President George W. Bush was not a very effective president. I don't really know of any of his policies that I agreed with. From the Patriot Act to the Iraq War, he was a president that I could never fully support. Not to mention, his credentials were less than stellar. He dodged his military duties, his college career was based more on his family's influence than his intellectual acumen, he was a professed alcoholic, he used cocaine and he just was not "real" in my opinion. Everything that he did was contrived and staged. Think, "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED" and then look at the body bags that are still piling up to this day, almost 9 years later. He projected a Rovian (Karl Rove developed) image that deceived the masses and led many to believe multiple lies. Then there is the issue of voter fraud, Diebold and other suspicious activities that took place during both of the elections that he was involved in. Suffice it to say that this was not a president that I supported nor believed in.
His legacy, the war notwithstanding, can still be felt in the economy, in the environment and in society. One of his most damaging policies, in my opinion, came in the form of a Trojan horse. In Greek mythology, the story of the Trojan horse is legendary. The Greeks presented the Trojans with a gift during the Trojan war. A huge horse that some of the Trojans thought to be symbolic of peace and others a tribute to Athena, was rolled up to the gates of the city of Troy. Some Trojans thought that the horse should be burned and that it was some sort of trap. In actuality, the horse was hollowed out on the inside and contained scores of Greek soldiers that, otherwise, would not have had access to the heavily fortified city of Troy. As the story goes, the Trojans accepted the gift and were destroyed from the inside out because they allowed the enemy to infiltrate their ranks. The Trojan horse has become synonymous with subversive activities that are done under the guise of sincerity and good intentions.
I submit to you that the No Child Left Behind program is a Trojan horse. On the surface, we see educational funding and support for public schools but this program is actually designed for the systematic destruction of the educational system as we know it. This was crystallized for me this morning as I dropped my children off at school. I noticed a sign up that was commemorative of Down Syndrome Day. This is in no way an indictment of people with Down's Syndrome. I actually think it is great that people with Down's Syndrome have been destigmatized over the years and we should not look at them any differently than anyone. But it hit me that within the same classroom that "gifted" children (i.e. children that have taken an exam and showed exceptional proficiency in some area) are located, there are also children with Down's Syndrome that we know are limited in their intellectual abilities. When I was in school, they had Special Education for students with special needs and they were instructed from a curriculum that was different than the curriculum that I followed. What No Child Left Behind has done is place those special needs children in a no-win situation by holding them to the same academic standards that children with uncompromised cognitive abilities are held to.
Speaking with a teacher, she was totally frustrated in that she was "preparing her children for a test that they are unable to pass." Here is the problem with NCLB, if the special needs students are not performing, the entire school is seen as underperforming. A larger issue stemming from that problem is this, schools that do not meet AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress) are defunded. So, the mad scramble to make AYP and maintain funding has caused schools to falsify test scores and do other things to "prove" to the government that they deserve the few dollars in educational funds that they do receive. This Trojan horse called NCLB has caused the prevailing sentiment in America to be that all schools are failures. If the test scores were separated, as they should be, then we wouldn't be having this discussion. NCLB has been a colossal failure and it has failed our children as well. They are taught to a test and not taught to think critically. Thank God that book companies and educational supply companies are now beginning to realize this and produce material that encourages critical thinking. I sit on a textbook adoption committee and the two math books that we have reviewed so far are very innovative and challenging to students. This is critical considering the fact that we are preparing tomorrow's leaders that must compete in a global marketplace as opposed to their small town or against only those students that were educated in American school systems.
This is where we are today. We are given a bleak picture of our schools. The Trojan horse of NCLB has painted our teachers as pathetic (albeit some are), our students as if they are on a sinking ship and our educational system as if it is the worst in the world. There are flaws for sure, but nothing that cannot be fixed. But the job of NCLB was not to fix the schools in the first place. It was cleverly designed to cause dysfunctionality in the schools in such a way that the people become disgruntled with public education and it eventually becomes obsolete. The Trojan horse concept is this: if the schools fail badly enough, according to the test scores, then we will eventually eradicate them altogether in favor or private pay education. By design, the standards set by NCLB would never be met because the evaluation of the schools would be based on skewed data; data that includes the scores of special needs children and the general student population both taking the same tests. Since Americans love data and numbers, these data would then be used to justify abandoning public education. A secondary outcome of NCLB would be the creation of a permanent underclass of intellectually dull, imperceptive simpletons that would not question the government or its practices. I am personally fighting this outcome by teaching my children to think outside the box and exposing them to reality. I suggest that you do the same if you have children. Don't hide the truth from them and teach them to think.
Thank God that now schools have the ability to opt-out of the NCLB policies. They made no sense then and they make no sense now. That whole program needs to be scrapped. Judging from the product, my students that I encounter every day, it has not worked. There is an entire generation of students that was handouts for grades, promotions just because and that do NOT want to work for anything. The limited intellectual ability can be heard in the music that they listen to, the disdain for any thing that makes them think outside of the box and the constant requests for exams that are watered down and verbatim from the lectures. I am in agreement with the Trojan seer Laokoon that told king Priam not to accept that horse into the gates and the other citizens of Troy that wanted to burn the horse where it stood outside the gate. NCLB should never have been allowed to be thrown onto our children. It should have been burned where it stood.
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