THE SHAMBLES THAT IS AMERICAN EDUCATION: EPISODE 6,314

Whatever Leftists touch, they degrade or destroy.

Florida Education: "I've been writing about the problems with public education since 1993. The business of imparting to children what I believed to be empty self-esteem became, through the years, a recurring theme in my articles, along with such issues as the dumbing down of curriculum, grade inflation and social promotion. The responses I got from teachers on the editorial page and in person were usually defensive. I was often accused of hating all things having to do with public education. Apparently, it is impossible to criticize public education without hating it. I don't hate public education. I want it to be better than it is. And so, here we are today, and educators and Democrats are using the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test as their whipping boy as if the fact that this remedy was deemed necessary comes as a total shock to them; as if there were no red flags, no warning bells, nothing whatsoever to alert them to the fact that our kids have, for a long time now, been in serious academic trouble and that the policies of government schools have, for a very long time, been the agency of this trouble".

Kansas education: "Those of us who teach college English classes are always overwhelmed by the astonishing deficits in our students' ability to get their facts straight, to think clearly and logically, and to express their ideas in language that actually makes sense and that follows the most basic rules of grammar. Even our best students write incoherent essays and make grammar and usage errors that would have failed a third grader in the 1950s... When even our brightest, most "competent" college students cannot write as well or as quickly as most third graders could in my elementary school in 1958, that means something has gone very wrong with their instruction in writing." (Via Newmark's door).

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