America’s strengths are being weakened from the inside and dying

December 3, 2024

A major problem in America today is the abandonment of its traditions. The two-parent family is no longer the dominant feature it once was. The idea of citizenship, love of country, is less obvious these days. So many things have changed, as the culture of America devolves.

And one of the greatest of those is the honor and integrity that once accompanied some of our professions.

People in education too often no longer embrace and abide by traditional concepts and values. They often change what is done in classrooms without notifying parents, or going through official processes. Too often, schools teach what to think, rather than how to think, pushing certain concepts while hiding others.

News journalism once was a clear-cut process of reporting to the public what actually happened in news-worthy events. It didn’t hide relevant information. When reporting on a political topic, it did not take sides. And opinions were not expressed in news stories. The ideals of free speech and objectivity were respected and obeyed.

Yes, there is a place for opinions in journalism, but opinions must be clearly labeled, and not sneaked into news reporting to advance a particular point of view.

That sensible, honorable rule no longer exists for far too many people claiming to be journalists. News is largely no longer the process of keeping the people informed. Far too often news organizations are not providers of needed information, but sources of inducement to a particular way of thinking.

During the COVID frenzy lots of things were labeled as misinformation or false information, and were hidden from the public. However, many things that were labeled and withheld proved to be true and beneficial, and things presented as truth were found to be false.

Among topics where the opinions were hidden from the public were problems with the mRNA vaccine, the source of the COVID virus, and the issue of facemask use and uselessness.

The greatest and most harmful journalistic failures were in the realm of politics. Among those items, in addition to COVID censorship, were opposition to the Hunter Biden laptop story, the Steele dossier fiasco, and the Russian disinformation mess known as Russia Gate.

Social media sites also frequently banned certain pieces of information, claiming they were false. Sometimes this action, even though improper in a nation supporting free speech, was due to honest beliefs that the information was truly harmful. Other times — likely in the majority of cases — it was a politically motivated action, designed to prevent the spread of information contrary to the preferred narrative.

Neither of those are justification for the denial and restriction of the free expression of ideas guaranteed to us by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Even unpopular speech is defended by the free speech guarantee.

Workers at newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations and networks were also guilty of banning certain ideas.

Individuals yielding to political philosophy was often the problem. But there is a much deeper problem. Whereas some so-called journalists allowed political ideals into their work, because they hoped to convince the public more than they wanted to hold to their career integrity, others did the same thing for a different reason: they were trained that way, and believed they were acting appropriately.

There is a broad movement in academia away from the notion of objectivity. Jonathan Turley, a law professor at the George Washington University Law School and legal authority, addressed this in his new book, The Indispensable Right, dealing with the right to free speech guaranteed to us by the U.S. Constitution.

Turley wrote, “In journalism schools, professors now denounce objectivity’s place as the ‘supreme deity’ of American journalism.” One professor, Stanford’s Ted Glasser “has called for an end of objectivity in journalism as too constraining for reporters in seeking ‘social justice,’” he wrote.

This infection has spread from the classroom into the newsroom, as graduates enter the workforce, and join in with those who prefer political success to professional honor and personal integrity.

Speaking of this new view of journalism Turley wrote: “Reporters must serve as active interpreters in framing the news to convey what they view as the truth, including the suppression of opposing views on issues like climate change, the pandemic, or gender identity.” 

“In 2023, former Washington Post executive editor Leonard Downie, Jr. and former CBS News president Andrew Heyward released the results of their interviews with over seventy-five media leaders and concluded that objectivity is now considered reactionary and harmful,” Turley wrote, adding that “Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, editor in chief at the San Francisco Chronicle, said it plainly: ‘Objectivity has got to go.’” 

In his book, Turley follows up the discussion of the infection of journalistic principles with a similar infection of the field of law and interpretation of the Constitution and legal concepts.

In this context, the ideas and circumstances that brought about legal principles based upon the forces at work at the time they were implemented can now be ignored because “things have changed.” Laws and Constitutional principles can be changed at the whim of individuals rather than through established and necessary processes.

This line of thinking will not protect the freedoms Americans treasure and depend upon.

Our education system is failing to prepare our children for their future

May 9, 2023

How good is America’s education system, and how does it stack up against other countries?

“The United States isn't investing as much in human capital as other developed countries and its comparative advantage is falling behind as a result,” The Balance online tells us. “U.S. students' math skills have remained stagnant for decades. The country is falling behind many others which have greatly improved, such as Japan, Poland, and Ireland. U.S. test scores are below the global average.” China did not participate in this evaluation.

Four points are offered to support this claim:

* The U.S. placed 11th out of 79 countries in science when testing was last administered in 2018.

* The top five math-scoring countries in 2018 were all in Asia.

* U.S. students' math scores have remained steady since 2003. Their science scores have been about the same since 2006.

* The IMD World Competitiveness Center reports that the U.S. ranked 10th in its 2020 Competitiveness Report after ranking first in 2018.

These points tend to show that there were problems in K-12 education prior to the pandemic. School closures, that caused trauma and isolation of young people during the Covid-19 pandemic, brought on some serious problems.

U.S. News and World Report explains in an article from last October that “An overwhelming majority of states saw significant score declines among fourth- and eighth-graders in math and reading between 2019 and 2022, with students posting the largest score declines ever recorded in math, according to new federal data that provides the most comprehensive evaluation to date of the impact of the pandemic on academic achievement.”

The results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also called “The Nation’s Report Card,” shows the state of student learning after the pandemic. 

“The results reflect what U.S. students in fourth and eighth grade know and can do using a common measure of student achievement across all 50 states, the District of Columbia, the Department of Defense Schools, Puerto Rico and 26 large urban districts that volunteered to participate in the assessment,” U.S. News reported.

Fourth-graders lost 5 points in math scores and eighth-graders lost 8 points in math, while both grades lost 3 points in reading.

“These mathematics results are historic,” said Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), which is the research arm of the U.S. Department of Education. “They are the largest declines in mathematics that we have observed in the entire history of this assessment.”

Further, the proportion of students in the basic level — the lowest level of achievement — increased in math from 25% of fourth graders, and 38% of eighth graders by 3% each.

Another U.S. News article, this one from last Wednesday, titled “‘A National Concern’: Student Scores Decline on U.S. History and Civics,” explains that while young people are more active in politics than ever, their knowledge of history and government continues to decline.

In U.S. history, eighth-graders continued a decline in scores that has run nearly a decade. They also had their first-ever scores decline on a national civics assessment, as reported the prior week by the NCES.

“These data are of national concern,” said Carr, responding again to the situation. “A well-rounded education includes a grounding in the democratic principles. These assessments challenge students to show their knowledge and skills as they prepare to become engaged citizens in a democracy. Too many students are struggling to understand and explain the impact of civic participation and how our government works and the historical significance of events. This is concerning. Quite honestly, I was shocked.”

She said that the rise in students scoring at or below the basic level on the exam was most troubling: 40% of eighth graders scored below basic compared to 34% in 2018.

“We were shocked to see the first declines ever in math assessments. It's hard to top that,” Carr said. “But for US History I was also very, very concerned because it's a decline that started in 2014, long before we ever thought about COVID. So, this is a decline that’s been on the down for a while.”

A September, 2022 Forbes article titled “Pandemic-Era Policies Caused Dramatic Education Decline” discussed the effects of the responses to the pandemic on education, and the heavily negative results on student learning. 

“Fast-forward to nearly 10 months after the pandemic’s most serious weeks, and the Chicago Teachers union defied the school board’s order to open while hundreds of districts, including Fairfax County, VA, said that even with vaccinations their teachers would not return to school, contradicting the relevant CDC guidance,” the Forbes article said. “Such behavior — which some have called a rolling teachers strike — persisted in some cities for two years.

“This is not the first dire news about the United States’ failure to deliver excellence to every student. That came in 1983, and just about every couple of years since. The question is whether it can be the last. It can be, if we unleash innovation, and give families, not the system, the power to direct the educational path of students,” the article concluded.

Whether the schools are public or private, the parents who pay the bills cannot be excluded.