by Bruce Shortt, J.D., Ph.D.

WELCOME TO THE CONTINUING COLLAPSE!

 

"Doing the Education Research that Illegal Aliens Won't Do

 Since 1997"

 

 

Pre-Election Issue 2008

 

 

    In its never ending effort to expose the consequences of disobedience in the education of our children, The Continuing Collapse has consistently pointed out that giving children to an aggressively anti-Christian government school system is not "just another issue" or "just another sin".

 

     As The Continuing Collapse has also pointed out, the secular left has a far better grasp of the relationship between education, what we think, and what we are than most of our pastors and our Christian "leaders".

 

   This "grasp-of-reality gap" from which so many pastors and Christian "leaders" suffer doesn't result from the obscurity of the relationship between how we are discipled and what we become. The Bible is quite clear about this. Most pastors and Christian "leaders" simply choose to ignore what the Bible plainly says.

 

    In the Video Corner we have a MUST WATCH interview with a former member of the KGB who explains, among other things, how influencing how children are educated was central to Soviet efforts for subverting a society.

 

How odd that Communists are quite clear on the centrality of education while most Christians are clueless.

 

THE VIDEO CORNER

 

    Here we have an extraordinarily instructive interview with Yuri Bezmenov, who is the son of a high-ranking Soviet officer and was a member of the elite propaganda arm of the KGB, known as the Novasti Press Agency.

 

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x32cxf_yuri-bezmenov

 

 

     But, But....(the education antinomian pastor might stutter), that interview is over 20 years old. How can it be "relevant" now?

 

    The answer is simple. Although marxists lost their Soviet sponsor, they didn't cease their activities within their host countries. In no area have they been more active than in education. Many of America's radicals from the 60's such as Obama's friend Wiliam Ayers became teachers and "professors of education".

 

    Here we have a story about a speech given by William Ayers in Venezuela in which he proclaims:  

 

“La educacion es revolucion!”

Despite all manner of stonewalling by Obama, Ayers and their allies, these commentators have doggedly pursued information about the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.

 

That’s the $150+ million “education reform” piggy bank substantially controlled in the nineties by Ayers and Obama, who doled out tens of millions of dollars to Leftist radicals — radicals who, like their patrons, understood that control over our institutions, and especially our schools, was a surer and less risky way to spread their revolution than blowing up buildings and mass-murdering American soldiers.

 

As Diamond observes, in a 2006 speech in Venezuela, with Leftist strongman Hugo Chavez looking on, Ayers exhorted: “Teaching invites transformations, it urges revolutions small and large. La educacion es revolucion!”

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NjY4YzdhMDBkZGQ3ZmU2MTUzYjdkMzc5ZjUzYmViZWM=

 

Unfortunately, there are still pastors telling people that "how you educate your children is not a moral issue" and the "how we educate our children is not something that should cause controversy within the church." With leadership like that, no wonder Christians are losing the culture wars.

 

 

AND JUST WHERE DOES THE GOVERNMENT SCHOOL EDUCATION ESTABLISHMENT STAND?

(On the side of a hard left social revolution)

 

 

Hundreds of educators have endorsed a letter opposing the "demonization" of Williams Ayers – the domestic terrorist who helped launch Barack Obama's poliltical career, and whose relationship with the Democratic presidential candidate continues to be major controversy – arguing that frequent reports of his involvement in domestic bombings are "designed to intimidate free thinking and stifle critical dialogue."

 

"We write to support our colleague Professor William Ayers, Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who is currently under determined and sustained political attack," reads the letter, available for endorsement at www.supportbillayers.org.

"The current characterizations of Professor Ayers – 'unrepentant terrorist,' 'lunatic leftist' – are unrecognizable to those who know or work with him," the letter continues....

 

In a Times interview published Sept. 11, 2001, Ayers said, "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough." He posed for a photograph accompanying the piece that shows him stepping on an American flag.

The Times also reported that when asked if he would rule out planting another bomb someday, Ayers responded, ''I can't imagine entirely dismissing the possibility.''

 

...The educators' letter also contends that teachers have a moral obligation to promote the free flow of ideas and that public criticism of Ayers serves as a warning that "anyone who voices perspectives and advances questions that challenge orthodoxy and political power may become a target."

 

Reports that characterize Ayers as a leftist or a terrorist, the letter claims, represent a "crusade" to "crush" the "inevitable clash of ideas" that follows when challenges to the status quo present "the possibility of change."

"All citizens, but particularly teachers and scholars, are called upon to challenge orthodoxy, dogma and mindless complacency, to be skeptical of authoritative claims, to interrogate and trouble the given and the taken-for-granted," the letter states. "Without critical dialogue and dissent we would likely be burning witches and enslaving our fellow human beings to this day."

 

The letter concludes: "We, the undersigned, stand on the side of education as an enterprise devoted to human inquiry, enlightenment and liberation. We oppose the demonization of Professor William Ayers."

http://worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=77278

 

For those interested in whom the players really are in this election season: http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/obamas_radical_revolutionits_a.html 

 

 

AND NOW WE RETURN TO NEWS ABOUT THE PAROCHIAL SCHOOLS THAT MOST CHRISTIAN CHILDREN ATTEND... 

 

Earth Worship in Government Schools:

 

The Environmental gods shall

have no Gods before them

 

A public school's decision to fold over a portion of a kindergartner's poster to hide an image of Jesus did not violate the youngster's right to free speech, a federal judge has determined.

 

Antonio Peck's teacher and school principal had "legitimate pedagogical concerns" when deciding to edit the boy's poster for a school display promoting environmental awareness, Northern District of New York Judge Norman A. Mordue ruled....

 

Those valid concerns of Antonio's teacher, Susan Weichert, and the principal, Robert Creme, were that parents at the Catherine McNamara Elementary School in Baldwinsville, outside Syracuse, N.Y., would think Weichert was teaching religion if they saw the image of Jesus on Antonio's poster about ways to protect the environment, according to Mordue...

 

"Assuming that Antonio's poster conveyed a religious viewpoint on the topic of how to save the environment, the Court concludes that plaintiff failed to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that defendants would have treated another poster with an equally non-responsive secular image, differently," the judge wrote.

http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202425035974&pos=ataglance

 

HIGHLY TRAINED EDUCATION PROFESSIONALS SUE TO SECURE RIGHT TO EXPRESS THEIR FAITH IN ‘THE MESSIAH' IN THE WORKPLACE

 

The New York City teachers’ union filed a federal lawsuit on Friday claiming that a policy banning political pins and signs [Obama pins and signs, of course] in schools violates teachers’ First Amendment rights by blocking them from political expression.

 

The lawsuit comes nearly two weeks after the Department of Education sent a memo to principals directing them to enforce the longstanding regulation, which requires that all school staff members show “complete neutrality” while on duty. The policy also prohibits teachers from using school property to promote a candidate.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/11/nyregion/11button.html?ref=education

 

 

Although Courses on "the Bible as Literature" Tend to give Educrats Attacks of "the Vapors", Obama as Literature is Just Fine

 

Over at RealDebateWisconsin Fred Dooley was contacted by the mother of a Racine Unified School District 8th grade student in Wisconsin public schools about an outrageous thing she found in her son's school textbook.

 

Apparently, in this textbook supposedly teaching about literature, one of the books being pushed as a perfect example of that subject is Barack Obama's memoir Dreams from my Father. That's right, a book by a current political candidate for president is being pushed on our children as "literature." It also seems probable from campaign donation records that a principle member of the publishing company is a large Obama donor.

 

One would think that focusing on the ideology of a politician currently running for president would be a bit over-the-top even for our extreme left leaning system of education in this country. But there it is anyway. The book even presents a photo of the Senator at a campaign rally with signs advertising his campaign website address to help better indoctrinate the kids.

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/warner-todd-huston/2008/10/14/obama-pushed-our-kids-lit-textbook

 

 

Our Highly Trained Education Professionals are in a Panic:

 

The No Child Left Behind Chickens are

Coming Home to Roost

 

 

    One of the absurdities of NCLB is that each state was allowed to set its own standards for what counts as "proficiency" in a subject. Not surprisingly, one of the first things that happened after the passage of NCLB was that states began lowering their standards to make sure they could meet the requirements of NCLB.

 

    Another absurdity of NCLB was the requirement that all children be proficient by 2014.

 

    Now our highly trained professionals find that they didn't lower standards enough to avoid being embarrassed.

 

SACRAMENTO — Prairie Elementary School had not missed a testing target since the federal No Child Left Behind law took effect in 2002. Until now...

 

Over all, the number of its students passing tough statewide tests had increased by more than three percentage points annually, a solid record.

But this year, California schools were required to make what experts call a gigantic leap, increasing the students proficient in every group by 11 percentage points. For the first time, Prairie, and hundreds of other California schools, fell short, a failure that results in probation and, unless reversed, federal sanctions within a year.

 

“And they’re asking for another 11 percent increase next year and the next, and that’s where I’m saying I just don’t know how,” Fawzia Keval, the school’s principal, said. “I’m spending sleepless nights.”

 

Across the nation, far more schools failed to meet the federal law’s testing targets than in any previous year, according to new state-by-state data. And in California and some other states, the problem traces in part to the fact that officials chose to require only minimal gains in the first years after the law passed and then very rapid annual gains later. One researcher likens it to the balloon payments that can sink homebuyers.

 

Part of the reason for the troubles was that the states gambled the law would have been softened when it came up for reauthorization in 2007, but efforts to change it stalled. This year Congress made no organized attempt to reconsider the law. With the nation facing urgent challenges, including two wars and economic turmoil, it could be a year or more before the new president can work with Congress to rewrite the law.

 

The law requires every American school to bring all students to proficiency in reading and math by 2014. When it was first implemented six years ago, it required states to outline the statistical path they would follow on their way to 100 percent proficiency, and about half set low rates of achievement growth for the first few years and steeper rates thereafter.

 

Here in California, which in 2002 had only 13.6 percent of students proficient in reading, officials promised to raise that percentage on average by 2.2 points annually from 2002 to 2007, but starting this year greatly accelerate the progress, raising the percentage of proficient students by 11 points per year through 2014.

Now that the time has come for that accelerated improvement, California schools are not keeping up.

 

This year, about half the state’s 9,800 schools fell short...

 

“Lots of schools are no longer going to be able to meet the law’s requirements,” Dr. Cardullo said. His study predicted that virtually every elementary school in California would fall short of the federal law’s expectations before 2014.

Why did California decide on six years of relatively slow achievement growth, followed by six years of extraordinary gains? Officials from many states told the Bush administration in 2002 that they needed time to write new tests and accustom teachers to them.

 

But the California state school superintendent, Jack O’Connell, said he also bet that Congress might change the law in 2007, perhaps by removing its 100 percent proficiency goal. “It’s true that was in the back of my mind when we negotiated our plan with the feds,” Mr. O’Connell said. “And I’d do the same thing again. I’m still hoping a new administration will change the law.”...

 

Schools that miss targets for two consecutive years are labeled “needing improvement” and face escalating sanctions that can include staff changes or closings. Partly because the law is identifying thousands of schools, however, few states have tried to radically restructure more than a few....

 

Ms. Spellings has fiercely defended the law’s requirement that all students achieve proficiency by 2014.

 

Among that provision’s most tenacious critics has been Robert Linn, a University of Colorado professor emeritus who is one of the nation’s foremost testing experts. He argued, almost from the law’s passage, that no society anywhere has brought 100 percent of students to proficiency, and that the annual gains required to meet the goal of universal proficiency were unrealistically rapid, since even great school systems rarely sustain annual increases in the proportion of students demonstrating proficiency topping three to four percentage points.

“If, no matter how hard teachers work, the school is labeled as a failure, that’s just demoralizing,” Dr. Linn said...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/13/education/13child.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin

 

Note the California strategy: Set up a path to proficiency with minimal improvements required in the early years in the expectation that Congress would move the goal posts before it would become embarrassing. In the meantime, inceasing amounts of federal cash will continue to flow in to the coffers of the educational establishment. So far, only the money part is working.

 

 

Perhaps All Isn't Lost:

 Our Highly Trained Education Professionals Can Always Cheat to Meet

Testing Standards

 

(But sometimes they get caught)

 

   Here we have a story in which a school turned in some too-good-to-be-true testing results coupled with an unusual number of erasures that eliminated wrong answers. The County sent in monitors and required a retest and - surprise, surprise - the scores dropped dramatically.

 

   Ah, but our ever resourceful highly trained educational professionals have come up with an explanation: the presence of monitors created a "hostile testing environment." Who could expect children to add 2 plus 3 correctly under those circumstances?

 

When Charleston County school officials monitored Sanders-Clyde Elementary School's testing process this year, they deprived students of snacks and breaks and created a stressful and uncomfortable atmosphere, according to teachers' firsthand accounts of the situation.

 

School district leaders say that's an inaccurate description of what happened, and they denied doing anything that would negatively affect the school's testing process.

 

Teachers' descriptions of the monitoring somewhat mirror former Principal MiShawna Moore's account of what took place. Both predicted test scores would drop, and they did, dramatically. The State Law Enforcement Division is investigating whether any foul play was involved at the downtown school, which had become a shining star in Charleston for its low-income students' achievement....

 

"The testing environment felt hostile, and this made everyone at Sanders-Clyde on edge," wrote Tanya Domin, guidance counselor.

 

The packet, however, does not explainother issues that triggered the state investigation, specifically a high number of eraser marks on the school's tests in 2007 and improbable one-year gains made by students that same year. Moore, who talked to The Post and Courier last week after repeated requests for an interview, could not explain the eraser marks or large one-year gains.

 

Moore also could not explain the gap between students' scores on a test similar to PACT and the PACT test itself. On the former test, students' scores were among the weakest in the county, and on the latter, they were among the strongest.

Moore has denied cheating, encouraging cheating or knowing of any cheating at the school.

 

Janet Rose, the district's executive director of assessment and accountability who oversaw the monitoring process, said she was surprised at teachers' reactions to the monitoring because it was totally unobtrusive.

 

Her staff deliberately sat in the back or sides of classrooms so they would not distract students, and Rose said no one was pressured to finish tests quickly.

Snacks and breaks were allowed, she said. Rose asked teachers to provide snacks in a more orderly way rather than constantly supplying students with food because that was distracting.

 

Rose also asked teachers to ensure breaks were more orderly because students were stopping at different times and possibly disrupting others, she said...

http://www.charleston.net/news/2008/oct/12/teachers_criticize_test_monitoring57613/

 

 

 And What Has the Example of Our Highly Trained Education Professionals and

their Really Swell Postmodern Curricula

Done for the Character of Children Institutionalized in Government Schools?

 

Surveys show that cheating in school — plagiarism, forbidden collaboration on assignments, copying homework and cheating on exams — has soared since researchers first measured the phenomenon on a broad scale at 99 colleges in the mid-1960s.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/13/opinion/13mon4.html?ref=opinion

 

Students have just figured out that if our highly trained education professionals can cheat, being honest can't be all that important. Besides, the curriculum tells them that there are no moral absolutes...

  

More Budget Woes in California:

 

The Good News Just Keeps On Coming

 

    The California education establishment is discovering that it isn't the only tax hog at the trough.

 

For Californians still reeling from this year's record budget standoff, it's deja vu, less than a month after the shouting died.

 

Fighting falling revenues, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is preparing a list of up to $3 billion in new budget cuts – and schools should prepare for the worst, school business officials warned this week.

 

"Cuts are coming," the California Association of School Business Officials said in a written statement to members. "How big is the question that begs an answer."....

Schools are potential budget-cutting targets for two reasons: They consume more than 40 percent of the state's general fund budget, and under Proposition 98, their guaranteed level of funding declines as state revenues fall.

 

Put simply, state officials could dip into school funding without suspending Proposition 98 if a deal were struck between Schwarzenegger and a majority of both legislative houses...

 

Jack O'Connell, state superintendent of public instruction, said new cuts would be devastating. Schools already are receiving about $2.5 billion less than they anticipated, according to the Department of Finance....

 

Kevin Gordon, a veteran education lobbyist, said he doubts that legislators would vote to cut school funding in midyear, but if they did, the scars would run deep.

"It would do monumental damage to schools because never again could they trust that they could plan on anything from one month to the next, let alone from one year to the next," Gordon said.

http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/1305437.html

 

Babies instead of retirement: Grandparents raising grandkids

  

    Could it have anything to do with how they allowed their children to be "discipled" in the government schools and by the media?

 

...2.5 million parents...For one reason or another...find themselves starting over and raising their own grandchildren. Of those 2.5 million grandparents, 1.8 million are single parents, and roughly one-fifth live in poverty. According to the U.S. Census even more grandparents — 6.1 million — don't serve as sole guardians of their grandchildren but still live with them and provide some level of economic support and child care.

 

I spoke with one grandmother, Virginia Linares, 61, about the struggles she faced when after raising six of her own children, she was asked to care for five of her grandchildren.

 

Linares and her husband, Carlos, have been married 40 years. They were given their first grandson, Frankie, 21 years ago when he was just a baby, after his mother was unable to support him financially. In 1993 another daughter left them 2-year-old Cory, saying they could care for him better than she could.

 

For Linares, having custody of the first two and raising them since they were babies was one thing. However, in 1998, Frankie's mother abandoned three other children, 10-year-old Brandon, 7-year-old Noel and 5-year-old Carlos, at the home of her aunt. The aunt then called Linares and she picked them up. That's when life got complicated.

http://blogs.chron.com/momhouston/2008/10/babies_instead_of_retirement_g_1.html

 

God is not mocked. This problem is going to get worse.

 

REMEMBER

 

1. Feel free to circulate The Continuing Collapse.

 

2. If you aren't hearing about at least some these government school problems from your pastor, why is he your pastor?

 

3. FRIENDS DON'T LET FRIENDS SEND THEIR CHILDREN TO GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS.

 

 

“Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm – but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.” T.S. Eliot