Left Assigns Lower Education Goals for Blacks

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/10/a_socialist_agenda_behind_floridas_new_racebased_education_standards.html

This is not the first time that we have seen this. The Left, needing a base of helpless voters, has every intention of keeping a large segment of our populace in a status of second-class citizen.

The post linked at top does a good job of delving into the background of the support for the new education rules in Florida. These are apologetically designed to ensure that blacks will comprise the greatest amount of illiterates.

Here is another from Lloyd Marcus:

http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/10/academic_expectations_lowered_another_democrat_hit_to_black_intellect.html

"Frustratingly, many blacks still will not "get-it". They will interpret the Democrats' claim that blacks are too stupid to find their way to acquire a photo ID to vote as the Dems looking out for them. While in reality, Republicans who fight the Dems' absurd claim are the ones respectfully treating blacks as equal Americans. For crying out loud, black America, wake up!

Meanwhile, down in Tampa, the school board's new educational goal is by 2018 to have 92% of Asian students read at or above grade levels. The goal is lower for other groups: 86% whites, 80% Hispanics, and 74% blacks. The message is clear. The liberal school board, which I bet a dollar to a doughnut comprises mostly Democrats, does not think blacks can cut the mustard....."

This is a travesty and and a crime.

These older posts describe the Leftist background behind the enforced illiteracy in schools:

http://thehotgates480bc.blogspot.com/2012/05/follow-up-on-enforced-illiteracy-in.html

http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/05/reading_the_contempt_of_socialists.html

From the American Thinker link:

[Note that the article should be read in its entirety. The writer has his own website which contains a tremendous amount of resources and information concerning the strategic dumbing down of the US.
http://www.improve-education.org/ ]


"........One bit of history strikes me forcefully in this context. When the Progressives in this country took control of public education, fighting under the banner of John Dewey's socialist ideas, you might have expected -- or hoped -- that they would use their new power to lift the lower classes to some higher place. They did not.

They had power by the 1930s, and their first big move was to throw phonics out and introduce Whole Word, which requires children to memorize words as diagrams. It seems to me a particularly revealing move. From that time forward, our public schools have churned out more than 50 million functional illiterates. We have one million dyslexics, with some estimates much higher. We have a vast decline in culture, in general knowledge, and in ordinary common sense. (If people still have any of that, it's arguably because they are constantly interacting with movies and TV; most of this so-called entertainment is more sophisticated than most of the so-called education served up in our public schools.)

And all this decline was accomplished by a simple device: our collectivist educators, having climbed their way to the top, refused to let the peasants learn to read.

To me, it's shocking. But there's little doubt that that is what happened, and it is confirmation of George Orwell's cynicism. He said that the Middle, when they got power, would never give the suckers an even break. That's what we have seen in the public schools of our country for the last 80 years. What the Low get is dumbing down and illiteracy.

The reason for using Whole Word never seemed to have anything to do with helping the Low. A cursory look at literacy statistics proves that this method is a bust and generally hurts the slower students most. The real agenda always seemed to be making sure that the Low stay low, and in creating an economic and cultural disaster zone where the Middle can sign up new recruits and continue their assault on the High. Indeed, the Middle use their control of education primarily to wean the Low away from supporting the High. Education today is a war of propaganda against the status quo, until the High give up. Isn't this what we are seeing?

The Education Establishment pushed Look-say, Sight Words, Whole Language, and Balanced Literacy (all these are the same thing under different names) in an endless rolling barrage unlike anything seen since the trench warfare of World War I. Phonics had to be obliterated. Whole Word had to be enforced, by whatever claims, weird jargon, repackaging, and outright lies were necessary.

So here we are in 2012, and children are still forced to memorize their Dolch words in first grade. What are Dolch words? They are the more common words, named after Edward Dolch, one of the pioneers of Whole Word. Although language and jargon have been changed, the essential gimmick does not change. Kids were made to memorize sight-words in 1935, and they are made to do the same today.

Children still end up reading less fluently, knowing less, and making for a less educated, less independent people.

So I propose that reading theory -- perhaps I should say false reading theory -- provides a miniature diorama of George Orwell's analysis. Our Middle are Socialists, and once they were on the move circa 1931, they showed, at least in education, their true colors. I think it's fair to say that Obama and his far-left friends would like to move to the top. Obviously, this is bad news for the High. But this essay is about the Low. The warning is clear. The Low should not be so foolish as to expect much of anything. The people at the bottom will be kept there, ignorant, on welfare, and for sure hardly literate.

In short, the peasants never get an even break.

In 1911, G. Stanley Hall, one of John Dewey's mentors, went so far as to extol illiteracy: "It is possible, despite the stigma our bepedagogued age puts upon this disability, for those who are under it not only to lead a useful, happy, virtuous life, but to be really well-educated in many other ways."

And so we see that in reading -- theory, methods, and results -- we can read the contempt of Socialists.

Is there any hope? Only if the entire society rejects the blandishments of our Education Establishment. Personally, I think it's correct to conclude that nothing they endorse can lead to education, if they can help it, nor to literacy. All the phonics experts say they can teach virtually every child to read in the first grade. That's what we need. Anything less concedes the battlefield to our ruthless, on-the-march Middle."