DIES IRAE AND WEARING BLACK
On the day Barack Hussein Obama
took his oath of office
as President of the United States of America,
on another blog that I maintain I posted the entire text
of the hymn which in former days was always played at the beginning of a funeral Mass: Dies Irae.
I posted the text of the entire hymn in Latin and in English, without comment. To my amazement, my blog received a record number visits that day – a hundred times the usual number. I have no idea to this day how word could have spread about that post, but obviously the symbolism of my posting that funeral hymn on Inauguration Day was understood by many of my viewers as my lament that America had died that day.

Many aspects of America’s social fabric and way of life are obviously dying: free enterprise, international prestige and clout, financial stability, etc. But, less obviously, some other very important parts of American life began to die that day: freedom of speech, respect for religion, freedom in choosing one’s health care, etc.

One of the most important aspects of American life that has been in a state of decline for many decades, public education, has now quickened it slide into the abyss. It can be seen in education from the highest level to pre-school and kindergarten.

One of the worst examples of the slide was introduction into the public schools of Boston sex education which was designed by the LGBT activists to teach the primary school children how to engage in homosexual sex.

Scipio’s post today on his blog [TheReturnofScipio.blogspot.com] about his wearing black on Inauguration Day reminded me of my Dies Irae post. Here is Scipio on the subject:

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Man In Black
Posted on June 16th, 2009 by Scipio

I wandered over to Karen Howes’ place [KarenHowes.squarespace.com] and found this:

Conservatives need not apply
DateSaturday, June 13, 2009

If you’re conservative, you’d better hide your political leanings if you want a job teaching social studies.

Kansas teacher Tim Latham, who has 19 years in the classroom, found his contract for next year not being renewed at the new school he’s teaching at; he suspects the reason has nothing to do with his teaching performance (he never even got evaluated as he should have been), but everything to do with the McCain/Palin bumper sticker on his car and his refusal to treat Obama as a god.

Oh, and his class website, according to the assistant principal, is “too patriotic” (this would be the same dame who gave Latham crap about his McCain/Palin bumper sticker too).

Supposedly a kid complained to this administrator that Latham had been too critical of Obama. What is this, Nazi Germany, where kids were encouraged to snitch on their parents and teachers who spoke against Hitler or National Socialism?

Here’s a chilling thought: what if, sometime in the not-too-distant future, classrooms in American public schools will be required to display pictures of Dear Leader Obama (not our flag though), and any teacher who dares criticize him won’t just lose his job, but go to prison? Don’t scoff, because I think that day is coming. Obama is like every other statist in power; he doesn’t appreciate criticism or resistance.

I guarantee that if Latham had been a raving leftist who had bashed Bush or McCain to his students and who had a hammer-and-sickle background on his class website, his job would be perfectly safe.

Nope, instead let’s get rid of a guy who, by all accounts, is a wonderful and dedicated teacher, because he wouldn’t show in class the televised coronation– excuse me, inauguration– of the First Black President. Latham says he didn’t show it because he never shows inaugurations in class, regardless of who the new president is. Instead let’s replace Latham with some inexperienced 24-year-old who’s been indoctrinated with socialist garbage in her university education classes– preferably someone who wears low-cut tops and has an eye for 15-year-olds.

But the good news is that Tim Latham is fighting this. The forces that seek to undermine and destroy our society (and at this point it should be obvious that such forces exist) don’t expect normal people to resist; remember how they bared their fangs at tea party protesters back in April? Bullies are always surprised when their victims stand up to them.

Good luck and God bless, Mr. Latham.

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A teacher myself for 17 years in three countries, I was not surprised. The teaching profession in the US is by and large controlled by liberals. And liberals are not amused when one of their colleagues happens to have a political opinion outside of the “Obama good, Bush bad” view of things.

When Obama was inaugurated I expressed my summation of the creature by wearing all black to school. When asked why by some students I replied, “I am in mourning. My country died today.” As I teach in Oklahoma—the reddest of Red States and the Buckle of the Bible Belt—many of my colleagues and almost all of the students were amused. I heard that a few parents were angry that a teacher had had the nerve to “express his views” in the classroom. Nothing came of their complaints, though I was ready, willing and able to defend my choice of attire.

black

We still live in a free nation. We can either express that freedom openly or hide under our beds and hope that our liberal enemies go away. Liberals believe that the teaching of our nation’s children is their own private fiefdom, but these small-minded and petty bigots must be disabused of their fantasy.

Part of the battlefield for the soul of our Republic takes place in the classroom. If we win it there, we win it everywhere.

Update: Some background on the usual mentality behind the teaching profession is here [in the article below by Bruce Deitrick Price].

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THE BIGGEST MYSTERY IN AMERICAN HISTORY
by Bruce Deitrick Price
http://www.tcsdaily.com
May 2009

What is the greatest mystery in American history?
Rattle off a few answers.
I bet you won’t think of mine…

Here is my nominee for biggest mystery:
the decline and fall of public school education.
Don’t agree?
Give me a minute and I’ll convince you.

Here are the towering facts:
U.S. spends a huge amount on education; more per student than anyone else; more and more every year. Simultaneously, over the last 70 years, literacy has fallen, SAT scores have fallen, American competitiveness has fallen, and the general knowledge of ordinary citizens has fallen. Teenagers graduate from high school who can’t read their diplomas; the country now has 50,000,000 functional illiterates. I recently saw on television that the wealthiest, most successful country in the world–that would be us–hovers around 18th internationally on reading, and 25th in science.

I submit that all of these facts taken together are paradoxical; one might say, impossible. It’s as if I told you that an ordinary man consumed 5000 calories a day and lost weight. So this, I submit, is the greatest mystery in our history.

But why have our educators allowed this decline to take place? Or is “allowed” a trick word, and they have actually abetted this failure? Ah, mystery on top of mystery. This is a puzzle that academic historians should be trying to solve.

For starters, can’t we all agree that genuine experts, making a sincere effort, would have our schools functioning at a higher level? Why, oh why, don’t our educators do a much better job?

In the interest of brevity, let me just list the three most common answers given to that question:

1. Our educators mean well but they get caught up in fads.
2. Our educators have a lot of bad luck. Who could guess that all their wonderful ideas would have so many unintended consequences?
3. A harsher theory is that our educators, alas, are nitwits. (Smart people, it’s often remarked, don’t go into Education.)

The problem with all these theories is that, if true, we would see a greater range of outcomes. After all, there are thousands of these people. Now and then they’d have to get lucky; the law of averages would have to have its day. There’s only one problem with this: there are, it seems to me, no successful results, and no good ideas. All we see is a grinding mediocrity.

It goes beyond a failure to find ideas that increase education; many have embraced ideas that are clearly destructive. Our experts really don’t seem all that interested in education as most people understand this term. Reading, writing, arithmetic, and geography, for example, don’t seem to be priorities. What we see in education makes sense only if we assume that our educators have an agenda we don’t know about, or that they are malevolent, or both.

So what agenda, you’re wondering, are they actually focused on? What’s the answer to the mystery? Here is my deduction: that those at the top of the Education Industrial Complex, since the time of John Dewey, have been collectivists first, and educators second or third. The goal of creating an educated child was too often superceded by the goal of creating a cooperative child.

Broadly speaking, they undermined educational success in two ways. First, they found reasons to delete and dilute the curriculum. Second, the things they did teach, they often taught in confusing, unhelpful ways. I could reel off a list of 50 failed pedagogies, none of which lived up to the hype or the hope, things such as New Math, Reform Math, Constructivism, Bilingual Education, Self Esteem, et cetera.

The paradigm of bad pedagogies, of course, is Whole Word, I.E. any non-phonics way of teaching reading. Around 1931, every public school in the country was told that phonics was out, and the children should be taught by Look-Say (think Dick and Jane). This switch is one of most amazing (and revealing) events in American educational history. Try to think of another instance where a profession abruptly decided to reverse everything ordinarily done for centuries.

Once you assume that all these conclusions are true, you find there’s no mystery at all. Everything that’s happened in American education is as logical as 1 + 2 = 3. My estimation is that if we tossed out the ideological admixture, we’d see steady improvement. Don’t think we can improve things by tweaking around the edges. We need an intervention. We need surgery.