This post was started on April 7, 2010 and finished on May 10, 2010.

Today on Alternet there were articles about the hate groups being egged on by FOX News and Glenn Beck, and the revision of history by the current Texas State Board of Education.  As I read the articles I found myself thinking about why would people want to commit such acts in this country.  For someone like Rupert Murdoch who was given the opportunity to build his fortune here as an immigrant, it is repugnant to think he would use his opportunities to support what is nothing more than sedition in this country.  For someone like Glenn Beck, it is truly just about fame and money by preying on the fears of others and his own paranoia.  For the Texas Board of Education, it is about pandering to a group of religious zealots and Confederate losers in order to forward an agenda on the rest of the country that the rest of us have rejected.  So what is the reason behind all this insanity?  Is it about education or about ignorance, solutions or just blatant destruction?  And what should the rest of us be doing about it?

Education was something that Thomas Jefferson (yes, the same one that the Texans are taking out of there textbooks) felt was an imperative in a free democracy.  He believed in a free public education for every citizen, and in this he was considered liberal and radical by his fellow leaders.  But he understood that an educated electorate was the only thing that could, and would, sustain a strong democratic republic.  Just as Plato and Socrates believed that such education would insure a strong democracy in Ancient Greece, only to see it supplanted by war and irrational thought, as we see today in this nation.

We have become a less educated society starting with the youngest baby boomers and all our children and grandchildren that followed.  Why?  For many reasons, but mostly because we allowed ourselves to be sold out to teacher’s unions (yes, before you scream foul, I agree you need more money and better tools and more supportive parents and administrators, but your union leaders supported No Child Left Behind and sold you out as well as the children) who negotiated for smaller class size while negotiating pay raises that did not even come up to a decent standard of living for teachers.  Parents objected to paying more for education where their children were getting a poor education through bond issues forcing school districts to cut services or comply with odious federal policies to get money.  It was a vicious series of cycles that essentially weakened our education system, until No Child Left Behind was instituted that put the final nail in the coffin of educating our children.

I am 57 years old, my class sizes were never under 35, and without exception, my classmates and I did well on tests, could spell, do math in our heads, and write papers using good grammar by the time we were out of sixth grade, and our teachers did not have classroom helpers, it was just one teacher and 25+ students.  We understood the basics of music, art, history (both American and World) as well.  We understood the connection between genetics of peas and the animal world, and we were physically fit because of mandatory physical education.  We built on these basics as we moved into algebra, research papers in history, English, biology and chemistry, health education and sex education, and a variety of other subjects, including music appreciation and art and theater appreciation.  And we did it all in classes of never less than 25.  So why are teachers upset at having to deal with this number of students?

Ironically, as the class sizes have reduced, instead of getting better educated students, we have segregated out those students that educators do not want to be bothered with so that only the top students are allowed to excel, instead of forcing the poorer students to work to achieve their potential.  The result:  70% of our students who enter high school do not graduate.  The ultimate result:  this group is prey for the likes of Murdoch, Beck, and the radical right/religious zealots – and a nation on the brink of violence.

So now the argument becomes is the current educational system leading to ignorance rather than knowledge; is it offering us solutions or is it sowing the seeds of our destruction?  By all appearances, it is not helping and when the Texas Board of Education can rewrite our very history as a nation to meet their twisted sense of priorities without an outcry across this nation to the publishers to stop this insanity, this level of ignorance is only going to increase.  We as citizens of this nation can step back and let this kind of education continue and walk blindfolded into the kind of future that many Third World nations are experiencing today, or we can change how we approach education.

There are many dedicated and wonderful teachers in our schools today who are frustrated and going broke trying to teach our children.  They need the support of parents and students, not administrators or school boards or unions, to do their jobs.  They need to be able to encourage children to think through problems and lessons, not just memorize facts like they were computers, not human beings.  They need to know how to teach, not just coach to a test.  They need to know that the children are not going to be drugged up or dangerous to others because they have been strung out on prescription drugs.  These teachers need to stand up and say that their classes are for educating children, and these children deserve better than what we as a community are doing for them.  It may mean standing up to your unions who have allowed this to happen; to the administrators who encouraged it to happen; the politicians and corporations who were more than happy to let this happen; and finally, to the parents of these children who stood by and trusted that you and the others would care for, teach, and protect their children while they went on about their adult lives of feeding, housing, and clothing these same children.

Our current educational system has failed.  On that I think there is little doubt.  Charter schools are nothing more than publicly subsidized private schools, and they are a tool for teaching only the elite of our nation, not future generations of children as a whole.  (Any doubt about that is stopped when you look at the voucher program and its qualifications, leaving the rest behind in underfunded public schools.)  Many of them teach along prescribed religious or corporate ideologies that essentially deprive many children, even the elite, of the ability to function in the rest of world because of a skewed view of that world.  These schools are not the answer.  I am not sure that there is any one answer, but I do know this, unless we find a way to re-educate our society, from the bottom up, we are going to continue in this cycle of destruction until there is nothing left.

On my website, which has changed focus recently, I have proposed a new form of educational approach that takes both the kind of education I had as a child and couples it with modern technology and a broad based philosophy to teach our children to think critically and creatively, and to stress physical and emotional fitness as well as knowledge acquisition in creating a new kind of citizen and person.  It is not an easy program and it is not one that will appeal to many people, but my goal is to create a system of free schools eventually where these goals can be met by those who wish to create a different, healthier, sounder approach to how this nation moves forward.  (See <a href=”www.letfreedomring.community.officelive.com”>Let Freedom Ring.Community</a> for the information)

Education can be the building blocks for a great civilization or it can be the seeds of its destruction.  Our current system of education, which only coaches children to take tests effectively in order to avoid school closures or teacher layoffs, is sowing the seeds of destruction by failing to produce children who can think, be creative and innovative, and who will not settle for being a third world declining nation.  We need to create new building blocks for education that can offer growth into the future, not of an empire, but of a nation that is honorable, hard-working, charitable, honest, and compassionate while moving forward as a world leader and great power for good.  We do this by creating those kinds of leaders through excellent education and encouragement of all our students to strive to be the best that they can possibly be, not drones to a corporate system that is failing.

Please join me in trying to create this kind of change in education and to work within your communities to institute similar programs in your public schools if possible.

<a href=”http://www.letfreedomring.community.officelive.com”>Let Freedom Ring.Community</a>

First, as many people here at Alternet know, I am against ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION.  I am a fourth generation descendant of LEGAL immigrants and I find this current desire by certain elements in our society to condone the breaking of our laws of entry to be disturbing.  We often read in various articles and blogs here about how corporations are taking away our freedoms, but then the issue of illegal immigration hits the headlines and suddenly it is perfectly all right for non-citizens to come across our borders to work for these very same corporations while Americans go jobless.  What hypocrisy!

The current laws in Arizona are not racist, except in the eyes of those who want you to believe as they do.  I have lived in Arizona off and on over the last 30 years, and I have yet to meet more than two police officers that were not Hispanic.  I am sure that there are more non-Hispanics, but you do not see them very often on the streets – except maybe in SWAT gear.  That is first. So this new law is one that while some officers may use racial profiling, I seriously doubt if the vast majority of them will.  They are too sensitive to it personally.

Second, if you were born after 1960 in a hospital here in the US, you were issued a birth certificate and a Social Security card at the time of your birth.  By the mid-60s your parents had to get you one so that you could be deducted on their IRS tax returns, so if you were a citizen you got a SS card then through your parents.  It was rare that this did not happen, so any officer on a lawful stop who asks you for a driver’s license or state ID, will also ask for your SS card.  That is all.  If you are here legally, they will ask for your driver’s license or state ID and your green card, period.  If you are here visiting from another country, thanks to the Patriot Act, you will have a passport or visa, which you will be asked to produce (and which if you are traveling you should have on you anyway).  If you cannot produce any of these documents, then they may arrest you for whatever they stopped you for originally, and sort it out with a family member at the station.  By the way, a lawful stop means you have committed a felony crime, traffic violation, or misdemeanor, for which you would be stopped anyway if seen by a police officer, so I would not be wasting too many tears on those who are stopped.  The stop must be reasonable, it cannot be random – our laws prevent that, even in Arizona.

Now, since people of all races and ethnicity have been stopped for these kinds of things and have been asked to produce ID for nearly a century, my problem with this is why suddenly Hispanics are claiming that this is racial profiling.  It isn’t.  It is, however, codifying a common practice as a way of addressing an ILLEGAL immigrant problem that has led to human death and crime in much of Arizona.  Anyone who has lived there can tell you how much has changed in the last 35 years, and for someone such as myself who moved in and out of the state about every 5 years, I can tell you the changes are dramatic.  This law is not aimed at Hispanics or anyone group of people, but because most ILLEGAL immigrants in Arizona are Hispanic, it will affect them more.

But perhaps someone should GOOGLE what I did this afternoon: legal immigrants against illegal immigration.  There are 711,700 possible sites for this.  Go and read some of those sites.  These are people who find themselves profiled because of the ILLEGALS, and just like non-Hispanic American workers have found their jobs cut in favor of low-wage illegal immigrants; their neighborhoods become shooting galleries for drugs, human traffickers, and gangs; and their children being forced into classes which they do not want to take because of their ethnic background. LEGAL immigrants resent the presence of the ILLEGAL immigrants almost, if not more, than natural born citizens, and with better cause.

In Arizona when Reagan granted Amnesty and suddenly everything had to be bi-lingual, their budget took a serious hit from which they had a difficult time recovering.  Schools had to cut programs in the arts and special education to cover the costs of mandatory ESL classes.  Social services were swamped in Arizona, and because they were not allowed to ask for proof of citizenship, many that could have qualified did not because there was no money for them.  American citizens and legal immigrants did without because the ILLEGAL immigrants were swamping the system, a fact that still holds true today  (and do not tell me that this is a lie, because too many people who have to deal with the system know that it is spending more on ILLEGAL immigrant needs than they pay in for taxes from their low wage jobs.  The numbers published by state agencies and federal programs each year are fairly accurate on this issue.)  At the time, a single person who needed assistance got $117 per month, and $75 in food stamps, while families with multiple children who were not citizens were getting upwards of $1000 per month plus $500 in food stamps.  (I know I was disabled at the time, and until Social Security disability came in I was dependent on state assistance, and was told this one day by a very disgusted caseworker who wanted to help me more, but could not.)

So my question now, as a fairly progressive liberal, is why should I be upset that Arizona is passing laws that allow law enforcement to do what they have always done – ask for ID that now includes a SS card, passport/visa, or green card – and to re-instate programs that meet the needs of all students, or delete ones that are not all-inclusive or preach sedition and treason?  From what I can see, they are the only ones acting with any sense on this issue.

They go after drug trafficking operations, gangs, human trafficking and kidnapping operations, and they are trying to make the schools for American citizens (after all that is what our public schools are for) less exclusionary in their curriculum as a cost cutting measure, which considering that every other school in the country is having to cut programs seems only fair.  So again I come back to the question of whether I am the only person in the blogosphere who understands that these laws are being made to seem racist because they are addressing the needs of US citizens, naturalized or legal citizens, to be educated, and they are allowing local law enforcement to do what the Border Patrol, which is badly under-manned, cannot, which is enforce the law and at the same time find ILLEGAL immigrants for return to their homelands.  Since they are virtual slaves to corporations here – why is everyone so upset that they are being sent back home where they can be free?

Simple questions that no one is asking.  Why support a corporate agenda that makes people slaves?  Why prevent law enforcement from doing their jobs?  Why cut school budgets for inclusive programs, but allow exclusionary programs to stay because of their topic?  These questions are at the root of the laws everyone is so upset about, and it would seem that the only ones who are making a noise are the very people who will suffer most from not enforcing these laws – the ILLEGAL immigrants themselves, because their corporate controlled advocates need to control the discourse through misrepresentations.  LEGAL immigrants do not want them here.  Natural born citizens, by a vast majority, do not want them here.  So, why are we advocating for keeping them here in virtual slavery where they are not welcome?  Right, because corporate America wants them here and people who do not understand what they have been pawns in allowing to happen – the greatest loss of American wages and jobs in history!  But, hey, if that is what you want to support, go for it.  I cannot, as a fourth generation LEGAL immigrant granddaughter, believe that this is what we as Americans stand for – slavery and ignorance – but maybe I am wrong?