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QotD – Freedom
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.
– Ronald Reagan
Reagan said this over forty years ago, and it has never been more relevant than it is today. The Maoists leading the Woke movement are the product of a public education system that ceased teaching children the meaning and value of freedom; it is not new. The rot seems to have set in during the 1990s and was accelerated by the “No Child Left Behind Act” in 2001.
The preponderance of those in their 20s and 30s who still value freedom and liberty seems to be those who escaped indoctrination from today’s public schools. They were either homeschooled, when to non-“progressive” private schools, or had very strong-minded parents who worked outside of school hours to counteract “Woke” brainwashing by the current education system. We are well past Reagan’s “one generation.” The children of those miseducated in the ’90s are now entering kindergarten.
Published in Education
Preach it!
What do you think has been the influence of Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States? I managed to escape high school and college without reading it, but I think it must have influenced millions of Americans.
Dunno. I know we didn’t use that when Jan and I homeschooled our kids. And the two of us were too ancient for it to have been in our high school history classrooms.
Since several of our teachers were WWII veterans (including one in the Marines tasked to go ashore on day one of the cancelled invasion of Japan – cancelled when Japan surrendered after the atomic bomb was dropped) I doubt Zinn would have received much of a welcome.
This was true of me also, and I suspect was fairly common among my contemporaries. Same for parents, who did their bit to inculcate and appreciation for the world many had fought so hard and sacrificed so much to bring into being.
I graduated from college (in the US) in 1976, and I think it was just beginning to set in, in Academia, about that time. Probably took a few more years to settle in, and for the next generation of teachers to hit the streets, so that sounds about right.
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So did you learn that the
JapaneseImperial Japanese were as awful as they were.That’s what the ex-Marine science teacher taught us. (Although, surprisingly, he was okay with the postwar Japanese visiting my home town. They were all right. I am pretty sure he meant it, too. He was big on judging you by what you did, not what you looked like.)
Well Japanese can either be war criminals are some of the greatest American heroes. Culture matters quite alot. I am big into teaching world history so kids know that imperialism, war and racism were universal human crimes.