Can We Get Back to a Classical Education Now?

Tired of young adults running around in the streets rioting, looting, murdering, and burning?

You are not alone.

A K-12 curriculum based on the United Nation's Agenda 21, Common Core, and Social Justice has destroyed our educational system. Young minds now believe in the opposite of sanity, which has led to having adults who have no idea which way is up. Chaos has become the norm.

Some say that corruption was by design. Some do not know anything about such insinuations. Nonetheless, Americans can see the results.

It is time for us to have a conversation about what Americans value in public education. Do Americans value social justice, revisionist history, comprehensive sexual education, and activism? Not really. Most of these topics are age inappropriate to childrens' ability to absorb, weigh, and analyze them.

Would you give your kindergartner a bottle of booze, a cartoon of cigarettes, and the keys to your car? How about your eight year old? Or, a ten year old? A twelve year old? Most people would not even give their licensed sixteen year old that combination.

Yet, educators have decided to "adult" children with mature content in their classrooms. Anyone who is thrust into adulthood without an adult mind would be piles of dry timber ready to combust. And boy, are these fire starters on a rampage. That is educators' fault.

Children view adults as authority figures. When these authority figures betray young minds, how would those children know the difference? Most adults cannot; so we cannot ask it of our younglings.

We need a counterbalance to negate the irresponsible education Americans are seeing in our public education system. We need to lay down some common sense and agreed upon tenets for pedagogy:

-Mathematics
-Physical Education, Health
-Science
-Social Science
-Foreign Languages, Culture
-Geography
-History
-Art
-Music, Band, Orchestra, Choir
-English, Literature

With an outline of what curriculum should not present to students:

-morality
-religion
-activism
-social justice
-criticism
-sexuality

Educators have overstepped their bounds and decided to become other people's children's parents, religious advisors, and life coaches. Instead of education, our children were indoctrinated by authoritarians. 

Life is our morality play. Each day with each interaction, we learn what is acceptable in our society and what is not. For most people morality is based on their religious upbringing. That is where parental guidance in such matters is of the upmost importance. 

Social justice and activism have been brought into the classroom. Why? Children are unable to vote. Until eighteen, children are in studying and learning mode, not direct action. Action is what is being modeled by teachers. Students are taken to the side of the road in order to protest. That is irresponsible and out of bounds. Children have no business being taught this behavior or modeling it for adults. Hate is a learned behavior and we have young people who are executing this behavior as programmed drones setting fires. 

Dissection of a subject is an advanced skill. This coursework is usually taught in graduate studies. Critical analysis is for the seasoned student. Yet we have children learning critical theories without the knowledge base to scrutinize and assess such complex topics. This skill is age inappropriate for its intended young audience. 

Comprehensive sexual education is also inappropriate in K-12 education. First, children's bodies are immature and their undeveloped brains are unable to make much sense out of this subject. If a child is too young to go to a PG-13, or rated R movie by themselves, then why are educators pushing NC-17 on them? Some mature knowledge is just that: for mature audiences only. Children do not have context for what is being displayed to them and has become the grounds of pedophilic-type grooming behavior by teachers.

The underlying issue is that we have an educational system geared toward "adulting" children. That in itself is morally and ethically abhorrent. The educational system is not the parent. Teachers are not the parent. The child's mother and father are the parents. It is about time America reconciles this notion and snap back to reality. 

American exceptionalism is not about egotism. This educational path is about knowledge and the application thereof. Americans learn the combustion engine: we build cars and highways. Americans learn the filament: we have lighting in all our houses. Americans learn science: we go to the Moon. That is how knowledge coupled with imagination and integrity works. 

The United Nation's interpretation of education has led American children to become incompetent, ignorant, and incompatible with reality. Arson anyone? 

Americans should be setting the example of what humans can do if we set our minds to it. 

Speaking of which, Americans should demand that our National Curriculum should be based around a Classical Education that gives age appropriate knowledge, real world application, and fosters the imagination. 

Children should learn the classics: Latin, Greek, as well as literature, history, and mathematics. These items are missing in education in order to promote over-emotionalism. Empathy has to be balanced with knowledge and ability or the emotive qualities of altruism becomes magnified and distorted as we are seeing today. 

Our individual skills, abilities, talents, and accomplishments should be highlighted and encouraged over group work and group think. A classical education that is reminiscent of Socrates and other great philosophers and educators would propel American ingenuity forward by leaps and bounds. 

So now the question becomes: who wanted to stifle American exceptionalism? 

And parents should ask: why did our educators follow this downward spiral without question? How have the standards plummeted math and reading scores? Just where should the blame be placed? 

Then how can America clean up our academic standards to promote American exceptionalism and eliminate American nihilism from our educational system? 

"You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant" -Harlan Ellison

The answer: getting America's educational system back to the classics and leave the indoctrination to authoritarian regimes where free thought is frowned upon.  

Because learning from the greats should be fearless.

 

Spring is Here, Sports are Overrated, and Stories Abound

Yes, I know those in the upper and eastern portions of the United States are frozen.

In Phoenix, 80's are on their way! Good, I hate the cold. I hate snow even more. I did live in Iowa as a child and I am so glad we fled, I mean: moved.  

The only wish I have is that frigid weather would ruin the Super Bowl. Then maybe Arizona would not be cursed with having to host another one. 

I know that sounds harsh but sports are not important. Sports are for fun. Sports are not supposed to be a person's main focus in life or take up their extra cash.

Let's put it this way.... We pay men to play with a ball in several sports more than we pay our teachers to teach our children, people to watch our children while we are at work. It is really obscene once you put sports in perspective to the rest of our world. 

These examples demonstrate the failing of ethics and morals. Roman Gladiators and idolizing current sports figures are but two different sides of the same coin.

In writing, a writer can find the similarities between the past and present as well as what irritates him or her about their own culture and use that experience to create another society in fiction.

Perhaps writing about how cultures defeat their male worship sports binge might be a good novel to write.

That and the weather. I cannot wait for our nice warm weather to stay awhile, even if the temperatures do not ruin the Super Bowl. At least I will have a good time being outside again. 

Well, if the planes stop spraying lines all over that make me ill and cause breathing problems. Yeah, clean air days and blue skies would cure a lot of what ails me.