A generation degenerates; Education is the "core" to healing a nation

It is the word standards that, frankly, must take center stage. In education, the whole concept of developing national standards has been a driving force for decades. That a cadre of professional educators can tax their brains to write reams of documents detailing nebulous concepts of what every student must learn to become "fully rounded" is, on its face, irrational. From the start, the contradiction appears in the creation of a whole discipline called "Education." This is being written from the perspective of a teacher with a Masters degree in the field of "Education" who has taught Ed majors at university. In order to receive the diploma, it took compiling dozens of credits in learning styles, project development, class management, application of the US Code (didn't know you needed to be a lawyer, did you), theory (many that make no sense such as Feminist education philosophy--for which there is no comprehensible definition other than pandering to emotion), quantitative and qualitative research (how to manipulate statistics), incorporating liberal attitudes to the exclusion of all conservative mores and, maybe a little bit about the graduate candidate's specialty subject. If this doesn't explain how the classroom has become a seething cauldron of emotionalism, nothing does, which brings this argument around to point out what must be changed about education in general--teacher training. Who and what sets these standards for creating a supposedly effective teacher? At the moment, the Department of Education (driven by teacher union lobbies) and its billions of dollars spent on creating national standards and grants for teachers and administrators to conduct studies and undergo further training otherwise known as indoctrination. Visit the DOEd website and hunt through the voluminous pages of both vague standards and grant opportunities. The latter offers only a fraction of grants for student programs, and those stress climate change studies in one fashion or another with the occasional math and technology subjects thrown in to spice things up. The standards adopted by states mostly echo the national standards in order for school districts to qualify to receive those senseless federal grants... senseless for the fact that they exist to keep administrators and educators in line by rewarding them with vacation time (training jaunts) and padding bank accounts.

A few paragraphs back, history is mentioned regarding the consequences incurred from lack of critical judgment, or any judgment at all that underlies curricula. Within the past century alone can be cited education's disregard of tens of millions of murders: Nazi Germany's Final Solution's extermination of Jews, disabled and homosexuals (6M+); Stalin's slaughtering political dissenters (40M), Mao's Great Leap Forward (45M), Pol Pot (3.3M, half the Cambodian population), etc. With Fidel Castro's death reported November 26, 2016, his legacy of executions and fatalities by other means on the small Caribbean island of Cuba is estimated at more than 100,000 during his bloody regime. These socialist and communist despots have been given a pass by modern educators and political leaders who laud them for promoting social justice (see Jesse Jackson, et al). Their preference is to demonize this nation's Founding Fathers, characterizing them as "white slave-owners." They overlook atrocities of history because that would detour from the new state syllabus of American self-hate. Shunting aside moral transgression in favor of "live and let live" policy, no matter how individually and socially destructive the practices, leads back into the very bowels of history and the accurately corroborated annals of the Bible. Over centuries, after Israel was settled into Canaan, the people strayed from God's standards and accepted the idolatrous customs of the previous residents. The idolatry committed by Solomon late in his life caused the split of his dominion, which had spread from Egypt to the Euphrates, all the surrounding nations of Africa and Arabia bringing yearly tribute.

The resulting two smaller states of Israel and Judah had king after king who refused to do what was "right in the sight of the Lord." Some in Judah followed their forefathers' faith but they ignored the many altars and groves outside of Jerusalem where much of the populace continued to sacrifice to other gods--Baal, Ashteroth, Molech to whom they threw their live children into the fire. A few kings, such as Jehoash (Joash 2 Kings 12), followed God and served His law (moral constructs) but didn't bother to do anything about the amoral practices outside the city. They allowed those traditions to continue and fester, undermining the core standards of ancient Israel and its vestige nation, Judah. Only one king, one leader in Israel and Judah's history, followed in the footsteps of David, a man "after His (God's) heart." 2 Kings 18:3 "And he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, according to all that David his father did." What this king, Hezekiah, did was remove and destroy all the altars in the high places (and on street corners in Jerusalem that his father, Ahaz, had built), and in the forests throughout the country. He refused to ignore the customs and traditions of other nations that, by acceptance, had destabilized Judah's government and sovereignty under his father's reign. These deceptive practices had grown into a self-loathing that spurned the freedom from Egyptian slavery to which God had led them. During Hezekiah's revival, Judah rebuffed the advances of Assyria (2 Kings 18 and 19) that had already carted off Israel's populace, transplanting them within its borders never to return to their homeland (the original Diaspora). It took repudiation of the amorality that had permeated Judah's social fabric (via their form of education, i.e. religious practices) in order to re-establish a cohesive, plentiful economy during his reign. But even that grand effort fell into disorder when his grandson returned to idolatrous practices that eventually destroyed the whole of the nation. This is just one of numerous chronicles that demonstrate the devolution of society when it succumbs to outside influence of standards (or lack thereof) that directly challenge its framework. In Judah, it was the worship of idols that encouraged self-indulgence to the point of reviling the founding and fabric of the nation. Today, it is the worship of education that endorses self-indulgence to the point of delegitimizing not only the fabric of the nation, but the individual's original nature. Lessons of the past are continually disregarded as better ways and new theories supplant them with amoral education that deconstructs the social order, leaving the new generations with no bearings to find their direction in a sea of so-called modernity. Lives are sacrificed on the altars of self-hate; the new religion of diversity instilling aversion to plain truth by accepting reconstituted facts. The only way to reverse this trend is by doing what Hezekiah did--remove the altars of education that seeds distraction, disillusionment, dissipation, discord, disruption and ultimately destruction of society. The national standards permeating schools from the top down with, ironically, no standards of social conduct are at the core of the upheaval every city is now experiencing. School choice is only a patch on the problem. It can't touch the fact that the foundation of education has already crumbled under the weight of the undisciplined diversity of nonjudgmental "free thinking." Teacher unions and elitist educators long ago turned a calling into a job with a paycheck and benefits. Returning curricula development and institution to local autonomy, funding provided by the communities, not union-lobbied federal oversight, is a necessity. This would entail the new Secretary of Education, with good conscience, to do all in her power to dissolve the department and put herself out of a job.