teachers and parents. Charity from the local Church towards some expenses for whatever. Christian charity is not stipulated, it is given of free will or desire.

The Christian principle that I admire for vouchers is their business model and the quality of the curriculum, the sincere interest in the students and their well-being, and if this is because they're Christians, then so be it,

The admiration that you refer to is not due to an "if" it is because they're Christians, it is because they are Christians. They expect excellence as a result, as how could it be any other way when you have Jesus Christ on your side?

I've done the math on $4000 vouchers and it works. The majority of the US is Christian, roundabout, so whether you're a Christian working for a Christian school or a Christian business person working for a school following the Christian business model shouldn't make any difference.

Provided you are saying that the teachers and business administrators are Christians, AND, the parents are Christians, OR, admire the Christian principles and morals then I agree with you, there should be a great outcome. The Christian model that you said you admired, works because of these parameters, not because of any particular business model that could be utilized in a secular atmosphere. One trying to turn a silk purse into a nylon purse hardly seems worth while.

[/quote]As to morals, behavior and all that, there will be no restrictions for policies and procedures for the private schools so long as they don't violate any business laws or discriminate against students or applicants based on race or religion, etc.

This part,.. I am not sure we are on the same page. How would a school operate as a Christian school, or one with Christian tenets, hire a atheist for the science class? Or a gay teacher to teach health and show the teenage young ladies how to put condoms on a banana? I think it is alot of these anti-discrimination lawsuits and laws that have brought our public schools to where we are today. Afterall, there was a time when public schools had prayer in school and no one objected til the atheist came into power.

Separation of Church and state, or the manipulation of such a slick slogan taken from a statement of the past and twisted to confuse the populace has done the damage we see today. Men have attempted to play the role of gods and have failed,.......as usual.