Filed under: teacher tenure

Let's Compare, Shall We?

Teacher Union Contracts

The Supreme Court's failure to apply the First Amendment for its intended purposes destroyed the perimeters necessary to protect society from morally incompetent teachers.  Statewide laws, enabling tenure guarantees for unqualified teachers, crept silently into legislation for lower-level public schools beginning in the early 1970s.  Only seven states have rejected such laws.  The leftist NEA union advantage of control continues, however, without tenure laws in those seven states.

 

Two paragraphs for teacher contracts demanded by NEA unions are the root of the problem.  These controlling paragraphs may be found in the contract between the NEA union (or its state affiliate) and the local school board or in the state public sector collective bargaining laws.  One paragraph provides teacher tenure, which makes it virtually impossible to fire a teacher.  There is also a confidentiality paragraph, making it a crime for school administrators to disclose the reason(s) for dismissing a teacher without advanced approval--a very costly and lengthy procedure.  If the citizens are not permitted by law to be informed, their political support, so desperately needed by the superintendent in order to fire a bad teacher, is successfully silenced.

 

"Precisely because of the obvious potential for abuse, even labor union advocates like AFL-CIO President George Meany and Franklin D. Roosevelt viewed unionization of the public employees as unthinkable."*

 

In March 2008, harsh debate in the Iowa legislature brought this problem to the public's attention.  Radicals, whose elections were advanced by large sums of campaign money received from outside the state, were pushing for changes in the public sector collective bargaining law.  A section making it even harder to fire harmful teachers caused "grave concerns" among school administrators.  "Margaret Buckton, chief lobbyist for the Iowa Association of School Boards, says [arbitration] adjudicators have tended to rule in favor of the teachers."  As the teachers' bargaining rights law now stands, "Attempts to remove a teacher can last years and cost hundreds of thousand of dollars."**

 

Any force that makes it impossible for the school administrator to be in control and implement the citizen consensus for values is, by definition, fascistic and advances the consequences of fascism.  It was this ever-present threat, and its consequent tyranny of the mind, that prompted elected representatives in the individual states to require that curbs be placed upon government employees via the First Amendment and the federal Constitution.

 

*Peter Brimelow and Leslie Spencer, "How the National Education Association Corrupts Our Public Schools," Forbes magazine, June 7, 1993.

*Dan Gearin, "Schools Concerned with Union Bargaining Bill," The Tribune (Ames, IA), March 27, 2008, B4.

Image from http://papundits.wordpress.com/2011/01/07/spending-cuts-national-security-more/

 

Image_ownersmanual2011-01-07-digest-cartoon-1

 

For more information or to purchase Restoring Education Central to American Greatness:

http://bookstore.iuniverse.com/Products/SKU-000185969/Restoring-Education-Cen...

http://www.amazon.com/Restoring-Education-Greatness-Principles-Liberated/dp/1...

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/restoring-education-david-a-norris/1103308053...

 

For previous blog entries on similar topics, simply go to this site and scroll down:

http://davidanorris.posterous.com/

 

Like on Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Restoring-Education-Central-to-American-Greatne...

 

Revisionism In the Soft Sciences

The collective political power of teacher unions, established by legislative and judicial acceptance, has enabled them to prevent curriculum control by elected school boards and superintendents hired to administer the system.  

 

Even though tenure laws enable teachers in the hard sciences (math, engineering, chemistry, physics, and so forth) to get by with dumbed down approaches to learning, the harm done is less than in the soft sciences.  Whether or not the researcher or teacher is a Bible-believer, the conclusions drawn in the hard sciences tend to be the same because proof is determined by observing consistently repeatable and immutable laws of creation's nature.  Misrepresentations are typically exposed and rejected as a result of our free enterprise system, which thrives on competition and the consumer's right to choose from products that come from the hard sciences.

 

In contrast, conclusions drawn in the soft sciences--such as literature, news editing, education strategies, political science, life-origins biology, history, law, social studies, arts, and ecology--differ starkly between creationist and evolutionist instructors.  The differences include the acceptance or rejection of moral certainties, an honest or dishonest rendition of history, and respect or disregard for parental authority and for the Constitution itself.  When an evolutionist instructs a student year after year, the student's ability to separate truth from non-truth and to appreciate the value of moral law and the traditional family becomes seriously impaired.

 

Not surprising, an Ames, Iowa, public school board member complained:  "I know the Legislature likes to talk about local control, but what I am getting [at] is that … we really don't have local control."*

97vmk

*Teresa Kay Albertson, "School District Cuts Not as Bad as Feared," The Tribune(Ames, IA), January 18, 2009, A3.

Image from http://www.jeffersonquotes.com/2012_04_01_archive.html

 

For more information or to purchase Restoring Education Central to American Greatness:

http://bookstore.iuniverse.com/Products/SKU-000185969/Restoring-Education-Cen...

http://www.amazon.com/Restoring-Education-Greatness-Principles-Liberated/dp/1...

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/restoring-education-david-a-norris/1103308053...

 

For previous blog entries on similar topics, simply go to this site and scroll down:

http://davidanorris.posterous.com/

 

Like on Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Restoring-Education-Central-to-American-Greatne...

 

The Emergence of Teacher Tenure Law

Teacher tenure law was brought from Europe to America with the founding of the American Association of University Professors in 1915.  Their first president, Professor John Dewey (1859-1952) was a published atheist.  Dewey reminded conferees, "To have failed to undertake these initial demands would have been cowardly."*

 

The abuse of academic freedom and teacher tenure guarantees is rooted in the old European secular philosophy.  John S. Brubacher and Willis Rudy point out that, when Darwinian advocates coupled their "origin and destiny of man" theory with the authoritarianism of "German graduate methods [faculty independence]… academic freedom became a cause celebrate [highly controversial]."**  According to Darwinian militants, "There is no fixed limit or perfect form of knowledge and, that on the contrary, truth is always tentative."***

 

The harmful impact of teacher tenure guarantees arises from the use of law (government power) to shelter teachers from accountability to the public for what they teach.  "The obligations of the teacher are direct to truth, and the teacher who, in order to please anybody, suppresses important information, or says things he knows are not true, or refrains from saying things that need to be said in the interest of truth, betrays his calling and renders himself unworthy to belong to the company of teachers."****

 

John Dewey is recognized as a key leader of the Teachers Union, Local 5, which was organized in 1916 as an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) in New York City.  The union's principal target was the repeal of the Lusk Laws, statutes that allowed for the revocation of a teacher's license "if he is not of good moral character--or if by act or utterance he shows that he will not support the Constitution of the State or of the United States of America.*****

 

This belligerent breed of social engineers gradually pushed its way into the leadership of government-administered education.  The group also included Professor John Dewey.  He was the first president of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and was one of the signers of the first Humanist Manifesto.  He also served as honorary president of the National Education Association (NEA) after it came under leftist control.

 

These authoritarians demand taxpayer-funded tenure guarantees, the means to finance and empower their war against citizen self-rule and liberty.  To achieve their goal, they must have the freedom to turn the minds of students away from the beliefs of their parents and traditional American values.

 

Image_nea_radicalunion-295x300

*John S. Brubacher and Willis Rudy, Higher Education Transition (New York: Harper and Row, 1958), 310.

**Ibid., 296.

***Ibid., 306.

****W. T. Couch, Academic Freedom (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 1995), 1; quoted at a conference titled "Fifty Years After Russell Kirk's Academic Freedom:  The Future of the Liberal Arts in America," Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, Michigan, February 2-6, 2005.

*****Kheel Center for Labor Management, Teachers Union of the City of New York. Records, 1921-42, Collection Number: 5445, Cornell University Library, Ithaca, NY, http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/EAD/htmldocs/KCL05445.html

Image from http://www.reflector.com/greenville-news-board/nc-public-school-teacher-gives...

 

 

For more information or to purchase

Restoring Education Central to American Greatness:

http://bookstore.iuniverse.com/Products/SKU-000185969/Restoring-Education-Cen...

http://www.amazon.com/Restoring-Education-Greatness-Principles-Liberated/dp/1...

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/restoring-education-david-a-norris/1103308053...

 

For previous blog entries on similar topics, simply go to this site and scroll down:

http://davidanorris.posterous.com/

 

Like on Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Restoring-Education-Central-to-American-Greatne...

 

 

Earl Warren Court of 1953-1969

The harm that has resulted from the activist Earl Warren Court (Supreme Court 1953 - 69) is beyond measure.

 

"On August 7, 1956, the Senate Subcommittee on Internal Security held a hearing on the 'Limitation of Appellate Jurisdiction of the United States Supreme Court' [arising from decisions by the Warren Court] at which Senator William E. Jenner testified:  'There was a time when the Supreme Court conceived its function to be the interpretation of the law.  For some time now, the Supreme Court has been making law--substituting its judgment for the judgment of the legislative branch.  We witness today the spectacle of a Court constantly changing the law, and even changing the meaning of the Constitution, in an apparent determination to make the law of the land what the Court thinks it should be.'  Echoing the testimony of others, Senator Jenner continued:  'The Senate was wrong.  The House of Representatives was wrong.  The Secretary of State was wrong.  The Department of Justice was wrong.  The State legislatures were wrong.  The State courts were wrong.  The prosecutors, both Federal and State, were wrong.  The juries were wrong.  The Federal Bureau of Investigation was wrong.  The Loyalty Review Board was wrong.  The New York Board of Education was wrong.  The California bar examiners were wrong…  The Ohio Committee on Un-American Activities was wrong.  Everybody was wrong except the attorneys for the Communist conspiracy and the majority of the United States Supreme Court.'"*

 

As long as the court fails to restore the First Amendment, intended to prevent, among other things, establishment of government employment guarantees, radical government teachers will continue to rip into the moral fabric of the American mind.  The Ten Commandments, featured on the walls of the US Supreme Court Building, will continue to be found and removed from schools and other public buildings throughout the nation.  Although this is being vigorously protested, American foundations in God-honoring faith were largely absent from the new Visitor Center that has now become a gateway to the Capitol Building in Washington DC.  Even the words "religion and morality" were stripped from the education mandate of the Northwest Ordinance displayed in the Visitor Center.**

 

The war against the Judeo-Christian foundation for American law, self-government and the spirit of liberty extends beyond the censorship of American history and foundational American beliefs from public school textbooks.  No nation, however great, can withstand the politicization of the soft sciences that comes with the establishment of teacher union tenure laws.  "All power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."***  Perhaps the greatest damage has been the loss of quality education taught unabashedly by pro-family, pro-life and pro-American teacher majority.  Good teachers simply submit or leave the profession.  The soft sciences in schools saddled by tenure laws are not the only victim.  Student abilities in the hard sciences have suffered.****

 

Judicialactivism

*Phyllis Schlafly, The Supremacists:  The Tyranny of Judges and How to Stop It, Dallas, TX:  Spence Publishing Company, 2004, p. 108.  This highly recommended book may be purchased at http://www.eagleforum.org/psr/2004/june04/psrjune04.html

**http://www.onenewsnow.com/Journal/editorial.aspx?id=315560

***John Dalberg, Letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, an English historian refuting the dogma of papal infallibility, April 3, 1887.

****http://articles.cnn.com/2009-08-25/us/students.science.math_1_math-and-scienc...:US

Image from http://worldcities.bloguez.com/worldcities/1015346/Deadwood

 

http://davidanorris.posterous.com/

http://www.facebook.com/restoringeducationcentraltoamericangreatness

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002512790358

 

For more information or to purchase Restoring Education Central to American Greatness:

http://bookstore.iuniverse.com/Products/SKU-000185969/Restoring-Education-Cen...

http://www.amazon.com/Restoring-Education-Greatness-Principles-Liberated/dp/1...

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/restoring-education-david-a-norris/1103308053...

 

For previous blog entries on similar topics, simply go to this site and scroll down:

http://davidanorris.posterous.com/

 

Like on Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Restoring-Education-Central-to-American-Greatne...

 

A Celebration of Liberty

"Be it remembered, however, that liberty must at all hazards be supported … cannot be preserved without a vernal knowledge among the people…  And the preservation of the means of knowledge among the lowest ranks, is of more importance to the public than all the property of all the rich men in the country.  The people … have a right, from the frame of their nature, to knowledge, as their great Creator, who does nothing in vain, has given them understandings, and a desire to know."*  This is from the 1765 Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law, by John Adams.  He was a devout Christian, a Harvard-educated lawyer and a delegate to the First and Second Continental Congresses that adopted the Declaration of Independence.  He was the second president of the United States.  Adams' wife, Abigail, has been recognized as a Founding Mother because of her influence on behalf of women's rights.  Their son, John Quincy Adams, was the sixth president of the United States.

 

Are we as citizen taxpayers willing to forfeit our liberty, the teaching of essential knowledge, as a courtesy to union bosses and tenured secular militants who have rejected American history, the traditional family, public morality and representative government?  AS EDUCATION GOES, SO GOES A NATION.

 

On July 3, 1776, John Adams wrote the following to his wife, Abigail:  “The second day of July 1776 will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America.  I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival.  It ought to be commemorated as the Day of Deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty.  It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations from one end of this continent to the other from this time forward forever more” (cited by David McCullough, John Adams, New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2001, 130).

 

On July 4, 1787, consistent with the nationwide custom, Philadelphia celebrated the Declaration of Independence with bell ringing, marching with fife and drums, the salute of guns and speeches.  It was Wednesday, and the constitutional delegates had taken the day off.  That "The Grand Convention may form a constitution for an eternal Republic!" was the toast of the day.  The Pennsylvania Herald declared, "With zeal and confidence we expect from the Federal Convention a system of government adequate to the security and preservation of those rights which were promulgated by the ever memorable Declaration of Independence."  

 

No more rule by pretender gods -- Samuel Adams is quoted as saying, "We have this day [Fourth of July] restored the Sovereign [the God of creation] to whom all men ought to be obedient.  He reigns in Heaven, and from the rising to the setting of the sun, let His Kingdom come."*


Fireworks2

*http://www.usachristianministries.com/us-history-quotes-about-god-and-the-bible/

Image from http://wallwatcher.wordpress.com/2008/07/04/

 

http://davidanorris.posterous.com/

http://www.facebook.com/restoringeducationcentraltoamericangreatness

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002512790358

 

For more information or to purchase Restoring Education Central to American Greatness:

http://bookstore.iuniverse.com/Products/SKU-000185969/Restoring-Education-Cen...

http://www.amazon.com/Restoring-Education-Greatness-Principles-Liberated/dp/1...

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/restoring-education-david-a-norris/1103308053...

 

For previous blog entries on similar topics, simply go to this site and scroll down:

http://davidanorris.posterous.com/

 

Like on Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Restoring-Education-Central-to-American-Greatne...

 

Tighten Up the Language

Let's tighten up the language and clear the air about the basics for public education.  The language of secular open-mindedness along with Darwinian origin and meaning of life have proven to be diabolical enemies of the rule of law.  The underpinning for the rule of law rests in the July 4, 1776 Declaration that gave birth to the United States of America.  All men "… are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. -- That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, -- That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of those ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."  The Declaration of Independence is universal and immortal in scope.  Along with the Declaration, the citizen's Bill of Rights (of which government employees cannot legitimately violate) added later to the Constitution provides the design.  The Constitution is the tool for implementing that design.

 

Appellate court judges need not bow down to atheistic secular legalese.  The impartial non-sectarian Supreme role of a Higher Authority, emphasized in the Declaration, is justifiably appropriate when writing a court opinion.

 

It is needful that we reject the spirit of rebellion and enjoin the spirit of truth that empowers man to storm the strongholds of evil.  It is spiritual wisdom that enabled this nation to become the most blessed civilization in history.  The restoration of spiritual glory--the potential to reassert our culture's values of freedom, education, prosperity and truth--is at hand.

 

Using twisted renderings of the Bill of Rights, leftist lawyers and tenured radicals in education have forced Americans--good teachers, as well as the citizen majority--into submission.  They terrorize by denigrating the reputation of teachers who dare to disagree and endangering the financial solvency of those who must hire expensive lawyers to defend traditional American values.  Secular militants have shut down ideological competition by preventing religious, political and academic freedom on many campuses throughout the nation.  Militants who oppose citizen self-reliance and limited government in America are effectively muting the voices of tens of millions of concerned citizens.

 

Nea

Image from http://religiopoliticaltalk.com/category/politicspolitical-science/pundits-pe...

 

http://davidanorris.posterous.com/

http://www.facebook.com/restoringeducationcentraltoamericangreatness

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002512790358

 

For more information or to purchase Restoring Education Central to American Greatness:

http://bookstore.iuniverse.com/Products/SKU-000185969/Restoring-Education-Cen...

http://www.amazon.com/Restoring-Education-Greatness-Principles-Liberated/dp/1...

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/restoring-education-david-a-norris/1103308053...

 

For previous blog entries on similar topics, simply go to this site and scroll down:

http://davidanorris.posterous.com/

 

Like on Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Restoring-Education-Central-to-American-Greatne...

 

 

Old European Secular Philosophy vs Education

There are more sure marks of authenticity in the Bible

than in any profane history.*

Sir Isaac Newton

 

Backed by the 1947 Supreme Court decision Everson v. Board of Education, militant objectors to American principles and the American creed bullied their way into controlling the atmosphere of American public schools.  Instead of upholding their oath to abide by the Constitution, judges rule by "incalculable and changeable decrees."  Rule by men replaced government by established law.  The reasoning behind their decision reflects the old European secular doctrine of open-mindedness for dumbing the people down and transforming society.  Instead of being umpires, unelected judges are trampling on the sacred rights of the people by legislating superior rights for the enemies of responsible liberty.

 

A report by the nonpartisan Commission on Excellence in Education remains the premier American study of problems in public education.  It states:  "The educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people… If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war."  The report laments "the deconstruct of the moral and spiritual strengths which knit together the very fabric of our society."**

 

Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores have declined, and today the United States ranks academically near the bottom of the world's industrialized nations.  College seniors have no better grasp of general cultural knowledge than did high school graduates in the 1950s.  The average correct responses for modern college seniors on a series of questions was 53.5 percent, compared to 54.5 percent of high school graduates in 1955 (survey by Zogby International, April 2002, for the Princeton, New Jersey-based National Association of Scholars, presented by NAS President Stephen H. Balch in December 2002).

 

In the fall of 2005, researchers at the University of Connecticut's National Civic Literacy Board conducted a survey of some 14,000 freshmen and seniors at fifty colleges and universities.  Students were asked sixty multiple-choice questions to measure their knowledge in four subject areas:  American history, government, international relations and market economy.  Seniors, on average, failed all four subjects and their overall average score was 53.2 percent.***

 

The abuse of academic freedom and teacher tenure guarantees is rooted in the old European secular philosophy.  John S. Brubacher and Willis Rudy point out that, when Darwinian advocates coupled their "origin and destiny of man" theory with the authoritarianism of "German graduate methods [faculty independence]… academic freedom became a cause celebre [highly controversial]."   According to Darwinian militants, "There is no fixed limit or perfect form of knowledge and, that on the contrary, truth is always tentative" (John S. Brubacher, and Willis Rudy, Higher Education Transition, New York:  Harper and Row, 1958, 296 and 306).

 

"I believe that religion is the only solid base of morals and that morals are the only possible support of free governments.  Therefore education should teach the precepts of religion and the duties of man towards God."

Gouverneur Morris

Signer of the Constitution

 

Claybennett

 

 

 

*Halley's Bible Handbook authored by Henry H. Halley and published by Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI (republished since 1924).

**A Nation at Risk, the National Commission on Excellence in Education, April 26, 1983, http://www2.ed.gov/pubs/NatAtRisk/risk.html

***The Coming Crisis in Citizenship:  Higher Education's Failure to Teach America's History and Institutions, 09/26/2006, Intercollegiate Studies Institute's National Civic Board Report.  See http://content.usatoday.com/community/tags/topic.aspx?req=tag&tag=Interco...

Image from:  http://pleated-jeans.com/2012/03/23/funny-pic-dump-3-23-12/

 

For more information or to purchase Restoring Education Central to American Greatness:

http://bookstore.iuniverse.com/Products/SKU-000185969/Restoring-Education-Cen...

http://www.amazon.com/Restoring-Education-Greatness-Principles-Liberated/dp/1...

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/restoring-education-david-a-norris/1103308053...

 

For previous blog entries on similar topics, simply go to this site and scroll down:

http://davidanorris.posterous.com/

 

Like on Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Restoring-Education-Central-to-American-Greatne...

 

 

Old European Secular Philosophy vs Family

Karl Marx attacked the family.  He appealed to academia and others for the "abolition of the family."  "The bourgeois clap-trap about the family and education, about the hallowed correlation of parent and child" is "disgusting."*

 

Dr. John Dewey, a proponent of teacher employment guarantees at taxpayer expense, is the acknowledged father of modern-day public education.  He was an admirer of Margaret Sanger, Humanist of the Year in 1967 and the founder of Planned Parenthood.  Sanger also founded the publication The Woman Rebel, whose slogan was "No Gods! No Masters!"  Her first edition denounced marriage as a "degenerate institution" and sexual modesty as "obscene prudery" (George Grant, Legacy of Planned Parenthood, Wolgemuth & Hyatt Publishers, Inc).

 

Judith Stacey, a highly regarded member of the public school primary and secondary education faculty at the University of California (Davis campus), declared:  "The 'family' is not here to stay.  All democratic people, whatever their kinship preferences, should work to hasten its demise" ("Rights and Rites," The Washington Times, March 29 1993). Since the Supreme Court decision Everson v. Board of Education in 1947, tenured radical teachers have sought to take God out of education and ultimately turn the tide of education against the family.  

 

It is the collective political power granted to monopoly teacher unions and the establishment of tenure laws that empower the enemies of the family, human dignity, and self-government.  Tenured secular authoritarians have achieved control of curriculum used in the soft sciences and the study of law taught in government schools.  The weapons they use to enforce what must be taught include the ridicule and denigration of the reputation of anyone who dares to challenge leftist political correctness.  The use of the word "science" is code for their atheistic human origins, meaning and purpose; "diversity" is code for demanding the approval of evil life practices; and "social justice" is code for using government power to force the transfer of wealth from the thrifty to their own block of voters. 

 

"These [atheist] teachers must embody the same selfless dedication as the most rabid fundamentalist preachers, for they will be ministers of another sort, utilizing a classroom instead of a pulpit to convey humanist [atheistic] values in whatever subject they teach, regardless of the education level--preschool, daycare or large state university.  The classroom must and will become an area of conflict between the old and the new--the rotting corpse of Christianity" (The Humanist, January/February, 1983).

 

The change in the American family since the 1947 Supreme Court decision in Everson v. Board of Education, teacher unionization and tenure law has led to a colossal increase in family breakdown (See April 6 2012 blog entitled "Public Education Shuns Reality").

 

 

Every thinking man, when he thinks, realizes that the teachings of the Bible

are so interwoven and intertwined with our whole civic and social life that it would be literally, I do not mean figuratively, but literally impossible for us to figure what the loss would be if these teachings were removed.  We would lose all the standards by which we now judge both public and private morals;

all the standards toward which we, with more or less resolution,

strive to raise ourselves.**

Theodore Roosevelt

Teddy_roosevelt_and_family

President Theodore Roosevelt and Family

1903

 

 

*Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, 1848, http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/classics/manifesto.html

**http://www.prayerforceone.com/hailtothechief.asp

Image from http:  http://marshallmatlock.com/tag/yosemite/

 

For more information or to purchase Restoring Education Central to American Greatness:

http://bookstore.iuniverse.com/Products/SKU-000185969/Restoring-Education-Cen...

http://www.amazon.com/Restoring-Education-Greatness-Principles-Liberated/dp/1...

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/restoring-education-david-a-norris/1103308053...

 

For previous blog entries on similar topics, simply go to this site and scroll down:

http://davidanorris.posterous.com/

 

Like on Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Restoring-Education-Central-to-American-Greatne...

 

 

The Dearth of Freedom in Public Education

Continued reliance on the promise of reforms made by government education professionals simply give tenured radicals more time to dumb down our most precious resource and engineer the "transformation of society."

 

Milton and Rose Friedman pointed out in their book Free to Choose, published in 1980, that "The education, or rather the uneducation, of [all children in public schools but most harmfully] black children from low income families … [is a] disaster area in education and its most devastating failure."  The Friedmans continue:  "More than four decades ago Walter Lippmann diagnosed it as 'the sickness of an over-governed society,' … the exercise of un-limited power by men with limited minds and self-regarding prejudices is soon oppressive, reactionary, and corrupt, … that there are no limits to a man's capacity to govern others and that, therefore, no limits ought to be imposed upon government …  For schools, this has taken the form of denying many parents control over the kind of schooling their children receive.*

 

The radical minority boastfully proclaims their authoritarian credentials and warns opponents that "Sixty-seven countries' national academy of sciences (including the US National Academy of Science) signed the Inter-academy Panel's Statement on the Teaching of Evolution."  The truth is that it was a radical minority in those countries that have "signed" the document.**

 

Albert Einsten (1879-1955) was not stamped by the Darwinian craze.  He is thought to be among the most highly revered scientists of the twentieth century.  Although not a Christian, he recognized the impossibility of a non-created universe.  The Encyclopedia Britannica says of Einstein:  "Firmly denying atheism, Einstein expressed a belief in 'Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the harmony of what exists.'  He once remarked to a young physicist:  'I want to know how God created this world, I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element.  I want to know His thoughts, the rest are details.'  Einstein's famous epithet on the 'uncertainty principle' was 'God does not play dice.'  A famous saying of his was 'Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind" (for more details search Famous Scientists Who Believed in God).

 

The pseudoscience of evolution rests on Darwin's book Origin of the Species.  Darwin's theory about the origin of life is both unprovable and illogical.  Dr. Soren Lovtrup, a non-Biblicist scientist and author, declares:  "Believe that one day the Darwinian myth will be ranked the greatest deceit in the history of science."***

 

Adam Sedgwick, one of Charles Darwin's professors at Cambridge University, took immediate issue with Darwin's book Origin of the Species.  Sedgwick told his former student that it "greatly shocked my moral taste" and elaborated in a passage that proved prophetic:  "There is a moral or metaphysical part of nature as well as a physical.  A man who denies this is deep in the mire of folly.  'Tis the crown and glory of organic sciences that it does thro' final cause, link material to moral; …  You have ignored this link; and, if I do not mistake your meaning, you have done your best in one or two pregnant clauses to break it.  Were it possible, which, thank God, it is not, to break it, humanity in my mind would suffer a damage that might brutalize it--and the human race into a lower grade of degradation than any into which it has fallen since its written record tells us of its history."****

 

When collective bargaining unions had a monopoly for supplying railroad industry workers, the opportunity for truckers to compete by hauling freight gave the public an option and stopped costly exploitation by railroad employee unions.  Also, employee unions dominated the auto industry and cars were poorly made.  It was competition from the manufacturers of foreign-made cars that restored quality to automobiles made by American auto manufacturers.  And now at least two American auto manufacturers have been forced into bankruptcy or government takeover because of government-established unions that demand unreasonable wages for autoworkers.

 

When Medieval European religious authoritarians achieved control of education in the Roman Catholic Church, it was competition sparked by the martyrs (the offended protesters were themselves Catholics) that brought about the great Reformation and gave the masses freedom from the despotic education monopoly.

Life_lib_and_pur

 

*Milton and Rose Friedman, Free To Choose (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980), 151.

**State of Washington, Kitsap Herald, July 22, 2006, A4.

***Dr. Soren Lovtrup, Darwinism: The Refutation of a Myth (New York: Croom Helm, 1987), 422.

****Adam Sedgwick (1785-1873), http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/sedgwick.html

 

Image from http://stonescryout.org/?cat=54

 

For more information or to purchase Restoring Education Central to American Greatness:

http://bookstore.iuniverse.com/Products/SKU-000185969/Restoring-Education-Cen...

http://www.amazon.com/Restoring-Education-Greatness-Principles-Liberated/dp/1...

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/restoring-education-david-a-norris/1103308053...

 

For previous blog entries on similar topics, simply go to this site and scroll down:

http://davidanorris.posterous.com/

 

Like on Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Restoring-Education-Central-to-American-Greatne...

 

Posterous theme by Cory Watilo