To the Editor: This is The Source of the Decline in our Current Educational System

Dear DailyClout,

Our country was formed around religious freedom. People came here so they could practice their religion and not have that practice denied.  In the mid-1960s schools were deemed to be “state,” and thanks to Madalyn Murray O’Hair and the courts, a separation of Church and “state” occurred. The basic assumption, wrongly assumed, is that public education is “state.” 

The existing problem to which “separation” was a solution was to prevent there from being a “State Religion”, such as existed in Europe.  With this separation, religion was removed in its entirety from public schools. This action in the 1960s essentially outlawed religion; and with that so went the only majority-supported sense of morals. Morals were invalidated, as they came from religion.  What is right and wrong conduct, then, had no agreement when religion left.  That vacuum opened the door to psychology.

Psychology came into public education and began teaching their concept of right and wrong. Diametrically opposed to religion, the subject of Psychology espouses that man is an animal; while religion, conceiving that man is or has a soul, believes him to be something greater than an animal. It’s from religion that moral codes are derived—right behavior and importance on things greater than the dictates of the flesh. With this, we also get concepts of integrity, honor, morals, and fidelity.  Psychology propagates confusion of identity and a validation of one’s desires for physical satiety, and relevantly, we get an emphasis on racial differences.

In this vacuum, and since the mid-’60s, our kids have been confused on the points of right and wrong, moral codes, and higher ideals. In its place is the teaching of sexual confusion, no right or wrong, no winners or losers, no purpose, no achievements.  Ethical values have been removed from schools. Children are taught that parents are the principal barrier to learning and growing up.

From the psychologists have come such things as Social Emotional Learning (SEL), Critical Race Theory (CRT), Sexual identity, 1619 project to name the main current issues.  Each of these is based in psychiatric think which negates the human soul.  “Humans are animals,” it says;  we cannot change; we cannot improve. We can only fight authority in defense of our right to be in the confused state we find ourselves in.  No matter what they say, or how they twist it, that is their bottom line.

The war goes back even further. One hundred years ago, Anna Freud identified education as the market for psychology. In 1965, concurrent with the removal of prayer from public schools, the situation was escalated by Lyndon B. Johnson’s war on poverty. That plan was designed by John W Garner, then the head of Health Education and Welfare and formerly from the Rockefeller Brothers Educational Fund, and before that the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. That plan was to bring government money into public schools and to introduce psychological testing as a means of proving each school’s use of federal money to justify receiving financial support.

This was the first entry of the federal government into public schools, and it was and is against the law.  Why? Per “20 U.S.Code 1232a-Prohibition against Federal control of education” ( U.S.Code /US Law/ LII / Legal Information Institute (cornell.edu), the government can have no part in the education curriculum.

Ostensibly, the effort was to control children’s thinking. On closer inspection, however, it would appear it was to build and protect the income of the psychologists, and more specifically the pharmaceutical companies. In John Garner’s “War on Poverty” it was required that schools administer standard testing, and this work was given to the Educational Testing Service (ETS), of which Garner had an interest.  A privately owned company that is manned by psychiatrists and psychologists with their strategic marketing run by an ex-Big Pharma exec, ETS receives this contract without competition (also against the law).

In order for public schools to get government funding they must test and meet an ETS standard. These tests have not only been used to teach our kids not to think, or to see right or wrong, but to also confuse them about what they want to achieve. This was the start of our schools losing application through shop classes, home economics, art, and music.  Over time these types of classes have gone away, and in their place we have classes devoted to the taking of the tests, with no other application intended.  

Application, as obvious as it may not seem, is how kids learn to think with a subject. Without it, we have only the parrot-like learning of facts. Devoid of application, kids’ thinking becomes that of the author of the textbooks they are tested on.  They might be able to quote facts, but solve a problem related to their own survival? Not so much. Instead, they learn to do what they’re told. Self-determinism, interest and purpose become irrelevant to the children.

SOLUTION

To target solely SEL, CRT, etc. does not get to the source of the problem.  It will slow the advancement of the psychological ideology, but these methods will be replaced by yet another method attacking the same points unless there is a more basic change.

*The correct target for the school problem is the illegal relationship and partnership of the federal government with the Educational Testing Service regarding public schools and their funding. This partnership needs to be dismantled. 

*The illegal actions involved in the 1965 federal government intrusion into public education, the violation of the laws then (and now) by the federal government and ETS, need to be investigated and appropriate legal action taken.

*Ideally education would be returned to the individual States, and even to their counties. The cost of education can be reduced while its effectiveness greatly increases. The US spends more money per student than any other country in the world and in educational standards ranks 30th out of 36 countries!

*A more basic study and legal strategy is highly recommended. The idea that schools are part of the ‘State’ should be further studied to find how to get religion back into schools while ensuring religious freedom is maintained for all religions.

*Lastly, and well worth noting, is that ‘application’ needs to be gotten back into the schools.  Shop classes, art, music, and other “how to” courses, in addition to the ‘more contemporarily interesting classes’ of computer-based subjects.

*It would be wise to go back to the major changes in the mid-60s and remove all the changes based on that thinking, as it has proven the main factor in the dwindling spiral of our educational system.  

Sincerely,

A Reader