You're entirely correct that a major part of the problem is our treatment of our schools almost as red-headed stepchildren. Above all else, school is where people learn how to learn effectively. We're doing a shockingly poor job of conveying that knowledge.
Athletic leagues and pep rallies, though? Football scholarships? Honestly, that stuff is fluff. Kids need exercise, sure. But maintaining a winning sports team is really not a school's job.
The writer is dead on the mark about the litany of apology for Western civilization, not to mention the fashion for dismissal of the Founders as "dead white males" as though that invalidates any of the things they did or said. Our schools are not effectively teaching how our society, our economy, or our government works, at least in part because many of those doing the teaching are ashamed of them, and are certain that Utopia lies just around the corner if people would only listen to them. The fact that their ideas have demonstrably repeatedly failed to work elsewhere in the world is a mere technicality that simply means the implementers were not sufficiently ideologically pure, or some other such guff.
Umm...wait a minute. I live in Berkeley, and my kids attended Berkeley's public schools. And my wife and I observed and volunteered many hours in classrooms. If what you describe was going on to the degree that you imply generally, it would have been going on to an extreme degree here in the People's Republic of Berzerkeley, and I can tell you it isn't. I'd like to know how many teachers you've actually observed displaying shame for our economy, society, or government. (Critical views of shameful events, e.g. the Japanese-American internments during World War II, don't count.)
Maybe Berkeley teachers rebelled in the other direction ;)
Seriously though, if I had a dollar for every time I've heard some liberal academic dismiss the Constitution as a dead document written by dead white males, of only historical interest if even that, with both "white" and "male" spoken in tones of evident distaste...
Actually, Berkeley's teachers are diverse in their outlooks, though the town's leftward bias skews the distribution.
I'm curious about this liberal academic dismissal of the Constitution. I've never heard it, and I've hung out with plenty of liberal academics. Even on the local Pacifica station, KPFA, which is to the left even of Berkeley, I've never heard anyone, academic or otherwise, dismiss the Constitution like that. On the contrary, the government is regularly excoriated for violating the Constitution.
The most dismissive quote I'm aware of is "[it's] just a piece of paper," attributed to George W. Bush.
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Athletic leagues and pep rallies, though? Football scholarships? Honestly, that stuff is fluff. Kids need exercise, sure. But maintaining a winning sports team is really not a school's job.
The writer is dead on the mark about the litany of apology for Western civilization, not to mention the fashion for dismissal of the Founders as "dead white males" as though that invalidates any of the things they did or said. Our schools are not effectively teaching how our society, our economy, or our government works, at least in part because many of those doing the teaching are ashamed of them, and are certain that Utopia lies just around the corner if people would only listen to them. The fact that their ideas have demonstrably repeatedly failed to work elsewhere in the world is a mere technicality that simply means the implementers were not sufficiently ideologically pure, or some other such guff.
"the litany of apology for Western civilization"
Re: "the litany of apology for Western civilization"
Seriously though, if I had a dollar for every time I've heard some liberal academic dismiss the Constitution as a dead document written by dead white males, of only historical interest if even that, with both "white" and "male" spoken in tones of evident distaste...
Re: "the litany of apology for Western civilization"
I'm curious about this liberal academic dismissal of the Constitution. I've never heard it, and I've hung out with plenty of liberal academics. Even on the local Pacifica station, KPFA, which is to the left even of Berkeley, I've never heard anyone, academic or otherwise, dismiss the Constitution like that. On the contrary, the government is regularly excoriated for violating the Constitution.
The most dismissive quote I'm aware of is "[it's] just a piece of paper," attributed to George W. Bush.