Most of you are probably now familiar with what happened recently in North Carolina: “A preschooler at West Hoke Elementary School ate three chicken nuggets for lunch Jan. 30 because a state employee told her the lunch her mother packed was not nutritious. The girl’s turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, potato chips and apple juice did not meet US Department of Agriculture guidelines, according to the interpretation of the agent who was inspecting all lunch boxes in her More at Four classroom that day." So the kid had to eat what the bureaucrat told her to eat. The government knows best.
An education system in the hands of the government produces educators like Debbie Squires, who is the associate director of the Michigan Elementary and Middle School Principals Association. Recently, she testified before the Michigan legislature. This conversation ensued:
SQUIRES: You know, educators go through education for a reason. They are the people who know best about how to serve children. That's not necessarily true of an individual resident. I'm not saying they don't want the best for their children, but they may not know what actually is best from an education standpoint.
MICHIGAN REPRESENTATIVE: Wow, parents don't know what's best for their child?
SQUIRES: I said they may want what's best for their child. They may not know.
What Squires has done, whether she realizes it or not, is indict her own system. Because if the parents don’t know…who didn’t teach them what they ought to know? Those parents who don't know what's best for their children have been in her hands for more than a generation now. Longer than that, actually.
Here’s what the last 50 years of liberal government-run education has given us. From Walter Williams’ February 15 article “Rising Black Social Pathology”:
“The Philadelphia Inquirer’s big story Feb. 4 was about how a budget crunch at the Philadelphia School District had caused the district to lay off 91 school police officers. Over the years, there’s been no discussion of what has happened to our youth that makes a school police force necessary in the first place. The Inquirer’s series “Assault on Learning” (March 2011) reported that in the 2010 school year, ‘690 teachers were assaulted; in the last five years, 4,000 were.’ The newspaper reported that in Philadelphia’s 268 schools, ‘on an average day 25 students, teachers, or other staff members were beaten, robbed, sexually assaulted, or victims of other violent crimes. That doesn't even include thousands more who are extorted, threatened, or bullied in a school year.’
I graduated from Philadelphia’s Benjamin Franklin High School in 1954. Franklin’s students were from the poorest North Philadelphia neighborhoods -- such as the Richard Allen housing project, where I lived -- but there were no policemen patrolling the hallways. There were occasional after-school fights -- rumbles, we called them -- but within the school, there was order. Students didn’t use foul language to teachers, much less assault them.
How might one explain the greater civility of Philadelphia and other big-city, predominantly black schools during earlier periods compared with today? Would anyone argue that during the '40s and '50s, back when Williams attended Philadelphia schools, there was less racial discrimination and poverty and there were greater opportunities for blacks and that’s why academic performance was higher and there was greater civility? Or how about "in earlier periods, there was more funding for predominantly black schools"? Or how about "in earlier periods, black students had more black role models in the forms of black principals, teachers and guidance counselors"? If such arguments were to be made, it would be sheer lunacy. If white and black liberals and civil rights leaders want to make such arguments, they'd best wait until those of us who lived during the '40s and '50s have departed the scene.”
Government educators can force a 4-year old to eat chicken nuggets (are those healthy?), but they cannot stop violence in schools.
And this from America’s beloved President:
October 7, 2008: “I think everybody knows now we are in the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.”
February 14, 2012: “Well, uh, we're not there because, uh, this recession turned out to be a lot deeper than any of us realized. Everybody who was out there back in 2009, uh, if you look back at what their estimates were in terms of how many jobs had been lost, how bad the economy had contracted when I took office, everybody underestimated it.”
So, today he doesn’t know how bad it was, but back in October, 2008, he did. This man is a child. He absolutely refuses to take any responsibility for anything. He’s had three years now to do something positive, but nothing he has done has moved the economy in the right direction. But it’s all George Bush’s fault, of course.
But he’s close to getting what he wants, folks. He’s struggling, mightily, this year to get 50% of the population upon some form of government largesse. That’s all he needs to win re-election.
Destroy the military and build a welfare state. And the United States government-run education system is helping him.
Boy, that country is in bad shape. But, it's only to be expected after half a century of godless, liberal leadership. "Be not deceived; God is not mocked. For whatever a man sows, that shall he also reap" (Galatians 6:7). The only people who haven't a clue what's happening, or why, are those who don't know history and the Bible.
Folks, the liberal, government-run education system is doing exactly what the liberals want it to do: create uneducated, unskilled incompetents who will become dependent upon government. A government, of course, run by liberals.
Liberals who will, among other things, tell children what they can and cannot eat.
I wonder if I'll be dead before they start shooting people. Character assassination can only go so far, you know.