I find this concentration on "tradition" quite funny.
YouTube - Fiddler on the roof - Tradition ( with subtitles )
New Math. Hardly "tradition".
We look at "the space race" and how that actually happened. The entire country was directed, it was a concerted effort. Teachers, government and parents.
I remember when I was in school, the "science fairs" and the competitions. Winners would be on national news and Johnny Carson. Where has that gone?
Now, smart children are called "nerds" and "geeks". Good grades are something to be embarrassed about. Black children call other black children getting good grades "trying to act white". There is not a segment of this society that hasn't undermined education.
And the conservatives are the worst. Because they make up the largest single group in this country and are the "natural" leaders. And they have thrown out that "mystical creation" and "education is just a piece of paper". They have delegitimized education. And it's easy to understand why.
By delegitimizing education you:
Keep "mystical creation" going. Making religion more "real".
You keep women in a more subservient role.
It's easier to keep the gays ostracized.
It's easier to keep church leaders in power.
It's easier to keep the right slaves to their ideology.
It's all about "power". The last thing you want is people asking questions.
Today's circumstances force us to take a new path. We are at the fork. Go left, and you find knowledge, understanding, financial success and security. Go right and you become Afghanistan. Those are the real choices.
Remember, it was that "liberal" education that gave us the moon, won us the space race and created all the new technology. Look at where that is concentrated in this country. That tells you the entire story. It's not like it's a secret.
OMG! I almost thought I was agreeing with you!!!!
I believe I have the vapors...
Then you saved me from a fate worse...well, that may be over he top.
You see, I buy paragraph one, how low knowledge and education have fallen, but then you proved to be the same old 'head-of-stone' deanie-weanie:
"Now, smart children are called "nerds" and "geeks". Good grades are something to be embarrassed about. Black children call other black children getting good grades "trying to act white". There is not a segment of this society that hasn't undermined education.
And the conservatives are the worst. Because they make up the largest single group in this country and are the "natural" leaders. And they have thrown out that "mystical creation" and "education is just a piece of paper". They have delegitimized education. And it's easy to understand why. "
I've explained it to you twice, but, alas, you're not able to break free, you know, and actually think for yourself.
The depredation of education can be traced to the ascendancy of left wing thinking in society...the sixties, my poor slow-thinking friend.
Since even tiny bits of learning have slipped past you, understanding the big picture is out of the question...but just, just, just in case, (I am the eternal optimist) here is the provenance, and a liberal, left wing provenance it is:
1.The unrest of the sixties was born in June of 1962 at the AFT-CIO camp at Port Huron, Michigan.
Some prior rumblings had been heard in a nascent civil rights movement, and from the Free Speech movement at Berkeley- but it was the Port Huron meetings that represented the heart of Sixties radicalism.
2. Port Huron was an early convention of SDS, a small group of alienated, left-wing college students, 59 from 11 campuses.
3. A draft of the meeting can be found at
Port Huron Statement of the Students for a Democratic Society, 1962. It sets forth an agenda for changing human nature, the nation, and the world. In it, one can hear the ignorance and arrogance so inherent in adolescents: the euphoria due to being convinced of their own wisdom, moral purity, and ability to change everything.
4. Now, here it comes: where did these folks go? The schools!
They destroyed education!
"The radicals of the sixties did not remain within the universities…They realized that the apocalypse never materialized. “…they were dropping off into environmentalism and consumerism and fatalism…I watched many of my old comrades
apply to graduate school in universities they had failed to burn down, so they could get advanced degrees and spread the ideas that had been discredited in the streets under an academic cover.” Collier and Horowitz, “Destructive Generation: Second Thoughts About The Sixties,” p. 294-295.
5. Is it a coincidence that since these folks graduated and took over all of the bastions of liberal thought, schools have stopped educating?
"The College Board revealed in 1975 that scores on the SAT had fallen steadily and sharply since 1964. The College BoardÂ’s own blue-ribbon panel reported in 1977 that the most substantial score decline had occurred after the demographics of the applicant pool, expansion of the low-income and minority test takers, had stabilized. They acknowledged that the likely influence of the lowering of standards and the lessened emphasis on critical reading and thoughtful writing."
From “Against Mediocrity: The Humanities in America’s High Schools,” edited by Finn, Ravitch, and Fancher.
And so, my easily-led friend, you have directed your contumely in the wrong direction...
too bad you are beyond learning or changing.
