From kindergarten to Ivy League, public education has for over half a century been suffering from the same political, economic, and moral decay that doomed the Roman Empire.
In 1953, due to their concern for the disappearance of Western Civilization instruction in public schools, Mortimer J. Adler, Chief Editor, and his Associate Editors of Colliers’ Encyclopedia gathered seminal historical literature culminating in what became known as the Five-Foot Bookshelf. This included the 22-volume Annals of America beginning with the diary of Captain John Smith at Jamestown and ending with the Bi-centennial in 1976.
Adler, et al did this to provide a way for the busy citizen to gain a classical education by reading just 30 minutes a day. Incidentally (and fortuitously), though not foreseeing the drastic, designed destruction of education in the United States, Adler not only provided (and preserved) the story of Western Civilization as it really was, but preserved America’s historical narrative against the progressive revisionism occurring today. He also unintentionally provided the foundation of knowledge for a burgeoning home school program free of radical ideology.
The academic entropy began with co-optation of education by “progressive” ideologists and their abdication of the partnership with parents’ responsibility for the discipline and moral development of their children. This has Dewey turning over in his grave. Socialists today have perverted “progressive” education derived by Dewey from Rousseau’s Emile into moral and intellectual chaos.
The current wave of orchestrated and administratively tolerated anti-Jewish vitriol is only the most recent and most visual indicator of the moral and political insurgency by the Left into academia. The explosion of home-schooled children throughout America is a testament to the bedrock virtue of citizens responding to the forced brainwashing of their children. Home schoolers banding together within neighborhoods and communities is the American way to react to academic tyranny.
Corporations have slowly arrived at the obvious conclusion that they are not getting their money’s-worth hiring Ivy League graduates who can’t read, write or think. Decades ago, a few Fortune 500 companies began requiring applicants to write essays but, like school curriculums and diplomas, ways were found to cheat on those as well. As seen on the news recently, corporations are trending toward not requiring a degree where one is not needed. Since 1961, McDonald’s has for many years conducted their own “college” course for management. “Hamburger University” is a training facility at the McDonald’s Corporation global headquarters in Chicago, Illinois. It instructs high-potential restaurant managers, mid-managers, and owner-operators in restaurant management. Hamburger University’s mission is to become an ‘organizational culture hub, introducing a continuous education process for the value chain and transforming knowledge into actual business results. . .” (wikipedia) Other businesses have been slowly adopting this cost-effective method of recruiting and maintaining a quality work force.
The “sages” of Academia have driven public education the way of the Latin language – an anachronism dying from self-strangulation. Corporate colleges are the wave of the future. The moral and political suicide of academia leaves parents and corporations no choice.
See also:
Standing Up to Goliath: Battling State and National Teachers’ Unions for the Heart and Soul of Our Kids and Country by Rebecca Friedrichs, 2018
Why Johnny Can’t Read: And What You Can Do About It by Rudolf Flesch, 1955
Why Johnny Still Can’t Read: A New Look at the Scandal of Our Schools by Rudolf Flesch, 1983
The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students by Allan Bloom, 1987
Left Back: A Century of Battles Over School Reform by Diane Ravitch, 2001
Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, 2011
