by Mike Gray

In a five-part essay on Pajamas Media, the pseudonymous “Zombie” blogger identifies problems with the educational system in the United States and offers his/her solutions.

From Part 1:

Students are returning to school this week. But they’re not heading back to class — they’re walking straight into a war zone. Our kids have become cannon fodder for two rival ideologies battling to control America’s future.
In one camp are conservative Christians and their champion, the Texas State Board of Education; in the other are politically radical multiculturalists and their de facto champion, President Barack Obama. The two competing visions couldn’t be more different. And the stakes couldn’t be higher. Unfortunately, whichever side wins — your kid ends up losing.

From Part 2:

The left, in its blindness, equates patriotism with brute nationalism, in particular the ethnic and chauvinistic nationalism of Europe which has led to totalitarianism and countless wars. And so the leftists condemn American patriotism as equally fascistic, unaware that by doing so they are rejecting not just the ideals on which America is based but the very notion of a nation based on ideals.
The revelation: Texas is not trying to push conservatism — it’s trying to preserve patriotism. (And by “preserve patriotism” I mean steadfastly uphold the principles upon which America rests.) Texas’ educational attitude only appears as “conservatism” to analysts because patriotism has been abandoned by the left in favor of internationalism, so conservatives are the only ones willing to stand up for patriotism anymore. In fact, the modern left has been so mesmerized by fantasies of a globalist utopia that American “conservatism” and “patriotism” have been conflated to essentially mean the same thing.
So, against the backdrop of a left-dominated public school system in the U.S. in which patriotism is increasingly downplayed or undermined in favor of multiculturalism and internationalism, when the Texas school board stands firm for a patriotic curriculum, critics accuse them of “pushing conservative ideology.”

From Part 3:

If anything, the textbooks approved by the California State Board of Education are even more politicized than Texas textbooks, and more ideologically biased. So: Why does the media ignore what happens in California textbooks? Because the state’s bias goes the other way. California-approved social studies textbooks are politically correct in the extreme, with multiculturalism and “social justice” as the defining characteristics. The pressure groups and board members setting policy for California’s (and hence a substantial portion of America’s) textbooks exceed their Texan counterparts in their extremism, but since California pushes the “correct” kind of extremism, you never hear about it.

From Part 4:

This fracturing of education into a million useless little pieces is not a bug of the leftist agenda — it’s a feature. The goal is (and has been for years) to use the public schools to transform American culture, in order to make it ripe for a communist revolution. That’s right: communist. No more pussyfooting around.
…. Mainstream average Americans — who have been duped into thinking that communism is a relic of the past which disappeared with the fall of the Soviet Union — feel that anyone still battling against imaginary Cold War enemies must be some sort of Dr. Strangelove-esque kook who worries about Precious Bodily Fluids and builds fallout shelters in the basement; OR…
Communists themselves — who thought it was safe to emerge from the shadows now that the world’s attention was drawn elsewhere after the fall of the Berlin Wall — react to the word with revulsion and fury, accusing anyone who says it of being a fascist McCarthyite intent on persecuting innocent Americans with hysterical witch hunts.
There’s one little detail, however, that tends to get overlooked: The communists are still here, and they’re just as dangerous as they ever were, and have not relinquished their goal of overthrowing the United States and bringing an end to the capitalist system. And the reason I’m aware of this fact perhaps more than the typical person is that I often attend anti-war rallies, which is where communists really come out of the woodwork.
And the other arena in which communist ideology never went away is academia, and in particular the educational world. The state sponsors of communism (i.e., the Soviet Union) have mostly ceased to exist, but the ideology remains as strong as ever.

From Part 5:

This final post in my five-part back-to-school essay is all about solutions: How can we fix education in America?
Below, I will outline my vision for a new paradigm in education. Realistically, I don’t expect all — or even any — of these proposals to be adopted anytime soon by the entrenched powers-that-be. But we’ve got to start somewhere, so let the edu-renaissance begin.
No single approach or solution will solve the multifaceted deficiencies in the way our children are currently being educated. So we must attack the problem on several conceptual levels simultaneously. Hence, it may not be necessary to implement every single one of the proposals outlined below, but if even just a few were adopted, it would be a significant step in the right direction.
Most of the proposals below are not original to me: Some are already gaining widespread support, while some are excellent new ideas just beginning to get traction. And a few are fresh concepts I came up with to help stimulate a rebirth of American education.