LET'S  FIX EDUCATION,  Episode 140,  Bruce Deitrick Price

    

The Legacy of Rita Kramer (1929-2023)
and the Embarrassment Factor


In 1990 Rita Kramer toured the country to study the best ed schools. She was reporting on education for ABC, and had begun to suspect that American ed schools were more corrupted and indoctrinated than most people ever imagined.   

Her research in 1990 led to a very important book, Ed School Follies. I recommend it to everyone who wants to understand what happened to K-12 

I reviewed her book on Amazon in 2007; in 2023 I wanted to interview her but didn't know whether she was alive or gone. Finally I found an email and wrote to congratulate her on her work and give her a bunch of questions. A few weeks later she was gone but her daughter sent me her answers to my questions. 

Here is the most important Q and A:

BDP: What were the things that most offended you as you worked on your book in 1990?

Rita Kramer: “Finding out that teachers were being taught to teach political propaganda as opposed to academic subjects. What I observed first-hand back then was the groundwork being laid for the crisis in education today.”

So we have a very smart, informed witness more than 30 years ago testifying that public schools were subversive and controlled by ideologues. These people ripped the heart out of education. At the same time they were sly enough so that the average citizen had no idea what was going on.

If you want to understand how the public schools evolved into a sinister force, alienated from the rest of American society, Rita Kramer's book would be Exhibit A.

A lot of people have trouble believing that our public schools intentionally moved into a different sphere. The more history you know, the more obvious this thesis becomes.

The history of the American education shifted gears around 1900 when John Dewey’s "progressive" theories took over the public schools. Gears shifted again after 1921 when members of the Communist International (Comintern) started arriving in America. They weren't here to make friends; their business was domination.

So, for almost 100 years, the tide has moved relentlessly against traditional education, common sense theories, and effective practice. Every decade, the schools are worse than the decade before. The perennial question is, how can they get away with this betrayal?

In fairness, Marxist revolutionaries are well organized. The most predictable technique used by these invaders is to constantly change the jargon, arguments, and marketing strategies. The verbiage is so dense and incoherent that few parents can discuss the problems their children have.

A second factor protecting these ne’er-do-well professors is that the public is hopelessly confused but nobody wants to confess just how confused they are. I'm betting that the president of the United States, his cabinet, the House of Representatives and the executives running the Fortune 500 almost without exception do not understand, for example, why Constructivism is destructive, why sight-words are problems, and why New Math was such a flop in 1962

So there is a sort of paralysis, or bewilderment, neutralizing the movers and shakers who run this country. They can't understand the tech-speak. How can they be interviewed by a reporter? How are they going to appear before Congress when they aren’t sure of anything, and their every word might be laughed at by haughty professors.

So I recently coined this phrase: the Embarrassment Factor. I say to the American people, get over yourself, admit you find K-12 murky and confusing. That's by design! Find people who want to learn more and discuss the decline of K-12. (Search any ed subject you're interested in with my name; you can find many articles.)

We don't have a chance of saving the schools until we can neutralize the extreme power of far-left professors. This would be easy If everyone understood that our professors are all too often quacks and pretenders. According to Rita Kramer, they are the problem. Tell them they need to understand what our great needs are: phonics, direct instruction, basic arithmetic, and all the traditional methods that are still the best choice.

Read some of Kramer’s book, meet the traitorous commissars running the ed schools, then you'll be able to help keep the country from sinking further.

And let us never forget who should be embarrassed. That would be professors of education who concoct  the unworkable and incomprehensible ideas found in K-12.

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>>> my Amazon review: from 2007

>>> my similar but longer article on X-

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