Building a great unwashed mass of ‘stupid’

In the event you had any lingering doubts that a movement exists which is intent on turning the United States into one great unwashed mass of "Stupid," last week's State Board of Education meeting in Austin should settle the argument.

The radical movement of the 1960s has uncloaked after all these years. Scary part is, they're now in charge at the White House, in Congress, in the Governor's Mansion, in the Legislature, the Texas Education Agency, in the newsrooms of major TV networks and daily newspapers, and in the boardrooms of the big multinational corporations which rape our planet.

Unfortunately, it no longer looks like we can stop them. Like those five courageous members of the State Board of Education who fought against the adoption of "rain-forest algebra," we simply don't have the votes.

In Texas, we now have an Outcomes-Based state curriculum guideline, the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS). Thanks to the nine State Board dolts in Austin — one of whom, unfortunately, represents us — our kids will now have the opportunity to learn about everything except algebra in algebra class.

Remember that big fight we had last summer over the TEKS? The main argument against a more specific state curriculum was that the state "can't dictate methodology." Yet in published reports on the state textbook hearings, the argument in favor of "rain-forest algebra" was that it met the state's guidelines for an "integrated" teaching methodology.

I'd echo a previous guest columnist and urge people to pull their kids out of public schools, but I'm afraid that would only lead to jail terms for parents. I don't doubt that our esteemed Legislature will soon make "failure to parent properly" (read that: instill Politically Correct values) some type of jailable offense, under the guise of "protecting the children."

Lest you think such an idea utter nonsense, watch what happens when your child is ill for a protracted period of time. I've personally experienced over-zealous KISD bureaucrats threatening parents with legal action, accusing them of "lying" about their children being sick.

What most rankles me is the subterfuge being employed to advance this agenda. Any time you hear the phrase "... to protect the children," you can bet it will be another program to enable government to intrude on privacy and individual freedom.

Humbug, you say? The federal government is currently developing a microchip which can be implanted just under the skin of children, presumably to track them in the event they're ever kidnapped, get lost or run away. One of the people who helped develop this technology says it's already been tested on a U.S. military base in New York in 1995.

What the government isn't going to tell you is that the same technology can not only transmit data (ostensibly to help searchers find kids) — it can also be programmed to receive data.

Texas is now developing its "Healthy Kids Corporation," to ensure that all children have "adequate medical coverage." Wouldn't want to lose any of them, now, would we?

I just wish folks like the President and the Governor would drop the pretense: education "reform" doesn't have diddlysquat to do with "making America competitive in a global economy." In fact, quite the reverse is the real goal.

The end ideal is a socialist Utopia in which the United States is merely a subject state to a greater world government; in which multi-national corporations are protected entities; and in which 80 percent of schoolchildren are programmed "from cradle to grave" to be happy, obedient servants to the moneyed interests in charge of the planet.

They've been manipulating failure in the education system since at least the late 1960s with the express intent of creating a "crisis" in education — for which, of course, they have the convenient "solution."