A headline on YouTube today discussing the bigotry of low expectations in public schools has me fuming. Having written multiple times about how it is racist, immoral, unethical, and illegal to treat people differently based upon the poverty of their parents, and in doing so hinder the potential of a learner, is criminal child abuse of the worst kind! Yet, what do we find in the news, all but daily; lower expectations based upon poverty, race, religion, handicap, and so much more because of the inferior minds of the teachers and school boards.
What is Bigotry?
Bigotry is being obstinate and intolerantly devoted to one’s own opinion and prejudices; of course, bigotry also classifies one as believing in the characteristics of a bigot, but that is another discussion entirely. A teacher or school board member holding onto the myth that a student’s race or “economic classification” restrains that student’s potential is a bigoted method of thinking that should have been stomped out of public schools in the 1940s or earlier. However, as this blog has recorded, the public schools in America have been purposefully designed to create dullards, anti-scholars, and functional illiterates since the early days of the 1900s, courtesy of John Dewey.
What is Racism?
Racism is the adherence to the fundamental belief that race is the single most important determinant of human traits and capacities, that racial differences produce inferior and superior races, and harmony among people can be achieved through racial ranking. Essentially, racism takes bigotry and hones and focuses bigotry on racial differences as the sole determinant between people. What is not said, not implied, and not discussed is that bigotry and racism are extensions of each other; thus, to call low expectations bigotry is to name those holding low-expectations racists nicely!
Why Does the Difference Matter?
From the article, “The Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations… Through Mathematics Education,” on the Racial Equity Institute, LLC website, we find the following:
“The phrase “the soft bigotry of low expectations” was coined by President George W. Bush in 2000 in a speech to the NAACP that marked the launching of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. Bush asserted discrimination is still a reality, even when it takes different forms. Instead of Jim Crow, there’s racial redlining and profiling. Instead of separate but equal, there is separate and forgotten” (George W. Bush’s Speech to the NAACP, 2000). After promising that his administration would enforce civil rights, Bush announced that he would be confronting “another form of bias: the soft bigotry of low expectations…” (George W. Bush’s Speech to the NAACP, 2000). He acknowledged that educational achievement gaps fall along socioeconomic and racial lines but evaded discussing any systemic causes of these gaps.”
What are these systemic causes for gaps? The answer is relatively easy, simple, and straightforward, and no single piece of legislation will fix the problem until the 800#-Gorilla is addressed. The Public School system was intentionally designed to mentally abuse children, classifying their potential by race, religion, color, sex, gender, handicap, socioeconomic status, and every other line of distinction. All in an attempt to bring about the socialist utopia dreamed up by John Dewey in the late 1890s.
President Bush’s speech argued that school achievement gaps produce discrimination as if how a school works in one part of town creates the gaps and failures in another part of town. Thus stealing resources from one school to deliver to another school would fix the discrimination gaps. This is a glorified wealth redistribution scheme, and it has failed miserably! It refused to discuss the reality in schools that the teachers and the school boards have attained power based upon discriminating upon race, gender, sex, socioeconomic status, and the intentional child abuse of the students.
President Bush failed to understand that raising the bar will require destroying more than a century of ingrained thinking and training of teachers to abuse students. Eradicating the discrimination will demand the rejection and destruction of the school board models, the Federal Hold on education, and placing states back in charge of the education in their states even if it means that each state has its own model of education.
Regardless, the main problem in America’s schools is not the gender, sex, socioeconomic status, religion, etc., of the students, but the bigoted and racist minds of the teachers and school boards who would hinder students’ potential by setting low expectations for academic achievement. I have worked with students across America; they are worth more than their teachers claim, can do more than their teachers think, and possess innate abilities, skills, talents, and raw potential. But, without high expectations to aim at, the students fail themselves and live lives more diminutive than their worth and value, thinking they are stupid, dyslexic, unable to learn, and more. All because the teachers and school board members set low expectations, refused to challenge the students’ own beliefs, and failed to do their jobs!
When a school board, principal, and teacher fails to do their job, they commit child abuse in the most heinous and deceitful manner, and this abuse must cease forthwith! As a new school year opens, let us challenge these low expectations, these abhorrent standards for performance, and these Neolithic ideas that should have died with John Dewey!
© 2021 M. Dave Salisbury
All Rights Reserved
The images used herein were obtained in the public domain; this author holds no copyright to the images displayed.
My high school experience included eight different high schools in four years. Seven high schools on the Wasatch Front in Utah, finally graduating from Camden-Rockport High School, Camden, Maine. During my high school career, I was unfortunate enough to be placed into several classes called “Language Arts,” “Literature Arts,” or something similar, plastic words covering the fact that I needed more English credits to graduate. In my first “Literature Arts” experience, I was hoping to explore books, literature, and as a young bibliophile (book nerd) I was excited to study literature.
Shortly reality would snuff out the excitement. Shakespeare is not the only author of note in the Renaissance period, and those other authors are easier and more fun to read. Poems and poetry are not the same things. Forcing high school kids to spend an entire semester on Emily Dickins and Edgar Allen Poe’s writings is sufficient to make suicidal depression seem like a jolly good time! Not a single literature arts class covered Kipling! Not a single class ever covered Aesop. None of the lessons put the art in literature arts, which made the classes boring.
In Junior High School, Crosby Junior High School, Belfast, Maine. The school was ancient, used to be the high school until the district built a new high school. Crosby Junior High was a gothic building, very imposing, but it had the coolest library. On my first day in Junior High, I bet the librarians that before leaving, I would have checked out all the books, read them, and returned them. I might not have gotten them all, but I explored every inch of that library, supplemented my reading from the Belfast Maine Library, and read books! Lots and Lots of Books!
Believe it or not, you bring the art to literary arts. Sure, authors will cast the story, set the stage, and prepare well to inspire you, but you bring the art. For example, I can give you a paint set, a charcoal set, pencils, paper, canvas, and every other art supply available, but you have to wield the brushes, pencils, tools to create the masterpiece. The fact that you, the student, are the art bringer to literature arts, should be the first lesson taught, but it is never mentioned. It is sad that many people have been turned off by something that should have turned them on. Worse, the second lesson in literature arts is the requirement for time with the materials to understand the meaning, grasp intent, and apply to a life of living.
For example, take the poem of Joseph Malins, “
When I was eleven, January, turning twelve in February, a person I admired introduced me to a poem that has defined, taught, and corrected me since that January day. The poem “
There are three reasons. One, literature arts is not just reading, but also writing, imagining, exploring the art inside you; but it is rarely taught in this manner. Two, the age of the mind during literature arts is unprepared for drawing lessons from materials for application to life through reflection on experiences. Reflection must be taught, and too often, reflection is refused as a topic in a classroom.It has taken a lot for me to find the poetic power in Kipling’s poem “
My penmanship is deplorable, but penmanship is rarely taught anymore, considered a wasted subject, but in killing penmanship, the art in literature arts dies just a little more. But what is penmanship, really? Some will erroneously claim, penmanship is writing cursive. Detestable ignorant blaggards! Penmanship is the science of writing the symbols of language neatly, precisely, cleanly, and writing in a manner that is interesting to read. As a K-12 student, penmanship meant cursive, and cursive meant I was going to suck! Why isn’t penmanship a daily practical lesson for K-12 students? Mainly because of the third and final reason literature arts is being murdered. Three, reducing literacy through abusing literature arts was a design characteristic in K-12 Education since the 1860s and John Dewey; for he looked upon literate people and loathed them, and children have struggled ever since.
We, the inheritors of intentionally designed poor education, must wake up, put on the work boots, and go to work learning literacy and literary arts. We are then responsible for teaching these lessons to our children so freedom and liberty can flourish and prosper again in America. Literacy and literature arts is a fight we cannot afford to lose!
From this quote, in 1898 to the mid-1960s, phonics in K-6th grade education began to be battled by “Whole Word Memorization.” By the end of the 1960s, teaching phonics in the classroom will be lost entirely. Reading will continue to be irrationally marginalized, and learning the English language will take a hit so hard that many people will never know the grandeur of the language.
John Dewey found high levels of literacy abominable. He worked tirelessly to transform the school curriculum centered around the development of academic skills, intellectual faculties, and high literacy to a curriculum built around occupational activities, provided with maximum opportunities for peer interaction and socialization. He spent 30-years teaching teachers how to subvert society by little introductions into the curriculum until the pattern was perfected, and lesser topics were more important than reading, writing, and arithmetic. The pattern: today’s school philosophies are tomorrow’s government actions. Remember, all actions taken by a legitimate government will cause injury!
Literacy is the ability to use printed and written information to function and achieve in society, to master one’s goals, and to develop one’s knowledge and potential, attain growth, and improve one’s mind and body through the written word. A 1992 survey reported 40 million adults’ literary competency at Level 1 (the lowest literacy level: understanding basic written instructions). The National Institute for Literacy estimates that 32 million American adults cannot read, which can contribute to chronic unemployment, low self-esteem, and a lower quality of available work. Dewey has succeeded in reducing literacy to its lowest common denominator, functional illiteracy. This lowering of literacy standards was intentionally conducted to destroy people’s minds to accept lives in socialism and communism.
The power of reading is remarkable, critical, and is the hinge upon which the Great American Republic swings. Believe it or not, the American population’s literacy will be the point upon which we survive or fail as a nation. Dewey understood the truth of this in 1896 and fought tooth and nail to eradicate literacy in America. Castro in Cuba understood this, and that is why Cuban schools have such low literacy rates. Every despot in history knows that the more literate a population is, the less likely that population is to accept captivity in the form of government largess. Every single tin-pot dictator knows the pattern. Today’s school philosophies are tomorrow’s government actions, and controlling literacy is the tool to dumb down society into brainwashed robots who do what they are told.
Hence, the best way to combat this war is through reading. Pick up a book! Read! Practice writing and grammar. I am not the best writer or grammarian; I use Grammarly, but I still try to write better because to my wife, I am functionally illiterate due to how and what I was taught. My wife, born in 1941, received such a robust education she amazes me. But, even in the K-12 Schools of the 1940s and 1950s, reading and literacy were being marginalized, freedoms and liberties were being stolen, and the plans to dumb down America were in full swing.
Please turn off the TV, turn off the computer, pick up a book. Read! Read because your life depends upon your ability and love of reading. Your children’s future depends upon your literacy rate and willingness to read aloud to them and with them. Your freedom, your liberty, your country all depend upon your literacy level. If you want help, ask. If you want suggestions, talk to a librarian. But, please read!
DNC-Consulting 