America's Soft Underbelly

If anyone had the slightest doubt that America is already well down the downhill slope that all good nations in recorded history seem to slip onto after shining for a while--just take a look around at today's media frenzy.

The post-teenie bopper Britney Spears and her drug-induced antics that delight and draw out the worst in the mass media. Simultaneously, there's Vicky Smith aka Anna Nicole Smith, a two-bit, airhead Hollywood slut, recently croaked on drugs (whether self-administered or otherwise) and not to forget her 20-year old fatherless son who succumbed to the same "disease" just a few months before. As if to put several exclamation points after these appalling events, a true circus maximus was created by the widely televised court proceedings detailing the grubbiness of an endless number of caricatures fighting for control of the corpse of this indiscreet, shameless harlot. As if that wasn't enough, the circus was presided over by a goof ball, ex-Bronx cabbie-turned-probate-judge, who is seeking his own "Judge Judy" TV show to coincide with his imminent retirement. This nitwit needlessly stretched a two-hour hearing into a week-long spectacle, finally announcing a non-persuasive decision while blubbering for the courtroom TV camera--this because he wanted to "preserve the spirit of the beautiful Anna Nicole." God forbid that I ever must face American justice if this character is representative of its guardians. These events and their personalities, presently being canonized as important American lore--if you measure them by the obsessive, salacious voyeurism we have accorded them--put America on record as where our real national values lie. Never mind that there are grave and substantive problems threatening our survival that should concern us--we gladly leave all that to others to worry about.

Does not our reaction to these events make an outrageous lie of the adage beloved by patronizing politicians who tell us that Americans are collectively a wise body? Doesn't it belie the validity of the polls that ask our opinion on a range of subjects from global warming to America's vital national interests?

Is it any wonder the Muslim World (and much of the rest of it) hates America? Maybe it's time to consider the many advantages of becoming an expatriate on a beach in some third-world country, where the main concern is whether it should increase or decrease its coffee export quota.

Rescuing K-12: But what about our universities? A look at Duke University.

Since my "rescue the schools" series has been limited to grades K-12, some might think I believe everything is hunky dory at our universities. I don't. Not by a long shot! But reforming higher education is beyond the scope of my undertaking. Besides, if we can straighten things out so that students will arrive at university prepared in reading, writing, and thinking, they'll force "academic" departments in the arts and humanities to return to seriously academic inquiry.

Today, however, things have reached such a sad point on most campuses that, in order to survive, universities must either offer tutorial courses in English (and other subjects, as students' SATs might indicate), or lower their academic standards.

Unfortunately, too many institutions (remember, they worry about attracting the necessary revenue to pay their bills) have chosen to lower their standards (for both students and professors) . They do so by offering courses that pander to politically correct trends that have been cast upon a generally uncaring society by disaffected social malcontents, radical feminists, and coddled flower children from the 1960s and 1970s. Once ensconced in a plush professorship, they created curricula around their maladaptive, New Age perspectives.

Nowhere is this better documented by Charlotte Allen in her timely article (January 29, 2007) in The Weekly Standard, entitled " Duke's Tenured Vigilantes." Ms. Allen takes a hard look at the strange behavior of 88 tenured professors at the preppy, expensive Duke University who signed and published an open letter condemning the three lacrosse players accused of the rape, sexual assault, and kidnapping (all of which charges are, this writing, about to be dropped due to the D.A. prosecutor's gross mishandling of the case).

Ms. Allen went to the Duke campus in Durham, North Carolina. What she discovered about these professors resulted in her expose of the mindset that, unfortunately, parallels what is taking place at most campuses in the U.S.A.

If you'd like to brush up on the Duke lacrosse students scandal, you can read Ms. Allen's entire article yourself in The Weekly Standard at this hyperlink, but the scandalous case is beyond the purpose of this essay. However, citing a few items from the article will give you a sense of what is happening to "higher education" throughout America.

Ms. Allen points discovered the obsession humanities professors have the themes "race, gender, and class"--which drive the curricula content and the "politically correct mindset" that pervades arts and humanities departments. These New Age professors have developed and bought into a trendy sociological theory that the three metas* of race, gender, and sexuality dominate human existence . Which of course can lead to some pretty questionable course titles: Critical Race Theory, Environmental Racism, and endless creative titles related to women's' studies, "diversity," "sexuality," and "multiculturalism"-- just pick your favorite university's website and surf course titles in the arts and humanities--you may be shocked to discover just how far "higher education" has departed from rigorous inquiry.

*Metas are "impressions" we are born with that pre-determine and color our every human motive-- a sort of updated psychology--the New Age collective consciousness, if you will.

Ms. Allen writes that Duke is known on the national university landscape as the absolute repository of "all that is trendy and hyper-politicized in today's ivy halls: angry feminism, ethnic victimology, dense, jargon-laden analyses of capitalism and 'patriarchy,' and "new historicism"-- [being] a kind of upgraded Marxism that analyzes art, literature, [and history, sociology, and psychology] in terms of efforts by powerful social elites to brainwash everybody else." She also comments on the university press that publishes such "scholarly" titles as, Appropriating Blackness: Performance and the Politics of Authenticity and An Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality and Lesbian Public Cultures. Duke University Press, she says, is the laughingstock of the publishing world.

I Googled Duke University to scan a few of their academic offerings for the Spring term 2007. The effort both amused and appalled me. Following are just a few examples to give you a feeling for Ms. Allen's analysis of Duke U.

A brief sample of course titles under "Cultural Anthropology":

African MBIRA Music

Marxism and Society

Social Activism Motivations

Gender in Language

Studies in Ethnomusicology

A brief sample of course descriptions in humanities:

IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE DEPARTMENT

English language variation in the United States considered from a current sociolinguistic perspective. Social, regional, ethnic, gender, and stylistic-related language variation, along with models for describing and applying knowledge about language variation. Language variation focused on vernacular varieties of American English in general and on North Carolina in particular.

IN THE GERMAN LANGUAGE (!) DEPARTMENT

Title: Philosophy
Synopsis of course content:
This seminar will be devoted to reading and discussing primary texts in early 20th century analytic philosophy. The readings will include works by Gottlob Frege (excerpts from the Begriffschrift, the essay "Thought", and other writings), Bertrand Russell (excerpts from The Philosophy of Logical Atomism and The Principles of Mathematics) and Ludwig Wittgenstein's
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.

Depending upon the interests of the seminar participants, we may also look briefly at movements and developments in art, architecture, music, biology, aerodynamics, and history and philosophy of physics about the time the Tractatus was written.

Theoretical approaches to the question of the interrelationship of gender and language including neurobiology, psychology, semiotics, feminist critical theory, philosophy of language, discourse analysis, and linguistic theory.
Assignments: Occasionally short written assignments in preparation for class discussions.
Exams : None. Grade to be based on: Class participation and paper(s).
Term Papers: Student's choice of either three (5-8 page) term papers or one long (20 page) paper.
Taught in English.

IN THE RUSSIAN LANGUAGE DEPARTMENT (!)

Title: Gender and Language
Department: RUSSIAN
Permission required? No
Prerequisites: None
Synopsis of course content:This course will explore a broadly-based set of issues and theoretical approaches that deal with the question of the interrelationship of gender and language. The question of gender and language is conceived and developed within the context of those linguistic theories that necessarily require a definition role of speaker and addresses in models of speech acts and sign production. Readings will be taken from a variety of disciplines that grapple with linguistic issues, including neurobiology, psychology, semiotics, feminist critical theory, philosophy of language, discourse analysis and general linguistic theory. Linguistic data will include a representative selection of the world's languages. The question of natural and human language(s) will also be discussed.

Theoretical approaches to the question of the interrelationship of gender and language including neurobiology, psychology, semiotics, feminist critical theory, philosophy of language, discourse analysis, and linguistic theory.

Exams: None

Term Papers: None; Final essay/research paper (topic to be chosen in
conjunction with instructor.)
Taught in English.

IN THE ENGLISH LITERATURE DEPARTMENT

(Here's the "champ" of "academic, politically correct jargon, and just plain BS)

Title: Gender/Sexuality
Department: Literature
Permission required? No
Prerequisites: None.
Synopsis of course content: “Sexuality: You’re Making it Up; It’s Making You Up”

In a woefully under-remarked upon passage in Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, Freud writes, “…The instinct for knowledge in children is attracted unexpectedly early and intensively to sexual problems and is in fact possibly first aroused by them." The instinct for knowledge here is explicitly linked to questions of sexuality. Moreover, “perverts,” Freud will more or less tell us in the first essay, are particularly adept at providing knowledge (for him) about psycho-sexual development, at historicizing, at leaving the psychical traces necessary for providing an account of Western culture, unlike their “normal” hetero-sexual counterparts. These claims by Freud serve as the general inspiration for this course. Not that we’ll rest peacefully on these assessments. Eventually, we’ll bring to bear on these claims the radical historiographic account by Michel Foucault in The History of Sexuality: Volume One that historicizes (as opposed to naturalizing) this very relationship between knowledge and sexuality. Designed mainly as an introduction to the field of “queer studies,” this course will mine the object, “sexuality” to compel questions like: What is sex? Is sex in the body, in the brain, on the body? What is sexuality? Why do we think sex is magic and that our sexualities speak to some special little secret about ourselves? How are sexualities racialized and “races” sexualized in historical and contemporary accounts of queer embodiment? These questions will be tracked through queer postmodern fiction (Dennis Cooper’s Closer & Frisk); psychoanalytic theory (Sigmund Freud); radical historiography (Michel Foucault); critiques of contemporary scientific research on sexuation and sexual orientation (Anne Fausto Sterling’s Sexing the Body); Marxist critiques of sexual identity in late capitalism (Rosemary Hennessey’s Profit and Pleasure). This course generally explores how humans in the West came to understand themselves—and continue to understand themselves—as properly “individualized” through sexual identity categories, that is, the “me” effect of sexual identity.

Requirements: Include one long research paper (12-15 pages), one oral presentation, 2 quizzes, spirited class participation, excellent attendance, an ability to still register and perform surprise and awe, a sixth sense attuned to the humorous and the morbid.

Well, the course offerings go on and on . . . afterall, Duke U. is a large campus with a "diverse" student body seeking wisdom. But this brief sample surely conveys an idea of how our kids are being brainwashed in some really strange material--all centered on gender, race, and sexuality. Those are the three metas the kids are learning for their life's journey. By the way, you'll notice the absence of prerequisite preparation or examinations for these courses--reflecting an old trend adopted years ago at the K-12 levels: Don't challenge the youngsters' self-esteem by judging their performance and comparing it with their peers.

If you've the stomach for it and believe Duke U. is a weird anamoly, just Google your favorite university by name and click on their undergraduate course offerings. After viewing a sample of them, you'll probably want to join the Gnuteacher's Revolutionary Vanguard the next day!

Finally, the 101 worst professors in America:

If you think Duke University is an exception rather than the rule, you've got to read David Horowitz's 2006 book, The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America. It is an thorough survey of the appalling landscape of "academic" inquiry on American campuses. Professor Horowitz describes, by name and university, a mere handful of the weirdos, malcontents, and charlatans who populate our campuses and are busy indoctrinating our kids-- those impressionable kids who are arriving at grade 13 without a developed critical ability they should have learned in their previous 12 years of education.

Names you're probably already familiar with (if you're old enough) pop up with regularity: Angela Davis, the black American Communist Party; her comrade, Black Panther Huey P. Newton, convicted rapist, murderer; the aging Tom Hayden (who holds only a B.A. degree) anti-American activist and Jane Fonda's pal during the Vietnam era; Noam Chomsky, the well-ripened professor of linguistics-turned-anti-American activist during the Vietnam era--he made a comeback splash after 9/11, when he dismissed the 3,000 deaths in the Twin Towers as pale when compared to Clinton's ill-advised cruise-missile attack on a Sudanese factory (in which no one was injured).

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Rescuing our schools: Part 4, The New Paradigm

This the fourth of a four-part series on K-12 education reform.

It was an interesting, if discouraging, hour-long interview with our local city schools superintendent, a substantially important job because she administers K-12 education to the children of our 45,000-populous (and growing) community in Arizona. Not that she isn't a bright, or even brilliant administrator. She earned her spurs as a young teacher in Wyoming, back at the beginning of era I call the "Age of Aquarius" reform period, which I discussed in Parts 1 and 2 of this four-part series "Rescuing our Schools." And here she is a half-century later, wrestling with the creature of her design.

I really have no personal animus for her--in fact, I'm awed that she is able to daily find the energy--especially at her age--to deal with the schools under her supervision. It's not easy managing the near-chaos typical of most public schools in the U.S.A.

I hate to admit it, but she controlled my interview--she was determined not to brook negative talk about a "reformed" system she was, after all, along with her thousands of colleagues an, architect. But I did manage a couple of touchy questions, one of which was, "With all the teachers, substitutes and aides you have to hire each year, how do you attract and retain them, given the abominable salaries you pay?"

It was evident she was used dealing with this old question, because she had a ready answer: "Fortunately, we have a good source from the nearby military base--they need the employment, but most important, salaries are not the most important factor to any of my teachers . . . they do it because they love children." Anyone who actually buys into this spin is hopelessly naive and uninformed. A more accurate answer would have been: "They do it, because most of them can't do anything else." However, in my vision of the future of a reformed system is, it'd be O.K. for teachers in the future quality, reformed system to love children, but I'd hire them on the basis of demonstrating that they're stable, intelligent, and highly capable people whose bona fides would not include a college degree in education, but in an academic specialty (or practical experience) appropriate to their teaching assignments.

In part 3, I promised to outline my design for The New Paradigm. To fulfill that promise, I decided to rely on two main sources: My own e-mail to a friend and the excellent work of Bob Lavin of Portland, Maine; he's a blogger who writes under the pseudonym "Gnuteacher." Doing so will cut down the time I'd otherwise spend rewriting my own e-mail thoughts and trying to re-work the extensive and excellent work of Gnuteacher, with whom I agree to an iota.

First my email I wrote in response to the comments by Bill Cosby and Star Parker about education, which my pal forwarded to me. I quote myself:

How much longer are the Star Parkers and Bill Cosbys going to entertain us with their pen and paper, in order to motivate the blacks (and other minorities) as well as us, the WASP crackers? They write, and we all nod our heads in solemn agreement, but we continue to elect failed political retreads and hacks as well as wild-eyed congenital liars with no or impossible agendas. Then when nothing changes or social pressures grow so demanding and thus force our so- called leaders to react, we spend years bitching and moaning at the stupidity, irrelevance, etc. of our school boards and school administrators. Want a taste of real reform? Here's an outline, beginning with some background:

First, recognize what education is really all about. It isn't to make good,intelligent, contributing citizens or develop lifelong learners, or to help each individual develop their full potentials. No, its purpose continues to be to establish fixed habits of reaction to authority, to make conformists of our kids, to develop each person's eventual social role, but most of all to provide the "fodder" for industry to maintain a workforce in support of "free market" principles.

Things got really wild after Sputnik when the government captured education by throwing unlimited monies at the system to develop linguists, scientists and the necessary human infrastructure to keep up with the USSR in its technological advances (this spawned the 1958 Defense Education Act), allowing unlimited experimentation that the hippies glommed onto in pursuit of their vague, purposeless "Age of Aquarius." And today we're left with the school system that has picked up the disabled that used to be in private or government-run sanitariums; we adopted the stupid hippie notion that individual children know better than their teachers what they want to study; when forced to study a basic reading, writing, and arithmetic regimen, are coddled by Bush's No Child Left Behind which naturally devolves into teaching tests that, in good faith are designed to measure actual achievement.

So the beat goes on and reformers have no chance to institute real reform because education has become a monstrous, faceless bureaucracy that has captured America, its parents and its kids. If you're skeptical, just read what Bill Gates has said in recent months, and why he and hundreds of other businesses must seek "brain power" abroad. Just look at the appalling recent stats that nationally, 40% of kids do not graduate from high school! This is up from the traditional 25% the past couple decades. Things are in a f**king mess that constitutes a disaster which is undoing our society and is "dumbing down" (Bill Bennett's term) the nation. Little wonder that our country elects queers as governors, Bill Ney's and ex-fighter pilots who turn out to be parasites and crooks.

2. Here are my recommendations, which I'm certain will never see light of day until the country implodes completely after the governors lose their grip on the present social order:

(a) Re-examine the purpose of education, which, in a nutshell should be: To recognize that every kid isn't enabled with the same capacity. Some should be in an institutional setting with special education teachers and nurses, while others should be mechanics and people who build the society the brilliant engineers design, and are capable of leadership in industry, law and politics.

(b) Around these classes (yes, my dear, what horror--I'm advocating that the classless society goals of JFK and LBJ must be rooted out and respect for individuals' abilities planted in their place) a rebuilt education system, with minimal influence or interference by the federal government, whose limited role would be to return to local schools the tax money we, the people, have paid and are now demand its return--without strings attached. The second federal involvement would be to host temporary boards of active teachers recruited from the states whose task would be to develop standardized curricula. In so doing, we could (and should) dismiss 99 percent of bloated, useless Department of Education in Washington.

(c) Demand teachers who have IQs of at least 120 and whose training is in the specific areas of practicum designed to master early on the basic skills (the 3 R's) and then to engage, in specific courses according to the desired end goal, the capable kids, as per my definition above.

(d) To hell with education courses for teachers, but instead seek out 'real' people from society who are actual practitioners in their areas and make them either adjunct or permanent teachers, according to their stage of life and personal needs.
(e) Throw out all distractions in curricula and focus on the essentials of the particular skill set the kids are training in.

(f) Throw out all non-productive and "theoretical" pedagogical approaches and speak and write in plain, concrete terms.

(g) Throw out teachers with social or political agendas. No more "civics" classes that are being propagandized by maladaptive "teachers," and replaced by leader or ex-leaders in communities at local, state and federal levels--people who have actual experience in governing.

(h) Throw out all frills such as swimming pools, fancy gyms and spas, irrelevant infrastructure that do not answer the question: "Is it needed to learn the (now radically revised) curriculum.

(i) Re-educate the parents (and bar them from interfering with the reformed schools, on pain of having their kids ejected) who, being products of the abomination we've suffered for the past half-century, probably have no clue what constitutes a sound education.

(j) Encourage parents to install severe Internet filters that will end the kids' exposure to sex, violence, and kook social theories. TV for students would be programmed and filtered so as to only carry programs relating to and reinforcing their level of educational curricula--these could be "hard core" subjects as well as entertainment, as long as it related to the curricula.

(k) Allow the greatest flexibility in the establishment of private institutions and finally,

(l) Establish a voucher system wherein students could choose their school, public or private, in any location, that would offer the specific career-directing courses they've chosen according to their (tested) native abilities. This would be a good start.

Following are verbatim excerpts from Gnuteacher's "Manifesto":

GNUTEACHER'S MANIFESTO OF EDUCATION REFORM

Gnuteacher says of himself: I have been involved in "education" for the past 15 years. I have taught in public and private schools in the United States and abroad. I am NOT a certified teacher and I look with antipathy and derision upon those that are. I believe that we can reform our educational system quickly and at absolutely no cost if we have the will and desire to do so.

Organizational Structure:

1. Give more power to the individual schools, principals and teachers. Let them hire, fire and train their own staff.

2. Consult with others outside the field of Education and study the writings of professionals in their respective fields. For example:

Learning Organizations (Peter Senge)
Systems Theory (Margaret Wheatley)
Industrial Ecology (Tachi Kiuchi)
Media Ecology (Neil Postman)
Multiple Intelligences (Howard Gardner)
Innovation and the Future (Gary Hamel)

3. Establish Lesson Study Groups within schools. In the long haul for Education reform, Lesson Study is one key to success.

4. Reject Federal funding. There is nothing in the US Constitution that says the Federal government should have anything to do with state schools. Tell 'em "thanks but no thanks" when they try to give you money and you won't have to follow any of their stupid regulations.

5. Outlaw, abolish and starve out the teacher's unions. They are one of the main reasons for our current, rotten system.

6. Expect that schools will be open for 12 hours per day for community and student needs. We paid for them so let us in whenever we want.

7. Our schools should be models of a paperless society. There is no reason for the waste and repetition that our schools produce each and every year. If you can't access a computer in the 21st Century then a teacher should call you on the phone and tell you that Johnny is flunking her class.

Cultural / Metaphysical:

1. A dress code for Teachers. Have you seen the way these people dress? Take off those sweatpants and put on a tie and you will notice that the students will respect you just a little bit more especially if you put pants back on.

2. A Teacher code of conduct consisting of: honesty, personal responsibility, intellectual curiosity, industry, kindness, empathy and courage. Teachers should ride the school bus in the morning if they are on the route and stop cutting the lunch line.

3. Incentives for students based on performance. How about $10 for every "A"?

4. No homework, textbooks or detentions.

5. Music over the intercom in the morning.

6. Longer school day with meaningful activity hosted by volunteer Teachers. Don't let our children roam the streets until we get home from work.

7. A bonfire on the eve of the first day of school. A spiritual rebirth every year.

8. More field trips within 1 mile of school. Get out of school more often and explore the resources for learning within walking distance of your homeroom.

Curriculum:

1. Teach literacy, numeracy and civic understanding along with rhetoric, linguistics, media studies, seeing and memorizing.

2. Bring back art, music, dance and theatre if only after school.

3. Teach all subjects under these umbrella headings:
Inquiry and Expression
Math and Science
Philosophy and History
Literature and the Arts

Teachers:

1. Involved in a Lesson Study group.

2. Streamlined alternative certification for would-be Teachers. Too many good Teachers never make it into the classroom because of hurdles placed in their way. Private schools Teachers are not certified but they DO have a degree in a specific major other than "Education" and they usually score high on verbal aptitude tests.

3. Highest test scores and verbal aptitude tests as basis for hiring. Right now all you have to do is pass the Praxis test. We should hire only Teachers who have scored extremely high instead.

4. Trained in the Socratic Method.

5. Teachers must ask themselves three questions each day:
What am I going to help my students to learn today?
What is it good for? and...
How do I know?

6. Teachers should occasionally teach a class outside of their field. This not only keeps things interesting for the Teacher and students but it also reminds the Teacher what it is like to be a Learner again.

7. Teachers should talk less, ask only questions and always say "please" and "thank you".

If you want to know how the whole thing turns out, then get your copy of the Gnuteacher Education Manifesto when it comes off the presses. We'll let you know.

Footnote: The above material, written sometime in 2006, was accompanied by the following advisory: "The [complete] Gnuteacher Manifesto of Education Reform is complete and has been sent to the printers. Before it is ready for distribution we thought that we would share some of the ideas contained within this groundbreaking and monumental treatise on the causes of and solutions to the problems facing our public schools. You will notice that almost all of the ideas don't cost a dime and there is no good reason why they can't be implemented ASAP." However, I have been unable to find it in print and due to the lack of activity on Gnuteacher's blogsite, he may have become inactive sometime in 2006--at least he hasn't returned my e-mail inquiry asking for his O.K. to cite his material above. But I'm risking his wrath by citing it, especially in light of his encouraging e-mail to me in early 2006.

Rescuing our schools, Part 3: The Purpose

It may come as a shock to many Americans when they learn, for the first time, that our school system wasn't a by-product of the idealism that underlay American democracy within a republican context. No, we inherited our educational context from Europe for strictly practical reasons: To provide obedient, skilled workers to industry.

When the American Revolution was complete, the Age of Industrialism was about to explode as the driving social and economic forces in Europe and England's recently liberated colonies. Almost overnight, no longer was it possible to operate industries with the independently minded lads and lasses possessing their specific, rudimentary skills (shoe making, basket weaving, etc.) they may have acquired from within their families or as apprentices to the Guilds. No, industries now would need armies of disciplined workers who would leave their homes, receive training in individual industrial skills, and completely submit their lives to the industrialist.

One will recall that these armies of workers were so well disciplined by their half-dozen years of basic education that they were too easily manipulated and abused by the industrial magnates. As unions and social activists began to diminish the tensions between industrialists and the work force, education begin to reshape itself in generally positive ways--by extending the number of years of mandatory schooling, expanding its curriculum and codifying standards of education that became generally accepted throughout America.

Meanwhile, however, in case we forget, a great shift has taken place. America lost virtually all its industrial base to other comers like Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, India and now China--and there are more comers. As we now know, that massive shift was abetted during the past couple of decades to corporate "outsourcing" and their transfer of remaining industrial operations to foreign countries in an effort to enhance profits through lower labor costs. But no matter how much hand wringing some of us are doing over that evolution, a surprisingly lucrative economic force filled the vacuum left by our diminished industrial base: America's entrance into the New Digital Age--a shift of our economic force into service industries that became centered around computers and related high technology. Unfortunately, however, our education system failed to match that massive shift, remaining stuck in the old rut of the Industrial Age.

What is now needed, in recognition of America's new economic force, is a parallel paradigm that will educate people to the demands of the New Digital Age; Bill Gates is a significant leader in pushing for an education system that will be responsive to the new demands of high technology. But something else even more demanding and urgent is taking place that will place heavy demands on the us--the shifting demographics of human population. As populations grow and ebb, huge new problems will continue to impose heavy responsibilities on society's governors and mechanics (economists, politicians, industrialists, educators, law enforcement--in a word, by the entire social apparatus), namely, how to deal efficiently with ever more complex problems that spin off of shifting populations.

What are "ever more complex" problems, you ask? Is it because high-tech industrialists, headed by the likes of Bill Gates, are consciously driving this transformation for the sake of profit, as some cynics suggest? Not at all! Population growth has given birth to a growing radicalization. Radicalized populations are already demonstrating our confusion in the face of new problems that so far are only slowly being recognized, but that are far from being solved. Almost overnight "jihadism" has evolved so dramatically that we're just becoming aware that the underlying causes must be dealt with swiftly if existing social orders are not to fall into utter chaos.

Little wonder that China, India, and other fast-growing populations (including the Muslim world around the planet) are frenetically searching for new natural resources, while simultaneously pushing science and technology at break-neck speeds.

But at the same time, the corollary of growth is also grave cause for concern: declining population (and its consequences). Europeans, whose birth rates are approaching historic lows, seem blissfully unaware why radical Islamic elements are beginning to ravage their traditional European social values and institutions. Indeed, some voices today teach that by mid-century Muslims will have completed a massive cultural transformation of most European societies into Islamic entities. The most incisive non-academic voice is Mark Steyn, a self-educated journalist who has become a star in the printed free-world media. Steyn's article "It's the Demography, Stupid" is urgent reading.

If, then, we can agree that the real purpose of education has changed radically during the last half-century and that we need to get in step with the Digital Age, identifying and outlining the new K-12 education system won't be such a difficult task. However, it will take the collective will of our society, beginning with a strong movement at the roots--namely, concerned parents-- in order to induce our politicians at all levels to make the necessary fundamental changes. This will initially involve purging the system and its guardians of old pedagogical habits learned during the now defunct Industrial Age. Resistance to this fundamental change (we could accurately call it a "revolution") will come from those schooled and exercised in the old mindset, and maintained by the powerful education unions that have canonized and politicized it.

So far, the conditions have not existed in sufficient force to overcome resistance from the status-quo folks. And our citizens are in a state of blissful ignorance or denial. But that's no reason to throw up our hands and cry "uncle." Even if it takes a generation or two before changes are in place, we must make the effort. While still unheard and unheeded, there are powerful and convincing leaders ready to support the "education revolution." Make no mistake about it, our survival is at stake. And the task is made more urgent when we realize that time and demography are working against us.

SUMMARY: The old, now defunct "education paradigm" that served the Industrial Age that produced disciplined, humble, dependent workers for assembly lines must be replaced by one that will produce highly intelligent, independent thinkers who will recognize and anticipate societal problems, and then deliver to societies' future governors and engineers the high tech solutions they can use to solve problems created by demography. From this perspective we can suggest an outline of the new educational paradigm, along with some details that will characterize what our new K-12 educational system will look like.

But hold onto your hat! My outline of a new educational mindset may surprise some, or step on others' toes; if they're a relic still stuck in the Industrial Age, it will definitely ruffle their feathers or even evoke severe condemnation.

Rescuing our schools - After a one-year breather!

After a 12-month hiatus, I've picked up the "pen" again, spurred on by dogged determination to finish this critique and consideration of the current K-12 educational mess.

Since my last post below, written on January 17, 2006, I've learned a lot more than I knew a year ago, but interestingly, have earned the contempt of (and have been ignored by) local educators and their supporters--who, I've learned (duh!), have too much personally invested in the present, corrupt system to advocate fundamental reform. In fact, many if not most of the senior educators today are the system's administrators who were the very ones that promoted and developed the nutty philosophies and outlandish techniques that led to today's mess. Anyhow, here we go again.

In Part 2, the elephant we've been laying our hands on to get some idea of what it is, but we might not yet feel comfortable with the image we getting--we're just getting the idea that it's a enormous "beast," and that trying to deal with it won't be easy. As my now retired poly-sci professor (jailed by both Nazis and Communists) e-mailed me recently:

"[Yours] is truly an Herculean undertaking because with few exceptions mediocrity in K-12 has been institutionalized. . . . [You] are somewhere between Mother Teresa in pants and Don Quixote."

My professor attributed me with more future effectiveness than I myself expect to achieve, but that's because in his indefatigable pedagogical habit, I suspect he doesn't want to discourage the early enthusiasm of his overly eager undergraduate student whose eyes he opened. That notwithstanding, his commentaries in several exchanges were designed to encourage me in what has also become his own personal crusade the past 25 years--reforming higher education, a coincidental and fortuitous event for me because, as the lyrics of a 1950s pop tune goes, "you can't have one without the other."

In Part 3 that follows this, I'll attempt to examine the question: "What is the purpose of education?" Or rephrased: "What do we want our system to achieve?" that is, "The Purpose." The final Part 4 will examine some specific steps that can be taken immediately and those longer-range steps that are critical to real reform.