George Will’s Sunday MDJ column, “The closing of U.S. minds starts on campus,“ tells only the tip of the iceberg. The entire U.S. education system has ceased to exist. It has instead become the U.S. indoctrination system. Somewhat like Germany’s system in the mid 1930s.
It begins in first grade and continues for as long our children remain in school. When my children attended K-5, middle school and high school in the mid 1970s, my wife and I were involved in 12 years of war with each child. We were continually told by teachers and self serving administrators that: “What we teach your children and how we do it is none of your business. We know what is best.“ So we began to teach them what they needed to know at home.
When my oldest son started his pre-med education at a major Midwestern university, my wife and I were invited to attend a parent seminar at which those present were told that the university counselors were telling our children to cut the apron strings from their parents because they no longer knew what they were talking about. Of course, they expected the parents to continue to pay the bills and carry their insurance. We chose to get off the boat. They were insulted by our attitude.
In 2006, at the request of a newly elected Cobb School Board member, I began a program in Cobb County primary and middle schools called “Veterans Day 4 Kids.” Under that program, four veterans of World War II and Korea visited a selected school for a full day to talk to students in the same grade level about what life was like during the years from 1942 to 1954 in a nation at war. They were spellbound. We found that modern day students were taught very little about WWII or the Korean War and how they affected our lives. The program died after a short tenure due to lack of support of school principals. We weren’t teaching the right stuff.
Our current educational system no longer teaches our children to be individual thinkers. The ultimate goal of our public indoctrination system today has become “groupthink” (You have to go along to get along). That’s the way our current dysfunctional government attempts to work. What chance do future governments have? My America is dying a slow and painful death.
Jim Stoll
Kennesaw
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Your expansive knowledge of the public education system needs a reboot. Do a little research and discover that, 45 years ago, guys like you were saying exactly the same thing about the higher education system in America while bemoaning the social decline of the country.
The more things change, Jim, the more they stay the same.
Spreading misery equally.
The rest of you nameless posters make my point for me. Thanks for playing.
Keep back pedaling. Perhaps you are using too much antiseptic?
Everything Mr. Stoll writes here could have appeared on the op-ed pages of the MDJ in 1967, and probably did. Nothing has changed at colleges and universities, the same way nothing has changed for parents like Mr. Stoll.