Following is a post from Steve Meersman, retired Air Force surgeon. Meersman is battling against ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease), and he has found a worthy research project for his very sharp mind. This is reprinted with his permission.
September 14
edu what?
First a word of caution. This is a long entry, I have been working on it for several days. I have been delayed by additional technical difficulties. This coupled with a week long of gastroenteritis, blogging has not been a priority. So let’s begin with the little quiz.
The following is an 1895 8th-grade final exam from Salina, Kansas. It was taken from the original document on file at the Smoky Valley Genealogical Society and Library in Salina, Kansas, and reprinted by the Salina Journal.
Grammar (Time, one hour)
1. Give nine rules for the use of Capital Letters.
2. Name the Parts of Speech and define those that have no modifications.
3. Define Verse, Stanza and Paragraph.
4. What are the Principal Parts of a verb? Give Principal Parts of do, lie, lay and run.
5. Define Case, Illustrate each Case.
6. What is Punctuation? Give rules for principal marks of Punctuation.
7-10. Write a composition of about 150 words and show therein that you understand the practical use of the rules of grammar.
Arithmetic (Time, 1.25 hours)
1. Name and define the Fundamental Rules of Arithmetic.
2. A wagon box is 2 ft. deep, 10 ft. long and 3 ft. wide. How many bushels of wheat will it hold?
3. If a load of wheat weighs 3,942 lbs., what is it worth at 50 cts. per bu., deducting 1,050 lbs. for tare?
4. District No. 33 has a valuation of $35,000. What is the necessary levy to carry on a school seven months at $50 per month, and have $104 for incidentals?
5. Find cost of 6,720 lbs. coal at $6.00 per ton.
5. Find cost of 6,720 lbs. coal at $6.00 per ton.
6. Find the interest of $512.60 for 8 months and 18 days at 7 percent.
7. What is the cost of 40 boards 12 inches wide and 16 ft. long at $.20 per inch?
8. Find bank discount on $300 for 90 days (no grace) at 10 percent.
9. What is the cost of a square farm at $15 per acre, the distance around which is 640 rods?
10. Write a Bank Check, a Promissory Note, and a Receipt.
U.S. History (Time, 45 minutes)
1. Give the epochs into which U.S. History is divided.
2. Give an account of the discovery of America by Columbus.
3. Relate the causes and results of the Revolutionary War.
4. Show the territorial growth of the United States.
5. Tell what you can of the history of Kansas.
6. Describe three of the most prominent battles of the Rebellion.
7. Who were the following Morse, Whitney, Fulton, Bell, Lincoln, Penn, and Howe?
8. Name events connected with the following dates: 1607, 1620, 1800, 1849, and 1865?
Well, how did you do? The exam goes on for another three pages. I know I had some difficulty with these questions and I imagine any eighth grader today would have trouble reading the questions.
The point of starting with this examination is to point out how dumb we have become as Americans. I believe one of the reasons we have allowed multinational corporations to dominate our lives and destroyed our society and health is because we have been intentionally dumbed down.
There has been a deliberate and methodical movement in this country to create a complacent and pliable citizenry. Our education system since the 1960’s has been modeled after a socialist archetype emphasizing a one-world notion of economy and citizenry. Our collective sense of American history and the sacrifices made by our forefathers in creating this nation been eliminated from the curriculum on purpose.
This might all sound like a lot of internet Conspiracy Theory, but there is a very real paper trail to investigate.
Bob Djurdjevic wrote in the The Washington Times, August 31, 1997…the desecration of America the Beautiful is not a spontaneous event. Nor is a deliberate dumbing down of our nation. It is a multi-pronged process carried out by the Wall Street elite and their vassals in government, education, media and the entertainment industry. Why would the bankers and industrialists want America to be a nation of "ignorant blunderers or dunderheads," according to Oxford Dictionary's definition of "mutts?" Because such a stupefied population is easier to subjugate by the elite's financial shackles than would be the free-spirited, free-thinking, patriotic, enterprising Americans who had made this country the envy of the world.”
But how is such a dictatorship of the few over the many possible in the "land of the free," the "greatest democracy on Earth?"
Easy. They buy the politicians. They buy the educators. They buy the media. And then, they tell them what they want Americans to think. And suddenly, America is no longer free.
The entertainment industry is another source of the destructive forces which are tearing apart the fabric of the American society. Just as the drugs are destroying the bodies of Americans, Hollywood, the record companies and the professional sports owners and sponsors are poisoning the minds of America. (nothing against you personally Joe).
Now that I have pigeonholed myself ideologically, let’s look at some evidence. In 1999 the 20 year experience of Christine Iserbyt a former department of education official was published. She has made this tome available free. The 750 page book can be found at http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/index.html. It contains dozens of actual government documents which detail the deliberate efforts to create a socialist/one-world school-to-work system in the United States
As Iserbyt points out, in the 1960's "American education would henceforth concern itself with the importance of the group rather than with the importance of the individual." The purpose of education would shift to focus on the student’s emotional health, rather than academic learning. The mantra of the 1960's was, of course; sex, drugs and rock'n roll. Drop out, tune in, and turn on. Just about everything that is wrong with America today had its genesis in this decade of youthful self-indulgence."
In 1965, there were two major federal initiatives developed with funding from The Elementary and Secondary Education Act passed that year. One was the 1965-1969 Behavioral Science Teacher Education Program and the other was the publication by the government of "Pacesetters in Innovation", a catalogue of behavior modification programs to be used by the schools.
That’s right: a catalogue of behavior modification programs! We're not talking about programs to teach students anything. We are talking about programs to indoctrinate children passing through the system to believe in values contrary to those on which this nation was based.
The intention was to create a generation or two of Americans who would accept the United Nations, not the United States, as their new "nation", a global nation, one-world government. The last thing the planner wanted was a nation of individuals who could or would actually think for themselves. In 1960, "Soviet Education Programs: Foundations, Curriculums, Teacher Preparation" was published under the auspices of the US Department of Health, Education and Welfare. It was the blueprint for the US school-to-work restructuring that would take place and it would rely on the "Pavlovian conditioned reflex theory." The mastermind was a psychologist, Dr. B.F. Skinner.
Today's students are taught not to make value judgments about other nations, even if they are authoritarian dictatorships. They may not know where Brazil is on the map, but they "know" all the rain forests are disappearing. They don't know when the Civil War took place or why, but they "know" that all the Founding Fathers were slave-owners. They also "know" that America's history is one of destroying the native Indian nations, taking their land, and exploiting it with farms, mining, and the destruction of whole forests. They cannot tell you what the Bill of Rights is, but they "know" the US is the leading contributor of "greenhouse gases" to the atmosphere, thereby causing global warming. It is a full course of lies. They haven't a clue about the individualism, sacrifice, daring and innovation that made this nation great, nor its political system, and most certainly not its history.
By the 1990's the decades of effort to overturn an education system that taught specific bodies of information and the skills to use them; arithmetic, spelling, history, civics, science had effectively been transformed into today's touchy-feely system. It is a place where a student's feelings of self-esteem are more important than whether they actually know anything other than the specific answers to the test. Thus teachers now "teach to the test" (their paycheck depends on it) rather than provide a broader body of knowledge. It is a place where competition is discouraged as unfair to those less qualified for any reason. It is a place where socialist attitudes and values are the priority, not knowledge.
People have got to get it through their heads that big corporations, multinational corporations, etc. benefit from socialism, believe it or not, because they don't have to compete. David Rockefeller, made a comment about Communist Angola. The press asked him "Why would you be interested in setting up an oil refinery in Angola?" He responded: "Because we find it much easier to deal with centralized governments and economies... We don't care what their politics are." So we have to get over the idea that the major corporations are pure capitalists -- especially when we are dealing with multinational corporations which have absolutely no allegiance to any particular country.
Initially, it was very difficult for me to reconcile what I had been reading and the experience of my children starting school. They attend the same schools now that I did. I have personally achieved quite a bit and most of my friends are informed and forward thinking. My children seem to be challenged. But my perspective is skewed. Our school district is one of the best in the nation. Even with excellent teachers and administrators we are under the influence of centralization of education. Just last week there was a proposal to take many important decision making tasks from our school board and give them to the superintendent and state administrative groups. What made our schools great in the early part of the twentieth century was local control. But the department of education has an agenda to centralize education of our children. Have you heard of no child left behind? This is the latest attempt to push the socialist agenda and it’s working. Teaching it to the lowest achieving students and teaching for the test are destroying our schools.
So what can be done? I really don’t have an answer. I don’t want to think about this too much in my current state of health. I simply want those who read this to begin thinking about this catastrophe which is occurring right before our eyes. The system needs to be fixed and in an attempt to make a suggestion I have found one interesting excerpt. In the January/February 2001 issue of The American Enterprise, devoted to why so few schools succeed while the majority fails, Karl Zinsmeister writes that "it's extremely interesting how many common traits are shared by the successful schools we profile. A remarkably similar basic formula applies in almost all of these places: high demands on students, strict discipline, a strong and unapologetic moral component, including a respect for religion, an emphasis on teaching intellectual basics, a preference for time-tested books and curricula, clear standards of dress, grooming, and comportment, and an insistence on politeness, respect and courtesy." So let’s make these changes in our local schools…yea right!! Not in our lifetime with all the political correctness which dominates our world.
That’s enough for now. Stay tuned t for the next installment.
