VIETNAM VETERANS FOR ACADEMIC REFORM
The University of Kansas Student Auxiliary
V.V.A.R.: Leading the student revolt on campus against speech codes, political correctness, multiculturalism, gender feminism, dormitory re-education, lying about Vietnam, and other instruments of academic oppression.
Leonard Magruder - Founder/President
Former professor of psychology - Suffolk College, N.Y.
Member: National Association of Scholars
CONTACT: Magruder44@aol.com - Phone: 785-312-9303
V.V.A.R. COMMENTARY: Vietnam vet reform group charges media with covering up latest evidence of education failure. Calls on Vietnam vets and African-Americans as major victims of leftist bigotry to join in demanding reform.
by Leonard Magruder
July 24, 2003
Hiding it away on back pages, newspapers across the country tried to keep the nation from the latest bad news about education, news that should have been on front pages everywhere. Both local newpapers, such as The Lawrence Journal-World, and national newspapers, such as U.S.A. Today, barely mentioned the results of the latest national reading tests by the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Based on the testing of 270,000 students, the results showed that only one third of students in the three grades tested, fourth, eighth and 12th, were up to profiency standards in reading. Among high school seniors, 36% were proficient, down from 40% in 1998. One third of the students in fourth, eighth and 12th grades can not show even a basic understanding of civics at their grade level. Three out of four fourth graders could not name which part of government passes laws. Half of all 12th graders asked to pick an ally in World War II picked Italy, Germany, or Japan.
In the last international competition in science and math, American students placed 19th. We are reminded of the famous “Nation at Risk” conclusion of 1981, “If a foreign power had done anything to us like this we would consider it an act of war.” No society can survive a failure of education such as we are experiencing.
Said Education Secretary Rod Paige of the poor results, “There are no scientific answers.”
There are definitely scientific answers as to why these results are so poor. It can be found in a number of books. A good example is Dumbing Down our Kids by Charles Sykes of Wisconsin Research. Some of the quotes in this article are from this book. But generally it is the leftist philosphy of life embraced by the National Education Association, a philosophy hostile towards the predominant democratic and Judeo-Christian values of the West that is the primary culprit. This philosophy is essentially the same one used to betray the sacrifices of our soldiers in Vietnam in the 60’s. It is also the source of totalitarian ideas being spread on today’s campuses by those in the social sciences and humanities as found in multiculturalism, speech codes, political correctness, and gender feminism.
Following are some of the techniques being used in our schools that research show have failed.
1) “Grades pit students against one another,” complains Outward Bound education expert William Grady, “implying that achievement and success are inherently comparative and competitive.” (which, of course, they are, as is life) He sees the issue of grades in terms of “class struggle.” This reflects the continuing influence of Marxist thought on American education, stemming from the radical movements of the 60’s.
2) In reading and literature, as a result of “multiculturalism,” selection of reading material continues to be based almost entirely on gender, race, and class, rather than through literary merit.
3) Textbooks become more simple each year, designed to ensure “success” in reading and contributing to “self-esteem.” (In spite of the fact that over 100 studies show no correlation between “self-esteem” and achievement.) In these texts, multiculturalists, primarily feminists, in their hostility to the democratic and religious values of the West, are rewriting history. In one well known study at New York University of 90 such texts, only five dealt with any patriotic theme. In 30 pages on the Pilgrims there is no reference to their religious concerns. Martin Luther King Jr. is mentioned in but one text but without mentioning that he was a pastor or that black churches played a key role in the civil rights struggle. There is no question but what the leftist philosophy that gave us multiculturalism is racist. As the noted liberal historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. once wrote of multiculturalism, “The result can only be the fragmentation, resegregation, and tribalization of America.”
4) Students who misspell words are considered “independent spellers” by their teachers and correcting them a stifling of their “creativity” and damaging to their “self-esteem.” Spelling need only be approximate to be accepted. Semi-literate, ungrammatical, run-on sentences are also tolerated as multiculturalist philosophy seeks to free students from the “restraints” of the English language.
5) Although research has shown it to be a bad practice, pressures throughout the nation to create “inclusive” classrooms force teachers to teach honor students at the same pace as students who are deficient in even the most simple academic tasks. Said one educator, Lloyd Hasting of Texas, “The ability grouping of students in a democratic society is ethically unacceptable. We need not justify this with research. It is a statement of principle, not science.” Research doesn’t count, only ideology.
6) Dropping of class rankings—the movement to end distinctions, honors, and valedictorians. Said one educator, “Excellence reflects an outmoded white male culture of vertical (i.e. logical) thinking.” A Pol Pot approach to education, making everyone equal by ensuring that nobody knows anything. (is dead) “All have won and all must have prizes.”- the Dodo Bird in Alice in Wonderland.
7) “Authentic assessment,” substituting scrapbooks and the collection of items for exams that require correct, and therefore gradable, answers. Grading is viewed by multiculturalists as “unfair, undemocratic, and racist,” reflecting “class struggle.”
8) Massive grade inflation, designed to encourage “self-esteem.” The juxtaposition of inflated grades with declining SAT scores clearly exposes the deception being practiced on students and parents. Grade inflation creates an illusory gap between where students think they stand and what their actual achievements are. They drift towards failure, and nobody will tell them the truth. Said Peggy McIntosh, professor of social science at Wellesley and a leading multiculturalist, “The emphasis on right/wrong answers is a culturally oppressive idea and unfair to minority students.” This is racist to the core. Said Jamie Escalante, the legendary math teach of Los Angeles, “Ideas like this are the kiss of death for minority youth and will significantly stall the advancement of minorities.” Again, the underlying racist thrust of multiculturalism is obvious.
9) Writing papers as a group rather than individually, unfair to the better students who do all the work. The better students resent having to explain everything to students who don’t listen, resent the time taken from their own studies and feel used. Said one educator, reflecting his leftist philosophy, “a student reading all alone is a bad example for other students, if not anti-social, it is at least self-indulgent and elitist.”
10) Most students are already the victims of the “look-say” approach to reading in spite of massive research that shows the clear superiority of phonics. Rudolph Flesch warned that the abandonment of phonics was a “time-bomb” primed to wreck educational havoc on the nation’s schools. Four decades and the “Nation at Risk” report have vindicated his warnings.
11) Research shows that the psychological-conditioning courses in high schools (sex education, values clarification, affective education, death education, drug and alcohol education, etc.) stemming from the naive humanistic psychology of Rogers, Maslow, and Kohlberg, etc., are resulting in increased rates of drug and alcohol abuse, teenage pregnancies, rape, violence, racism, and suicide. (Univ. of Toledo, Stanford Univ., Allan Guttmacher Institute, Harris Poll, etc.)
12) For some decades now, schools have sought to undermine national pride. Children do not know the Pledge of Allegiance, nor the words to the National Anthem. References to religion and its role in Western civilization have been systematically deleted, with America consistently portrayed as the spoiler of the planet, an international bully, and the source of all famine, war, and pestilence.
This is the direct product of the leftist and Marxist agenda that is tyrannizing contemporary education. The fault is not with the teachers, it is with the social scientists in our universities who design these approaches to education, and the National Education Association that promotes them. Following is a report from the battlefield of the left’s war on black children. Note the reference to the Vietnam War as the excuse the left used to impose this racist horror on minorities (from FrontPageMag):
“I spent 30 years in the Philadelphia public schools teaching high school. When I began in 1965 the school was integrated and the students in my French class read Victor Hugo and Molière. When I escaped in 1995 there wasn’t a shred of knowledge, decency or honesty left in anyone’s heart, soul or brain, be it administrator, teacher or student. As you well know, 1968 was the cut-off point, like B.C. and A.D. (Before Counter-Culture and After Devastation). You went to bed one night with one set of values in place and you woke up in a strange new world. It was exactly like “The Invasion of the Body Snatcher.” Human beings had mutated over night into apostles of socialized education—the concept that education was a right, free from any attendant responsiblities. This meant caving in to every demand, no matter how outrageous, emanating from the most infantile and hate-filled kids one could possibly imagine. By 1972 the school was entirely Black and firmly entrenched in an irreversible policy of passing the greatest number even if they had no skills. This was presumably some sort of reparation for the past cruelties to Blacks and some sort of redemption for “ racist America who was waging a racist war in Vietnam.” In the classroom, we all began fighting for our survival in the same way—by pandering to the kids, appeasing them and diluting difficult subject matter on their behalf. The behavior in the classroom was out of control. Many teachers knew this was wrong but they put their heads in the sand and never came up for air. Many left the system—there was a mass exodus out of teaching back in the seventies. Sometimes a voice would be raised but the iron curtain of political correctness stifled all attempts to establish honest discourse among “professionals.” It was no longer a profession but a type of dull ritual devoid of meaning. My school was typical of the many once excellent city schools that fell into depravity over the 30 year period.
[Note: for the full Comment submitted by Agatha in regards to blog entry: The left's war on black children, click on the link.]
As for the anti-Americanism and lack of values that pervades contemporary education, William Bennett, former Sec. of Education, in his recent book, Why We Fight, wrote this:
For forty years, leading educators and intellectuals have been saying and writing and teaching that the United States was no better and might even be worse than its enemies, that Western civilization was a mask under which one crime after another has been visited upon the poorer nations of the world, and that good and evil themselves are a matter of perspective, if not mere opinion. Some of the noblest ideas ever framed by the mind of man, including democracy, patriotism, honor, and freedom, have been systematically drained of meaning.
The attacks on patriotism, honor, and freedom began, of course, those forty years ago with the effort by our academics to defeat our goals in Vietnam. With those who served out of the country the university had an open field to expand on, until now whole disciplines are dominated by leftist thinking. As the former radical David Horowitz recently wrote, “The American university is now nothing but a hugh patronage machine for the Left.” But we see now that this has weakened our country to the point where all of us are in danger. This corruption in education must be challanged and reversed. The logical leaders in calling for such reform should be our Vietnam vets, many of them now professors. It is they who know about patriotism, honor, and freedom. As Thomas Sowell, the noted Afro-American scholar at Stanford and national columnist wrote to me on Sept. 19, 1998, “Academic reform is necessary, and no one has more moral authority to demand that they clean up their act than those who put their lives on the line for this country.” And anyone against racism must obviously also be in the forefront of this struggle.
Be sure to read our Manifesto of Student Liberation from Leftist Tyranny.
Founder/President, V.V.A.R.
Phone: 785-312-9303
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