AMERICAN EDUCATION: THE RACE TO THE BOTTOM DRIVEN BY POLITICAL CORRECTNESS
The progressive socialist democrats who dominate education have made political correctness a part of the educational mandate and curriculum. Spending more time, effort, and money in ensuring equal outcomes rather than allowing talented individuals to excel within the system. Even to the point of dumbing-down tests and pass/fail requirements to mask the massive failure of the educational system that produces decade after decade of functional illiterates. Students who cannot tell time without a digital watch, cannot use a library to research a paper off-line, and produce a term paper without the cut-and-paste ability of a computer.Not to mention requiring calculators to perform ordinary arithmetic. No wonder so many fast-food franchises and banks have installed change-making coin systems to avoid overtaxing the mental capacities of their workers.
When diversity trumps excellence in education …
NYC school cuts popular gifted program over lack of diversity: report
A popular gifted-student program at a New York City elementary school is getting the ax after school officials decided it lacked diversity.
"Our Kindergarten classes will be heterogeneously grouped to reflect the diversity of our student body and the community we live in," Miss McDonald said in the letter posted on Flickr.com.
In a follow-up letter sent to parents Monday, Miss McDonald wrote: "At PS 193, we believe that all children can learn and achieve high standards. We also know that we want all children at PS 193 to have equal access to high quality, challenging curriculum, and to have ample opportunities to master complex material and build academic and personal self-confidence. We also want our classes to reflect the diversity of our community. We believe we can have both: classrooms characterized by rigor and diversity." Source: NYC school cuts popular gifted program over lack of diversity: report - Washington Times
The progressive agenda of proportionality …
Success in America is not allocated in proportion to the class, race, national origin, ethnicity, color, age, gender, or sexual orientation of its population. But that is exactly what the progressive socialist democrats believe. That 9 people on the United States Supreme Court should mirror the numerical proportion of the greater American population – as if that were even possible. They, the progressive socialist democrats, promise every voting minority classification that their struggle will not be over until their class is proportionately represented everywhere. Like socialist unions, merit and native ability is trumped by seniority.
And, then there is the rhetoric …
“We also know that we want all children at PS 193 to have equal access to high quality, challenging curriculum, and to have ample opportunities to master complex material and build academic and personal self-confidence.”
If it were about high quality education and challenging curriculum, the teachers’ unions would be long gone – along with the bloated and over-paid bureaucracies that run most school systems. School boards would be more concerned with educating the children rather than promoting their own future political agenda and feathering their own nests by pandering to the special interests that insure pencils cost $1, books cost $50-$100, and that all of the necessary pensions and perks continue to be funded.
Bottom line …
Progressive socialist democrats and their pursuit of politically correct diversity insures that society manifests a downward spiral of mediocrity and ignorance as we educate our children to the “lowest common denominator” to insure that all students – regardless of their physical and intellectual abilities – are treated as “educational units” in a factory. And, when the outcomes are dismal and the product is a failure, it becomes times to, once again, lower the standards to insure diversity – but mostly to hide the failure of the teachers to do their jobs. Pretty much why the unions and their paid political hacks fear school voucher programs, testing for teacher competency in the subject matter they teach, and hold teachers accountable for the results they produce.
It is important to note that the teachers unions have been pushing pre-Kindergarten education to expand the ranks of unionized educational workers. Full well knowing that any pre-K education dissipates quickly and is functionally worthless in producing a superior student or a superior educational experience.
Does Prekindergarten Improve School Preparation and Performance?
The share of children attending early education programs in the United States has risen dramatically in recent years. Some 66 percent of four-year olds were enrolled in a pre-kindergarten center or a school-based preschool program in 2001. That's up from 23 percent thirty years earlier. Particularly striking, early education programs sponsored by school districts now serve one in seven four-year-olds. One frequent motivation for this early education is to insure that disadvantaged children with academic skill deficits are better prepared when they start school. But is it worth all the money and effort being spent in advancing children's school readiness?
Using a new rich source of data, researchers Katherine Magnuson, Christopher Ruhm, and Jane Waldfogel conclude in Does Prekindergarten Improve School Preparation and Performance? (NBER Working Paper No. 10452) that early education does increase reading and mathematics skills at school entry, but it also boosts children's classroom behavioral problems and reduces their self-control. Further, for most children the positive effects of pre-kindergarten on skills largely dissipate by the spring of first grade, although the negative behavioral effects continue. In the study, the authors take account of many factors affecting a child, including family background and neighborhood characteristics. These factors include race/ethnicity, age, health status at birth, height, weight, and gender, family income related to need, language spoken in the home, and so on. <Source>
It is time to do away with political correctness and the progressive socialist democrats at every level (local, state, and federal) who spout this nonsense to pursue their toxic agenda. Especially important is to remove progressive socialist democrats from Congress where they unconstitutionally push programs that deeply affect all Americans and the safety and security of America.
-- steve
“Nullius in verba”-- take nobody's word for it!
"Acta non verba" -- actions not words
“Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.”-- George Bernard Shaw
“Progressive, liberal, Socialist, Marxist, Democratic Socialist -- they are all COMMUNISTS.”
“The key to fighting the craziness of the progressives is to hold them responsible for their actions, not their intentions.” – OCS "The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane." -- Marcus Aurelius “A people that elect corrupt politicians, imposters, thieves, and traitors are not victims... but accomplices” -- George Orwell “Fere libenter homines id quod volunt credunt." (The people gladly believe what they wish to.) ~Julius Caesar “Describing the problem is quite different from knowing the solution. Except in politics." ~ OCS