American education was visibly in decline in the 1950s.  The 1955 book Why Johnny Can’t Read by Jonathan Flesch was a bestseller and was already resisting the “whole language” approach to teaching reading, and it called for a return to phonics.  A recent book by a regular AT contributor, Bruce Deitrick Price, entitled Saving K–12: What Happened to Our Public Schools? How Do We Fix Them?, also bemoans the lack of phonics education and the new math.

On the ideological front, a 1953 book by James B. Conant, entitled Education and Liberty; The Role of the Schools in a Modern Democracy, emphasized that schools should focus on strong intellectual skills.  Although he was a strong advocate of public schools, which brought together students from all social classes, in this book, he expressed a belief that “it may well be that the ideological struggle with Communism in the next fifty years will be won on the playing fields of the public high schools of the United States.”

Thus, we see that two great concerns of the 1950s — that basic reading and math skills be retained and continuously improved, and that the USA through its schools would continue to reject communism — were great goals to be advanced.  Yet the exact opposite has happened: reading and writing skills have sharply declined, and the schools are hotbeds of leftist and communist thinking.  American social and political mores have been diluted or are being overturned in alarming ways since the 1960s, and this has been accompanied by a corresponding decline in the verbal and math skill sets of the students.  In short, “dumbing down” of students and leftism appear to be hand-in-glove processes.

Having been a student-teacher myself in the Philadelphia public schools, I knew how dramatically backward the schools had become.  In one class, I had asked the students who the president of the United States was, and the entire class mocked me for asking such a simple question.  “Of course, of course,” they jeered, “the president of the USA is Pres. Carter!”  When they stopped jeering, this young teacher threw a piece of chalk into the gutter of the blackboard and retorted, “OK — if you are so smart, who’s the vice president of the U.S.?”  Not one hand went up.  No one called out the answer.  There was only a stupefied silence.  There were four students in that 10th-grade class who literally were unable to write their names at the top of any classroom assignment, let alone write the classwork assignment.  They were in 10th grade and totally illiterate. 

Fast-forward fifteen years to a high school in Brooklyn, N.Y.  Its enrollment was 99%  students from Caribbean families, mostly from Jamaica and Haiti, but with some from Trinidad and Tobago, Grenada, and British Guiana, with a few from Africa (Nigeria and Ghana).  There were violence, truancy, and cutting of classes of epidemic proportions.  There were 18 full-time security guards and two full-time police assigned to the school. There were metal detectors and wanding of students for weapons when they entered the building.  Students would be lined up to enter the school as late as 11:00 A.M.

The high school was divided into three smaller “themed” high schools — one for Business and Technology, one for Science and Math, and one for the Humanities and Performing Arts.  The “small schools” movement is built in part around the idea of themed high schools as inherently motivating students by giving them a sense of a community of purpose.  But despite the “sense of purpose” supposedly being inculcated by the smaller themed high schools, students continued to be slashed by razors in the hallways, engage in fellatio (for example, in a stairwell), fight daily all over the school, and remain truant and absent in sky-high numbers.  One female student was shot in the leg when leaving school.  Teachers were encouraged by administrators to literally call students who were not regularly attending first- or second-period classes to wake them up.  (Alarm clocks were being turned off at an “alarming” rate.)

One of my students who was 19 years old and in 10th grade went over to a first-floor window and jumped out.  Another student refused to take her assigned seat until a piece of black, hardened gum (about ten years or more old) that was on the seat was removed.  Also, a respected colleague from Africa who had two masters’ degrees from French universities was removed from class for supposedly spitting at a student when he had merely spit out a piece of paper that had been thrown at him and had stuck on his lower lip.  Two other African-American teachers — one an attorney and another a retired naval officer — quit in disgust after only a few months in that environment.  The themed schools did not seem to be particularly motivating.

Now fast-forward another thirty years to the present opening of nine schools in NYC and the phony hoopla accompanying the opening.  One of the high schools will enable students not only to complete high school, but to gain an associate’s degree (two years of college) at the same time.  However, this educator taught in one such program at a two-year community college in NYC that was attended by high school students.  Some of the writing was at a fifth- to seventh-grade level, but this teacher was told that I could at most give one C+, and the rest of the grades had to be B- or higher.  When I did not follow that directive, I was not rehired.

Another new themed high school will be called the Motion Picture Technical High School.  One of those announcing the school said, “There is an industry that wants more diverse voices, there is an industry that is asking for more people of color and women to explore these potential career paths.”  Instead of promoting the skills to be taught, the announcement promotes race and sex identity.  So many of these schools should be called the “High School of Race and Gender.”  The focus of these creative endeavors is upon identity politics and not upon the subject or the skills needed.

Communism is built into society by a divide-and-conquer mentality, not by the unity of patriotism and staunch moral commitment to God and country.  The new schools recently announced in New York do not reflect that philosophy.  Students need a sense of unity that transcends race, sex, economic status, and religious affiliation (atheism is now posited by too many as a unifying force and religion as disunifying).  We must return to educational values that motivated the country before progressive philosophy became dominant, a time when skills, cooperation, moral values, and national unity were valued.

Image via Pxfuel.