Cycles of Ignorance

A school district in Suffolk County (NY) gave teaching applicants an 11th grade reading test which three-quarters of them failed. One-third of applicants failed a basic-skills test in Virginia. Such horror stories permeate the public education system, including the fact that half the math and science teachers in California were discovered to have no training in these subjects. Clearly, it would be an understatement to assert that incompetency is rampant and stupidity abounds in the public education system. Indeed, while the system routinely graduates illiterates who can't read their own diplomas, it also employs teachers who can only charitably be described as dullards...The Unspoken Truth, Frank Borzellieri, New Century Books (1999)

And you thought it was getting better?

Efforts to reform our public education system received a blow recently when a federal court reopened a challenge to the testing procedure the State of New York requires as part of the certification process for new teachers...A disproportionate number of black and Hispanic teachers and prospective teachers failed this exam. The complaint is that the city discriminated against those removed from the classroom after failing the test...I have had some contact with this exam. My son is a teacher, and took the test four years ago. I was shocked when I first saw this exam...The test appears to me to be more appropriate as an exit exam required for high school graduation than as an entrance exam for new teachers. The claims of the plaintiffs that the test is "culturally and generationally bound" is absurd. This is a simple test of general knowledge and skills that represents the least that we should expect of someone to whom we entrust with the education of our children....Why We're Losing Ground," Andrew Wolf, The New York Sun, August 25, 2006

When "prejudice" comes to mean any negative opinion about any individual in a given group, it ceases to have meaning. It becomes instead a means of preserving the assumed rights of something akin to a royal family. They can smash the china at the palace, ransack the treasury, and be as dull as sheep, but don't dare say anything about them. These tests examine an individual's capacity for teaching. The possibility that mostly dolts would bother with the teaching profession in New York (or elsewhere)has nothing to do with race, but the condition of the profession itself, one wracked with wacko educational theories introduced by educrats with more interest in punching a ticket than educating a student. And it is getting worse.

Those who believe in the ideology behind this suit also have their sights set on another area of the city's educational scene, the specialized high schools...."Why We're Losing Ground," Wolf, NY Sun

Of the very few ways that public schools keep "taxpayer students" from leaving for private schools, gifted student programs and schools are among the most important. It is not surprising that the race merchants and the equal outcomes fantasizers would obsess about these programs and schools. Such programs and schools acknowledge what even fools know, that equal though we may be before the law, in matters of intelligence and talent, the dice fall differently individual to individual. This profoundly offends race and equal outcomes merchants; the evidence defies everything they claim to believe in. And Wolf is right to title is article "Why We're Losing Ground," because we are, especially any student with special gifts, or any parent who can't afford private schools.

Luther