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Charley Speaks; Educational "dark ages"
Topic Started: Dec 6 2005, 10:24 AM (72 Views)
Jolly
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Geaux Tigers!
An op-ed from Charley Reese:


Two-Penny Future

Societal changes come slowly and gradually so that many people don't realize how drastic the changes are. One such change is the now-common practice of having armed police officers stationed in public schools.

It reminds me of my friend Tom Fleming telling an audience one day that nobody awakened one morning in 476 A.D. (the year historians assign to the fall of the Roman Empire) and said, "Gee, I'm in the Dark Ages." His point was that the regression from Roman civilization to the barbarism of the Dark Ages was a gradual process.

So it is with our own regression. It's hard to express how unthinkable and unacceptable putting cops in public schools would have been just 50 years ago. It would have struck people as being as crazy as suggesting that everybody attend the Sunday service at the Baptist Church nude.

Yet today when I Googled the subject "police in schools," it produced 3.5 million hits. The 30 or so I examined were all in favor of the idea. Police in schools reflects an acceptance of bad behavior that was once unacceptable and should be again. It also reflects the trend toward behavior modification and the liberal tendency to criminalize everything under the sun.

If kids want to trade punches, for example, that should either be ignored or handled by hauling the two down to the gym, giving them boxing gloves and allowing them to flail away at each other. As long as no weapons are involved, there is no need to call the police. If I had been arrested every time I got into a schoolyard fight, I would have been classified as a career criminal by the ninth grade.

Keep in mind that public education is not going to be reformed. Between the politicians, the education bureaucrats and the unions, it will continue to deteriorate, cranking out a generous proportion of louts, sluts and functional illiterates. But if it were going to be reformed, the first step would be to repeal compulsory-attendance laws.

Far too many of today's generally sorry generation of parents look upon public schools as a free baby-sitting service. These parents need to be told in the most forceful way that education is a privilege, not a right. They need to be told that if they send a little barbarian to school, the school will send the brat right back home. The message should be: You rear an ill-mannered monster, you live with him.

Public schools need to flush out the emotionally disturbed, the mentally retarded and the juvenile delinquents. If you wish to build separate institutions for them, fine, but teachers cannot be expected to teach academic subjects if they have to also act as surrogate parents, bouncers, psychologists and psychotherapists. In recent decades, society has tended to dump too many social problems into the public schools.

Classroom discipline should be as tight as a Marine Corps boot camp. Under no circumstances should any pupil be allowed to display rude behavior or disrespect toward the teachers and the staff. Schools and staff should be given sovereign immunity against lawsuits, and suspensions and expulsions should be irrevocable. There should be no appeal. Academic standards should be high, and those who can't cut it should be flunked.

The present public education system cannot sustain this nation. The floodwaters of ignorance and stupidity are rising inexorably. We have college graduates who don't know eighth-grade English grammar or even how many states were in the union in 1945. We have too many lawyers and too few engineers, scientists and doctors.

We have grown soft and irresponsible. We are afraid to condemn bad behavior. We are pathologically tolerant of everything and have abandoned all standards of performance and behavior. We hire mercenaries to fight our wars (that is what an all-volunteer force is), and our attitude toward government is, "Gimme something and take care of me."

Unless we find the gumption to set and enforce higher standards, our best bet is to urge our grandchildren to learn Chinese. I once asked a former commander of the Strategic Air Command what he thought about the future of America. "I wouldn't give you 2 cents for it," he said.

The main obstacle to a stable and just world order is the United States.- George Soros
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