Just recently President Bush, Friday educating the American citizens of the "Trilateral" summit held with Canada and Mexico regarding the illegals crossing U. S. borders.
This Republic requires more of its citizens than any other form of government. Depends on the ability of the citizens to govern themselves. There are rooted in moral and political principles in which each generation must be educated. Educating citizens in the principles, rights, duties, and capacities of citizenship is the purpose of public education in America, and our institutions of higher learning play a critical part in making our public capable or incapable of fulfilling their purpose. The educators are failing miserably in accomplishing this purpose in apparent to all who have eyes to see and ears to hear.
Here is an excerpt of an article written by Christopher Flannery on "Educating Citizen's":
"Education in America today, at every level, is dominated by doctrines that openly repudiated the principles on which America is founded; indeed, they deny the very capacity of men to distinquish freedom from tryanny, justice from injustice, right from wrong. These doctrines have wholly discredited the perspective of the democratic citizen: they have made self government itself unitelligable as a political phenomenon. So pervasive has been the influence of these doctrines that the teaching of American citizen from the earliest elementary to the graduate schools takes place almost wholly within their horizons… The popular expressions of these ideas in our time take a wide variety of froms, …converge most faddishly under the banners of 'Multiculturalism' and 'Diversity."
"The foremost idea multiculuralism is the equal value of all cultures, or cultural relativism. This is an idea that has made it impossible for a generation of American students to make the perfectly reational moral distinction between a 'culture' that puts Jews in the ovens and one that grants them freedom of worship and all rights of citizenship…"
"Multiculturalists loudly denounce the emphasis on American history and culture and western civilization… One might think that it would be a rational and non-controversial approach to teach – student about the American Declaration of Independence and the American Constitution. This a naive. And, again, it is not just the 'fringe elements' who protest… have childern from all over the world. They want to learn about their own cultural heritage, not about the Bill of Rights, per California School Board Accociation."
"Multiculturalism has no patience for objective academic standards of excellence. Those are merely other means by which the 'dominant culture' oppresses 'minority' cultures. Therefore demonstrably objective tests are denounced as racist, …insist that students be graded only within their racial or cultural group or that tests be redesigned so that preferred 'minorities' racial group. This is called "Race-norming," and it has been practiced in the hiring policies of the federal government for years. Private employers reluctant to take high school diplomas or grades into account in hiring for fear of being punished under the law of racial discrimination."
"Multiculturalists replaces education with therapy, insisting that supporting the students 'slef-esteem' is the governing object of education… achieved by teaching the students of 'oppressed cultures' to be proud of their particular race or ancestry."
"…Beverly Slapin of Communities United Racism condemns as racist the inclusion in American history textbooks of the account of the migration of Indians across the Bering Strait of Alaska, whatever may be the claim to historical truth. "Native people say they were created here, she says, "that they sprang from Earth, not from Europe or Asian…" disregard people's religious beliefs os racist."
"…multicultural therapy inflicted on American students at all levels – produce adults – cannot distinquish between right from wrong; …who have been taught to indenify themselves through the skin color or surnames of their ancestors; …ignorant of American History and the principles of American Democracy or have been taught to despise America; …"
Intelligent liberal critics of multiculturalism see the problem clearly. Respected historian of education Diane Ravitch says, schools should say to students of other cultures, "that wherever they have come from, wherever their parents have come from, they are now preparing to be American Citizens… They must learn American History, Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights."
"American began with a ringing affirmation of a fundamental moral and political truth: "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights." There was no appeal to skin color or ethnicity."
American Founders proclaiming all men and all times possess by nature equal rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In that they realize the limits of their ability to secure these rights. When they were able to establish "more perfect union" they understood full well how far from perfection they remained.
"To began to restore American education today world, its necessary to restore the moral and intellctual horizons within which the self evident truths on which America was founded can command the respect and allegiance they deserve, …Americans can justly appreciate why and how Lincoln might say of America, "We find ourselves under the government of a system of political institutions conducting more essentially to the ends of civil and religious liberty than any of which the history of former times tells us."
On the web:
Bush Calls Trilateral Meeting -www.comcast.net
Educating Citizens -www.claremount.org
