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Congress is Destroying America’s Schools If you want to witness the most blatantly un-Constitutional and un-American laws at work than just take a walk through your local schools. They are currently under the control of the federal government.
Since the Constitution does not even mention education, it is a continuing mystery why the federal government has a department devoted to it. Well, it’s less of a mystery if you consider that its purpose is to indoctrinate the children passing through it to accept a whole range of values and ideas that lots of Americans think are wrong. From the Head Start program to the International Baccalaureate, the whole purpose of "education" today is to create new generations of Americans who think that the United Nations should govern the entire planet and who uncritically accept politically correct beliefs about gender issues, diversity, multiculturalism, and environmentalism. To insure this occurs, Congress and some States are ready to sign off on programs that would evaluate the mental stability of every child from pre-school on through graduation. That’s Big Brother! Is Johnny or Daphne not "thinking correctly" about these issues? Do they have dangerous ideas of democracy, sovereignty, privacy, or—horrors—a religious belief that they picked up at home? That is what "education" means today in America. It’s the reason some school districts still try to ban the singing of Christmas carols every December. It’s the reason that "hate speech" codes are instituted to insure that only the most leftist, approved things are thought and spoken. Under the Constitution, even so-called hate speech is protected. There is a reason why public confidence in the presidency and Congress is at an all-time low. It is the reason why thousands of Americans were forced to call, write, fax and email their elected representatives to insure the so-called immigration "reform" bill was defeated and I suggest they must do the same to put an end to the noxious "No Child Left Behind" legislation. Congress is discussing the reauthorization of NCLB. As Rep. Scott Garrett (R-NJ) points out, "It centralized accountability in Washington with the bureaucrats and appointees at the U.S. Department of Education, completely bypassing the legislatures in fifty state capitals, countless township school boards and local officials, and—most importantly—administrators, educators, and parents all across the nation." Rep. Garrett’s bill, the LEARN Act (Local Education Authority Returns Now) would empower local and state governments to create and enforce public education. What a notion! What an astonishing idea! Oh, wait a minute. Up to NCLB, that’s where the power over education was always practiced or assumed to be. Common sense tells you that education must be the province of those closest to those intended to benefit most, the children in local schools. What NCLB does is create a national standard that seeks the lowest common denominator for states to qualify for federal education funding. Perhaps that’s why, in some form or other, says Garrett, "all fifty states have taken some form of action, whether it is legislative or legal, against No Child Left Behind." Why then is Congress considering extending it? Perhaps it has something to do with the arrogance of the members of Congress who, until assailed for their determination to force a hated immigration bill on Americans, still haven’t concluded that our form of government takes its power from the will of the people and elected representatives are expected to act accordingly. They do not know better than us. There’s a reason they are called "representatives." No Child Left Behind is legislation conjured up by Sen. Teddy Kennedy and supported by President Bush. Since its enactment in 2001, the budget of the Department of Education ballooned to $23.5 billion. If NCLB is reauthorized, the budget in 2008 would grow to $24.4 billion, a 41% increase in just seven years! Currently, the teaching of mathematics, history, geography, and other essential areas of learning are pathetically inadequate, deeply distorted, or totally ignored. The enthusiasm and creativity that new teachers bring to the classroom is crushed. The growth of all manner of administrative staff to cope with federal paperwork expands. And homework increases to make up for the inability to teach the fundamentals during the school day, thus shifting the burden to parents. Little wonder that some parents elect to home school their children or, if they can afford it, send them to private schools that, despite operating on smaller budgets and lower salaries, still manage to provide a superior quality of education. Remember, the federal government has no constitutional authority over education policy! That policy should be set, at the local level by the parents and grandparents of children in whom we have invested our hopes for the future of America. It’s time to man the barricades and to fire up the fax machines and email. Tell your Senator and your Representative to vote against No Child Left Behind before it does any further damage to a new generation of Americans. Put some time aside and read "The Subversion of Education in America", a four-part series you can link to from this website’s home page. Then, if you wish, print it out and send copies to the members of your local school board. The Center does not take money from foundations or corporations. It is funded by your donation that permits us to maintain this website and our vigorous communications program. Please give what you can. Thank you! Celibate Deer, Monastic Bears, and Cuddly Coyotes If the notion of deer being administered contraceptives, bears giving up foraging for food, and coyotes sparing anything that looks like dinner seems idiotic to you, welcome to the People’s Republic of New Jersey where these notions are embraced by people who think anything other than hunting these creatures is going to change their ways. In April, a 23-month-old toddler, playing with family members in the backyard of a Monmouth County home, "became the first confirmed victim of a coyote attack" when bitten on the head and neck, before the coyote tried to drag him away. The shouts of the children with whom he was playing brought the adults to the scene. "It was not afraid of us," said the toddler’s grandfather. When you’re really hungry and you’re a coyote, fear takes second place to dinner. Kristin LaVitola of Roselle, not exactly a wilderness town, told me how, twice that same month, she had sighted a coyote about "the size of a German Shepherd and looks to be well fed." But you live in New Jersey I hear you saying. New Jersey! Perhaps that is part of the problem. The estimated 200,000 deer don’t realize they’re in New Jersey, nor do the estimated 3,200 bears in the northwestern section of the State. No one really knows how many Canada geese are totally unaware that they are not in Canada. Despite being constantly told that humans living in the most densely popular State in the nation have taken over the areas where the wildlife live, the wildlife have not gotten the message! These animals blithely show up in people’s backyards acting as if they own the place.
Undeterred, Lisa Jackson, the latest in a line of bear-loving Department of Environmental Protection commissioners, put the kibosh on any hunt this year. In early August the DEP held a hearing on the subject of not hunting bears. "Heated debate continued in Trenton last night about whether the state Department of Environmental Protection is wrong not to kill some of the burgeoning population of bears that, on occasion, kill livestock and break into homes," noted one reporter. Just how difficult is it to figure out that not culling the bears will, each spring, lead to more bears? Meanwhile, as usual, a state appeals court was reviewing lawsuits that claim Ms. Jackson had overstepped her authority when she cancelled the latest bear hunt. Instead, said, Jane Piszar of the Bear Education and Research Group, opponents of hunting, "managing people is the way to manage the bears." By some bizarre leap of logic, it is always people who are to blame for bears who adamantly refuse to take up a monastic lifestyle, let alone rummaging through garbage cans and trying to break into people’s homes. The result of this idiocy was an $800,000 DEP program for a door-to-door campaign to educate and encourage people to secure their trash. "However, reports on bears breaking into homes and killing livestock continue," reported a daily newspaper. Once again, the impudent bears have failed to cooperate. The news just keeps getting worse. On August 9 it was front-page news that "Deer contraceptive proves unreliable." Hey, would I kid you? With no hint of irony, the reporter lead off the story saying, "The search for the ‘magic bullet’ contraceptive, a one-shot, long-lasting solution to the state’s deer overpopulation woes, has once again eluded scientists, according to the latest study by a wildlife research team." Want to know what would constitute a "one-shot, long-lasting solution"? Just ask any hunter. Here again, the notion of capturing, marking and inoculating free-range deer, particularly in the months before breeding season, borders in delusion and idiocy. Even supposing you could do this to a couple of thousand deer, you would still have to locate them and do it again because they would require a booster shot. In a 2006 resolution, the State League of Municipalities noted that "High densities of deer have created near-emergency situations, causing deer-vehicle collisions resulting in death and injuries, ecological damage to native species of woodland flora, gardens and agricultural crops, as well as elevated risk of Lyme disease, all of which costs our citizens and farmers more than $50 million annually and places their health and safety at risk." In New Jersey! Though it is not likely, I keep hoping for the day when the legislature, the Department of Environmental Protection, and the assorted loonies who are determined to protect every single deer, bear, coyote and other wild critter in the State will conclude that letting the hunters do the job is the most sensible way of protecting the humans who pay taxes and, oh yes, hunting license fees. Tell a friend about this website, share our commentaries with them. Pass them along to your local print and broadcast media. Get the message out! Thanks.
©
2007 Alan Caruba. |
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Why any town or city bothers to hold an election for members of the local board of education is a mystery to me. Between the U.S. Department of Education and a union, the National Education Association—masquerading as just a group of concerned teachers—local boards have no real power to reverse the subjugation and destruction of the nation’s education system.
This is particularly true of bears who regard birdfeeders as snack stations and garbage containers as the equivalent of a local Wendy’s or Taco Bell. The last time there was a bear hunt in New Jersey was 2005 and 328 were culled. It took all manner of legislative lobbying and court cases to achieve that. The State even introduced "No Bear Zones" where they were definitely not supposed to be. The bears arrogantly ignored these restrictions. They began to wander about in places like Trenton, apparently attracted to the scent of lawmakers.