Newspeak, continued, 8/16/2010

ECONOMIC STIMULUS PACKAGE.  Was supposed to save or create two million jobs. The total, in its first year, has been less than a third of that number and even that figure is suspect. The unemployment rate is creeping upward.

EDUCATION. “Ignorance is strength.” “There will be no art, no literature, no science. When we are omnipotent there will be no need of science. There will be no distinction between beauty and ugliness. There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed.” George Orwell, 1984.

The teachers’ unions have had a stranglehold on education for decades. Their refusal to fire bad teachers and reward good ones, the useless teacher certification program and opposition to charter schools has prevented our schools from getting better. In the past forty years, spending on education has increased three-fold in constant dollars while the abilities of our children have declined. In the Obama administration’s plan to improve education, charter schools were not mentioned at all. Nor was competition or school choice. Subservience to the teachers’ unions nearly resulted in Congress cutting back charter schools in the District of Columbia even though D.C.’s schools are a national disgrace.

In New Jersey, a teachers’ union official sent out an email with a “mock” prayer for the death of Governor Christie who is trying to save the state from insolvency by cutting back on the generous retirement plans of public workers. The president of the teachers’ union later called on Governor Christie to offer an apology (Was it a “mock” apology, too?). When the governor asked the union official if the author of the email had been fired, he replied, “Why would we want to do anything like that?”

School administrators are often complicit in perpetuating our poor educational system. A teacher in Louisiana was told that she was not permitted to flunk any of her students regardless of how badly they performed. The state has a mandated test system and it appears that the administrators do not want to be seen as not performing well under the mandate and looking bad themselves. Better to let the students graduate with no skills than to improve the quality of education.

In Rhode Island, only seven percent of eleventh graders pass the state math exams. Seven percent!

Education Secretary Arne Duncan, has vowed to invade public schools with lawyers wielding the Civil Rights Act in order to overcome what he considers civil rights violations, such as too many white students in high school advanced placement classes. Columnist George Will points out that the greatest predictor of success in education is a stable family. Until the liberals address the fact that seventy-one percent of African-American and fifty-one percent of Hispanic babies are born to unwed mothers, there is not likely to be any real progress in improving the educational standards of minorities.

ELECTION IS OVER, THE. Routinely used by members of the Obama administration to trump any objections to their policies. They mean it to convey that they have a mandate to do whatever they want. It is their version of the “mandate of heaven” that was used for millennia to justify the position of Chinese emperors or of the “divine right of kings” used by European royalty.

EMPIRE STATE BUILDING. One would think that New York’s most recognizable remaining building would be safe from being an object of political expression. In honor of the 60^th anniversary of the Communist take over of China, it is going to be illuminated in red. Just a year ago, the building authorities refused to illuminate it in blue in honor of the 100^th anniversary of the birth of Mother Teresa. When asked. Daniel Hernandez, representing the public relations branch of the building, told a reporter that the decision was made by a “committee,” the members of which he refused to identify. This is more phony “diversity” at work.