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!
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.
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.
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.
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 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?
I agree it is wise to consider if the destruction of our education system, facilitated by propaganda in entertainment and news media, is a war on our society and western civilization more broadly. I believe it is. A lot of evidence for that claim can be found in the book by Dr. E Michael Jones called "Libido Dominandi: Sexual Liberation and Political Control."
As Trump is provoking a Color Revolution and moving military forces from the Caribbean to the Persian Gulf as he gears up for the destruction of Iran, something that has been on the Israel First team's checklist for decades, and after we have already killed millions and spent trillions in ticking off the boxes of the other entries on their wish list (Iraq, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Lebanon, and Somalia), it is more important than ever that we take stock of who in our society actually is driven by love for our children, our people, our country and love for God's moral law and be on the look out for false shepherds even if they say some good things from time to time.
This has been Conservative Inc's playbook all along. The controllers allow us to be in the conservative tent and stand up to "the left", but only if we tolerate complete subservience to the Israel First agenda and don't mention the work of shifting our country from a Christian society to one of "separation of Church and state."
Turns out Americans do not want to destroy yet another country and further saddle future generations with even more financial debt for a country that has corrupted every institution of our society, including the recent abuse of the executive branch to control speech on university campuses. But it seems Americans rarely get what we want.
If we cannot look honestly at this corruption across our society and how it has promoted a war on truth, education and inquiry for all Americans including our children, then we can't begin to succeed at changing these failed educational policies.
The wisest man ever, Jesus Christ, said "The truth shall set you free." G K Chesterton, a faithful servant of Jesus Christ, spoke about how we have to love a place to improve it. He said Rome was not loved because it was great, but became great because men loved it. It is time to focus on love, the highest commandment Christ spoke of, to gather our energies and efforts toward repairing our society instead of focusing on hatred for other societies we learn almost nothing truthful about from our captured schools, media and social media algorithms.
Why is my comment cut off? Is it cut off for others? Am I being Glitch banned by the platform? Well, in case you can't see it like I can't, the last paragraph said that we need to focus on love to improve our society and preserve it and reject calls to focus on hating and war on yet another society we know almost nothing about. Fix America, leave Iran be.
Aimee, honey, you’ve accidentally proven the article’s entire point, and it’s kind of beautiful.
The article explains that modern education has abandoned formal and final causes — the basic questions “What is this?” and “What is it for?” Instead of responding to that argument, you wrote a long rant about Iran that has no real connection to the article at all. It’s like being asked, “What is the purpose of a hammer?” and answering with a lecture about who owns the nail factory.
What’s especially striking is the contradiction. You quote Chesterton about loving Rome in order to make it great, yet your entire comment is focused on hostility toward Israel. You invoke Christ’s command to love, then immediately shift to talking about “who corrupted our institutions.” You call for “honest inquiry,” but replace the philosophical analysis offered in the article with geopolitical conspiracy theories.
That move is exactly what the article criticizes. When asked what education is and what it is for, you don’t answer those questions — you deflect to who you think ruined it. That's not philosophy, sweetie. That's just having enemies with extra steps.
When someone offers Aristotle’s four causes and you respond with E. Michael Jones and “Israel First,” you’re not participating in intellectual discourse. You’re demonstrating why classical education is needed in the first place.
Maybe audit an intro philosophy course? They still teach the difference between "formal cause" and "finding someone to blame" at some Catholic colleges. Well, the good ones anyway.
Wow. Forget a deeper study of philosophy, sign me up for the mind reading course you took. I want to know how to do that! But seriously, that is just sophistry on your part. It is a form of ad hominem fallacy to claim to know the motives of the speaker. "Racist." "Antisemite." "Sexist." "Homophobe." "Conspiracy theorist." These types of epithets are designed to detract from the speaker instead of properly engage with the speaker's claims and evidence. If that is all you are capable of, so be it. It is called "woke" and in the special case where it serves the Israel First agenda of Con, Inc. instead of the left social engineering DEI agenda it is called "woke right" and it is an argumentation style beneath those who engage with ideas in good faith for the common good.
Let me clarify something: I didn't claim to read your mind or divine your motives. I read your actual words. You know, the ones where you spent 300+ words talking about Iran, Israel, Conservative Inc., and "controllers" instead of engaging with the articles's argument about formal and final causes.
That's not mind-reading, sweetie. That's basic reading comprehension.
Now let's address your little logical fallacy tutorial, since you clearly need one:
First, calling someone's argument a "conspiracy theory" isn't ad hominem when they're literally theorizing about conspiracies. You wrote about "controllers" who "allow us to be in the conservative tent" only if we show "complete subservience to the Israel First agenda." That's... a conspiracy theory. I'm not name-calling — I'm accurately categorizing the type of argument you made.
Ad hominem would be: "Aimee is wrong because she's a bad person." What I actually said was: "Aimee didn't answer the philosophical questions the article posed; she deflected to geopolitical grievances." That's not attacking you personally — that's critiquing your argument's relevance.
Second, you claim I'm using "epithets designed to detract from the speaker instead of properly engage with the speaker's claims and evidence."
Okay, let's try this: What claims? What evidence?
You cited E. Michael Jones's book title and then launched into assertions about Trump, Iran, and Israel. You provided zero engagement with the actual thesis about the elimination of formal and final causality in modern education. You didn't address his diagnostic questions. You didn't interact with his analysis of Aristotelian metaphysics. You just... changed the subject to your geopolitical obsessions.
I can't engage with claims you didn't make about the topic in the article above-.
Third, the projection here is chef's kiss exquisite. You accuse me of "woke" argumentation while demonstrating the exact pathology the author diagnosed: the inability to think philosophically about first principles because everything must be filtered through a political grievance framework.
You literally cannot answer "What is education?" or "What is education for?" without deflecting to "Who corrupted it?" That's not philosophy. That's not even political analysis. That's just intellectual laziness dressed up in righteous indignation.
Here's your challenge, Aimee: as Mr. James H. Peter brilliantly asked, you need to answer the two questions without mentioning Israel, Iran, Conservative Inc., Trump, or any "controllers":
What is a human person?
What is the purpose of education?
If you can answer those questions philosophically — using formal and final causes like the article explained — then we can have a real conversation. If you can't answer them without pivoting to conspiracy theories about who ruined everything, then you've just proven the article’s thesis better than the author could have himself.
And honestly? That "Did you even read the article, Aimee?" question stands. Because nothing in your responses suggests you engaged with what was actually written. You saw some keywords, got triggered about geopolitics, and started ranting.
That's not "engaging with ideas in good faith for the common good," honey. That's using someone else's intellectual work as a launching pad for your personal grievances.
The floor is yours. Show us you can actually do philosophy instead of just complaining about who allegedly prevents it.
Thank you for your thoughtful engagement with my article. You’re absolutely right that love must drive our work to repair what’s broken—including education. I deeply appreciate your invocation of Chesterton’s wisdom that we must love a place to improve it, and your reminder that Christ’s highest commandment is love.
Where I believe we may differ is in our diagnosis of the problem’s nature and thus its remedy.
My article deliberately focuses on the specific philosophical error—the elimination of formal and final causes—that makes authentic formation impossible, regardless of who controls institutions or what external forces may influence them. The Great Abdication I describe isn’t primarily about external enemies corrupting our schools. It’s about educators—Catholic and secular alike—voluntarily adopting a bankrupt philosophical framework that denies fixed human nature and transcendent purpose.
This happened not through conspiracy but through intellectual capitulation. John Dewey wasn’t imposed on American education by foreign powers; he was embraced by American educators who found his pragmatism attractive. The rejection of classical metaphysics that undergirds our educational crisis emerged from within Western philosophy itself, beginning centuries before any contemporary geopolitical conflicts.
The resources for recovery exist within our own tradition: Aristotle’s four causes, Aquinas’s understanding of human nature and purpose, Augustine’s vision of education ordered toward truth and love. We don’t need to identify external villains to name the internal errors. We simply need the courage to recover what we’ve abdicated.
This is why my article offers parents concrete diagnostic questions and a philosophical framework for rebuilding Catholic education from authentic first principles. When a school board member cannot answer 'What is a human person?' or 'What is the purpose of education?'—whether that board member is in Santa Barbara, Paris, or Singapore—the problem is the same: the loss of formal and final causality
That work of recovery continues regardless of geopolitical debates, because the truth about human nature and education’s purpose remains constant across all political circumstances. As you wisely note, Christ taught that truth sets us free. My article attempts to name one specific truth that modern education has abandoned, so that parents and educators can reclaim it.
Your call to focus on love rather than hatred is one I wholeheartedly affirm. The classical and Catholic educational tradition I’m advocating is precisely a tradition of love—love of truth, love of the student’s immortal soul, love of the good toward which all authentic education orders the human person.
This is how it looks to me. The West suffers under a domestic enemy, not a foreign one. And the enemy has managed to cast spells that cause us to harm ourselves, our families, our communities and our society. Of course we ourselves facilitate this work when we succumb to sin. Sin darkens the mind, wounds us and others. Of course the sin of Protestant hubris led to the divisions within Christianity that enabled the weakening of the Church and the marginalization of the moral authority of Christ's teaching.
But what are the movements that have shaped understanding and sidelined the Catholic Church and her civilization sustaining teaching along with other traditional wisdom of Western Civilization? How was it done? What role did we regular citizens play? What were the forces that promoted it, rewarded its servants and punished those trying to stand against it? What are the forces that have sidelined Catholics from the Right in the US since the America First movement in the 30's? Was Father Coughlin a raging anti-Semite or a slandered Catholic? Joe Sobran? Pat Buchanan? Cynthia McKinney? E Michael Jones? Who gets to decide? Are we allowed to form our own opinions through critical thinking and discernment or are we required to repeat received ones under pain of slander, cancellation or state repression?
Reasonable people can disagree about what the forces are and which were most influential, but my claim is that to understand how education went from an important social undertaking for the forming of citizens of good character and capable of moral discernment in a Christian republic to one of indoctrination and control in an oligarchic world sole superpower, we need to understand the motives and means of those movements that sought to control the population for their agendas, including in geopolitics. It stands to reason that some would seek to direct a powerful empire like ours to foreign interests. How does Paul Singer get to use our military to secure oil wealth in Venezuela and our courts to fleece the people of Argentina after buying distressed marked down debt and then somehow seen fit to fund a program called the Philos Project that slanders Catholics who follow Catholic teaching as antisemitic?
My sense is that you may not be aware of some of these aspects to US history, which is understandable, since people who discuss them are persecuted. But that doesn't prove them false. As someone who has been involved in politics and examines views from a wide range of perspectives, the question is not whether a school board official sees children as ensouled, sacred beings created by God that the school should be preparing to take a vocation in life and reach heaven, but rather a number in a system that they are rewarded for tracking and manipulating as the powerful interests dictate, but HOW did we allow this transformation in thinking to become so commonplace and how might we reverse it?
I watched all but one SBCC Trustee work to find ways to coerce young adults to subject themselves to an experimental, untested, liability shielded medical intervention so they could get the numbers up and be a leader in "vaccine" promotion. I watched the SB school board members ignore concerns about including normalization of anal s*x and s*x with objects in the middle school "health" curriculum without a hint of concern for people who think differently about these matters. (Where is the respect for diversity they claim to champion?) So the answer to your question is already quite clear. I am ready to discuss how we got here and how we can have a chance at reversing it. And for those who are open minded, you would do well to consider E Michael Jones' entire book list, but especially "Libido Dominandi:Sexual Liberation and Political Control." His latest about the underlying theology shaping American identity also provides a lot that would shed light on this discussion, called "Walking with a Bible and a Gun." He is not allowed to sell on Amazon, but pornographers are. Funny that. His books can be found at his own Fidelity Press.
At the end of the day, I see the issues you raise as not simply a question of raising awareness about philosophy with well meaning but only misinformed or underinformed bureaucrats, but a spiritual battle against corrupt forces that seek to miseducate our children on purpose. My research indicates to me that there are interests and forces that seek to exploit us, saddle us with debt, use our government and military for their purposes, get us tied up in genocides, torture and theft, distract and weaken us with vices, monitor our every move and word, nudge us with their algorithms and make us shut up if we don't like any of it. May God help us and fortify every sincere person who seeks to love our country into being better.
Context is important. And this is the context we operate amidst. We ignore it at our peril, and risk the future of our people:
> ... there are interests and forces that seek to exploit us, saddle us with debt, use our government and military for their purposes, get us tied up in genocides, torture and theft, distract and weaken us with vices, monitor our every move and word, nudge us with their algorithms and make us shut up if we don't like any of it. May God help us and fortify every sincere person who seeks to love our country into being better.
The author writes an article about why school board members can't answer "what is a human person?" and "what is the purpose of education?" and you've responded by straight up not answering those questions and instead giving us a breakdown of your geopolitical positions.
The point of this article is that modern educators have lost the ability to think philosophically. Your response is substituting conspiracy theories for metaphysics. You've performed his argument better than he could have written it. You invoke "truth shall set you free" while demonstrating precisely the intellectual abdication the article describes. You can't engage with formal and final causality, so you've replaced philosophy with paranoia.
Just for me, could you answer the article’s two questions without mentioning Israel, Iran, or "Conservative Inc."? Just tell me what is a human person? And what is education for?
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.
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.
Thank you Brent! My experience is that teaching philosophically is a lot harder on the front end but abundantly fruitful, joyful and easy on the back end and students generally own what was most important in way that makes them foolproof- unless they choose to say "no" to the education. It will be tough to bring back a true liberal arts and sciences education, but it is the only true education that exists, until we start to abuse the word "education," then everything is an education.
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.
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.
My kid despised Kumon math, I’d drop him off and he pretended to go in, then sneak out the back door until I caught him. It must have done him some good, as he is now in Med school.
Assuming that a person who doesn't accept Christianity as the one universal religion means that person is anti-Christian is a mistake. Sorry but that is true. I do prefer a secular political order, which means that anybody is free to practice their religion, or to have no religion. I'm perfectly tolerant of any religion but reject any religious followers who insist that their religion not only must be the only true religion, but it must be the one everybody follows, or else.
What is eternal must be discovered anew in each epoch because any attempt to formulate it in language fails. That means that we have to rediscover the language that works in each generation to point to what is beyond language.
And you are caught in a fixed belief system that may allow you to feel superior and "saved" but is really makes a hell for you when it could have been a doorway. A verse that applies from my book The Garden Path
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
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?
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.
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.
Bingo...especially the Jesuits. As long as they focus on educational material and avoid the social justice mantra. Part of my education was in Catholic schools. I had classes with as many is 67 students…have photos to support…we had a very good education... and a nun no one would consider crossing...ever never. Worked out pretty well.
Six of my eight grandchildren are home schooled...very effectively. The other two in public school require additional tutoring and support. Summertime the school sends home a suggested reading list... recent list recommended publications were very far left, including a number of books focusing on the Black Lives Matter theme.... in which they did not participate. My daughter and her husband regularly detoxify them from the social garbage that the school forces on the students.
“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.
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.
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?
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.
I recently read E Michael Jones' shorter book on economics about usury drawing heavily from the ideas of Heinrich Pesch that are not easy to get in English. He uses state sponsored usury as the definition of the kind of capitalism that we are living under since capitalism is a rather ambiguous term. I recommend it.
This foundational problem is so deeply rooted in the soul of the West, the conversation cannot even be had at all- ask a metaphysical question about the fixd nature of man and you get a political, mathematical, ideological, material, disconnected rant, or unrelated greivance- anything, anything at all but the true answers to those two vital questions that fully determine and direct an authentic education. I am grateful for your comment and intrigued by the name of your Substack.
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
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.
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!
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.
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 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?
Theo ‘Wannabe Moral Dictator of SB Current’ - Get over it. Post when you’re God.
I agree it is wise to consider if the destruction of our education system, facilitated by propaganda in entertainment and news media, is a war on our society and western civilization more broadly. I believe it is. A lot of evidence for that claim can be found in the book by Dr. E Michael Jones called "Libido Dominandi: Sexual Liberation and Political Control."
As Trump is provoking a Color Revolution and moving military forces from the Caribbean to the Persian Gulf as he gears up for the destruction of Iran, something that has been on the Israel First team's checklist for decades, and after we have already killed millions and spent trillions in ticking off the boxes of the other entries on their wish list (Iraq, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Lebanon, and Somalia), it is more important than ever that we take stock of who in our society actually is driven by love for our children, our people, our country and love for God's moral law and be on the look out for false shepherds even if they say some good things from time to time.
This has been Conservative Inc's playbook all along. The controllers allow us to be in the conservative tent and stand up to "the left", but only if we tolerate complete subservience to the Israel First agenda and don't mention the work of shifting our country from a Christian society to one of "separation of Church and state."
Turns out Americans do not want to destroy yet another country and further saddle future generations with even more financial debt for a country that has corrupted every institution of our society, including the recent abuse of the executive branch to control speech on university campuses. But it seems Americans rarely get what we want.
If we cannot look honestly at this corruption across our society and how it has promoted a war on truth, education and inquiry for all Americans including our children, then we can't begin to succeed at changing these failed educational policies.
The wisest man ever, Jesus Christ, said "The truth shall set you free." G K Chesterton, a faithful servant of Jesus Christ, spoke about how we have to love a place to improve it. He said Rome was not loved because it was great, but became great because men loved it. It is time to focus on love, the highest commandment Christ spoke of, to gather our energies and efforts toward repairing our society instead of focusing on hatred for other societies we learn almost nothing truthful about from our captured schools, media and social media algorithms.
Why is my comment cut off? Is it cut off for others? Am I being Glitch banned by the platform? Well, in case you can't see it like I can't, the last paragraph said that we need to focus on love to improve our society and preserve it and reject calls to focus on hating and war on yet another society we know almost nothing about. Fix America, leave Iran be.
There is some technical issue with substack today
Aimee, honey, you’ve accidentally proven the article’s entire point, and it’s kind of beautiful.
The article explains that modern education has abandoned formal and final causes — the basic questions “What is this?” and “What is it for?” Instead of responding to that argument, you wrote a long rant about Iran that has no real connection to the article at all. It’s like being asked, “What is the purpose of a hammer?” and answering with a lecture about who owns the nail factory.
What’s especially striking is the contradiction. You quote Chesterton about loving Rome in order to make it great, yet your entire comment is focused on hostility toward Israel. You invoke Christ’s command to love, then immediately shift to talking about “who corrupted our institutions.” You call for “honest inquiry,” but replace the philosophical analysis offered in the article with geopolitical conspiracy theories.
That move is exactly what the article criticizes. When asked what education is and what it is for, you don’t answer those questions — you deflect to who you think ruined it. That's not philosophy, sweetie. That's just having enemies with extra steps.
When someone offers Aristotle’s four causes and you respond with E. Michael Jones and “Israel First,” you’re not participating in intellectual discourse. You’re demonstrating why classical education is needed in the first place.
Maybe audit an intro philosophy course? They still teach the difference between "formal cause" and "finding someone to blame" at some Catholic colleges. Well, the good ones anyway.
Wow. Forget a deeper study of philosophy, sign me up for the mind reading course you took. I want to know how to do that! But seriously, that is just sophistry on your part. It is a form of ad hominem fallacy to claim to know the motives of the speaker. "Racist." "Antisemite." "Sexist." "Homophobe." "Conspiracy theorist." These types of epithets are designed to detract from the speaker instead of properly engage with the speaker's claims and evidence. If that is all you are capable of, so be it. It is called "woke" and in the special case where it serves the Israel First agenda of Con, Inc. instead of the left social engineering DEI agenda it is called "woke right" and it is an argumentation style beneath those who engage with ideas in good faith for the common good.
This is getting embarrassing for you.
Let me clarify something: I didn't claim to read your mind or divine your motives. I read your actual words. You know, the ones where you spent 300+ words talking about Iran, Israel, Conservative Inc., and "controllers" instead of engaging with the articles's argument about formal and final causes.
That's not mind-reading, sweetie. That's basic reading comprehension.
Now let's address your little logical fallacy tutorial, since you clearly need one:
First, calling someone's argument a "conspiracy theory" isn't ad hominem when they're literally theorizing about conspiracies. You wrote about "controllers" who "allow us to be in the conservative tent" only if we show "complete subservience to the Israel First agenda." That's... a conspiracy theory. I'm not name-calling — I'm accurately categorizing the type of argument you made.
Ad hominem would be: "Aimee is wrong because she's a bad person." What I actually said was: "Aimee didn't answer the philosophical questions the article posed; she deflected to geopolitical grievances." That's not attacking you personally — that's critiquing your argument's relevance.
Second, you claim I'm using "epithets designed to detract from the speaker instead of properly engage with the speaker's claims and evidence."
Okay, let's try this: What claims? What evidence?
You cited E. Michael Jones's book title and then launched into assertions about Trump, Iran, and Israel. You provided zero engagement with the actual thesis about the elimination of formal and final causality in modern education. You didn't address his diagnostic questions. You didn't interact with his analysis of Aristotelian metaphysics. You just... changed the subject to your geopolitical obsessions.
I can't engage with claims you didn't make about the topic in the article above-.
Third, the projection here is chef's kiss exquisite. You accuse me of "woke" argumentation while demonstrating the exact pathology the author diagnosed: the inability to think philosophically about first principles because everything must be filtered through a political grievance framework.
You literally cannot answer "What is education?" or "What is education for?" without deflecting to "Who corrupted it?" That's not philosophy. That's not even political analysis. That's just intellectual laziness dressed up in righteous indignation.
Here's your challenge, Aimee: as Mr. James H. Peter brilliantly asked, you need to answer the two questions without mentioning Israel, Iran, Conservative Inc., Trump, or any "controllers":
What is a human person?
What is the purpose of education?
If you can answer those questions philosophically — using formal and final causes like the article explained — then we can have a real conversation. If you can't answer them without pivoting to conspiracy theories about who ruined everything, then you've just proven the article’s thesis better than the author could have himself.
And honestly? That "Did you even read the article, Aimee?" question stands. Because nothing in your responses suggests you engaged with what was actually written. You saw some keywords, got triggered about geopolitics, and started ranting.
That's not "engaging with ideas in good faith for the common good," honey. That's using someone else's intellectual work as a launching pad for your personal grievances.
The floor is yours. Show us you can actually do philosophy instead of just complaining about who allegedly prevents it.
I'll wait.
—Amara
Yawn....
Did you even read the article, Aimee?
I didn't. It started off too snotty. Sweetie.
And the only author you restack is the City. So you're not objective.
Why are you here if you didn’t even read the article?
Whoops - I did read the article, Honey. I misread and was responding to your condescending replies to Smith.
Aimee,
Thank you for your thoughtful engagement with my article. You’re absolutely right that love must drive our work to repair what’s broken—including education. I deeply appreciate your invocation of Chesterton’s wisdom that we must love a place to improve it, and your reminder that Christ’s highest commandment is love.
Where I believe we may differ is in our diagnosis of the problem’s nature and thus its remedy.
My article deliberately focuses on the specific philosophical error—the elimination of formal and final causes—that makes authentic formation impossible, regardless of who controls institutions or what external forces may influence them. The Great Abdication I describe isn’t primarily about external enemies corrupting our schools. It’s about educators—Catholic and secular alike—voluntarily adopting a bankrupt philosophical framework that denies fixed human nature and transcendent purpose.
This happened not through conspiracy but through intellectual capitulation. John Dewey wasn’t imposed on American education by foreign powers; he was embraced by American educators who found his pragmatism attractive. The rejection of classical metaphysics that undergirds our educational crisis emerged from within Western philosophy itself, beginning centuries before any contemporary geopolitical conflicts.
The resources for recovery exist within our own tradition: Aristotle’s four causes, Aquinas’s understanding of human nature and purpose, Augustine’s vision of education ordered toward truth and love. We don’t need to identify external villains to name the internal errors. We simply need the courage to recover what we’ve abdicated.
This is why my article offers parents concrete diagnostic questions and a philosophical framework for rebuilding Catholic education from authentic first principles. When a school board member cannot answer 'What is a human person?' or 'What is the purpose of education?'—whether that board member is in Santa Barbara, Paris, or Singapore—the problem is the same: the loss of formal and final causality
That work of recovery continues regardless of geopolitical debates, because the truth about human nature and education’s purpose remains constant across all political circumstances. As you wisely note, Christ taught that truth sets us free. My article attempts to name one specific truth that modern education has abandoned, so that parents and educators can reclaim it.
Your call to focus on love rather than hatred is one I wholeheartedly affirm. The classical and Catholic educational tradition I’m advocating is precisely a tradition of love—love of truth, love of the student’s immortal soul, love of the good toward which all authentic education orders the human person.
In Christ,
Steven
This is how it looks to me. The West suffers under a domestic enemy, not a foreign one. And the enemy has managed to cast spells that cause us to harm ourselves, our families, our communities and our society. Of course we ourselves facilitate this work when we succumb to sin. Sin darkens the mind, wounds us and others. Of course the sin of Protestant hubris led to the divisions within Christianity that enabled the weakening of the Church and the marginalization of the moral authority of Christ's teaching.
But what are the movements that have shaped understanding and sidelined the Catholic Church and her civilization sustaining teaching along with other traditional wisdom of Western Civilization? How was it done? What role did we regular citizens play? What were the forces that promoted it, rewarded its servants and punished those trying to stand against it? What are the forces that have sidelined Catholics from the Right in the US since the America First movement in the 30's? Was Father Coughlin a raging anti-Semite or a slandered Catholic? Joe Sobran? Pat Buchanan? Cynthia McKinney? E Michael Jones? Who gets to decide? Are we allowed to form our own opinions through critical thinking and discernment or are we required to repeat received ones under pain of slander, cancellation or state repression?
Reasonable people can disagree about what the forces are and which were most influential, but my claim is that to understand how education went from an important social undertaking for the forming of citizens of good character and capable of moral discernment in a Christian republic to one of indoctrination and control in an oligarchic world sole superpower, we need to understand the motives and means of those movements that sought to control the population for their agendas, including in geopolitics. It stands to reason that some would seek to direct a powerful empire like ours to foreign interests. How does Paul Singer get to use our military to secure oil wealth in Venezuela and our courts to fleece the people of Argentina after buying distressed marked down debt and then somehow seen fit to fund a program called the Philos Project that slanders Catholics who follow Catholic teaching as antisemitic?
My sense is that you may not be aware of some of these aspects to US history, which is understandable, since people who discuss them are persecuted. But that doesn't prove them false. As someone who has been involved in politics and examines views from a wide range of perspectives, the question is not whether a school board official sees children as ensouled, sacred beings created by God that the school should be preparing to take a vocation in life and reach heaven, but rather a number in a system that they are rewarded for tracking and manipulating as the powerful interests dictate, but HOW did we allow this transformation in thinking to become so commonplace and how might we reverse it?
I watched all but one SBCC Trustee work to find ways to coerce young adults to subject themselves to an experimental, untested, liability shielded medical intervention so they could get the numbers up and be a leader in "vaccine" promotion. I watched the SB school board members ignore concerns about including normalization of anal s*x and s*x with objects in the middle school "health" curriculum without a hint of concern for people who think differently about these matters. (Where is the respect for diversity they claim to champion?) So the answer to your question is already quite clear. I am ready to discuss how we got here and how we can have a chance at reversing it. And for those who are open minded, you would do well to consider E Michael Jones' entire book list, but especially "Libido Dominandi:Sexual Liberation and Political Control." His latest about the underlying theology shaping American identity also provides a lot that would shed light on this discussion, called "Walking with a Bible and a Gun." He is not allowed to sell on Amazon, but pornographers are. Funny that. His books can be found at his own Fidelity Press.
At the end of the day, I see the issues you raise as not simply a question of raising awareness about philosophy with well meaning but only misinformed or underinformed bureaucrats, but a spiritual battle against corrupt forces that seek to miseducate our children on purpose. My research indicates to me that there are interests and forces that seek to exploit us, saddle us with debt, use our government and military for their purposes, get us tied up in genocides, torture and theft, distract and weaken us with vices, monitor our every move and word, nudge us with their algorithms and make us shut up if we don't like any of it. May God help us and fortify every sincere person who seeks to love our country into being better.
Context is important. And this is the context we operate amidst. We ignore it at our peril, and risk the future of our people:
> ... there are interests and forces that seek to exploit us, saddle us with debt, use our government and military for their purposes, get us tied up in genocides, torture and theft, distract and weaken us with vices, monitor our every move and word, nudge us with their algorithms and make us shut up if we don't like any of it. May God help us and fortify every sincere person who seeks to love our country into being better.
The author writes an article about why school board members can't answer "what is a human person?" and "what is the purpose of education?" and you've responded by straight up not answering those questions and instead giving us a breakdown of your geopolitical positions.
The point of this article is that modern educators have lost the ability to think philosophically. Your response is substituting conspiracy theories for metaphysics. You've performed his argument better than he could have written it. You invoke "truth shall set you free" while demonstrating precisely the intellectual abdication the article describes. You can't engage with formal and final causality, so you've replaced philosophy with paranoia.
Just for me, could you answer the article’s two questions without mentioning Israel, Iran, or "Conservative Inc."? Just tell me what is a human person? And what is education for?
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.
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.
Thank you Brent! My experience is that teaching philosophically is a lot harder on the front end but abundantly fruitful, joyful and easy on the back end and students generally own what was most important in way that makes them foolproof- unless they choose to say "no" to the education. It will be tough to bring back a true liberal arts and sciences education, but it is the only true education that exists, until we start to abuse the word "education," then everything is an education.
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.
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.
My kid despised Kumon math, I’d drop him off and he pretended to go in, then sneak out the back door until I caught him. It must have done him some good, as he is now in Med school.
Plus the 'face' in the O of Kumon looks like a miserable kid.
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.
Assuming that a person who doesn't accept Christianity as the one universal religion means that person is anti-Christian is a mistake. Sorry but that is true. I do prefer a secular political order, which means that anybody is free to practice their religion, or to have no religion. I'm perfectly tolerant of any religion but reject any religious followers who insist that their religion not only must be the only true religion, but it must be the one everybody follows, or else.
You have no idea of the real "True Church."
What is eternal must be discovered anew in each epoch because any attempt to formulate it in language fails. That means that we have to rediscover the language that works in each generation to point to what is beyond language.
And you are caught in a fixed belief system that may allow you to feel superior and "saved" but is really makes a hell for you when it could have been a doorway. A verse that applies from my book The Garden Path
God breaths life into our clay,
Sees the meanings when we pray.
Believing we've reached Him
We've only impeached Him,
Preaching our dreams as His Way.
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
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?
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
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
For education, look at the Catholic Schools model. They do a pretty good job of education.
Bingo...especially the Jesuits. As long as they focus on educational material and avoid the social justice mantra. Part of my education was in Catholic schools. I had classes with as many is 67 students…have photos to support…we had a very good education... and a nun no one would consider crossing...ever never. Worked out pretty well.
Six of my eight grandchildren are home schooled...very effectively. The other two in public school require additional tutoring and support. Summertime the school sends home a suggested reading list... recent list recommended publications were very far left, including a number of books focusing on the Black Lives Matter theme.... in which they did not participate. My daughter and her husband regularly detoxify them from the social garbage that the school forces on the students.
“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.
“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!
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?
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.
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.
Amen.
I recently read E Michael Jones' shorter book on economics about usury drawing heavily from the ideas of Heinrich Pesch that are not easy to get in English. He uses state sponsored usury as the definition of the kind of capitalism that we are living under since capitalism is a rather ambiguous term. I recommend it.
This foundational problem is so deeply rooted in the soul of the West, the conversation cannot even be had at all- ask a metaphysical question about the fixd nature of man and you get a political, mathematical, ideological, material, disconnected rant, or unrelated greivance- anything, anything at all but the true answers to those two vital questions that fully determine and direct an authentic education. I am grateful for your comment and intrigued by the name of your Substack.