How progressives destroyed educational system

Education was once tailored to suit the needs of the student
which created the best and the brightest minds in the world
Now education is a one-size-fits-all system that fails many,
and has resulted in a weakening of the American Dream.

Most of us are used to an educational system whereby our children get up in the morning and are rushed off to state-run schools.  They are then offered an education by trained educators hired by the state. These educators, therefore, have complete control over the minds of our children for 6-8 hours, 5 days a week. This system allows the state to shape and molds their minds.

This is not a knock on individual teachers, as most of them are excellent at their jobs.  Plus it's not their fault the system is the way it is. So keep that in mind as you read on.

The current system began in the 1960s, so it's relatively new.  It was an attempt by liberals to fix something that was working rather well.  However, let's put that aside for a moment and look into what the American educational system looked like from the founding until the 1960s.

Most, if not all, of the founding fathers, were educated by their parents.  These are men who became some of the brightest men in all the world, and they were educated for free at home. Some didn't even have access to books and learned simply by reading the Bible.

This is how it was for most of history.  Parents either taught their children, or groups of parents banned together to hire the teacher of their choosing, someone who had similar morals and values as they did.  These children were taught about God, and they were taught about natural rights and American Exceptionalism.

These kids knew more about American history, and world history, and Geography, and mathematics at the age of ten than most kids today.  It was in this way that the American educational system became the best in the world.  America gave birth to the brightest and the best minds, from which gave birth to the electric light, the refrigerator, the air conditioner, the computer, the generator, the telephone, the automobile, the assembly line, etc.

It was in this way, by the creating of the best educational system in the world, that America became the greatest nation on the planet, the envy of all the world. Despite the failures of today's educational system, and even while 9 of 10 American children grew up on isolated farms, 9 of 10 of these children were literate.

Yet then it came to an abrupt halt.  Why?

First of all, tests for children privately educated were all in the form of an essay, and therefore the child was forced to fully understand the subject and be able to form an opinion on it.  Here is an example of an 8th-grade world history test:

U.S. History (Time, 45 minutes)

1. Give the epochs into which U.S. History is divided.
2. Give an account of the discovery of America by Columbus.
3. Relate the causes and results of the Revolutionary War.
4. Show the territorial growth of the United States.
5. Tell what you can of the history of Kansas.
6. Describe three of the most prominent battles of the Rebellion.
7. Who were the following: Morse, Whitney, Fulton, Bell, Lincoln, Penn, and Howe?
8. Name events connected with the following dates: 1607, 1620, 1800, 1849, and 1865?

That's pretty thorough.  Most Americans today could not answer those questions.  But this is what all 8th graders were expected to know.  I highly doubt most college graduates would be able to answer most of these questions.  

So the downward trend in our educational system began among a small group of individuals in the 19th century who decided that they could make our already great educational system even better.  Yet they didn't see it as great, they saw it as flawed, and they believed they could perfect it by creating rules and regulations.  

What the progressives wanted to do was very unpopular.  People inherently do not want to be told what they can and cannot do, or can and cannot buy.  They do not want to be told they have to buy healthcare, or that they have to exercise, or that they have to eat only healthy food.  

Surely they wanted a perfect society, but the one created by god and his capitalism was about as close to perfection as was ever going to be achieved.

Yet the progressives challenged parents, claiming that the state could better educate their children.  Parents wanted nothing of this, so progressives came up with a plan to extricate God from society, and to do that they needed first to assimilate the educational system from the parents to a state-run educational system.  

Here is how the gradual assimilation from effective parental education to a failed state-run education took place:

1. The first public school appeared in the U.S. in 1821
2. In 1867 the Department of Education was formed, although it was called Office of Education.  It was created on a budget of $15,000 to study how we could make education better (remember, it was already the best in the world)
3. In 1874, the Massachusetts Board of Education said: “The child should be taught to consider his instructor, in many respects, superior to the parent in point of authority.” 
4. In 1919, Oregon made it illegal to not attend a state-run school.  The goal was to squeeze out the religious schools, and religious education. The Supreme Court shot this down, however. 
5. In 1865 the Elementary and Secondary Education Act was passed by Congress and signed by Lyndon Johnson, paving the way for governmental control of education through funding.  Essentially, state-run schools were provided for free, making it so other school systems could not compete. In other words, they essentially forced parents to conform.
6. In 1979 (October 17), President Jimmy Carter signed the Department of Education Organization Act, thereby creating the Department of Education. 
7. 2014, the educational system now receives $72 billion each year, God is not taught, the Bible is not allowed, and the educational system is so watered down that it is failing many of our children.
8. Our educational system is failing, especially in inner 
9. High school graduation rates are 9% lower than the national average, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
10. High school dropout rate for African Americans in 2014 was 7.4%, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. This is higher than the national average. 
11. As of November 2011, the U.S. is ranked 4th in the world among developed countries, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. 
12. The U.S. is ranked 4th in the world on per pupil spending, and that comes to $11,600 per student. Despite this, the U.S. is ranking among developed countries is 17th in reading, 19th in science, and 26th in math, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. 
13. Despite the failures of the state-run educational system, and the previous successes of the free parental system that existed prior to the current system, people continue to ask for more money to make education better.  Yet despite annual increases in education funding, our educational system continues to fail our kids.

So, while progressives aimed to perfect an already great educational system through government control, they made education worse.  Yet what they did accomplish is taking kids out of the home in order to mold and shape them into good progressives.

As these kids mature into adults, it's difficult to convince them that the root cause of a failed American educational system is that God has been extricated from teaching, and that, above all else, the parents have been taken out of the loop.

Yet these were intended consequences for progressives, and this has resulted in them moving forth their agenda. So they certainly aren't going to insist on making changes in the opposite direction.

In fact, now that they have succeeded in brainwashing many of our children.  Worse, if you don't send them to schools you can be jailed.  Some people home school their children or send them to private schools, but federal regulations have even found a way to taint a child's education regardless of where it is taught.

They also now want to create a government pre-school system to remove kids from their parents even earlier.  Yikes!

Using the state-run educational system, state experts have succeeded in convincing many people that they -- human beings -- are responsible for creating climate change, giving government experts permission to tax and regulate to resolve this problem. This results in even less freedom.

The bottom line is that progressives in Washington have managed to abuse their power to advance their agenda.  This is something George Washington and most presidents prior to Teddy Roosevelt did not do. And considering a majority are convinced this is a good system, it may never be fixed.

 Now progressives are trying to fix a healthcare system that was considered by many to be the best in the world.  Early evidence suggests they are failing at that too.