Lindsay Perigo
The Politically Incorrect Show - 19/01/2001
[Music - Die Fledermaus]
Good afternoon, Kaya Oraaa & welcome to the Politically Incorrect Show on the free speech network, Radio Pacific, for Friday January 19, proudly sponsored by Neanderton Nicotine Ltd., the show that says bugger the politicians & bureaucrats & all the other bossyboot busybodies who try to run our lives with our money; that stands tall for free enterprise, achievement, profit, & excellence, against the state-worshippers in our midst; that stands above all for the most sacred thing in the universe, the liberty of the human individual.
[Music up, music down!]
Yesterday's discussion on the state of our education system set off quite a flurry. One caller wanted to pinpoint just when the 'dumbing-down' process chronicled in Deborah Coddington's article in the current North & South had begun. I said, long enough ago for us to be facing, not just pupils who can't read or write, but a generation of teachers who can't either. If it's any consolation - & it shouldn't be - we don't have this on our own. I quote from an article in this week's New York Post by Carl Campanile, headlined Certifiably Stupid?:
Teachers entrusted with helping city students pass standardized tests are regularly flunking their own certification exams - even after taking prep courses paid for by the Board of Education, a Post investigation found. Of 118 uncertified teachers who took subsidized prep courses at City College last year, 70 flunked one or both of the exams required to get their teaching licenses.
That's a 59 percent failure rate.
Most of those who failed are still teaching in city schools, according to board records and a Post survey. The test results for another 92 uncertified teachers who took the 3-month-long cram course have not yet been released by the state Education Department...
City College and board officials defended the prep courses and the results, stressing that over 40 percent had finally passed a test they had failed repeatedly. "These are teachers who are chronic failures. It's a miracle," said Albert Posamentier, dean of the teaching program at City College. "You have someone who failed nine times. Why would they pass the 10th time? It's our intervention that got them through," he said. But he acknowledged it's a "sad state" when so many teachers can't pass a competency exam...
The test results are ominous for the city school system. In 2003, a new state law bars anyone from teaching without passing the certification exams - eliminating the emergency waivers currently offered by the state education commissioner. This means thousands of teachers could be forced out of the system.
I wonder how many of our own teachers would flunk similar tests here?
The point to realise though is that it's in Nanny State's interest to have a nation of mentally dysfunctional illiterates being churned out by other mentally dysfunctional illiterates - sheeple who can't think pose no threat to her; they will depend on her & worship her. The current travesty that is our state education system was engineered by leftists who believed in an all-powerful state. They could not achieve their objective via the ballot box at that time, so set out to cripple the thinking faculties of future voters instead. They have been spectacularly successful.
How to undo their evil? Not just revert willy-nilly to the ways of the past, though in many respects that would be an improvement, but remove the state from education altogether. That way, both literacy & liberty might stand a chance.
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