R'nel: A Nation In Educational Peril
By Gary R'nel
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- The results of the 2014 test, called the National Assessment of Educational Progress are disquieting, distressing and disturbing. The NAEP measures student knowledge in the areas of history, civics and geography. More than half of American eighth graders believe that the government should guarantee them a job when they grow up. Only 32 percent believe that the U.S. should be a democracy. More than 10 percent said Americans favored a single political party with more than 5 percent professing that this country maintains an official religion. About a quarter of the test takers scored at a level considered proficient, essentially unchanged from 2010.
Roger Beckett, the executive director of the Ashbrook Center, an Ohio nonprofit that studies education, says that history, civics and geography "may not be getting the attention they need."Also troubling, only 25 percent scored at a level considered proficient in these subject areas.
The survey results reinforce the empirical evidence that there is, in fact, an inherent liberal progressive bias in the "sermons" inculcated in a multitude of lesson plans in classrooms across America. The left refrains from teaching children how to think and instead teaches them what to think and, more often, in politically correct terms. These left leaning purveyors of liberal indoctrination need to digest an intrinsically important lesson about the profession of teaching. You must educate students about differing ideologies and encourage discussions on their applications. The classroom is not the setting for you to proselytize or to pontificate on your person political leanings.
Abraham Lincoln wrote that, if we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves. One of America's most noble and important professions needs to meet a higher standard.