Some of you will remember California's 1970 Stull Bill that required school districts to explicate their goals and objectives. Not surprisingly, most didn't, but ours, the College School district in Santa Ynez, organized a committee to meet the challenge. Our response was titled "The Educated Child in a Free Society," that laid down the foundation on which we wished our school to base its approach.
Came the fateful day when John Vasconcellos, assemblyman from San Jose, arrived to present us with "our" 10 behavioral objectives, foremost of which if memory serves correctly was "make the student feel good about himself."
Unsurprisingly, we objected, at which the assemplyman and a representaative of the state Education Board departed without bothering to take a copy of our response. The rest is a sad plank in the demise of education in California.
Had a somewhat experience around 30 years ago when the educational rage was 2 + 2 does not necessarily = 4. A representative from the educational establishment delivered a talk to parents at Montecito Union regarding the "new math".
Needless to say the parents, of all political stripes, blew the guy right out the door. Gave me hope...albeit short lived.
Last week I had lunch at downtown's Pascucci with a large group of community members -- all of us from NextDoor (wonderful meet-up). Turns out the woman next to me attended Chatsworth High School, graduating 2 years earlier in 1968. As we happily reminisced, I was struck by the fact that for us, our generation, school was wonderful. We loved our classes, respected and still to this day, are thankful for our teachers. That positive experience is pretty much absent for today's youth. School is something to get through. High schoolers can't wait to graduate. What has changed? Significantly, administrators have pushed their way into classrooms, in absentia, pushed aside good teachers and done great damage. Note those with the Ed.D degree who demand to be addressed as "Doctor." They need to get out Webster's and look up the definition of education. Over the decades, district offices are bloated with administrators who take up space, curriculum, and staff. Meantime, school nurses, librarians, counselors -- gone. Gone: music and the arts, Shop and Home Ec. Some schools no longer offer Journalism and Drama. And then there's the buildings themselves: custodial staff and maintenance shrunk to bare bones.
Agreed. If a purpose of education is to help us become more aware of our surroundings, then art, music, Shop and Home Ec. are important if not essential.
Too many public schools are not fulfilling their function so need to be defunded, replaced by alternatives. Make unions illegal for any and all taxpaid teachers and government workers. Break up large public school districts into small districts of 6-and fewer schools to improve taxpayer accountability, parent responsiveness, and student outcomes. Cold Spring School, Montecito Union, Hope and some schools in the Goleta District deliver prepared students for secondary learning at SBUSD. That’s where it ends for most.
Failed SBUSD changed its mission statement to “prepare students for a world yet to be created”; to one where reading literacy and math skills aren't essential. High performing secondary school students turned out to speak and protest to the deaf SBUSD Board, complaining this statement is loosey-goofy, meaningless.
A free public education is a societal expectation, not a US Constitutional right, that was driven by industrialization, immigration, and the need for literate citizens/workers. What has changed?
In MA, ‘the father of public education’, Horace Mann, advocated for free, non-sectarian, tax-supported schools open to all children. He envisioned public schools would promote moral character, democracy, social mobility, unity in a growing, immigrant-heavy nation, and be the “great equalizer”essential for our Republic. Ignorance and freedom can’t coexist.
Locally we promote ‘kindness’, ‘give back’, ‘collaboration’ at our public schools to instill feelings of guilt and privilege in students. Competition is bad. Mediocrity is encouraged. SBUSD has even mandated assembly attendance to inform high performing AP and Honors students “you make other students feel uncomfortable so tone it down”.
All students are graduated to protect taxpayer property values impacted by school rankings. Top level faculty get demoted. Academies popped up: schools within our public high schools. Then these programs diluted to ‘all-comers’ like the former nationally recognized Dos Pueblo Engineering Academy. In frustration, experienced working professionals quit volunteering on campus: a huge loss to teachers and students.
Parents, District Taxpayers, need to be on campus at all times for oversight and observation in safe havens like the library, band room, and cafeteria. Otherwise, outcomes decline and fraud continues. We must seek and push to elect qualified school board members like the late 4-term exceptional Bob Noel, PhD. He made a difference! His weekly media column kept us informed. A turn around is needed!
Public, taxpayer funded education has been a colossal failure which needs to be ended. School vouchers now! Like Trumps proposal to end the monopoly of health care by insurance companies by giving the money to the people to buy their own health care. Let parents decide which schools work for their own children to include religious affiliated schools.
End the education monopoly by the teachers union. Competition, with well defined outcomes will turn around our disastrous results as we are now at the bottom of western industrialized countries.
LT- agree colossal failure; and need for competition from vocational, charters, magnet, etc . However, have you thought 2 steps ahead on vouchers? Giving tax money for discretionary spending to oblivious parents, political radicals at either end of the spectrum, religious zealots or those here to convert citizens or eliminate American customs, values and traditions? What would Somalia schools be like? Would taxpayers be content to have no say?
Having twice contributed to the creation of voucher ballot measures, discussions become complex related to guardrails and taxpayers not wanting to fund specific religious or political schools that could indoctrinate students against our country. Nothing is easy.
A small town in Oklahoma recently had over 500 citizens show up to protest funding Islam Sharia Law; followed by similar actions in Texas following Gov Abbott’s move to ban. Serious issues; these legitimate concerns must be resolved.
A Free Appropriate Public Education is a Constitutional Right: State constitutions mandate a public school system, often deeming it essential for democracy.
A State determined right; not federal. The federal government has no public education obligation: it’s up to each State to independently decide if a right. Imagine the possible changes after closure of US Dept of Education! What are the various cost implications for different States to meet student outcome goals?
It must be terrible to live in a world where other people have their own connections to God and don’t have to go through you as an authority or intermediary.
Wow; well written, thanks for sharing your thoughts.
The issue of expecting tax dollars and increased tax dollars to solve our problems including education of our kids and grandkids is a non starter. Until we get rid of waisted funds going into the wrong pockets we will not get the results that we are all looking for.
It doesn't come as a huge surprise that most of the comments so far are about rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic—we have been conditioned to miss the ship for the deck chairs. If we engage with the topics covered in the article, we would be having a very different conversation. Modern public education was recognized by the sober as an “act of war” on the American people in 1983—here we are over 40 years later, and this war has turned into totalizing brainwashing. How do we miss this? More money? The real solutions are free. Keep your kids out of the public schools, and you have saved them from decades of deprogramming. Recover formal and final causality; learn what you are and what you are meant to become. It may cost time, but the wisdom is free. The virtue will cost much blood, sweat, and tears, but the ROI is exponential. Let's have a real conversation about real things, not plastic deck chairs.
EXCELLENT ARTICLE! The 30,000' view I believe is outlined in "The 45 Communist Goals for America by W. Cleon Skousen, written in 1961:
1-U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2-U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3-Develop the illusion that total disarmament by the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4-Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5-Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet Satellites.
6-Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7-Grant Recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8-Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev’s promise in 1955 to settle the Germany question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9-Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10-Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11-Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo).
12-Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13-Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14-Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent office.
15-Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16-Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17-Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers’ associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18-Gain control of all student newspapers.
19-Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20-Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, and policy-making positions.
21-Gain control of key positions in radio, TV and motions pictures.
22-Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to “eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms.”
23-Control art critics and directions of art museums. “Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive meaningless art.”
no God in communist countries because one cannot honor both God and the Communist Party.
24-Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them “censorship” and a violation of free speech and free press.
25-Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio and TV.
26-Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural, healthy.”
27-Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with “social” religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a “religious crutch.”
28-Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of “separation of church and state.”
The end of prayer in American public schools has its origin in the 1962 Supreme Court case of Engel v. Vitale, and prayer in American public schools is virtually nonexistent today.
29-Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a world-wide basis.
30-Discredit the American founding fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the “common man.”
31-Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of “the big picture.” Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32-Support any social movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture – education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33-Eliminate laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34-Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35-Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
It was unlikely that Skousen, a former FBI agent who believed in the righteousness of the FBI, ever contemplated a time when the FBI might not be the good guys. However, if the FBI becomes an agency that no longer equally applies the law to all people and becomes primarily influenced by political, not Constitutional, considerations in its investigations and charging decisions, then it will have stopped operating as a police agency worthy of a free people. If not addressed quickly by Congress, the president, the states, or the Federal Courts, such a change would end Constitutional government in America.
36-Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37-Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38-Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand or treat.
39-Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40-Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41-Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42-Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use “united force” to solve economic, political or social problems.
43-Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44-Internationalize the Panama Canal.
Control of the Panama Canal changed from the United States to Panama on December 31, 1999.
45-Repeal the Connally Reservation so the U.S. cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over domestic problems. Give the World Court jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.
A first rate diagnosis of the problem, but I don't think the solution is a return to the past but a (sorry for the term) revisioning for the future. We need to have a new appreciation of what a human being is without confining that within past religious boxes, and a renewal of our understanding of the ancient Greeks (and the Islamic work on this during their golden age, as well). Back in the early 90s my cousin and her husband founded a non-religious charter school in Phoenix to return education to the rigor of the 4-Rs. They've retired years ago but it's still one of the blue ribbon schools in Arizona.
As a university math professor in Alberta I was dismayed by the poor grounding students had coming out of high school. I got a first hand illustration of part of the problem when I was appointed to a provincial committee aimed at fixing an emergency that had come up (I was standing in the wrong place at the wrong time when they needed a volunteer). The Alberta Education Ministry had decided in 1990 to revise the high school math curriculum. They designed three streams: first was called terminal, for students not going on to university. The second was "applied" for students going into arts, humanities, and social sciences. The third was "pure," for students going into engineering and science. They got the text books, got everything in order, told high school guidance people what to do, and enrolled the first and second cohorts of 10th graders who went through a couple of years in the program. Then, and only then, did they inform the four provincial universities about all of this. Whoops. None of the universities would accept the "pure" stream for matriculation. So a committee was struck to "fix things." At our first meeting there were representatives from the math departments at each university, and the chair who was from Alberta Education. She started the first meeting off by asking why we had a problem with the curriculum as given. With one voice we replied: all that it does is teach students how to use a programmable calculator, it doesn't teach critical thinking or any sort of real mathematical understanding (the what for, final cause - how to recognize a mathematical truth, which Plato said was a first step toward the Good). The person from Alberta Education replied: "I don't see why learning how to use a programmable calculator doesn't teach that." With that, we knew we'd have a long task ahead of us. The problem eventually did get resolved, in my view only partially because they didn't put geometry back in.
"We need to have a new appreciation of what a human being is without confining that within past religious boxes"
They aren't past religious boxes because they're eternal. You also haven't provided a justification for why that should be the case [new appreciation without a religious framework], you're asserting a metaphysical claim that denies the legitimacy of a tradition because... because, yet also appealing to Islamic contributions [a theological tradition...]
The Greeks were literally pagan - just because they appeal to nature and reason doesn't mean they didn't consider a transcendent [i.e, theological, not rationalist] Epistemic framework
St. Paul himself made note of the "statue to the unknown god" because the Greeks while deficient in their understanding of the True God, implicitly acknowledged a higher unseen power.
The Greeks appealing to reason is no different than a Scholastic [Medieval Catholic method that sought to reconcile reason, faith and engaged heavily with Aristotle] appealing to reason - reason informs people and orders them to truth and transcendence.
Don't smuggle in your post enlightenment presuppositions as truth.
"What is eternal cannot be confined in time but must be rediscovered in each time.
What does this even mean? The spirit of the ages? Truth can be redefined according to the present beliefs commonplace in a specific society at that moment?
Sorry but I detect a specific anti Christian belief system because Christianity uniquely claims universality and binding authority. You can abstract Greek philosophy and metaphysics because it belongs to a bygone world, you can support Islamic schools of thought and their revelations from a distance as they are not dominant in the Christian world - but it seems you cannot tolerate Christianity because you desire a modern, secular order.
Curious Burton: your opinion of Kumon Math, steady sequential learning? I noticed in 2008-2010, most AP - AB/BC Calculus students at SB High had been in the SBCounty Math SuperBowl competitions (starting in third grade on), and/or were Kumon Math students (enabling measured progress across all Central and SoCal enrollees.) A few other AP Calc students were from Mountain View, Kellogg, Monte Vista and Washington Elementary Schools which had invested in other intense math instructional programs paid for by parents or PTAs. SBUSD historically had kept math students tracked based on standardized testing or performance from 7th to 12th grade, until “collaborative group math” was introduced and became the local norm.
Thanks Steven for a thought provoking read and for your 35 years helping youth. My experience is that it is easier to teach specific facts, which in my opinion are often trivial and will quickly be forgotten, rather than the more philsophical issues underlying the reasons why the subject should be studied.
I couldn’t agree more that public education in this country and particularly in this state are a complete waste of our tax dollars. Give the money to the parents to educate their children in whatever way they feel best suits their wants and needs. This will bring competition to the different schools to cater to the wants of the people and in turn force free market responsibilities on the individual schools in order to maintain fiscal responsibility
The wants of normie parents won't change anything because normies are just that - they have no specific end goal in mind besides their children graduating high school and acquiring some degree in higher education.
"This will bring competition to the different schools to cater to the wants of the people and in turn force free market responsibilities on the individual schools in order to maintain fiscal responsibility."
Free market responsibilities - and why? What's so great about them? What are they ordered to? Not to God. "Fiscal responsibility-", and this does what exactly?
TheotokosAppreciator - I appreciate your precision in identifying the philosophical incoherence in conflating capitalism with traditional values. You’re absolutely right that the Church has never promoted capitalism as an ultimate end, and your point about capital accumulation lacking proper final cause is well-taken.
However, I’d gently suggest that when you write “normies are just that,” you’re conceding the very thing we should be fighting against. These parents you’re dismissing aren’t intrinsically deficient - they’re products of the Great Abdication I describe in the article. They’ve been systematically deprived of formation in formal and final causes for generations.
Our task isn’t to write them off as hopeless “normies” but to recognize that they’re starving souls who’ve never been fed the truth about what they are or what they’re for. If we approach them with contempt rather than the patience of a physician diagnosing a curable disease, we’ve abandoned our responsibility to help restore what’s been stolen from them.
The free market conversation here is mostly people grasping for some solution when they lack the philosophical equipment to diagnose the real problem. Rather than scorning their inadequate tools, shouldn’t we be offering them the 2,500-year-old wisdom that would actually answer their questions?
It wasn't contempt, it was apathy. You cannot fix normies because that's not what they want - and no I have no appreciation for the conservatives here whom I find lacking in depth and cannot even defend their own positions.
If you want to offer them wisdom by all means, but that's not my goal. Just to be clear I don't fight for western civilization, and quite frankly I don't oppose a collapse because my beliefs are Pre-Westphalian. I don't support the Reformation or the Enlightenment, I have nothing in common with everyone who supports "western civilization."
Sorry, but that's just how I am. If it pains you - I can't really say much else.
I hear your honesty about apathy, and I respect that you're not pretending otherwise. But I think you're underestimating what's possible.
The "normies" you describe aren't a separate species - they're us, in my case forty years ago. My own intellectual conversion began with a simple question I couldn't answer. Augustine was a "normie" Manichaean before he encountered Ambrose. Most fallen men are Normies before an encounter with Truth! The Logos! Normies aren’t ours to “convert” they are our neighbors to love, God will do the rest.
The Pre-Westphalian Church you admire didn't wait for collapse - it converted barbarian tribes, rebuilt civilization from ruins, and sent missionaries to hostile territories. That's not optimism about Western civilization; that's confidence in Christ's promise that the gates of hell will not prevail.
You're free to refuse that mission, but the starving souls who lack philosophical feasts still need to eat. I'd rather hand them bread than watch them starve while critiquing their lack of sophistication.
If you change your mind about offering wisdom to those who need it, there's always room at the table.
"Their cerebral structures are highly developed and intentional - but somehow, unapproachable [which normies are. They have a rational soul and intellect, and yet wouldn't understand a word a Church Father said.] They have no speech of their own [normies don't stand or oppose anything], no language, they don't seem to even see us. Not like how we see ourselves I mean.-" January, Morgan Yu's personal operator
That's just a quote from a game I have played and enjoyed. It's in reference to an alien species known as the "typhon-", highly advanced beings who lack the ability to register others as persons or empathize with the suffering of another living creature.
That's my allegory [not dehumanization] for "normies."
Normie itself is a vague catch all term for anyone who doesn't stand for or oppose anything in particular.
Ask yourself this; Would thr average person care for a word you said? They're more than capable of understanding what you say - but it would be utter nonsense they'd forget about - not because it's incoherent, it simply doesn't register as meaningful to someone who simply lives by vibes.
Comparing human beings - made in the image and likeness of God - to alien monsters who “lack the ability to register others as persons” isn’t an allegory. It’s precisely the dehumanization you claim to avoid.
Your disclaimer doesn’t change what you’re actually saying: that some humans are functionally a different species, incapable of recognizing meaning when offered. But this contradicts both reason and the Faith you claim to defend.
Every person has a rational soul capable of knowing truth. The fact that they haven’t yet cultivated it - or that we lack the patience to help them form it - doesn’t make them alien. It makes them what we all were before formation: hungry souls who don’t yet know what they’re hungry for.
St. Paul faced Athenians who mocked him as a “babbler.” St. Patrick faced Irish who worshiped stones. St. Francis Xavier faced Japanese who’d never heard of Christ. None concluded “these people are like empathy-lacking aliens who can’t register meaning.” They loved them into the truth - not because they were optimistic about pagans, but because they were obedient to Christ.
You say you represent Pre-Westphalian Christianity, but the Pre-Westphalian Church didn’t wait for worthy audiences. It sent missionaries to hostile territories, converted barbarian tribes, and rebuilt civilization from ruins. That’s not naïve optimism - that’s the Great Commission.
If you’ve decided certain souls are unreachable, that’s your choice. But don’t mistake apathy for theological sophistication. Look at this thread - every person here is participating in good faith, even with incomplete formation. They came hungry for truth. The question isn’t whether they can receive it. The question is whether we’ll offer it.
I’ll keep offering bread to the hungry. You’re welcome to join anytime.
State constitutions mandate a public school system, often deeming it essential for democracy.
This is an achievable goal, and the solution isn’t to destroy public education, which both parties are doing. It’s one of the only things they’re both proficient at.
The School Choice that was recently passed in Texas will increase tax burdens substantially. Arizona is already tens of millions in the red because of their voucher system.
Get rid of the computer systems for K-6, spend the money training and hiring literacy teachers. Reduce class sizes. Abolish the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act as well as ESSA. The “Universal School Choice” being pushed by this administration is WEF globalism on steroids.
"WEF Globalism-" this is empty culture war posturing and a very old [by internet standards] polemic.
Globalism isn't the cause for modernity or the rot of the modern world. The Protestant Reformation, the Enlightenment, Modernist/Liberal/Revolutionary movements and ideologies of thr 19th century onward are.
It's also telling you support democracy, a system that is illegitimate as it presupposes that authority comes from people and not God, and legitimate authority/established tradition.
I didn't ask for your consent. You also didn't, or rather were unable to confront a point I made.
I suggest you go talk about something substantial rather than modern conservative conspiratorial nonsense, for you yourself aren't an expert on the problems with the world, given that you point to boogeymen "WEF!"
I guess it couldn’t have anything to do with decades of underfunding. Nice try, but this is not hard to figure out. Fourty kids in a classroom (see what I did there?), elimination of art, music, civics.
Bobby: is $28,000 per student for 9 months instruction insufficient? It’s how the Districts use their funding. We are administrator top heavy ensuring high paid employment to friends and family. What does County Ed do for $1.4B —with a ‘B’— to benefit student outcomes? It’s the full employment center for terminated administrators until pension eligible. Tax Money needs to be spent on students, teachers, classroom aides, and vocational and other programs; not administrators. BTW: it’s 20 students max per class to third grade; 36 max in secondary.
Maybe they get $28k per student in Montecito. At my daughter’s little school where I was on the board, they got $9k. That paid for everything: staff, admin, facilities, supplies. Anything over that had to be supplemented through fundraisers. They can’t even get a bond measure passed to upgrade facilities built in the 1940’s. No one goes into education to get wealth.
I find that hard to believe. Can you provide more information? What school, where, what years, any way to support your claim of 9k per student. Is this a public school in what district?
Bobby: Which state was your daughter’s little school? California’s K-12 funding, primarily through the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) enacted in 2013, has increased significantly, with statewide funding well above $15,000–$20,000 per student (and usually higher to $28,000 when including all sources like federal funds, special grants, etc.). Call Superintendents at each District to confirm $28,000 is the local norm.
Local Basic Aid elementary schools are about $33,000 per student; MUS higher due to property tax revenues that fund the school. You’ll notice on your property tax bill your assessment for the ‘Educational Augmentation Fund’ whereby property tax payers help fund other CA District public schools via LCFF.
Bobby, money is the very least of our problems- the fundimental shift if we retrun to formal and final causes is that we will subordinate the current emphasis on exterior and material realities (money and buildings) and return to the real primary concerns of an educaiton which are spiritual, immaterial, intellectual and moral. No country in the history of the world has spent or spends more than we do, and very few countries excell us in our ability to deform our chidlren.
My guy he wrote the article. If you can't understand what he means, then you're one of the people he wrote of who can't even see what education today lacks.
The "funding" argument only goes to illustrate the writer's thesis. The fallacy of the comment...teacher union centric...is and has been empirically demonstrated. The "funding" argument is straight out the union's playbook and regurgitated mindlessly by products of public school.
Check out communist/socialist Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals (1971) regarding the infiltration of the public school system.
Why can’t Johnny (Juanito) read, write or do arithmetic? Maybe it’s because the NEA and other teachers groups are preoccupied with fund raising for radical leftist causes? Turns out union dues from teachers are used to fund causes such as: climate change activism, racial equality, LGBTQ outreach, anti Israel propaganda and migrant rights. Every election cycle the various teachers unions give $1 billion for left wing, Democratic candidates, increasingly with Socialist ideologies.
And we wonder why our schools are failing miserably? Will test scores improve as illegal migrant children are removed from our schools?
Isn’t it interesting how teacher union activism has become a hotbed for anti -American, anti-Christian, anti-Capitalist, anti-white, and anti-nuclear family indoctrination?
Stop conflating capitalism with virtue or traditionalism LT. Perhaps within your modern worldview that has existed for barely 200 years does capitalism qualify as a traditional system, but it isn't. The Church has never promoter capitalism, that is a liberal value because the final cause of capitalism is ultimately the accumulation of more capital.
Sorry, not everyone is living in a 4th century fantasy world. “The church has never promoted capitalism.” Seriously? Is that why they send an annual stack of gift envelopes?
Please stop lecturing the rest of us, it really gets old.
Questioning others faith, morality, motivations, calling others “cowards,” have you ever been professionally evaluated for narcissistic personality disorder? How does your constant browbeating go over with your co-workers? Assuming you do have a job.
What would a Church father say about your contempt for the 4th century?
I am free to call other people cowards, and I am free to question your faith. Quite frankly you sound no different than a materialist protestant. Nothing you write shows me you're a Catholic in any capacity.
Mrs. Bond for example cannot defend her beliefs but relies on others to do so, she'll attack me but only behind other people who do it for her. Hence my claim that she's a coward.
Perhaps if you weren't so antagonistic I would feel the need to respond in such a way.
Distributism is more aligned with Catholicism than capitalism, and yes LT - the Church has never endorsed capitalism. It's striking to you because you're a modernist with no respect for genuine traditions ["4th century fantasy" - I can tell everything I need to know about you based on that].
Excellent, excellent Article! Your synopsis of "The Four Clauses-Two Missing" is spot on! It would do every educator and parent well to remember them: Material Cause, Efficient Cause, Formal Cause, & Final Cause
If we look at "The 45 Communist Goals for America" by W. Cleon Skousen, written in 1961, we can see and verify these targeted goals for our YOUTH in Education are playing out NOW all across the country as you so well observed.
GOALS
17-Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers’ associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18-Gain control of all student newspapers.
19-Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
26-Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural, healthy.”
29-Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a world-wide basis.
30-Discredit the American founding fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the “common man.”
40-Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41-Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
Notice these targeted "goals" for OUR CHILDREN have been very successfully--Turning the Titanic around is not for the faint of heart!
“Religious zealots?” You mean like some who post here? Zealotry is wrong no matter what faith. I have no problem with Somali or Islamic schools as long as they are held to the same high standards, recite the Pledge of Allegiance and support American values and exceptionalism.
It's troubling to know amoral relativisits like Montecito have a voice in society, such people are uniquely responsible for the destruction of public order, morality, and decency. How one can speak of a culture or a society yet treats the most vulnerable as "Its", as objects or obstacles to use or overcome is beyond me.
It's truly chilling that such people live among us and have no issue offering moral condemnation of those who have a coherent set of moral principles, while lacking their own.
Some of you will remember California's 1970 Stull Bill that required school districts to explicate their goals and objectives. Not surprisingly, most didn't, but ours, the College School district in Santa Ynez, organized a committee to meet the challenge. Our response was titled "The Educated Child in a Free Society," that laid down the foundation on which we wished our school to base its approach.
Came the fateful day when John Vasconcellos, assemblyman from San Jose, arrived to present us with "our" 10 behavioral objectives, foremost of which if memory serves correctly was "make the student feel good about himself."
Unsurprisingly, we objected, at which the assemplyman and a representaative of the state Education Board departed without bothering to take a copy of our response. The rest is a sad plank in the demise of education in California.
Devastating!!! Look at that monster today through SEL! And Empathy!
Had a somewhat experience around 30 years ago when the educational rage was 2 + 2 does not necessarily = 4. A representative from the educational establishment delivered a talk to parents at Montecito Union regarding the "new math".
Needless to say the parents, of all political stripes, blew the guy right out the door. Gave me hope...albeit short lived.
These are crazy stories that no one blinks at today!
Last week I had lunch at downtown's Pascucci with a large group of community members -- all of us from NextDoor (wonderful meet-up). Turns out the woman next to me attended Chatsworth High School, graduating 2 years earlier in 1968. As we happily reminisced, I was struck by the fact that for us, our generation, school was wonderful. We loved our classes, respected and still to this day, are thankful for our teachers. That positive experience is pretty much absent for today's youth. School is something to get through. High schoolers can't wait to graduate. What has changed? Significantly, administrators have pushed their way into classrooms, in absentia, pushed aside good teachers and done great damage. Note those with the Ed.D degree who demand to be addressed as "Doctor." They need to get out Webster's and look up the definition of education. Over the decades, district offices are bloated with administrators who take up space, curriculum, and staff. Meantime, school nurses, librarians, counselors -- gone. Gone: music and the arts, Shop and Home Ec. Some schools no longer offer Journalism and Drama. And then there's the buildings themselves: custodial staff and maintenance shrunk to bare bones.
Agreed. If a purpose of education is to help us become more aware of our surroundings, then art, music, Shop and Home Ec. are important if not essential.
Too many public schools are not fulfilling their function so need to be defunded, replaced by alternatives. Make unions illegal for any and all taxpaid teachers and government workers. Break up large public school districts into small districts of 6-and fewer schools to improve taxpayer accountability, parent responsiveness, and student outcomes. Cold Spring School, Montecito Union, Hope and some schools in the Goleta District deliver prepared students for secondary learning at SBUSD. That’s where it ends for most.
Failed SBUSD changed its mission statement to “prepare students for a world yet to be created”; to one where reading literacy and math skills aren't essential. High performing secondary school students turned out to speak and protest to the deaf SBUSD Board, complaining this statement is loosey-goofy, meaningless.
A free public education is a societal expectation, not a US Constitutional right, that was driven by industrialization, immigration, and the need for literate citizens/workers. What has changed?
In MA, ‘the father of public education’, Horace Mann, advocated for free, non-sectarian, tax-supported schools open to all children. He envisioned public schools would promote moral character, democracy, social mobility, unity in a growing, immigrant-heavy nation, and be the “great equalizer”essential for our Republic. Ignorance and freedom can’t coexist.
Locally we promote ‘kindness’, ‘give back’, ‘collaboration’ at our public schools to instill feelings of guilt and privilege in students. Competition is bad. Mediocrity is encouraged. SBUSD has even mandated assembly attendance to inform high performing AP and Honors students “you make other students feel uncomfortable so tone it down”.
All students are graduated to protect taxpayer property values impacted by school rankings. Top level faculty get demoted. Academies popped up: schools within our public high schools. Then these programs diluted to ‘all-comers’ like the former nationally recognized Dos Pueblo Engineering Academy. In frustration, experienced working professionals quit volunteering on campus: a huge loss to teachers and students.
Parents, District Taxpayers, need to be on campus at all times for oversight and observation in safe havens like the library, band room, and cafeteria. Otherwise, outcomes decline and fraud continues. We must seek and push to elect qualified school board members like the late 4-term exceptional Bob Noel, PhD. He made a difference! His weekly media column kept us informed. A turn around is needed!
Public, taxpayer funded education has been a colossal failure which needs to be ended. School vouchers now! Like Trumps proposal to end the monopoly of health care by insurance companies by giving the money to the people to buy their own health care. Let parents decide which schools work for their own children to include religious affiliated schools.
End the education monopoly by the teachers union. Competition, with well defined outcomes will turn around our disastrous results as we are now at the bottom of western industrialized countries.
LT- agree colossal failure; and need for competition from vocational, charters, magnet, etc . However, have you thought 2 steps ahead on vouchers? Giving tax money for discretionary spending to oblivious parents, political radicals at either end of the spectrum, religious zealots or those here to convert citizens or eliminate American customs, values and traditions? What would Somalia schools be like? Would taxpayers be content to have no say?
Having twice contributed to the creation of voucher ballot measures, discussions become complex related to guardrails and taxpayers not wanting to fund specific religious or political schools that could indoctrinate students against our country. Nothing is easy.
A small town in Oklahoma recently had over 500 citizens show up to protest funding Islam Sharia Law; followed by similar actions in Texas following Gov Abbott’s move to ban. Serious issues; these legitimate concerns must be resolved.
Quite frankly Ms. Montecito the more you antagonize me the more I would permit sharia law, if only to see you seethe.
Not light the match, but I would not put out the fire.
A Free Appropriate Public Education is a Constitutional Right: State constitutions mandate a public school system, often deeming it essential for democracy.
A State determined right; not federal. The federal government has no public education obligation: it’s up to each State to independently decide if a right. Imagine the possible changes after closure of US Dept of Education! What are the various cost implications for different States to meet student outcome goals?
Well, even if the Dept of Education closed it wouldn’t make a difference due to things like WIOA.
Yes and clearly the education system failed to instill moral values given your own inability to recognize unborn children as humans, as a "Thou."
How someone like you can speak of morality yet support one of the most evil modern practices is beyond me.
Theo ‘Wannabe Moral Dictator of SB Current’ - Get over it. Post when you’re God.
No thank you Montecito. You can get back to me when you abandon your incoherent and amoral beliefs.
It must be terrible to live in a world where other people have their own connections to God and don’t have to go through you as an authority or intermediary.
Wow; well written, thanks for sharing your thoughts.
The issue of expecting tax dollars and increased tax dollars to solve our problems including education of our kids and grandkids is a non starter. Until we get rid of waisted funds going into the wrong pockets we will not get the results that we are all looking for.
It doesn't come as a huge surprise that most of the comments so far are about rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic—we have been conditioned to miss the ship for the deck chairs. If we engage with the topics covered in the article, we would be having a very different conversation. Modern public education was recognized by the sober as an “act of war” on the American people in 1983—here we are over 40 years later, and this war has turned into totalizing brainwashing. How do we miss this? More money? The real solutions are free. Keep your kids out of the public schools, and you have saved them from decades of deprogramming. Recover formal and final causality; learn what you are and what you are meant to become. It may cost time, but the wisdom is free. The virtue will cost much blood, sweat, and tears, but the ROI is exponential. Let's have a real conversation about real things, not plastic deck chairs.
EXCELLENT ARTICLE! The 30,000' view I believe is outlined in "The 45 Communist Goals for America by W. Cleon Skousen, written in 1961:
1-U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2-U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3-Develop the illusion that total disarmament by the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4-Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5-Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet Satellites.
6-Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7-Grant Recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8-Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev’s promise in 1955 to settle the Germany question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9-Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10-Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11-Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo).
12-Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13-Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14-Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent office.
15-Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16-Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17-Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers’ associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18-Gain control of all student newspapers.
19-Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20-Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, and policy-making positions.
21-Gain control of key positions in radio, TV and motions pictures.
22-Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to “eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms.”
23-Control art critics and directions of art museums. “Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive meaningless art.”
no God in communist countries because one cannot honor both God and the Communist Party.
24-Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them “censorship” and a violation of free speech and free press.
25-Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio and TV.
26-Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural, healthy.”
27-Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with “social” religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a “religious crutch.”
28-Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of “separation of church and state.”
The end of prayer in American public schools has its origin in the 1962 Supreme Court case of Engel v. Vitale, and prayer in American public schools is virtually nonexistent today.
29-Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a world-wide basis.
30-Discredit the American founding fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the “common man.”
31-Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of “the big picture.” Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32-Support any social movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture – education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33-Eliminate laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34-Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35-Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
It was unlikely that Skousen, a former FBI agent who believed in the righteousness of the FBI, ever contemplated a time when the FBI might not be the good guys. However, if the FBI becomes an agency that no longer equally applies the law to all people and becomes primarily influenced by political, not Constitutional, considerations in its investigations and charging decisions, then it will have stopped operating as a police agency worthy of a free people. If not addressed quickly by Congress, the president, the states, or the Federal Courts, such a change would end Constitutional government in America.
36-Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37-Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38-Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand or treat.
39-Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40-Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41-Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42-Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use “united force” to solve economic, political or social problems.
43-Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44-Internationalize the Panama Canal.
Control of the Panama Canal changed from the United States to Panama on December 31, 1999.
45-Repeal the Connally Reservation so the U.S. cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over domestic problems. Give the World Court jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.
A first rate diagnosis of the problem, but I don't think the solution is a return to the past but a (sorry for the term) revisioning for the future. We need to have a new appreciation of what a human being is without confining that within past religious boxes, and a renewal of our understanding of the ancient Greeks (and the Islamic work on this during their golden age, as well). Back in the early 90s my cousin and her husband founded a non-religious charter school in Phoenix to return education to the rigor of the 4-Rs. They've retired years ago but it's still one of the blue ribbon schools in Arizona.
As a university math professor in Alberta I was dismayed by the poor grounding students had coming out of high school. I got a first hand illustration of part of the problem when I was appointed to a provincial committee aimed at fixing an emergency that had come up (I was standing in the wrong place at the wrong time when they needed a volunteer). The Alberta Education Ministry had decided in 1990 to revise the high school math curriculum. They designed three streams: first was called terminal, for students not going on to university. The second was "applied" for students going into arts, humanities, and social sciences. The third was "pure," for students going into engineering and science. They got the text books, got everything in order, told high school guidance people what to do, and enrolled the first and second cohorts of 10th graders who went through a couple of years in the program. Then, and only then, did they inform the four provincial universities about all of this. Whoops. None of the universities would accept the "pure" stream for matriculation. So a committee was struck to "fix things." At our first meeting there were representatives from the math departments at each university, and the chair who was from Alberta Education. She started the first meeting off by asking why we had a problem with the curriculum as given. With one voice we replied: all that it does is teach students how to use a programmable calculator, it doesn't teach critical thinking or any sort of real mathematical understanding (the what for, final cause - how to recognize a mathematical truth, which Plato said was a first step toward the Good). The person from Alberta Education replied: "I don't see why learning how to use a programmable calculator doesn't teach that." With that, we knew we'd have a long task ahead of us. The problem eventually did get resolved, in my view only partially because they didn't put geometry back in.
"We need to have a new appreciation of what a human being is without confining that within past religious boxes"
They aren't past religious boxes because they're eternal. You also haven't provided a justification for why that should be the case [new appreciation without a religious framework], you're asserting a metaphysical claim that denies the legitimacy of a tradition because... because, yet also appealing to Islamic contributions [a theological tradition...]
The Greeks were literally pagan - just because they appeal to nature and reason doesn't mean they didn't consider a transcendent [i.e, theological, not rationalist] Epistemic framework
St. Paul himself made note of the "statue to the unknown god" because the Greeks while deficient in their understanding of the True God, implicitly acknowledged a higher unseen power.
The Greeks appealing to reason is no different than a Scholastic [Medieval Catholic method that sought to reconcile reason, faith and engaged heavily with Aristotle] appealing to reason - reason informs people and orders them to truth and transcendence.
Don't smuggle in your post enlightenment presuppositions as truth.
I didn't say "without a religious framework" I said 'boxes." What is eternal cannot be confined in time but must be rediscovered in each time.
"What is eternal cannot be confined in time but must be rediscovered in each time.
What does this even mean? The spirit of the ages? Truth can be redefined according to the present beliefs commonplace in a specific society at that moment?
Sorry but I detect a specific anti Christian belief system because Christianity uniquely claims universality and binding authority. You can abstract Greek philosophy and metaphysics because it belongs to a bygone world, you can support Islamic schools of thought and their revelations from a distance as they are not dominant in the Christian world - but it seems you cannot tolerate Christianity because you desire a modern, secular order.
Curious Burton: your opinion of Kumon Math, steady sequential learning? I noticed in 2008-2010, most AP - AB/BC Calculus students at SB High had been in the SBCounty Math SuperBowl competitions (starting in third grade on), and/or were Kumon Math students (enabling measured progress across all Central and SoCal enrollees.) A few other AP Calc students were from Mountain View, Kellogg, Monte Vista and Washington Elementary Schools which had invested in other intense math instructional programs paid for by parents or PTAs. SBUSD historically had kept math students tracked based on standardized testing or performance from 7th to 12th grade, until “collaborative group math” was introduced and became the local norm.
That's interesting! I'm not aware of Kumon Math, more familiar with the Moore Method.
Thanks Steven for a thought provoking read and for your 35 years helping youth. My experience is that it is easier to teach specific facts, which in my opinion are often trivial and will quickly be forgotten, rather than the more philsophical issues underlying the reasons why the subject should be studied.
I couldn’t agree more that public education in this country and particularly in this state are a complete waste of our tax dollars. Give the money to the parents to educate their children in whatever way they feel best suits their wants and needs. This will bring competition to the different schools to cater to the wants of the people and in turn force free market responsibilities on the individual schools in order to maintain fiscal responsibility
The wants of normie parents won't change anything because normies are just that - they have no specific end goal in mind besides their children graduating high school and acquiring some degree in higher education.
"This will bring competition to the different schools to cater to the wants of the people and in turn force free market responsibilities on the individual schools in order to maintain fiscal responsibility."
Free market responsibilities - and why? What's so great about them? What are they ordered to? Not to God. "Fiscal responsibility-", and this does what exactly?
TheotokosAppreciator - I appreciate your precision in identifying the philosophical incoherence in conflating capitalism with traditional values. You’re absolutely right that the Church has never promoted capitalism as an ultimate end, and your point about capital accumulation lacking proper final cause is well-taken.
However, I’d gently suggest that when you write “normies are just that,” you’re conceding the very thing we should be fighting against. These parents you’re dismissing aren’t intrinsically deficient - they’re products of the Great Abdication I describe in the article. They’ve been systematically deprived of formation in formal and final causes for generations.
Our task isn’t to write them off as hopeless “normies” but to recognize that they’re starving souls who’ve never been fed the truth about what they are or what they’re for. If we approach them with contempt rather than the patience of a physician diagnosing a curable disease, we’ve abandoned our responsibility to help restore what’s been stolen from them.
The free market conversation here is mostly people grasping for some solution when they lack the philosophical equipment to diagnose the real problem. Rather than scorning their inadequate tools, shouldn’t we be offering them the 2,500-year-old wisdom that would actually answer their questions?
It wasn't contempt, it was apathy. You cannot fix normies because that's not what they want - and no I have no appreciation for the conservatives here whom I find lacking in depth and cannot even defend their own positions.
If you want to offer them wisdom by all means, but that's not my goal. Just to be clear I don't fight for western civilization, and quite frankly I don't oppose a collapse because my beliefs are Pre-Westphalian. I don't support the Reformation or the Enlightenment, I have nothing in common with everyone who supports "western civilization."
Sorry, but that's just how I am. If it pains you - I can't really say much else.
TheotokosAppreciator,
I hear your honesty about apathy, and I respect that you're not pretending otherwise. But I think you're underestimating what's possible.
The "normies" you describe aren't a separate species - they're us, in my case forty years ago. My own intellectual conversion began with a simple question I couldn't answer. Augustine was a "normie" Manichaean before he encountered Ambrose. Most fallen men are Normies before an encounter with Truth! The Logos! Normies aren’t ours to “convert” they are our neighbors to love, God will do the rest.
The Pre-Westphalian Church you admire didn't wait for collapse - it converted barbarian tribes, rebuilt civilization from ruins, and sent missionaries to hostile territories. That's not optimism about Western civilization; that's confidence in Christ's promise that the gates of hell will not prevail.
You're free to refuse that mission, but the starving souls who lack philosophical feasts still need to eat. I'd rather hand them bread than watch them starve while critiquing their lack of sophistication.
If you change your mind about offering wisdom to those who need it, there's always room at the table.
Steven
"Their cerebral structures are highly developed and intentional - but somehow, unapproachable [which normies are. They have a rational soul and intellect, and yet wouldn't understand a word a Church Father said.] They have no speech of their own [normies don't stand or oppose anything], no language, they don't seem to even see us. Not like how we see ourselves I mean.-" January, Morgan Yu's personal operator
That's just a quote from a game I have played and enjoyed. It's in reference to an alien species known as the "typhon-", highly advanced beings who lack the ability to register others as persons or empathize with the suffering of another living creature.
That's my allegory [not dehumanization] for "normies."
Normie itself is a vague catch all term for anyone who doesn't stand for or oppose anything in particular.
Ask yourself this; Would thr average person care for a word you said? They're more than capable of understanding what you say - but it would be utter nonsense they'd forget about - not because it's incoherent, it simply doesn't register as meaningful to someone who simply lives by vibes.
TheotokosAppreciator,
Comparing human beings - made in the image and likeness of God - to alien monsters who “lack the ability to register others as persons” isn’t an allegory. It’s precisely the dehumanization you claim to avoid.
Your disclaimer doesn’t change what you’re actually saying: that some humans are functionally a different species, incapable of recognizing meaning when offered. But this contradicts both reason and the Faith you claim to defend.
Every person has a rational soul capable of knowing truth. The fact that they haven’t yet cultivated it - or that we lack the patience to help them form it - doesn’t make them alien. It makes them what we all were before formation: hungry souls who don’t yet know what they’re hungry for.
St. Paul faced Athenians who mocked him as a “babbler.” St. Patrick faced Irish who worshiped stones. St. Francis Xavier faced Japanese who’d never heard of Christ. None concluded “these people are like empathy-lacking aliens who can’t register meaning.” They loved them into the truth - not because they were optimistic about pagans, but because they were obedient to Christ.
You say you represent Pre-Westphalian Christianity, but the Pre-Westphalian Church didn’t wait for worthy audiences. It sent missionaries to hostile territories, converted barbarian tribes, and rebuilt civilization from ruins. That’s not naïve optimism - that’s the Great Commission.
If you’ve decided certain souls are unreachable, that’s your choice. But don’t mistake apathy for theological sophistication. Look at this thread - every person here is participating in good faith, even with incomplete formation. They came hungry for truth. The question isn’t whether they can receive it. The question is whether we’ll offer it.
I’ll keep offering bread to the hungry. You’re welcome to join anytime.
Steven
State constitutions mandate a public school system, often deeming it essential for democracy.
This is an achievable goal, and the solution isn’t to destroy public education, which both parties are doing. It’s one of the only things they’re both proficient at.
The School Choice that was recently passed in Texas will increase tax burdens substantially. Arizona is already tens of millions in the red because of their voucher system.
Get rid of the computer systems for K-6, spend the money training and hiring literacy teachers. Reduce class sizes. Abolish the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act as well as ESSA. The “Universal School Choice” being pushed by this administration is WEF globalism on steroids.
"WEF Globalism-" this is empty culture war posturing and a very old [by internet standards] polemic.
Globalism isn't the cause for modernity or the rot of the modern world. The Protestant Reformation, the Enlightenment, Modernist/Liberal/Revolutionary movements and ideologies of thr 19th century onward are.
It's also telling you support democracy, a system that is illegitimate as it presupposes that authority comes from people and not God, and legitimate authority/established tradition.
You have no authority to define God other than for yourself. None. Do not consider yourself an expert on that subject for others, ever.
It must be unsettling to see someone call out your overused, ancient polemic that has mo actual value.
I didn't ask for your consent. You also didn't, or rather were unable to confront a point I made.
I suggest you go talk about something substantial rather than modern conservative conspiratorial nonsense, for you yourself aren't an expert on the problems with the world, given that you point to boogeymen "WEF!"
What even are you?
I guess it couldn’t have anything to do with decades of underfunding. Nice try, but this is not hard to figure out. Fourty kids in a classroom (see what I did there?), elimination of art, music, civics.
Bobby: is $28,000 per student for 9 months instruction insufficient? It’s how the Districts use their funding. We are administrator top heavy ensuring high paid employment to friends and family. What does County Ed do for $1.4B —with a ‘B’— to benefit student outcomes? It’s the full employment center for terminated administrators until pension eligible. Tax Money needs to be spent on students, teachers, classroom aides, and vocational and other programs; not administrators. BTW: it’s 20 students max per class to third grade; 36 max in secondary.
Maybe they get $28k per student in Montecito. At my daughter’s little school where I was on the board, they got $9k. That paid for everything: staff, admin, facilities, supplies. Anything over that had to be supplemented through fundraisers. They can’t even get a bond measure passed to upgrade facilities built in the 1940’s. No one goes into education to get wealth.
I find that hard to believe. Can you provide more information? What school, where, what years, any way to support your claim of 9k per student. Is this a public school in what district?
Bobby: Which state was your daughter’s little school? California’s K-12 funding, primarily through the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) enacted in 2013, has increased significantly, with statewide funding well above $15,000–$20,000 per student (and usually higher to $28,000 when including all sources like federal funds, special grants, etc.). Call Superintendents at each District to confirm $28,000 is the local norm.
Local Basic Aid elementary schools are about $33,000 per student; MUS higher due to property tax revenues that fund the school. You’ll notice on your property tax bill your assessment for the ‘Educational Augmentation Fund’ whereby property tax payers help fund other CA District public schools via LCFF.
Bobby, money is the very least of our problems- the fundimental shift if we retrun to formal and final causes is that we will subordinate the current emphasis on exterior and material realities (money and buildings) and return to the real primary concerns of an educaiton which are spiritual, immaterial, intellectual and moral. No country in the history of the world has spent or spends more than we do, and very few countries excell us in our ability to deform our chidlren.
I have no idea what this means. Did a human write this?
Bobby, this is classic: "Did a human write this?" Did a literate man read it?
My guy he wrote the article. If you can't understand what he means, then you're one of the people he wrote of who can't even see what education today lacks.
The "funding" argument only goes to illustrate the writer's thesis. The fallacy of the comment...teacher union centric...is and has been empirically demonstrated. The "funding" argument is straight out the union's playbook and regurgitated mindlessly by products of public school.
Check out communist/socialist Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals (1971) regarding the infiltration of the public school system.
Excellent and spot on! The public school are now completely a neo-marxist color revolution with pretty words conveying spiritual dragons!
Why can’t Johnny (Juanito) read, write or do arithmetic? Maybe it’s because the NEA and other teachers groups are preoccupied with fund raising for radical leftist causes? Turns out union dues from teachers are used to fund causes such as: climate change activism, racial equality, LGBTQ outreach, anti Israel propaganda and migrant rights. Every election cycle the various teachers unions give $1 billion for left wing, Democratic candidates, increasingly with Socialist ideologies.
And we wonder why our schools are failing miserably? Will test scores improve as illegal migrant children are removed from our schools?
Isn’t it interesting how teacher union activism has become a hotbed for anti -American, anti-Christian, anti-Capitalist, anti-white, and anti-nuclear family indoctrination?
https://cbsaustin.com/news/nation-world/major-teachers-union-funneled-millions-of-dollars-into-left-wing-groups-report-israel-standardized-testing-ohio-massachusetts
https://www.freedomfoundation.com/education/never-mind-its-lies-the-nea-is-nothing-but-the-lefts-piggy-bank/
Narcissist, charlatan and all around head case, trying to be relevant. Suggest you familiarize yourself with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
I suggest you actually seriously engage my points if you don't want me to be sardonic and aggressive with you.
"You're a narcissist!"
You're the one constantly bullying me, LT.
You're not a serious person or someone worth engaging. You yap in culture war polemics no one would even recognize in a society like Hapsburg Spain.
Stop conflating capitalism with virtue or traditionalism LT. Perhaps within your modern worldview that has existed for barely 200 years does capitalism qualify as a traditional system, but it isn't. The Church has never promoter capitalism, that is a liberal value because the final cause of capitalism is ultimately the accumulation of more capital.
Sorry, not everyone is living in a 4th century fantasy world. “The church has never promoted capitalism.” Seriously? Is that why they send an annual stack of gift envelopes?
Please stop lecturing the rest of us, it really gets old.
Questioning others faith, morality, motivations, calling others “cowards,” have you ever been professionally evaluated for narcissistic personality disorder? How does your constant browbeating go over with your co-workers? Assuming you do have a job.
What would a Church father say about your contempt for the 4th century?
I am free to call other people cowards, and I am free to question your faith. Quite frankly you sound no different than a materialist protestant. Nothing you write shows me you're a Catholic in any capacity.
Mrs. Bond for example cannot defend her beliefs but relies on others to do so, she'll attack me but only behind other people who do it for her. Hence my claim that she's a coward.
Perhaps if you weren't so antagonistic I would feel the need to respond in such a way.
Distributism is more aligned with Catholicism than capitalism, and yes LT - the Church has never endorsed capitalism. It's striking to you because you're a modernist with no respect for genuine traditions ["4th century fantasy" - I can tell everything I need to know about you based on that].
Amen.
Stop being cowardly Monika.
Excellent, excellent Article! Your synopsis of "The Four Clauses-Two Missing" is spot on! It would do every educator and parent well to remember them: Material Cause, Efficient Cause, Formal Cause, & Final Cause
If we look at "The 45 Communist Goals for America" by W. Cleon Skousen, written in 1961, we can see and verify these targeted goals for our YOUTH in Education are playing out NOW all across the country as you so well observed.
GOALS
17-Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers’ associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18-Gain control of all student newspapers.
19-Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
26-Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural, healthy.”
29-Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a world-wide basis.
30-Discredit the American founding fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the “common man.”
40-Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41-Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
Notice these targeted "goals" for OUR CHILDREN have been very successfully--Turning the Titanic around is not for the faint of heart!
P Wilson
“Religious zealots?” You mean like some who post here? Zealotry is wrong no matter what faith. I have no problem with Somali or Islamic schools as long as they are held to the same high standards, recite the Pledge of Allegiance and support American values and exceptionalism.
"American values and exceptionalism."
Like abortion? Oh nah. Get this man out of the kitchen
America is only exceptional in lacking a tradition, culture, and binding faith.
"Zeal is bad except when it's a national myth rooted upon classical liberal values, civic religion, and proceduralism!"
I'd rather you be an anarcho syndicalist in Catalonia in 1933.
“Industry vs. Inferiority,” I realize it’s Erickson not Maslow, but it applies to you genius!
“Industry vs. Inferiority,” I realize it’s Erickson not Maslow, but it applies to you genius!
For education, look at the Catholic Schools model. They do a pretty good job of education.
It's troubling to know amoral relativisits like Montecito have a voice in society, such people are uniquely responsible for the destruction of public order, morality, and decency. How one can speak of a culture or a society yet treats the most vulnerable as "Its", as objects or obstacles to use or overcome is beyond me.
It's truly chilling that such people live among us and have no issue offering moral condemnation of those who have a coherent set of moral principles, while lacking their own.
Theo- you’re totally off-base. What moral condemnation? What’s your plan to purify, squelch the opinions of others?