https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/sep/3/richard-dreyfuss-is-right-if-we-dont-fix-our-schoo/Richard Dreyfuss is right: If we don’t fix our schools, America is about to failBy Everett Piper
Sunday, September 3, 2023
This past week, in an interview on PBS’ “Firing Line” with Margaret Hoover, the actor Richard Dreyfuss said: “I think we’re in the endgame right now.
“We could let slip the greatest idea for governance ever devised, and we won’t even know that it happened. … Our democratic republic is failing, and it shouldn’t be a surprise. We can’t fly a plane without training; we can’t practice medicine without attending medical school. And yet we expect the American people to wield the full power of their citizenship without an education.”
He went on: “We no longer teach our children the Bill of Rights or the Constitution. … We don’t teach them critical thinking skills. … We’ve stopped teaching civics, and now we can’t have a civil political discussion. The American experiment may fail if we don’t act.”
Mr. Dreyfuss’ description of American education is spot on. His warning is not exaggeration or hyperbole. He’s absolutely right.
Your public schools are no longer a place where your children are taught to read and write, nor is today’s academy nearly as interested in your sons’ and daughters’ understanding of science as it is in teaching them to parrot the talking points of social justice.
Gone are the days of teaching American history and celebrating our Constitution. Activism is now far more important than getting a good grade in algebra. Critical theory now supplants critical thinking. From elementary school through 12th grade, our next generation of leaders are being taught to fixate on America’s flaws rather than celebrate its virtues.
This is the reality of our public schools. It’s a mad hatter’s world where, as C.S. Lewis warned, the elite among us actually claim it makes sense to geld the stallion and then “bid him be fruitful.” This is a time where the wise ones in our faculty lounges work to remove a child’s civic soul as the remedy to the to the cultural hell they’ve created for our progeny.
When will we learn? Bad ideas will breed bad behavior as surely as an acorn will grow an oak or a hurricane will bring a flood.
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