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George Bush has let it be known that he wants to be
known as the education president.
To date, his major
campaign effort along that line has been attacking Michael
Dukakis because Dukakis, as governor of Massachusetts,
vetoed a bill which would have required all classes to
start the school day by reciting the Pledge of
Allegiance.
Never mind the constitutional grounds, such as a Supreme Court ruling which held that members of the Jehovah's Witness Church could not be forced to recite the pledge; we're talking politics here, so the constitution doesn't matter.
I know a few elementary teachers; I asked them what they thought of requiring the pledge. Most said they managed it once or twice a week, but they were opposed to requiring it daily. Why?
As one explained, Okay, suppose you've got the Pledge
of Allegiance to start the day. Then there's attendance to
take, along with keeping track of who's riding which bus
that day. And you can't forget collecting lunch money, and
accounting for that, along with money for book sales and
the like.
We're required to include plenty of drug education,
and encourage kids to go to the counselor if they think
their parents use drugs. By the way, when we were little,
they always told us that in Nazi Germany and in Soviet
Russia, children were encouraged to rat on their folks, but
of course that sort of thing would never happen in America.
Anyway, you're going to lose a few of your class to the
counselor after the daily drug scare.
We're encouraged to read to our students, too. You
know how hard it is to find anything interesting that won't
offend somebody? And of course, there are kids that lose
their coats or gloves, and we've got to help track them
down. A lot of the day is spent grading papers -- in a
given subject, we're supposed to have 18 assignments to
base a grade on, so there's a lot of make-work, just to
meet that requirement.
We might be in the classroom six hours a day, but if
you get in a solid hour of teaching anything substantial,
you're lucky. Sure, some days we recite the Pledge. But if
it's required every day, that will just steal more time
from what we're supposed to be doing here -- teaching kids
to read, write and add.
Why don't we just abandon all pretense that we're
here for education? Throw in some prayer time too, and then
we can graduate the kids just as soon as they learn how to
Just say no
and when they can recite all four verses to
The Star Spangled Banner.
I'm afraid that's what it's all
coming to, anyway.
Apparently the Bush campaign doesn't care whether kids learn to add, write or read maps. William Bennett, former U.S. secretary of education, has been out stumping for Bush.
Referring to Dukakis, Bennett said I think the crowd
with which he runs... do think they're smarter. You know,
they have these advanced attitudes. They don't like what
most Americans think and believe.
What do most Americans think? In a recent Gallup survey commissioned by the National Geographic Society, just over half of the respondents could not find New York on a map, and three out of four Americans didn't know where the Persian Gulf is. Do we really want a president who thinks like the majority of Americans? A president who can't find New York? A president who dispatches warships, not knowing or caring whether they're going to the Caribbean or to the Gulf of Oman?
One is reminded of former Nebraska Sen. Roman Hruska, who argued that we had too many capable people on the Supreme Court; it was time for the mediocre to get their representation. By his and Bennett's logic, if most Americans can't find the Persian Gulf, then we should have a president who doesn't know Bahrain from Long Island.
During Hruska's heyday, Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew succeed in dividing our nation into two warring factions: the Middle America Silent Majority vs. the Nattering Nabobs of Negativism. The Nixon-Agnew tactics won elections and aroused tremendous hatreds -- hard-hats beating up on peace marchers, Weathermen blowing up buildings, etc.
Now the Bush campaign seems intent on the same twisted goal of dividing in order to conquer. You often read that Bush is a man of decency; where's he been hiding it lately?
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