Nature hates a vacuum. So do people. I have discovered in my profession as a teacher and administrator in the public schools that if you don’t give people information, they will make it up or, even worse, someone will teach them lies.
And that is what has happened with our young people. We didn’t focus on teaching them the whole and true history of our country, so someone came in and taught them lies. Or, they left huge holes in their knowledge and the kids made up their own incorrect information.
As an administrator in the late 90’s and early 2000’s, I realized that teaching History and Social Studies in general was not a priority in most school systems. Of course, children must be taught reading, writing, and math. But with so much other content and so many useless activities taking up the daily school day, Social Studies was pushed off in the corner to be taught whenever there might be time, which there never was. And, since Social Studies materials were also hard to come by, teachers shied away from teaching history, geography, and government. Even when history was taught in high school, it was pared down to survey courses that attempted to teach the history of the world and our country in a semester. It sure didn’t allow for much depth of knowledge. It was a mile wide and an inch deep.
Into that gap crawled the Marxists. First, they stated that students didn’t really need to know dates and names. So, schools cut that out. Then they stated that the history of “old, white men” didn’t resonate with the current generations. So, schools cut that out too. They boiled social studies and government down to a jumble of disjointed events and ideas which mostly centered on the ills of our country, the misdeeds of White people and the suffering of certain populations.
Of course, I realize that our country has not always been perfect, and some of our people have committed horrible injustices against certain ethnic groups. To ignore that would be educational malpractice. But, on the other side of that, our country has worked hard to correct injustice, to assure the equality of all races and genders, to help people achieve their dreams. Many of our citizens have. To ignore that is also educational malpractice. It’s like focusing on a small mole on the cheek of a beautiful woman and calling her ugly for it.
But that is what we have done. And now we are seeing the result of this neglect.
As you read the modern media regarding the beginning of our country, you’ll hear some bullshit about how our country started in 1619 with the first slaves in this country. You’ll hear about how our country was built solely on the back of slaves. You’ll hear that our founding fathers were racists and sexists and that this is all that matters. Funny thing is, the woman who created the 1619 project has said that the whole project wasn’t about truth and facts, but feelings and interpretations. That would be like studying horticulture without studying the facts about how plants grow and then creating a substance that you “feel” might help them grow better.
Ever seen “Idiocracy”? Think Brawndo. The main character, Joe, an average man who has traveled to the future, is considered a genius because the people of the future are so stupid. He gets into a conversation with his cabinet ( Joe has been elected President) about why the crops in the future are dying. He tells them that he’s pretty sure that the stuff they are putting on the crops, Brawndo, is what is killing them. His Secretary of State says, ” But Brawndo’s got what plants crave. It’s got electrolytes. ” Brawndo had a great corporate messaging plan.
Joe tells them they need to put water on the plants. His cabinet is shocked and one asks, ” Water? Like out the toilet?” Joe tells them it doesn’t have to be out of the toilet, but yes, water is what he is talking about. He tries to convince them that Brawndo isn’t working and they should try water. His Secretary of Energy says, “Well I’ve never seen no plants grow out of no toilet.”
They go on through circular reasoning that proves they don’t even know what electrolytes are or why they use them. When asked, the cabinet members always reply, “It’s what they use to make Brawndo.”
You see, the people of the future are so stupid that they don’t even know basic biology and fall for the idea that a substance that is actually killing the plants is helping them. They FEEL it is right, so they constantly argue for it. No facts. No logic. Just feelings and mis-guided beliefs.
And that is where we are with the teaching of History in our schools. Instead of teaching actual History, we have trained our children in feelings and mis-guided beliefs about our country and our people.
And what we get is this. We get a Congresswoman, Cori Bush, a Black woman who has been elected to an important office, who uses the liberty that our forefathers and generations before her fought and died for to speak freely, and who has been well compensated financially as a congresswoman, saying this on July 4th: ” When they say that the 4th of July is about American freedom, remember this: the freedom they’re referring to is for white people. ( notice white is not capitalized) This land is stolen land and Black people are still not free.”
Huh. That’s weird. Because if Black people aren’t free, how is she a Congresswoman? Why is she speaking in front of other free Black people? Why are there so many Black people who have taken advantage of freedom and become successful? Obama, Clarence Thomas, Ben Carson, Condaleeza Rice, etc.? She got slammed on Twitter by Black and White people for those comments. You know what, she knows what she said is wrong.
Problem is, her presentation of the way things are will resonate with some people who don’t know the facts of history. For example, the graphic below was posted by the same young Black man who I wrote about earlier this year. His name is Danny and he posted this on Facebook on Memorial Day:
” As a black man it’s hard to celebrate any of these American holidays there’s to (sic) much bad history.”
And then he posted this yesterday :
You see what is happening here? Danny, who was a student in the public schools in our area, who is a nice young man, has implied in his Tweet on Memorial Day that first, he is not counting himself as an American and second that our country has done more bad than good. In the picture he posted, the implication is clear. July 4th is NOT Independence Day for him, as a Black man, but rather it is just 15 days after what he considers his true Independence Day, Juneteenth.
Like I said, he is a nice, young Black man who I know has a job, who works with people of all races teaching his athletic passion, and he doesn’t see himself as an American because our country is so evil. Who is telling him this? I think I know, but it really doesn’t matter because the person who is telling him this garbage, like Cori Bush, is exploiting the fact that he and other young people of all races have not learned the facts and truths of history. So they are ripe for the taking and are buying into a narrative that is not only false but damaging to him and to the rest of us. They are not stupid, they are vulnerable to liars.
We let this happen. I let this happen. So did you. We didn’t notice that our children were being denied the teaching of real, actual History. We didn’t notice that the people who want to destroy our country replaced it with garbage and lies. We trusted the State Department of Education, the school systems, and the teachers*. And we let them whittle away at the time we spent teaching actual history and give that time to such nonsense as “values clarification” and the various “issues of the day” which were created because of some whim by a politician.
And now we have to fight to change things. We have to fight Marxist programs such as the 1619 Project and Critical Race Theory in our schools. We have to fight to teach the truth. And that is ALL of us, of all races. We need to teach our children American History as a total picture and not just the cherry picked sins of the past. And we need to show them that we are one of the only countries in the world that works to correct our flaws rather than ignore them. We also need to show them that if many of our citizens lived in a totalitarian society such as in China, they would have NO rights and would probably be dead. I applaud Texas for mandating that their students are taught the true horrors of Communism.
Unfortunately, it’s hard to ” unteach” that which has been taught and indoctrinated. It usually requires that the student has a rude awakening and realizes how he/she has been misled. But, if we start with our young children and counteract the lies being taught, even if we have to do it through teaching it ourselves, and we keep exposing our older students to what the truth is, we may have a chance. But it has to start now.
I promise you I will do my part by helping others create a plan to fight CRT and to monitor that our schools don’t sneak it in and that they teach the TRUTH. I will not be silenced nor shut down.
I watched the series ” Sons of Liberty” yesterday on the History Channel. It is about Sam Adams and the rest of the revolutionaries who risked their lives to create a new country that would not be dominated by Kings and the societal elites. We forget how precarious it was for them to do that. And we can’t let their efforts go to waste.
(SIDE NOTE)*In defense of the teachers I worked with for the two years I was Social Studies Specialist in my system, they worked with me to make sure students got a true and accurate understanding of American and World History. But, when your job depends on you teaching what the state tells you to teach, it’s tough. And, as is true so many times, some of the younger ones hadn’t been taught the truth in college. You can’t teach what you don’t know.
This exactly precisely describes the situation and the latest way racists tend to make the most of the ignorant people they are supposed to be looking out for. This is what Al Sharpton has made his wealth from and he knows it is wrong and false and keeps the ghost of the old school Democrats alive. Shame on them!!