Truth in love blog

The Continuing Collapse: March 2010

Tue, 9 Mar 2010 07:52:53 -0600

WELCOME TO THE CONTINUING COLLAPSE!

By Bruce N. Shortt, J.D., Ph.D.

Exposing Government Schools: The Youth Ministry of the State Church
of Secular Humanism

March, Anno Domini 2010

"Politics is the art of looking for trouble,
finding it, misdiagnosing it, and then misapplying the wrong remedies."
(Groucho Marx)  
Here richly, with ridiculous display,
The Politician's corpse was laid away.
While all of his acquaintance sneered and slanged
I wept: for I had longed to see him hanged.
(Hilaire Belloc)

WHY SHOULD YOU CARE ABOUT WHAT THE CONTINUING
COLLAPSE REVEALS?

At times The Continuing Collapse fears that you, Dear Reader, see TCC mainly as a source of dark amusement. TCC's purpose, however, is not to entertain, but to equip you to evangelize on behalf of Christian education and to be a prophetic voice on education in your church and community.

Our collective ministry is to help families and churches return to a Biblical understanding of education so that Christians will rescue their children from the dark and decaying government school system. This, in turn, will bring reformation to our families, churches, communities, culture, and country and repentance to the government school tares in our midst.

Remember, a child's soul is a terrible thing to waste...

Even big media guys like Glen Beck are beginning to talk about the rampant pathologies of the government schools. If you missed Beck's recent program titled "What are your kids learning?", here's a link:
http://www.watchglennbeck.com/video/2010/March/Watch-The-Glenn-Beck-Show-March-5-2010/

Now, if you listened very carefully Beck even says at one point "sell your car" and get your kids out. It goes by in a flash, and there is also some blather about calling your highly trained education professionals, but Beck has now timidly stuck his toe in the water regarding the only real solution to the problem.

As you will find IF you but persevere to the end of this month's TCC, chaos will soon be upon the government school system. In fact, the chaos is being organized.

Please use the information in TCC to help others understand the times so they will rescue their children and work to defeat bond levies.

ONCE MORE INTO THE BREACH, DEAR FRIENDS, ONCE MORE...

Henry The Fifth Act 3, scene 1, 1–6

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikynTH9oJg8&feature=related

Every month The Continuing Collapse is faced with a sisyphean task. No sooner is a draft completed of an evening than the next morning journals, newspapers, books, and web-browsers innundate The Continuing Collapse with a torrent of yet more compelling material illustrating the irrepressibly degenerate and ridiculous folkways of our highly trained professionals.

Thwarted from completion, like King Henry before the walls of Harfleur, The Continuing Collapse again and again urges itself forward redrafting until the measure of the month in government education has been taken....which, this month, leads The Continuing Collapse to return to developments regarding a supperating wound within the very soul of Pharaoh's schools....

YOUR SCHOOLS AREN'T "DIFFERENT"...BUT THEY SURE ARE GOING TO BE...

Just over a year ago California's SB 777 made it mandatory that every government educational institution in California promote both gender confusion among children and the sodomite and other perverse lifestyles. The Continuing Collapse also predicted that this would spread rapidly.
So far, the expansion of government school promotion of sexually degenerate lifestyles has indeed been occurring rapidly, largely by stealth at the state and local levels. Now, with Kevin Jennings safely installed as the "Safe Schools" czar, the sodomites have come flouncing out of their closets in the federal government to seize an opportunity to mandate approval of their "lifestyle" across the country.
A homosexual congressman from Colorado has proposed a law critics say would give controversial federal school safety czar Kevin Jennings – a longtime homosexual-rights advocate – almost unlimited authority to mandate indoctrination in public schools at taxpayer expense...

Under the legislation by Democrat Rep. Jared Polis, Jennings "can create pro-homosexual programs and policies to their hearts' delight," Harvey wrote...Polis' proposal would provide special protections for students who claim they are discriminated against because of their "perceived sexual orientation." The bill would call down the wrath of the federal government on offenders by classifying "actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity" alongside race, color, sex, disability or national origin as factors on which protections are based...

"If a school receives federal funds from one of these agencies or any other, it is subject to the new rules that agency devises to conform to this bill," Harvey explained. "And states can be held liable for violations, so state governments will have incentives to put pressure for compliance on local schools." ...

"The purpose of this bill is not what is being stated, but is quite simply to mandate in public schools one acceptable viewpoint on the issue of homosexuality, using purported violence or harassment as the rationale, and the power of the feds as the hammer," Harvey said.
"The goal is to silence those who may warn about or object to student expression of homosexuality or gender confusion. Such warnings might literally save a child’s life."
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=124704

HIGHLY TRAINED EDUCATION PROFESSIONALS PROVIDE A SEX EDUCATION WORKSHOP AT
A PEP RALLY

When speaking with older, sane school prinicpals and other administrators, The Continuing Collapse not infrequently hears complaints about the teachers coming into government schools since the early 90's. Evidently, schools of education have omitted instructing aspiring highly trained education professionals that flip-flops, see-through blouses, bare mid-riffs, jeans, and pajamas are not appropriate attire for a work day at government school.
Ah, but time marches on. As The Continuing Collapse has repeatedly pointed out, in more recent years highly trained education professionals are increasingly "sexting" students and are also selflessly providing them with one-on-one sexual "mentoring".
Now it appears that principals will have to further instruct the highly trained education professionals under their supervision that acting out their sexual fantasies on one another at pep rallies in front of students is frowned upon.
Two teachers... took part in an eyebrow-raising lap dance at a high school pep rally...have been told not to report back to work.
The dance, caught on video by one of the 100 students at the Churchill High School rally, shocked many of the students, who say the teachers went too far.
The two teachers, one a man, the other a woman, were dressed as a cheerleader and a football player. The female teacher is seated on a chair with her legs spread as dance music plays.
The male teacher approaches her between her legs. He then straddles her and gyrates his hips. He bends over, while she slaps his bottom, his hips bouncing to the beat.
They then take it one step further.
While the female teacher throws her head back, the man dips his head down between her legs and simulates oral sex.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOplTIvAJaA
Readers who can explain how this represents a multigenerational government school negative feedback loop may go to the head of the class.

"MAN BITES DOG"

OR "THE WASHINGTON POST CALLS OUT
THE EDUCATION ESTABLISHMENT"

If the Washington Post allows George Will to tell the truth about the government school education establishment, why won't allegedly conservative pastors and Christian leaders tell the truth?

Only two things are infinite -- the expanding universe and Democrats' hostility to the District of Columbia's school choice program. Killing this small program, which benefits 1,300 mostly poor and minority children, is odious and indicative. It is a small piece of something large -- the Democrats' dependency agenda, which aims to multiply the ways Americans are dependent on government.

Democrats, in their canine devotion to teachers unions, oppose empowering poor children to escape dependency on even terrible government schools. Unions and their poodles say school choice siphons money from public schools. But federal money funds the D.C. program, so killing it denies education money to the District while increasing the number of pupils the District must support....

A century ago, Herbert Croly published "The Promise of American Life," a book -- still in print -- that was prophetic about today's progressives. Contemplating with distaste America's "unregenerate citizens," he said that "the average American individual is morally and intellectually inadequate to a serious and consistent conception of his responsibilities." Therefore, Croly said, national life should be a "school" taught by the government: "The exigencies of such schooling frequently demand severe coercive measures, but what schooling does not?"...

Subordination is dependency seen from above. Today, it is seen approvingly by progressives imposing, from above, their dependency agenda....
The dependency agenda is progressive education for children of all ages, meaning all ages treated as children.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/12/AR2010021204007.html

Speaking of the liberals' disdain for "unregenerate citizens", here we have an example of how our highly trained education professionals are doing their part in North Carolina to stamp out heretical Christian teaching about the most holy sacrament of the church of liberalism: abortion.

Charlotte, N.C., Feb 13, 2010. A proposed school textbook that describes Roe v. Wade as a ruling against government oppression of rights should be opposed by Catholics, the bishops of North Carolina have said. They argue the text implies that opposition to abortion is wrong...

They said the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction is considering a proposal for a revised textbook on Civics and Economics. The proposed text asserts that Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that mandated permissive abortion laws nationwide, is an example of the Supreme Court upholding rights “against oppressive government.”

If the text is approved, the bishops warned, children will be taught the textbook’s interpretation is the correct one
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/proposed_textbook_implies_abortion_opposition_is_wrong_n._carolina_bishops_warn/

GEORGIA'S HIGHLY TRAINED EDUCATION PROFESSIONALS
PERSECUTED FOR TRYING TO RAISE STUDENTS' SELF-ESTEEM

In a shocking display of insensitivity, someone in Georgia is insisting on characterizing tampering with student answer sheets as "cheating" rather than as "an emergency intervention to maintain and improve students' self-esteem".

From the New York Times:

ATLANTA — Georgia education officials ordered investigations on Thursday at 191 schools across the state where they had found evidence of tampering on answer sheets for the state’s standardized achievement test....
The order came after an inquiry on cheating by the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement raised red flags regarding one in five of Georgia’s 1,857 public elementary and middle schools...

The inquiry flagged any school that had an abnormal number of erasures on answer sheets where the answers were changed from wrong to right, suggesting deliberate interference by teachers, principals or other administrators.

Experts said it could become one of the largest cheating scandals in the era of widespread standardized testing.

“This is the biggest erasure problem I’ve ever seen,” said Gregory J. Cizek, a testing expert at the University of North Carolina who has studied cheating. “This doesn’t suggest that it was just kids randomly changing their answers, it suggests a pattern of unethical behavior on the part of either kids or educators.”

Professor Cizek praised Georgia for conducting the analysis, saying that many states do not monitor erasure rates to check for potential cheating...

“The amount of cheating is staggering,” said Ben Scafidi, the director of the Center for an Educated Georgia, which promotes education reform.

Dr. Scafidi said he was concerned that the state did not flag enough schools, and that the districts were being asked to investigate themselves.
He said he did not believe teachers could be responsible for a problem as widespread as the study indicated. “When you get even 5 percent of the classrooms that have cheating, you get the sense that there was orchestration from above,” he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/12/education/12georgia.html

This witch-hunt must be stopped before it gets out of hand. If Georgians addicted to aid-to-dependent-parents knew how badly their children are really doing academically, the nation would have to mobilize and deploy to Georgia an army of grief counselors and other practitioners of the psychiatric and psychological black arts to minimize the trauma.

By the way, the same story could be written about your state... and probably has.

SCHOOLS OF EDUCATION LEAD THE WAY...BUT WHERE?

The real story behind cheating scandals across the country is the conflict between what regular folks believe that children should be learning and what our highly trained education professionals want to teach.

For example, why should teachers and administrators allow their jobs and bonuses to be jeopardized by standardized tests that demand a knowledge of standard English rather than rewarding a solid grasp of Ebonics?

Here is Mike Adams reporting from inside the education establishment:

Some people call them “wiggers” but I just call them “idiots”. I used to wonder where they learned to be so racially condescending - presuming that dressing and “talking black” was a cool thing to do. But now I suspect that many of them have taken a course under Maurice Martinez, an education professor at UNC-Wilmington.

The class “Teacher, School, and Society” (EDN 200) is required of all education majors. When students take Maurice Martinez for the class they get a special treat. Maurice teaches them “Black English.”...

In his class, students are taught that “many African Americans speak and use a form of English that is somewhat different from Standard English.” They also learn that “the rules of Black American English are functional to those who use them.” ...

Maurice devotes dozens of pages of class notes to teaching white future teachers the specifics of Black English. It isn’t rocket science but it’s darned close. For example, Maurice teaches his students that while whites use terms like “This, that, them, these, and those” blacks often say “Dis, dat, dem, dese, and dose.” His notes say “There is a ‘duh’ sound substituted for the ‘th’ sound in the beginning of the word.

Actually, the “duh” sound was the student reaction to Professor Martinez’ lecture. There are some things so obvious that even education majors can learn them on their own.

Of course, if a white teacher is going to teach black kids, she needs to learn how to curse like they do. Here, Professor Martinez is brilliant. He informs us that while whites use the terms “mother” and “brother,” blacks often prefer to say “muvah” and “bruvah.” Maurice even gives a sample sentence: “My muvah cook grits.” But he cautions that when using profanity in conjunction with the “F-word” it is best to pronounce “mother” properly.
Well, I’ll be a muvah f----r! I mean, I’ll be a mother f-----r! ...

After sending their kids to study education at UNC-Wilmington, many parents may decide they want their tuition money back. Thankfully, Maurice teaches 18 ways to say “money” in Black English: Book, bread, cake, cash, cheddar, cheese, chump change, coins, crumbs, dough, eagle, fitty, green, jingle, loot, moola, scrilla, and Benjamin.

I recommend that parents, black or white, call UNC-Wilmington and say “I want my chump back, ‘cause Professor Martinez is whack!” Or, to make it less personal, they could say “I want my scrilla, ‘fo rilla!”...
http://townhall.com/columnists/MikeAdams/2010/02/15/wigger_please!

Martinez would give these girls an A+, and their parents are probably proud of what their girls are doing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=016C4sUj5_8

SPECIAL EDUCATION STUDENT NOW LEADS DETROIT PUBLIC SCHOOLS

(NO, TCC IS NOT MAKING THIS UP.)

Many readers of TCC no doubt think that much of what TCC says about the intellectual and moral level of today's highly trained education professionals is hyperbolic. Regrettably, all of it is fact-based.

For example, it was a former president of Columbia Teachers' College, not TCC, who first pointed out that those administering government schools are shown by standardized tests to be on average less academically capable than kindergarten teachers, who themselves are not academic luminaries.

Now let us go one more rung up the ladder from school administrators to school board members. What do we find? All too often school board members hold various degrees in education, which is one of the seven warning signs of being pedagogically "challenged". Indeed, TCC has provided many reports showing that decisions by school board members all too often reflect the general views of the education establishment.

But statistics and generalizations are bloodless things. Sometimes we need to see what "not as smart as the average kindergarten teacher" really means.

Here we have a story describing in small part what it means to have a former special education student in charge of one of the nation's largest government school systems. Before you think that Otis Mathes is an "exception", consider that he was elected as President of the Detroit School Board by a 10-1 vote. What does that say about virtually the entire board?

The president of the Detroit school board, Otis Mathis, is waging a legal battle to steer the academic future of 90,000 children, in the nation's lowest-achieving big city district.

He also acknowledges he has difficulty composing a coherent English sentence.

Here's a sample from an e-mail he sent to friends and supporters on Sunday night, uncorrected for errors of spelling, grammar, punctuation and usage. It begins:

If you saw Sunday's Free Press that shown Robert Bobb the emergency financial manager for Detroit Public Schools, move Mark Twain to Boynton which have three times the number seats then students and was one of the reason's he gave for closing school to many empty seats.

The rest of the e-mail, and others that Mathis has written, demonstrate what one of his school board colleagues describes, carefully, as "his communication issues." But if these deficits have limited Mathis, as he admits they have, they have not stopped him from graduating from high school and college...

His difficulties with language were spotted as early as fourth grade, when he was placed in special education classes. His college degree was held up for more than a decade because he repeatedly failed an English proficiency exam then required for graduation at Wayne State University...

He graduated from Southwestern High School in 1973 with what he says was a 1.8 grade-point average but was previously reported as a .98 average. After serving in the Navy, Wayne State placed him in a special program to help academically unqualified students move forward, on the G.I. Bill.
He stayed at Wayne for 15 years, as a student and a counselor, becoming a virtual "prisoner of Wayne," as he jokes, unable to graduate.

Here's another mass e-mail from Mathis, from Aug. 11, 2009:

Do DPS control the Foundation or outside group? If an outside group control the foundation, then what is DPS Board row with selection of is director? Our we mixing DPS and None DPS row's, and who is the watch dog?
http://www.detnews.com/article/20100304/OPINION03/3040437/Does-DPS-leader-s-writing-send-wrong-message#ixzz0hKmvVBtZ

Can anyone really say without laughing that Detroit's government schools are run for the benefit of children? Of course, for the children, Otis Mathes is no laughing matter.

FEELING SMUG BECAUSE YOUR CHILDREN DON'T ATTEND "INNER CITY" SCHOOLS
WITH "TROUBLED YOUTH" ?

Do you live in Oregon, for example? You're getting "gamed" too.

Oregon is moving its 10th-grade tests in reading, writing, math and science to the 11th grade, saying many students need another year of high school to learn the skills covered on the tests.

The tests were written for sophomores, and the minimum passing scores were set based on how sophomores performed on the tests. But, beginning next school year, they will be given to juniors, and the state's high schools will be judged by how many of their students pass the exams by the end of junior year.

Oregon got permission from the U.S. Department of Education to make the standard easier for schools.

When Oregon sophomores take the tests, a lot of them fail, particularly in math. Last year, 46 percent of 10th-graders flunked that test, 45 percent failed the writing test and 42 percent failed in science.

Low passing rates on the state reading and math tests are the main reason that Oregon high schools get worse ratings on state and federal accountability reports than the state's elementary and middle schools.

Educators are hopeful that, with another year of instruction under their belts, more high schools students will be able to pass.

Jack Jennings, president of the non-profit Washington, D.C.-based Center on Education Policy, has tracked how states have changed their testing programs since the 2001 passage of the federal No Child Left Behind law, which increased accountability and sanctions for schools that post low test scores. Some states lowered the scores a student needs to pass the state test to help schools avoid low ratings.

Jennings could not recall another state moving its high school exams to a higher grade, and said it suggests Oregon may be lowering its expectations for its schools or its students.

"It does seem unusual to move a 10th-grade proficiency set of tests to the 11th grade," he said. "If you thought 10th-graders could do something, and then you shift the measurement of that skill to 11th grade, it at least raises the question of whether they have lowered the standard."

Schools will still be able to give the tests to sophomores, and those that pass won't have to retest as juniors, said Susanne Smith, communications manager for the Oregon Department
http://www.oregonlive.com/education/index.ssf/2010/03/post_6.html

State "accountability tests" are notorious for their low standards. In fact, they are mainly political tools designed to gull the public into thinking that Johnny can read and Suzy can do math. Amusing, isn't it, that the expert quoted in the article has difficulty stating straight up that moving 10th grade proficiency standards to 11th grade is a flagrant lowering of standards.

GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS:
THE RETURN OF THE "EYE OF SAURON"

Over two years ago The Continuing Collapse wrote about government schools experimenting with using RFID chips to track children through lunch lines, buses, bathrooms, and classrooms.

Apparently, our highly trained education professionals like this technology, and George Soros is looking to help spread it while making a buck.

Nevermind that it conditions children to accept living in a total surveilance society like a prison or a police state and that it will radically deform the next generation's sense of privacy. Or, perhaps, that is the point.

What's billionaire George Soros doing investing in a tiny company out of Jamaica? Answer: He has found a company that tracks student lunches and is working on tracking: attendance, transportation, grades and welfare payments.  It is becoming increasingly clear that if George Soros makes an investment, there is usually some government backing of the investment in some fashion, and it is generally an investment that is not moving the world in the direction of freedom and the pursuit of happiness...
http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2010/02/soros-invests-in-people-tracking.html

HIGHLY TRAINED EDUCATION PROFESSIONALS CAUGHT HAVING "FUN" WITH STUDENT WEBCAMS

Many readers of TCC may have seen the stories about the school officials who were remotely accessing students webcams in the students' homes, including their bedrooms.

In case this tale eluded you, however, the basic storyline is this: 1. high school requires students to have laptops to do homework, 2. students notice laptop webcam lights flashing at inappropriate times while they are at home, 3. students discover that school officials can turn the webcams on and off remotely, 4. school officials issue various denials, and 5. a blogger who is smarter than said school officials finds blog entries and blogcasts by one of said highly trained educational professionals boasting about his ability to remotely activate student webcams.
With surveillance technology like this, highly trained education professionals don't need to visit websites like "Webcam Girls Gone Wild." Your 14 year-old provides their "enter-tainment" for free.

This investigation into the remote spying allegedly being conducted against students at Lower Merion represents an attempt to find proof of spying and a look into the toolchain used to accomplish spying. Taking a look at the LMSD Staff List, Mike Perbix is listed as a Network Tech at LMSD. Mr. Perbix has a large online web forum footprint as well as a personal blog, and a lot of his posts, attributed to his role at Lower Merion, provide insight into the tools, methods, and capabilities deployed against students at LMSD. Of the three network techs employed at LMSD, Mr. Perbix appears to have been the mastermind behind a massive, highly effective digital panopticon...

The primary piece of evidence, already being reported on by a Fox affiliate, is this amazing promotional webcast for a remote monitoring product named LANRev. In it, Mike Perbix identifies himself as a high school network tech, and then speaks at length about using the track-and-monitor features of LanRev to take surreptitious remote pictures through a high school laptop webcam. A note of particular pride is evident in his voice when he talks about finding a way outside of LANRev to enable "curtain mode", a special remote administration mode that makes remote control of a laptop invisible to the victim. Listen at 35:47, when he says:
 "you're controlling someone's machine, you don't want them to know what you're doing" ... http://strydehax.blogspot.com/2010/02/spy-at-harrington-high.html
http://strydehax.blogspot.com/2010/02/spy-at-harrington-high.html

THE COLLAPSE IS ACCELERATING.

WILL YOU LISTEN NOW?

As the recession threatens its "iron rice bowl", the education establishment is mobilizing its financial and ideological special interests to threaten to destroy or disrupt the "Little Red Schoolhouse" if its demands aren't met.

Here we have a story reporting that Oakland's teachers' unions are threatening to shut down Oakland's schools unless they get the collective bargaining contract they want.

Oakland teachers have set a one-day strike for March 24, an action that could shut down schools unless district officials make major concessions at the bargaining table, union officials said Wednesday...

The strike could leave parents scrambling for child care and force the financially strapped district to decide whether to keep schools open with administrators and support staff in classrooms or tell students to stay home.
Teachers who represent the union at the school sites cast the strike votes this week, and the result was overwhelmingly for the one-day walkout, an action the union's general membership, which includes 2,700 teachers, authorized in January....
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/03/04/BA9T1CA8MQ.DTL&tsp=1 

"MR. BIRTHDAY SEX" PROVES IMPOTENT TO RESTORE CHICAGO SCHOOLS' FINANCES

If you are new to TCC, don't start "Tsk, Tsking" over the title. Regular readers recall that in the August 2009 edition The Continuing Collapse wrote about the impending bankruptcy of the Chicago school system and an "extraordinary" measure taken by the successors to "His Education Secretaryship", Arne Duncan, to avert financial calamity.

Did they look for waste to eliminate? Certainly not. Instead, they sought to increase enrollment by increasing their capitation funding. And just how were the educational swamis of The Second City going to entice more young people to return to the fetid educational swamps of Chicago public schools?

Easy. Bring in a "celebrity" to spearhead the "back to school" effort, and, they maintained, the gangbangers and other dropouts will come.

The celebrity, the "Chosen One", upon whom the financial hopes of Chicago's highly trained education professionals rested was none other than 21-year-old R&B singer Jeremih, whose song and music video, “Birthday Sex”, hit number 4 on the charts last summer. “Birthday Sex” is in essence the tender story of a generous man who offers his girlfriend sex for her birthday in lieu of a gift or a cake.

Unfortunately for Mr. Birthday Sex and the wizards of Chicago's public schools, the "troubled youth" were quite capable of figuring out how to cash in on a little free entertainment while managing to stay out Chicago's finest institutions of lower learning.

The end result was that the "Mr. Birthday Sex gambit" shrivelled like a failed souffle, and now Chicago's government schools face a $900 million budget shortfall and the prospect of a teachers' strike.

The Chicago Public School system is broke. By now you know the score: pension promises cannot be met and union salaries and benefits are out of line with reality. Combined with bloated administration costs, the system is bankrupt...Unions being unions, and administrators being administrators, neither will be willing to negotiate a fair compromise. Instead, look for massive teacher layoffs as the union and administrators throw the kids to the howling wolves...

Chicago Public Schools CEO Ron Huberman on Thursday painted the grimmest financial picture the Chicago schools have ever seen..."We're alerting parents now, when there's still time, to try to resolve this crisis and avoid a strike."...

By the way, I am not talking about just Chicago. Expect to witness a nationwide phenomenon of teachers unions and administrators combine to throw kids to the wolves to protect their own cushy jobs.
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2010/02/chicago-public-schools-system-is-broke.html

WHAT DO YOU THINK HAPPENS IN KANSAS CITY WHEN YOU TRY TO ELIMINATE A BUDGET SHORTFALL BY
IMPLEMENTING SCHOOL
CLOSINGS?

Do we really need to ask?

Kansas City’s Afrikan Centered Education Collegium Campus struggled a quarter-century for its three-building campus at Southeast High School.
The hundreds of supporters of ACE who packed Thursday night’s school closings forum made it clear they have no intention of letting any of it go — marking the strongest resistance yet to Superintendent John Covington’s unprecedented “rightsizing” school closings plan...

The school-closings plan makes up the driving force of an effort to cut $50 million from the district’s budget, which is strained by a steady loss in enrollment and declining revenues.

Thursday’s forum, the third in the series, was the most contentious so far, with the crowd occasionally shouting over the district’s opening presentation with choruses of “No!”
http://www.kansascity.com/2010/02/18/1758697/backers-of-african-centered-education.html

TEAMSTERS AND TRADE GROUPS JOINING RHODE ISLAND TEACHERS TO "PROTEST" LAYOFFS

When highly trained education professionals are laid off, what is a teachers' union to do? The answer is easy: Rent a mob of Teamsters and bus in teachers from other areas to "protest".

An estimated 600 to 700 people, many of them teachers from other districts, rallied Tuesday afternoon at Jenks Park to support Central Falls High School teachers facing layoffs at a Board of Trustees meeting Tuesday night....
Busloads of teachers arrived from Coventry, Warwick, Providence, East Providence and Cranston. The Teamsters Union Local 251 parked a full-size tractor-trailer rig in front of the park, and people in stood with others in matching jackets, representing various trade groups.
http://newsblog.projo.com/2010/02/commissioner-gist-approves-cen.html

THE RETURN OF THE 60'S: STUDENT PROTESTS AS A MODERN CHILDREN'S CRUSADE

In an effort to relive the halcyon days of their youth, the aging leftist hippies in the education establishment and allied "community organizers" are trying to get our semi-literate "youth" to take it to the streets to save the cashflow of those who have rendered them the what can only be called "the least capable generation".

Thousands of students rallied today at UC Berkeley, San Francisco State University and many other schools across the Bay Area, expressing frustration over the decline in funding for California's beleaguered public education system...

Similar rallies and protests were planned in other states that have also experienced funding cuts...

High school students also participated in the day's events...

In San Francisco, more than 50 Commodore Sloat Elementary fifth-graders boarded a Muni bus to the state building, each wearing handmade sandwich board signs protesting budget cuts to schools.

Teacher Libbie Schock said the "field trip" was in line with social studies curriculum and was a real life lesson in civics. "Students need to know that they have a voice and that voice can be heard if we speak together," she said.

The students were well prepared to make their voices heard. "Hey, hey! Ho, ho! The budget cuts have got to go," the students yelled as passing cars honked...

School districts across the state have issued nearly 19,000 pink slips to public school teachers, warning that they may lose their jobs at the end of the semester, the California Teachers Association reported.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/03/04/BAC41CAAM1.DTL&tsp=1#ixzz0hLEyhjpA

As tax revenues continue to decline, you can expect the momentum toward system wide chaos in the government schools to accelerate. Government schools are a burning building, and we need to help families find the exits.

That's a wrap for this edition of The Continuing Collapse. So, TCC bids you a fond adieu and asks you to:  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.

“I had motive for not wanting the world to have a meaning; consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. The philosopher whofinds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics, he is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do, or why his friends should not seize political power and govern in the way that they find most advantageous to themselves. … For myself, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation, sexual and political.” (Aldous Huxley [evolutionist, leftist, and grandson of T.H. Huxley, known as "Darwin's bulldog"]: Ends and Means, pp. 270 ff.)

“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

More from the “Our School Has Christian Teachers” File

Fri, 5 Mar 2010 11:04:40 -0600

As I continue to post The Continuing Collapse each month on this blog, there is a steady stream of public school defenders who insist that, although TCC has been finding and publishing evidence of widespread corruption, under-achievement, radical Gramscian marxism, violence, fraud and more in the American education establishment from coast-to-coast, this has no impact on these people’s educational choice because (altogether now) “their schools are different!” Of course, the main difference is the presence of Christian teachers.

Of course any attempt to point out the lack of biblical worldview of most professing Christians in America, the socialist/neo-marxist leanings of the curricula to which these “Christian teachers” are forced to adhere, and the Gramscian residue that clings to an education degree as relentlessly as dirt clings to fallen snow, is met with blank stares and incredulity. Not to mention the fact that these “Christian teachers” were trained in institutions that bathed them in the worst the left has to offer; and that includes Christian colleges. In a recent Town Hall article, Sandy Rios exposed one of these institutions. Writing about the prestigious Wheaton College, Rios wrote:

So imagine the dismay of many to learn that, in an effort to educate its students, Wheaton has moved to the left, so much so that in a survey by the Wheaton Record, 60 percent of its faculty voted for President Barack Obama, the most pro-abortion, pro-homosexual agenda, spiritually confused president the nation has ever elected.

Beyond this general lunge to the left, the philosophy that has overtaken the school of education is particularly troubling. Rios continues:

In the current document known as the “conceptual framework” of the education department at Wheaton College which must be endorsed by each of its faculty, the thinkers cited include among others, the father of the social justice movement, Brazilian Marxist, Paulo Freire and former Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers. Just a glimpse at Freire’s foundational treatise “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” will clearly display his sources: Marx, Lenin and revolutionary murderers Mao Tse Tung, Fidel Castro and Che Guevera (see, “Pedagogy of the Oppressor,” March 28, 2009, in National Review by Sol Stern).

Amazing! If these teachers had been forced to endorse the London Baptist Confession, or the Westminster Confession of Faith there would have been a revolt. However, they endorse the “Conceptual Framework” and parents who are paying obscene amounts of money for an education degree from Wheaton (nearly $40,000.00 per academic year for tuition and more than $50,000 total cost) haven’t heard or made a peep. All of this in the name of “open minded” academia:

Dr. Jillian Lederhouse, chairman of the department of education defended the conceptual framework by saying “we don’t teach our students to be afraid on an ideology as long as we give them a critical perspective. We do not have a list of people we do not read. Our goal is to produce a thinking Christian teacher.” And that is as it should be in an institution of higher learning, except for one thing. Lederhouse went on to admit that the people who were foundational to Wheaton’s conceptual framework were all on the far left.

Isn’t it interesting how real “thinking” always requires one’s mind being open to the Gramscian left? Christ and his Kingdom = closed-minded fundamentalist teacher. Marx and his kingdom (Paulo Friere and Che Guevera) = “thinking Christian teacher.”

Wheaton is not alone in this matter. Christian colleges across the country have been co-opted by the marxist, socialist educational establishment, and the teachers they are producing are the most dangerous of them all. Unlike the teachers coming out of Stanford, Wisconsin, or Columbia, the teachers coming out of the Wheaton’s of the world have instant credibility among unsuspecting Christian parents in both public and private schools who believe that a teacher who professes faith in Christ and has credentials from a Christian college MUST BE the real deal. Who better to send your children to for their education?

For years I have tried to communicate the reality that there are few Christian schools in the country worthy of the title. Almost without exception, Christian colleges and universities in this country are Christian in name only. Perhaps they have a historic connection to a religious founder, a nominal connection to a Christian denomination, or a public acknowledgement of a broad, sweeping, shallow confession of faith. However, most lack the courage and/or conviction to uphold the aforementioned commitments in their hiring practices, or in the development and implementation of their curriculum.

Moreover, these realities are not about to change. As long as schools like Wheaton can “push the envelope” in the name of open-minded “Social Justice,” and still fill their dorms with students whose families are more than happy to pay the $40,000.00 per year price tag we will not see a revival of God-honoring, Kingdom-minded, Christ-exalting, culture-transforming Christian education.

Here are a few predictions:

1) There will be no outcry over this issue (unless you count the outcry against anyone who would dare to question the Christian commitment of Wheaton and other Christian colleges).

1) Those who expose this issue will be vilified as narrow-minded “fundamentalists” while the marxists are heralded as broadminded defenders of education and free expression.

1) Students in the program (and those who’ve graduated) will insist that this is all blown out of proportion, and the education faculty at Wheaton (who supported Obama overwhelmingly) are wonderful, committed Christians who “believe and teach the Bible” (even though they endorse the “conceptual framework” which is completely inconsistent with the Bible).

1) Parents will continue to pay the obscene tuition for the prestige of a Wheaton degree.

1) Wheaton, and other Christian colleges like it, will continue to surge to the left in search of “friendship with the world,” and recognition as a prestigious university.

Nothing would make me happier than to be wrong on this. However, the key here is the tuition. Universities don’t charge $40,000.00 a year unless they can fill their dorms at that price. Any school that can demand that kind of money doesn’t do so because they offer sound biblical education. There is not enough demand for that (which is the primary reason we don’t have an abundance of sound Christian colleges). Parents don’t pay $40,000.00 a year for their children to be trained in godliness; they pay that kind of money for prestige and upward mobility. The bottom line is quite simple: We worship the god of education and status, not the God of the Bible.

The good news is there are schools out there where something like this would never have happened. I would be shocked, for example, to learn that New St. Andrews University (about $9,000.00 per year tuition), Grove City College (about $13,000.00 per year tuition), or The Master’s College (about $25,000 per year tuition), asked their professors to endorse the “conceptual framework.” And none of these schools takes a back seat to Wheaton academically!

Does this mean that Wheaton is the antichrist and the other schools I mentioned are without sin? Absolutely not. I’m sure there are good people at Wheaton who abhor the fact that the school of education has taken such a stance. Nor is every professor at NSA, GCC, or TMC perfect. Don’t miss the point here. This is a serious matter that cannot be ignored. We should all expect more from Wheaton

VB

The Continuing Collapse: February 2010

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 14:41:54 -0600

WELCOME TO THE CONTINUING COLLAPSE!

By Bruce N. Shortt, J.D., Ph.D.

Exposing Government Schools: The Youth Ministry of the State Church
of Secular Humanism

February, Anno Domini 2010

"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it, misdiagnosing it, and then misapplying the wrong remedies."
(Groucho Marx)    Here richly, with ridiculous display,The Politician's corpse was laid away.
While all of his acquaintance sneered and slanged
I wept: for I had longed to see him hanged.
(Hilaire Belloc)

"IT'S THE MONEY, STUPID."
Nothing beats the schadenfreude that results from watching our highly trained education professionals receive their deserved comeuppance...except, perhaps, a well merited "I told you so."
Here The Continuing Collapse leads with the best of all - a story of comeuppance and an occasion for a robust "I told you so." For years TCC has pointed out that despite the massive cashflows enjoyed by our highly trained education professionals, the government school establishment is financially vulnerable.
Why? Because the government school system is primarily a mechanism for allocating spoils among the various special interests that constitute the education establishment. That coalition, which represents wildly divergent interests, coexists peacefully when money is abundant, but when it becomes scarce the various constituent parts of the coalition begin to resemble a pack of jackals fighting over carrion.
Here the Associated Press surveys the beginning of the collapse of government school funding.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - The nation's public schools are falling under severe financial stress as states slash education spending and drain federal stimulus money that staved off deep classroom cuts and widespread job losses.
School districts have already suffered big budget cuts since the recession began two years ago, but experts say the cash crunch will get a lot worse as states run out of stimulus dollars.
The result in many hard-hit districts: more teacher layoffs, larger class sizes, smaller paychecks, fewer electives and extracurricular activities, and decimated summer school programs...
"The states are facing a dismal financial picture," said Jack Jennings, president of the Center on Education Policy.
The Obama administration's $787 billion federal stimulus package provided roughly $100 billion for education, including $54 billion to stabilize state budgets. In October the White House said the stimulus created or saved 250,000 education jobs.
But many states have used most of their stimulus money, leaving little to cushion budget cuts in the coming fiscal year.
Experts say the looming cuts could weaken the nation's public schools, worsen unemployment, undermine President Obama's education goals and widen the achievement gap between students in rich and poor districts...
In Michigan, which has the nation's highest unemployment rate, school districts lost 2 percent of their state money this year and could lose another 4 percent next year because of a projected government shortfall of $1.6 billion. Most of more than $1 billion in federal stimulus money is gone.
Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm has proposed an incentive program to entice about 39,000 public school employees to retire, but that plan has been criticized by the state's largest teachers union.
"Our districts don't know what the next step is," said Don Wotruba, deputy director with the Michigan Association of School Boards.
In Washington state, school districts that lost $1.7 billion in state money over the past two years are bracing for another round of cuts as lawmakers try to plug a $2.8 billion state deficit.
Seattle Public Schools, the state's largest district, plans to lay off nonunion staff, freeze hiring, create more efficient bus routes and increase class sizes further to close an expected budget shortfall of $24 million.
In Florida, public schools are being squeezed by state budget cuts and an unexpected increase in student enrollment, including an influx of Haitian students in the aftermath of Haiti's devastating earthquake.
Districts have been coping by closing schools during breaks, cutting energy costs and changing transportation routes, but the next round of cuts is expected to hit classrooms.
"We're at a point now where you just can't stretch that rubber band any further," said Bill Montford, CEO of the Florida Association of District School Superintendents.
In California, school districts have already laid off thousands of teachers, increased class sizes and slashed academic programs.
But state officials are warning the worst is yet to come because the state has already handed out most of its $6 billion in stimulus money.
Per-pupil spending for K-12 schools fell 4 percent last year and would be slashed another 8 percent under Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposed budget for 2010-2011, according to the state Legislative Analyst's Office.
"It's cataclysmic. It hasn't been seen since the Great Depression," said Bruce Fuller, an education professor at the University of California, Berkeley. "Now you're talking about sizable layoffs and further increases in class sizes."
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20100214/D9DS59VG0.html
Now, consider what would happen if Christians removed their children and worked to defeat bond levies everywhere. Every one of us should ask ourselves what we AND our churches are doing to rescue children from the government schools.

DO YOU STILL DOUBT THAT THE STATES' FINANCIAL CRISIS HAS A SILVER LINING?
In Utah, the budget crisis leads a legislator to speak words previously thought unspeakable.
The sudden buzz over the relative value of senior year stems from a recent proposal by state Sen. Chris Buttars that Utah make a dent in its budget gap by eliminating the 12th grade.  The notion quickly gained some traction among supporters who agreed with the Republican's assessment that many seniors fritter away their final year of high school...
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-na-utah-school15-2010feb15,0,906102.story?track=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+latimes%2Fmostviewed+%28L.A.+Times+-+Most+Viewed+Stories%29
TCC suspects that Utahns aren't feeling very smart these days about having listened to the education special interests and having voted down a voucher program would have effectively privatized education in Utah. What a difference a couple of years make.

HERE IS A SUPERINTENDENT WITH A PLAN THE CONTINUING COLLAPSE APPLAUDS!
Fair's fair. Once a decade or so someone in the education establishment does something that deserves an accolade. In a single stroke Frances Gallo, a Rhode Island superintendent, has punctured the "Dear Old Mr. Chips" facade of our highly trained (and highly overpaid) education professionals and has also performed an "incomectomy" on them. Three cheers for Superintendent Gallo!
A school superintendent in Rhode Island is trying to fix an abysmally bad school system.
Her plan calls for teachers at a local high school to work 25 minutes longer per day, each lunch with students once in a while, and help with tutoring. The teachers' union has refused to accept these apparently onerous demands.
The teachers at the high school make $70,000-$78,000, as compared to a median income in the town of $22,000. This exemplifies a nationwide trend in which public sector workers make far more than their private-sector counterparts (with better benefits).
The school superintendent has responded to the union's stubbornness by firing every teacher and administrator at the school.
http://www.businessinsider.com/henry-blodget-unionized-rhode-island-teachers-refuse-to-work-25-minutes-more-per-day-so-town-fires-all-of-them-2010-2

EXTRA! EXTRA ! READ ALL ABOUT IT!LOUISIANA SUPERINTENDENT OF EDUCATION ACTUALLY SAYS SOMETHING TRUE:
"I know it's a strong statement, but it'sactually quite accurate. It [the New Orleans school system] was a pathetic system before the storm."
NOW, JUST WHY WEREN'T THEY SAYING THIS BEFORE KATRINA?
Education Secretary Arne Duncan called Hurricane Katrina "the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans" because it forced the community to take steps to improve low-performing public schools, according to excerpts from a television interview made public Friday...
Duncan was quoted as replying: "It's a fascinating one. I spent a lot of time in New Orleans, and this is a tough thing to say, but let me be really honest. I think the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans was Hurricane Katrina. That education system was a disaster, and it took Hurricane Katrina to wake up the community to say that 'we have to do better.'...
Paul Pastorek, Louisiana superintendent of education, said of Duncan's comments: "I know it's a strong statement, but it's actually quite accurate. It was a pathetic system before the storm."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/29/AR2010012903259.html
The New Orleans school system isn't the only one that would benefit from a storm.
WOULD YOU BE SURPRISED IF THE NEW REALLY, REALLLY IMPROVED NEW ORLEANS SCHOOL DISTRICT
IS SHOWING THE SAME SIGNS OF EDUCATIONAL DEMENTIA
AS THE OLD DISTRICT?
You can't fix stupid.
NEW ORLEANS – A student at a Maurepas school was sent home by the principal for refusing to take off an Indianapolis Colts jersey, according to a statement from the American Civil Liberties Union.
“(T)he Principal of Maurepas High School, which had declared that students could wear jerseys in support of the New Orleans Saints, punished a student for wearing a jersey in support of the Indianapolis Colts,” said ACLU Executive Director Margie Esman in an e-mail.   “The student, who had lived most of his life in Indianapolis and has an outstanding academic record, was called out of class and told that he was not allowed to wear that shirt. When he refused to change his shirt, the principal sent him home.”  This prompted the ACLU of Louisiana to take up the case of the student.   Esman said she sent a letter to Principal Steven Vampran, demanding that the unnamed student’s tarnished record is restored and the school erase any disciplinary action....
http://www.wwltv.com/home/ACLU-Student-sent-home-for-wearing-Colts-jersey-83671827.html

DELIBERATELY MANUFACTURING HISTORICAL AMNESIA
For years apologists for the government school system tried to justify compulsory education by government as necessary to create a common culture - to turn the "Pluribus" into an "Unum".
Unfortunately, as survey after survey and test after test have shown, American government school students know about as much about the history and institutions of the United States as they do about the history and institutions of Bulgaria.
Not willing to admit defeat, North Carolina's highly trained education professionals have "reinterpreted" the goal of having a common culture. Now North Carolinians will be unified in abject historical and cultural ignorance - the new "Unum."
Aw....who cares anyway? That history stuff is mainly just about the magnificent achievements of dead white men.
North Carolina public high schools are trying to erase all early U.S. history from the curriculum, ranging from the Founding Fathers to Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War...in exchange for things like environmental issues.
This kind of blatant propagandistic slant has become routine in public schools.
Even though many Americans are increasingly convinced that we need to be embracing the Founding principles now more than ever, the far left teachers' unions driving this latest attempt to accommodate mediocrity disagree. They insist that lowering educational standards even further to such completely dysfunctional levels will somehow enable public school students to gain a more in-depth understanding of current events.
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-35976-Conservative-Examiner~y2010m2d4-High-schools-to-replace-US-History-with-environmental-issues
WE'RE NUMBER 1! WE'RE NUMBER 1!
(or, maintaining our image, cashflow, and parent's "self-esteem" can be expensive)
There's a reason the top public relations people who work for government school districts are paid considerably more than principals. When you're trying to convince the public that the educational dog food you are selling is really an elegant academic pate, you need all the help you can get.
Here we have a story about a government school public relations trifecta: a scheme for "building the brand", increasing cash flow, and helping parents maintain their ridiculous belief that "their schools are different."
Please note the brazen way in which the district superintendent justifies this "stolen honor" by pointing how it can increase the district's cashflow by bringing in new little revenue units (aka "students"). As TCC has repeatedly told you, it is mainly about the money.
The banner ad across the Lincoln school district’s website proudly proclaims it has been recognized as one of the best school districts in Michigan.
The criteria for Lincoln and eight other districts being selected?
A $25,000 check.
Nine southeast Michigan school districts paid $25,000 each to a Detroit-area public relations firm to be “named,” a top school district. That firm, in turn, bought airtime on a Detroit-area television station to broadcast a feature on the state’s best schools. A website - bestschoolsinmichigan.com - also features the nine schools.
Mentioned nowhere on the videos or the website is the fact that the districts paid for the honor...
As a “schools of choice” district, Lincoln accepts students who don’t live in its attendance boundaries. Under the state’s current school funding plan, each student is worth $7,300 to the district.
Lincoln has a marketing budget of about $30,000 a year, but most years it doesn’t spend it all, Cleary said.
Dearborn Superintendent David Mustonen said the money a district gains from increasing enrollment makes the investment worth it. Dearborn is one of the nine districts highlighted in the program.
“We had a new program starting in the fall of 2009 (district-wide all day kindergarten), and we felt that this was a good opportunity to get the word out,” Mustonen said.
“We felt the cost of the program was reasonable for what we received, and if we attracted three new students, the cost was covered. Our district did have a 350-student increase this year. We have no way of knowing how many of those students, if any, are a result of the program, but you never know. The show did get very good ratings the night it aired.”
The Lincoln school district has 4,764 students enrolled this year, a loss of 27 students from the previous year...
http://www.annarbor.com/news/lincoln-pays-25000-to-be-named-one-of-the-top-school-districts-in-michigan/
Next time someone tells you his government schools are "different", you have TCC's permission to guffaw.

YESTERDAY'S "GENIUS" SCHOOL REFORM IDEAS ARE TODAY'S PROBLEMS
Over the years The Continuing Collapse has sedulously pointed out that "school reform" serves three sinister purposes: 1. Prying ever larger amounts of money out of taxpayers to fund heretofore unknown levels of educational failure and corruption., 2. Distracting the public from the current failure and corruption of the government school establishment with visions of a future educational utopia, and 3. Giving ever more power to our highly trained education professionals.
Of course, "school reform" is in fact a swindle. The "New! Improved!" reform ideas periodically trotted out by our highly trained education professionals to gull the public merely lay the foundation for future problems, which become, in turn,the basis for the next round of "school reform". This is a really great racket...if you are a sociopath.
Which brings us to a couple of stories about the fruit of two reforms whose "chickens" are coming home to roost: "zero-tolerance" and charter schools.
In the 1980’s a new movement began implementing policies, such as “zero tolerance” and “high-stakes testing,” that were more punitive and penalizing in both the criminal justice and public education school systems. Recent studies show the U.S. graduates fewer than seven out of every 10 high school students. Have these two disciplinary policies produced a threat to the educational opportunities of America’s youth and consequently created a dropout crisis?
In President Obama’s first address to Congress, he cited America’s school dropout rate as one of the three most pressing issues facing our country. Researchers believe policymakers are looking in the wrong places for their answers to the cause of this “crisis."
According to the report from the Advancement Project, low graduation rates aren’t the problem. Instead they are simply a symptom of the problem. The current education system is not designed for every child to succeed, they assert. Instead, the educational opportunities of young people are threatened by policies that set them up to fail.
Both “zero tolerance” and “high-stakes testing” have been pinpointed as the two policies that pose the most direct threat to American youth’s educational opportunities. Together they turn schools into hostile and alienating environments and as a result, huge numbers of students are treated as if they are disposable, routinely being pushed out of school and toward the juvenile and criminal justice systems.
http://www.journalismcenter.org/resource/k-through-12/how-zero-tolerance-and-high-stakes-testing-funnel-youth-school-prison-pipeline
Ah, but not only do we find that zero-tolerance policies are contributing to a high dropout rate, but our sainted charter schools are leading to racial segregation. Golly, what's a social engineer to do? Give up on charters, or give up on integration? TCC leaves this dilemma to the strutting princes and princesses who control our single-payer education system.
A UCLA study is one of two finding that the increasingly popular [charter school] campuses skew toward racially separate student bodies...
The growth of charter schools has promoted segregation both in California and nationwide, increasing the odds that black, Latino and white students will attend class with fewer children who look different from themselves, according to two new studies.  Charter school advocates contend that the researchers' presumptions about racial separation are out of date. They said parents -- including low-income minority parents -- are turning to charters for a quality education that traditional schools have not provided.  Charters are independently managed public schools that are exempt from some rules that govern traditional schools. About 2.5% of the nation's students attend charters -- a threefold increase over seven years. The Los Angeles Unified School District has more charters -- enrolling about 9% of district students -- than any school system in the country.  The trend toward segregation was especially notable for African American students. Nationally, 70% of black charter students attend schools where at least 90% of students are minorities. That's double the figure for traditional public schools. The typical black charter-school student attends a campus where nearly three in four students also are black, researchers with the Civil Rights Project at UCLA said Thursday.  The other researchers also focused on economic segregation, looking at private companies that manage schools, in most cases charters. The enrollments at most of these campuses exacerbated income extremes, they concluded. Charters tended to serve higher-income students or lower-income students. Charters also were likely to serve fewer disabled students and fewer English learners. This report, soon to be officially released, was developed by education policy centers at the University of Colorado at Boulder and Arizona State University...  "We don't want the Race to the Top to become a race to the past," said Gary Orfield, co-director of the Civil Rights Project, alluding to the era of enforced segregation.  Orfield's UCLA team previously documented how court decisions since 1991 had gradually eroded the halting progress in integration. Segregation remains a marker for inequality, just as it was in the 1950s, he said...  The school district itself has left behind integration as a primary goal. Its school construction program, for example, is aimed at returning students to their neighborhood schools rather than their being bused elsewhere. But segregation is exacerbated in the process...  Orfield's team isn't ready to surrender on integration. He proposes expanding magnet schools, which are special programs designed to attract diverse enrollments and thus promote desegregation. Alternatively, he said, charters should be required -- and helped -- to promote diversity. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-charters5-2010feb05,0,3300930.story

EVEN TEACHERS AREN'T THRILLED WITH THE
GOVERNMENT SCHOOL GULAG
(that is, the teachers who could find indoor work with no heavy lifting outside the government school system)
Roughly 40% of government school teachers quit within the first five years or so. Here are some of the results of a Public Agenda survey that remind us that the increasingly sclerotic, bureaucratized government school system is a rotten work environment.
Two out of five of America’s 4 million K-12 teachers appear disheartened and disappointed about their jobs, while others express a variety of reasons for contentment with teaching and their current school environments, new research by Public Agenda and Learning Point Associates shows...
The view that teaching is “so demanding, it’s a wonder that more people don’t burn out” is remarkably pervasive, particularly among the Disheartened,—they are twice as likely as other teachers to strongly agree with this view. Members of that group, which accounts for 40 percent of K-12 teachers in the United States, tend to have been teaching longer and are older than the Idealists, and more than half teach in low-income schools. They are more likely to voice high levels of frustration about the school administration, disorder in the classroom, and the undue focus on testing.
Only 14 percent rate their principals as “excellent” at supporting them as teachers, and 61 percent cite lack of support from administrators as a major drawback to teaching. Nearly three-quarters cite “discipline and behavior issues” in the classroom, and 7 in 10 say that testing are major drawbacks as well...
http://www.publicagenda.org/pages/teaching-for-a-living

BEWARE THE GOVERNMENT SCHOOL /BIG PHARMA COMPLEX

The Continuing Collapse for years has pointed out that the government schools, not the Mexican drug lords, are by far the world's largest drug pusher. Psychotropic drugs are given daily by school nurses to children across the country in the name of managing "disorders" that have been invented over the past few decades by psycholgists, psychiatrists, and big pharma.

Apart from the questionable legitimacy of the diagnoses, no one really knows what the long term effects of these drugs are on young bodies and still developing brains. But, for highly trained education professionals, drugging children has become an indispensible tool for maintaining order, so they don't care.

Now the witch-doctor branch of the medical profession has released the latest revision of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, known as "DSM V". The DSM is actually a goldmine for doctors, psychologists, and big pharma. By giving a child a DSM-based diagnosis drug companies and health professionals get to tap into third-party payers for the child's "treatment".

The following article mentions just a few of the problems created by the government school/big pharma complex, but the money quote is from Edward Shorter, a historian of psychiatry: "...the bad news is that the scientific status of the main diseases in the previous editions of the DSM - the keystones of the vault of psychiatry - is fragile."

Give that man a medal for euphemism above and beyond the call of duty.

One significant change would be adding a childhood disorder called temper dysregulation disorder with dysphoria, a recommendation that grew out of recent findings that many wildly aggressive, irritable children who have been given a diagnosis of bipolar disorder do not have it.
The misdiagnosis led many children to be given powerful antipsychotic drugs, which have serious side effects, including metabolic changes.
“The treatment of bipolar disorder is meds first, meds second and meds third,” said Dr. Jack McClellan, a psychiatrist at the University of Washington who is not working on the manual. “Whereas if these kids have a behavior disorder, then behavioral treatment should be considered the primary treatment.”
Some diagnoses of bipolar disorder have been in children as young as 2, and there have been widespread reports that doctors promoting the diagnosis received consulting and speaking fees from the makers of the drugs.
...The good news, said Edward Shorter, a historian of psychiatry who has been critical of the manual, is that most patients will be spared the confusion of a changed diagnosis. But “the bad news,” he added, “is that the scientific status of the main diseases in previous editions of the D.S.M. — the keystones of the vault of psychiatry — is fragile.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/10/health/10psych.html

DEAR LEADER'S HIGH SCHOOL STURMABTEILUNG
(German for "Assault Section"...Just call it Dear Leader's S.A. Or, if that seems harsh, we can just call them Dear Leader's "Brownies")
Dear Leader is working to unleash on an unsuspecting public an army of cognitively-impaired, knowledge-deprived government school inmates hoping "to make a difference." Of course, they have no idea at all what the difference they may make is, but that doesn't matter. Those directing their activities will make them FEEL important no matter what they do.

Reminiscent of the Hitler Youth, President Obama’s army of citizen volunteers, Organizing for America, is recruiting high school students as interns to organize the President’s agenda in the 2010 election cycle. I quote,
“Organizing for America, the successor organization to Obama for America, is building on the movement that elected President Obama by empowering students across the country to help us bring about our agenda”
Pam Geller at Atlas Shrugs reports on students at Perry Local High School in Massillon, Ohio who were given propaganda recruiting papers in government class to enlist students to sign up as interns for Obama’s Organizing for America.
With weekly curricula titled “Strategizing for Effective Change,” “Managing Events,” and “Working With The Media” one wonders exactly what training the students will receive. But you needn’t wonder much further than the next page of the application....
Under the pretense of “Earn credit for school and help change the world!” Obama is mobilizing America’s youth to campaign for his agenda and assist re-election of Democrat’s in 2010, while indoctrinating them into Saul Alinsky’s radical tactics and ideology.
http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/01/31/brainwashing-america%e2%80%99s-youth-obama-uses-public-schools-to-indoctrinate-students-required-reading-alinsky%e2%80%99s-%e2%80%9crules-for-radicals/

A GLIMPSE INTO THE FUTURE OF
"SEX-ED" FROM EUROPE
Our left has been enamored of the more advanced success of their European counterparts in getting rid of all that "repressive" Christianity stuff and replacing it with something "more enlightened".
Consequently, it is always instructive to look across the Atlantic to see what the left is up to there so that we know what our home-grown leftists have in mind for the next step in our cultural transformation.
You may think that this can't happen here, but our psychologist/psychiatric witch doctors have already begun laying the ground work by treating bestiality as a mere paraphilia in the DSM (that is, bestiality is not a problem unless "...it is accompanied by distress or interference with normal functioning on the part of the individual"). Moreover, professors such as Peter Singer are arguing that there is nothing inherently wrong with transspecies sex.
Parent organizations in Spain are fiercely protesting the curriculum of the Socialist government’s required education course, “Education for the Citizenry,” after it was revealed that in one Spanish city, students are being taught that sex can be freely practiced, even with animals.
According to the organization “Professionals for Ethics,” third grade students in Cordoba, located in the southern Spanish region of Andalusia, are using course material stating that “nature has given us sex so we can use it with another girl, with a boy or with an animal.”...
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/spanish_government_course_teaches_sex_can_be_practiced_with_girl_boy_or_animal/
Our highly trained education professionals will probably wait on incorporating bestiality into the government school sex-ed curriculum until after they have engineered wider acceptance of "polyamory" and "intergenerational intimacy".

DEAR LEADER WANTS TO HEAL YOUR "CRIPPLED EPISTEMOLOGY"

(Information and Regulatory Affairs Czar seeks 'cognitive' provocateurs)

Dear Leader's Information and Regulatory Affairs "Czar", Cass Sunstein, is the poster child for our university-based, tenured radical, self-appointed "elites". Here we have Sunstein candidly outlining a totalitarian government program to encourage thinking approved by Sunstein and Dear Leader.

By Marc Estrin / The Rag Blog / January 11, 2010

Cass Sunstein is President Obama's Harvard Law School friend, and recently appointed Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.

In a recent scholarly article, he and coauthor Adrian Vermeule take up the question of "Conspiracy Theories: Causes and Cures." (J. Political Philosophy, 7 (2009), 202-227). This is a man with the president's ear. This is a man who would process information and regulate things. What does he here propose?

[W]e suggest a distinctive tactic for breaking up the hard core of extremists who supply conspiracy theories: cognitive infiltration of extremist groups, whereby government agents or their allies (acting either virtually or in real space, and either openly or anonymously) will undermine the crippled epistemology of believers by planting doubts about the theories and stylized facts that circulate within such groups, thereby introducing beneficial cognitive diversity. (Page 219.)

Read this paragraph again. Unpack it. Work your way through the language and the intent. Imagine the application. What do we learn?

¥ It is "extremists" who "supply" "conspiracy theories."
¥ Their "hard core" must be "broken up" with distinctive tactics. What tactics?
¥ "Infiltration" ("cognitive") of groups with questions about official explanations or obfuscations or lies. Who is to infiltrate?
¥ "Government agents or their allies," virtually (i.e. on-line) or in "real-space" (as at meetings), and "either openly or anonymously," though "infiltration" would imply the latter. What will these agents do?
¥ Undermine "crippled epistemology" -- one's theory and technique of knowledge. How will they do this?
¥ By "planting doubts" which will "circulate." Will these doubts be beneficial?
¥ Certainly. Because they will introduce "cognitive diversity."

Put into English, what Sunstein is proposing is government infiltration of groups opposing prevailing policy. Palestinian Liberation? 9/11 Truth? Anti-nuclear power? Stop the wars? End the Fed? Support Nader? Eat the Rich?

It's easy to destroy groups with "cognitive diversity." You just take up meeting time with arguments to the point where people don't come back. You make protest signs which alienate 90% of colleagues. You demand revolutionary violence from pacifist groups.

We expect such tactics from undercover cops, or FBI. There the agents are called "provocateurs" -- even if only "cognitive." One learns to smell or deal with them in a group, or recognize trolling online. But even suspicion or partial exposure can “sow uncertainty and distrust within conspiratorial groups [now conflated with conspiracy theory discussion groups] and among their members,” and “raise the costs of organization and communication” -- which Sunstein applauds as "desirable." "[N]ew recruits will be suspect and participants in the group’s virtual networks will doubt each other’s bona fides." (p.225).

And are we now expected to applaud such tactics frankly proposed in a scholarly journal by a high-level presidential advisor?

The full text of a slightly earlier version of Sunstein's article is available for download here.
http://theragblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/got-fascism-obama-advisor-promotes.html

That's a wrap for this edition of The Continuing Collapse. So, TCC bids you a fond adieu and asks you to  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.
“I had motive for not wanting the world to have a meaning; consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics, he is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do, or why his friends should not seize political power and govern in the way that they find most advantageous to themselves. … For myself, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation, sexual and political.”(Aldous Huxley [evolutionist, leftist, and grandson of T.H. Huxley, known as "Darwin's bulldog"]: Ends and Means, pp. 270 ff.)
 “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

A New Old Hymn

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 08:17:27 -0600

As Pastor of Preaching at GFBC, part of my responsibility has been leading us to worship in a manner fitting our theology and philosophy of ministry. This has included developing a theological and practical approach to music that fits our doctrine. Most of this task now rests on the capable shoulders of Richard Rector, who has matured into a fine worship leader.

Our goal at GFBC is to sing music that is rich in theology, melody and lyric. As a result, most of our music consists of hymns written in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. We are not opposed to newer songs, however, there are few “new” songs that match the theological depth of Isaac Watts’s “How Sweet and Awful is the Place,” or Thomas Kelly’s “Stricken, Smitten and Afflicted.” Singing most modern “praise choruses” next to these songs is a bit like wearing flip flops with a tuxedo. Nevertheless, we do enjoy the music of modern-day hymn writers like Keith Getty.

All this to say, we are constantly on the prowl for a lyric that will assist us as we strive to obey the apostle’s admonition to “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.” (Col 3:16) So imagine my excitement when I came across this gem recently:

The Joyful Sound of the Gospel
by Ralph Erskine (1685-1752)

They ought, who royal grace's heralds be,
To trumpet loud salvation full and free;
Nor safely can, to humour mortal pride,
In silence evangelic myst'ries hide.
The revelation of the gospel flower,
Is still the organ framed of saving power:
Most justly then are legal Minds condemn'd,
That of the glorious gospel are asham'd;
For this the divine arm, and only this,
The power of God unto salvation is.
For therein is reveal'd to screen from wrath,
The righteousness of God from faith to faith,
The happy change-in guilty sinners' case
They owe to free displays of sovereign grace:
Whose joyful tidings of amazing love,
The ministration of the Spirit prove:
The glorious vent the gospel news express,
Of God's free grace, through Christ's full righteousness,
Is Heaven's gay chariot where the Spirit bides,
And in his conquering power triumphant rides.

I pray this song becomes a cherished companion as we walk through the Romans together for the next year or so at GFBC. Lyrics like these will definitely edify us as we seek to express the gospel in song as well as sermon. Now Richard will just have to find the music!

VB

February Question of the Month

Tue, 9 Feb 2010 16:12:18 -0600

In every sermon, blog, newsletter, article I have agreed with you on every issue except one, predestination. Although I myself do not believe in predestination in a Calvinistic sort of way, I am curious and many people I hear defending Calvinists, never really answer my questions like I know many Calvinists believe in the Great commission, naturally, but why? If every body already has a spot reserved for them why evangelize, or why pray to change things if things are already set in stone? I guess I'm just confused of why anything matters in predestination such as witnessing? Anyways thanks for your help to a very confused young man!

I call this the “doesn’t Calvinism kill evangelism?” question. I get it about once a week. The easy way to answer this question is to point out the difference between Calvinism and Hyper-Calvinism, or even worse, Fatalism. Fatalism is a caricature; a strawman often erected in an effort to portray Calvinism as a belief in the ends (God will save his elect), but not the means (God will use the preaching of the gospel) of salvation. This is at best wrong, and at worst dishonest. However, I do not believe the questioner is being dishonest here. This is a simple matter of not understanding the Doctrines of Grace. This classic misunderstanding can be the result of a number of causes.

First, just like there are lazy, un-evangelistic Arminians, there are indeed lazy, un-evangelistic Calvinists. And unlike their Arminian counterparts, the lazy, un-evangelistic Calvinists can always fall back on the fatalistic caricature. Thus, there are some people who call themselves Calvinists who have actually just found a way to excuse their disobedience to the Great Commission. I wish I could say that this was the source of the unfortunate caricature, but it is not. In fact, most people who question the evangelistic zeal of Calvinists are like this month’s questioner. Note what he doesn’t ask. He doesn’t say, “the Calvinists I know are un-evangelistic.” On the contrary, the at the core of his question is the assumption that the evangelism and prayer in which Calvinists engage makes no sense in light of what he understands to be their doctrine.

The second cause of this classic misunderstanding is ignorance on the part of the questioner (not meant as an insult). Most people are ignorant when it comes to the theology of Calvinism, while others know little about the history of the church (and thus lack any knowledge of Calvinism’s rich evangelistic history). As a result, many are unaware that the Doctrines of Grace have motivated some of the greatest evangelists and missionaries in the history of the church; men like Adonirum Judson, William Carey, and George Whitefield. Then there are great pastor/theologians like Jonathan Edwards, Charles Spurgeon, John Bunyan, Richard Baxter, Matthew Henry, Arthur Pink, James Boyce, J.L. Dagg, Daniel & Abraham Marshall. And the list has not ended. There are also recent giants like D. Martin Lloyd-Jones, J.I. Packer, Ian Murray, D.A. Carson, John Piper, James White, Tom Nettles, Tom Schriner, Tom Ascol, Timothy George, Mark Dever, and Al Mohler, to name just a few.

The problem opponents have is not that history lacks examples of evangelistic Calvinists, but that the aforementioned caricature of Calvinism (i.e., Calvinism kills evangelism) doesn’t fit the historical record. As a result, opponents have three choices, 1) stop believing the lie and let the history and theology of Calvinism speak for itself in regard to evangelism, 2) hold on to the caricature, but paint the men in this list (and others like them) as “good Calvinists” who fight the system and become evangelistic in spite of the mandates of their doctrine (sort of like people who say, “I hate black people, but you’re a good one… You’re smart, articulate, clean, and... but I digress), or 3) ignore the theology and history of Calvinism and persist in the erroneous line of thinking that puts the Doctrines of Grace at odds with a passion for souls.

But lets get to the question at hand. First, let me state what I (as one of those scary Calvinists) believe. I have often quoted from our church’s Confession of Faith, the Second London Baptist Confession. It seems only fitting to do so here:

Those whom God hath predestinated unto Life, he is pleased in his appointed, and accepted time,( Rom. 8:30; 11:7. Eph. 1:10–11. 2 Ths. 2:13–14) effectually to call by his word, and Spirit, out of that state of sin, and death, in which they are by nature, to grace and Salvation (Eph. 2:1–6.) by Jesus Christ; enlightening their minds, spiritually, and savingly to (Acts 26:18. Eph. 1:17–18) understand the things of God; taking away their (Ez. 36:26) heart of stone, and giving unto them an heart of flesh; renewing their wills, and by his Almighty power determining them (Deut. 30:6. Ez. 36:27. Eph. 1:19.) to that which is good, and effectually drawing them to Jesus Christ; yet so as they come (Ps. 110:3. Song of Sol. 1:4) most freely, being made willing by his Grace. (Source: Second London Baptist Confession of 1689, Chapter X.1, “Of Effectual Calling”)

This is clearly a “Calvinistic” statement. There is a clear appeal to God’s sovereign election and the doctrine of predestination. However, notice also the allusion to the means by which God carries out his work. God is “pleased in his appointed , and accepted time, effectually to call by his word...” Thus, you have a clear reference to both the ends and the means of salvation without the slightest bit of hesitation. This is how Calvinists have viewed the issue historically. God uses the foolishness of preaching to save his people:

“In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it,to the praise of his glory.” (Eph 1:11–14)

Notice the presence of both predestination (having been predestined) and preaching (when you heard the word...) in this text. And again without the slightest bit of tension. Who saves sinners? God! What does he use? Preaching! What should we do? Preach! In his first letter to the Corinthian church, Paul sheds even more light on this doctrine:

“Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.” (1 Cor 1:20–25)

As to the “why pray” part of the question, the answer is the same. We pray because we have been instructed to do so (Eph. 6:18; 1 Ths 5:17; Phil. 4:6; Luke 18:1; Col. 4:2). Prayer is communion with God. We need communion with God. Moreover, the Calvinist knows that it is God alone who can change a sinner’s dead heart. Jesus said, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.” (John 6:44) Thus, in many ways it makes more sense for a Calvinist to pray to God for the salvation of sinners than for an Arminian. Unlike my Arminian friends, I believe God “forces himself” on people (See Daniel 4). In fact, I don’t believe a man can be saved any other way since “none is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.” (Rom 3:10–12; cf. Ps. 14:1-3; 53:1-3) What other hope is there? Can we change our minds, or “make a decision for Christ?” The answer is a resounding NO! “For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.” (Rom 8:7–8) Therefore, the Calvinist prays that God will do what man cannot.

And for all my non-Calvinist friends out there (you know who you are), let me save you some time and trouble (I can see the emails, phone calls and letters now). My goal here was to answer a specific question. This is not meant to be a thorough defense of the Doctrines of Grace. Remember, the question was why do Calvinists evangelize and why do they pray. You may still believe the Calvinist is wrong, but at least take a deep breath and understand that this is indeed an answer to the question. Right or wrong, this is why a man who believes strongly in the doctrines of election and predestination would evangelize and pray.

For more on this, see The Doctrines of Grace, by Boyce and Rykin, Chosen by God, by R.C. Sproul, The Sovereignty of God, by Arthur Pink, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, by J.I. Packer, Bondage of the Will, by Martin Luther, The Freedom of the Will, by Jonathan Edwards, The Potter’s Freedom, by James White. Also, I’ve preached a message on the subject that you can get here.

VB

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