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The Nightmare We Call Our SchoolsA friend of mine recently wrote to me saying, “My wife is retiring in June after thirty years of teaching. A high school degree means nothing. No Child Left Behind is an even bigger joke. It is a scary situation that could lead us to third world status, but we are prepared for that since we already teach English as a second language.” I remember my Father, the son of Italian immigrants, telling me how, when he entered kindergarten in the early years of the last century, the teacher paired him with a boy who spoke both English and Italian. That was how he learned to speak English. He was not considered special, the school was full of immigrant’s children and they were expected to pick up English as best they could and as fast as they could. Later, my Father worked his way through New York University and became the youngest person at the time to pass the exam to become a Certified Public Account.
Today’s schools reflect the opening quote from a friend of mine, a fellow with a master’s degree in education who tried his hand at teaching and discovered that his school was a jungle of incompetent teachers, indifferent administrators, and a majority of students for whom the expectation of good behavior and a dedication to learning was laughable. And his school was every public school. That explains why Dr. Renato C. Nicolai, Ed.D, with forty years of teaching elementary and middle school as well as being an administrator in California schools, sat down and wrote The Nightmare That is Public Education: An Expose of What Really Happens in Public Schools ($17.95, iUniverse). I recommend this book to parents so that the blinders can fall from their eyes and especially to teachers who still have a desire to actually teach. “I believe teachers and principals work in school systems throughout the United States that are ineffective, poorly administered, and broken,” says Dr. Nicholai. He cited six “myths” the public is spoon-fed to keep them in the dark.
Politically conservative parents have an even greater problem with today’s schools that are totally in the grip of unions with a demonstrative leftist agenda. “The terms multiculturalism, modernism, diversity, secular humanism, individual self-expression, moral relativism, and political correctness identify the secular-progressive,” writes Dr. Nicholai. “When these terms are discussed with praise and commitment, you know you’re on the trail of persons who believe that traditional values, rights, and responsibilities are old-fashioned and out of step with modern thought.” “Public schools are havens for liberal thought and practice. Secondary teachers are generally far left, left, or left-leaning.” The greatest complaint of parents with children in today’s school is that they are factories for indoctrination of values that run contrary to their own “old-fashioned” views. It is doubtful still that parents have any idea how bad the situation is in their local schools, even if their children attend those in prosperous suburbs. Dr. Nicholai simply says they have been hoodwinked. Everyone participates from the students to the teachers to the administrators. “Actually, at most public high schools chaos is just under the surface of the daily routine, with cops on campus and administrators supervising before and after school, during passing periods, and at lunches and recesses, with walkie-talkies and cell phones.” Not exactly the description of a serene, safe environment in which to learn or teach anything. We as a nation have known about this as far back as 1983 when the National Commission on Excellence in Education issued its report, “A Nation at Risk.” Here we are, twenty-five years later, and the situation is infinitely worse. At a current average cost of $9,200 per student, an increase of 69% over 1980 per-pupil spending, taxpayers are spending more and getting worse results. Editor’s note: For an excellent source of information the nation’s troubled education system and solutions to save it, visit http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=10211 Please take a moment to make a donation to the Center. We are a critical point when only the facts we share with you can equip you to deal with the threats to our nation. Become a part of the Center’s work with your vital support!
The announcement Wednesday, May 14, by Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne that the department has decided to list the polar bear as “threatened” was yet another way of insuring that America must remain dependent on Saudi oil, along with the oil we purchase from other nations that are sucking U.S. dollars out of U.S. pockets at rates never seen before in history. The three page justification issued by the Department of the Interior simply shouts how utterly debased this decision is. It claims it was based “on the best available science which shows that loss of sea ice threatens and will likely continue to threaten polar bear habitat.” This government whose meteorological service cannot accurately predict what next week’s weather will be now wants us to believe it can predict the amount of sea ice off Alaska ten, twenty, thirty or more years from now. That’s how stupid they think you are! To add to the absurdity of this decision, Secretary Kempthorne says, “this listing will not stop global climate change or prevent any sea ice from melting.” Notice he does not say “global warming”! He uses the newer Green terminology of “climate change”, something that has been going on now for 4.5 billion years! Bluntly put, the President and his administration has betrayed every American at a time when the need for access to our national reserves of oil and natural gas is uppermost in the minds of Americans concerned about our increasing dependence on foreign nations, some of which are unfriendly to our national interests and policies, while others are regarded as unstable providers of oil. To put it another way, they just broke open the champagne bottles in Russia, in Venezuela, in Nigeria, and, in Islamic nations where they are toasting each other with whatever they drink to celebrate victory over the infidels. The administration’s claim that the Endangered Species Act—one of the worst, failed pieces of legislation ever imposed on Americans—had to be enforced because polar bears are imperiled by global warming is obscene, an immoral offense to the truth. James M. Taylor, a Senior Fellow for Environmental Policy at the Heartland Institute, responded to the announcement saying, “The only plausible basis for ruling polar bears as threatened is blind faith in alarmist computer models that have been no more accurate than Chicken Little’s claim that the sky is falling.” There is no global warming and the administration knows this. The federal government’s own meteorological services are on record that the natural warming that had occurred since 1850 ended in 1998 when satellite data and other temperature measurements clearly indicate a cooling trend has begun. Writing in November 2007, I noted the following: The environmentalists seeking to put the polar bears on the Endangered Species list conveniently overlook a report by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) noting there are some 22,000 polar bears in 20 distinct populations worldwide. H. Sterling Burnett, a senior fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis, noted in a 2006 commentary published by The Washington Times that, “Only two bear populations—accounting for about 16.4 percent of the total—are decreasing, and they are in areas where air temperatures have actually fallen, such as the Baffin Bay region. “By contrast, another two populations—about 13.6 percent of the total number—are growing and they are living in areas where air temperatures have risen, near the Bering Strait and Chukchi Sea”, i.e., just off the coast of Alaska! The World Wildlife Fund study found the ten populations—comprising about 45.4 percent of the total—are stable, and the status of the remaining six is unknown. As Burnett points out, “These bears have survived for thousands of years, during both colder and warmer periods, and their populations are by and large in good shape. Polar bears may face many threats, but global warming is not primary among them. As you watch the cost of gasoline, heating oil, food and just about everything else that depends on oil for production or transportation continue to rise and impact your life, remember that it was environmentalists that started this ball rolling and the Bush administration that put it in motion. Don’t forget to visit our blog!
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The difference between my Father’s era—and mine at mid-century—and the children in today’s schools is that there were subjects we were expected to master and grades reflected actual achievement. 
When President Bush was meeting with his Saudi masters last week to discuss oil prices, you can be sure that one of the things he told them was that he met their demand to insure that the potentially vast oil and natural gas reserves off the coast of Alaska, the realm of the polar bear, have now successfully been put off limits to any exploration, extraction, and delivery to the citizens of the United States.