We have known Bruce since he was a precocious child. He was in my scout troop in the mid-'60s and was one of only two boys I had to send home from summer camp during the five years I served as his scoutmaster.
Bruce, in the intervening years, married, raised four children and has given back, as most scouts do, to his community and church and has become a highly successful businessman and church leader. In addition to discussing our portfolio, we discussed our families. His dad, a World War II veteran and close friend for nearly 50 years, is struggling as the end of his long and productive life draws nearer. We discussed our children who are facing economic challenges, as all children have. Some more than others!
Bruce then shared an experience he had recently with his stake president, a very successful business man as well as an area church leader. He told us of a meeting he had had recently with this leader. During this meeting, this man stopped the discussion he was having with his 12-man council and began discussing the economic storms many of their church members were facing. He asked how many had jobs. All 12 raised their hands. He asked how many had college degrees. All 12 raised their hands. His last question was how many had graduate degrees. Fewer raised their hands. His point, he said, was to tell them that 78 percent of those unemployed today only have a high school education or less. A staggering statistic! But it emphasized the ever-changing requirements of the world and of the society we live in - and of the need for continuing one's education to be better prepared to meet the higher demands of our high-tech work force.
Later, after Bruce had left, I pondered the message of his stake president. A news release from the White House then told how this new administration was thinking of lowering the standards of the schools so there would not be so many deficient schools. This announcement was followed by another announcement that the North Carolina school system has proposed to eliminate the founding fathers from their high school curriculum and begin teaching America's history with the administration of Rutherford B. Hayes that began in 1877.
What are these people thinking of? Then I remembered: Hayes administration was near the beginning of the Progressive Movement. Is there a connection here?
In 1789, the Congress of the United States passed the North West Ordinance, a law that established guidelines that allowed new states to join the Union. In this law was a section that stated all new states would be required to establish schools and teach their children "religion, morals and knowledge." Perhaps the current administration should give strong consideration to resurrecting that law and implement it in every state school system - including colleges and universities. Instead of "dumbing down" the schools to match the level of the students, they would be challenging the students to reach up and develop their god-given talents, the talents needed to survive during times when the economic storms of life surround them.
To even give a thought to eliminating the history of America's founding fathers is ludicrous - it smells of Progressivism. No free nation has ever survived being ignorant of its own history. While I commend the civil rights movement for promoting its past achievements with Black History Month, I think it would behoove not only the civil rights movement, but all Americans, if Black History Month were renamed "National Founding Father's Month." It could expand its reach and extol the lives of not only the black leaders of the civil rights movement, but also of the founding fathers, those men and women who put their lives on the line to break the bonds of slavery and begin the process that led to the election of Abraham Lincoln, who ended the slave practice in the United States.
Is it possible that the Civil Rights movement leaders and North Carolina school leaders have become indoctrinated by the Progressive movement and are leading their followers back down that path that leads to slavery, with "elitist" government leaders the taskmasters, not plantation owners? This theory makes sense when one realizes that an "elitist" government must dumb down its children so they are ignorant of their history and don't realize that it was only with God's influence in the lives of the founding fathers that America, with its Declaration of Independence and Constitution, would become the nation that would end slavery as a flourishing business and remove slavery as a thorn in the flesh of all mankind.
Remember it was Thomas Jefferson who declared that "the Laws of Nature's God" was the cornerstone of America's liberty. This is the history of America that Progressives do not want today's students to know or understand.
Donald Conkey, a retired agricultural economist, lives in Woodstock.
Post a Comment