Report from the Education Front

RUSH: Who’s next? Marie in Kansas, nice to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Hi.

RUSH: Hi.

CALLER: It’s so good to talk to you.

RUSH: Thank you very much.

CALLER: Well, I kinda just wanted to change gears a little bit. The reason I called was to talk about education, not health care, because I’m a public educator. And today was the only day I had to call. Yesterday I was at a curriculum-planning meeting, and they were talking about changing the curriculum so much for kids starting in middle school, not teaching them history anymore.

RUSH: Wait. Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah. Hold it. They’re gonna just wipe history from the curriculum?

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: Where in Kansas is this?

CALLER: Uhhh…

RUSH: You don’t want to say.

CALLER: No. It’s rural.

RUSH: You know what surprises me about this?

CALLER: Nothing?

RUSH: No, no. I’m being serious. Let me tell you what surprises me. History is the vehicle they’re using to pollute kids’ minds with current events. They’re using history classes to advocate global warming, to advocate Obama’s presidential agenda, to trash conservatives and Republicans. There’s a lot of places where history is not even being taught at all. It’s being written every day under the guise of history, but it’s basically current events politics being taught. I’m surprised that they would — why do they want to do this?

CALLER: Okay. This is the reason that they want to completely stop teaching history and social studies is because they want to start teaching real-world economics and start teaching them about their future. And, this isn’t all. They want to start in elementary school all through middle school gearing them toward a specific career so that when they’re in high school they will essentially be working toward that career, not getting a well-rounded education so that in college they can, you know, maybe have a history class, maybe have a fine arts class, choose what they want to do and in high school they’ll be working in their career. So they want to put them in this little box and only teach them these little things so they’re just like robots.

RUSH: You know, this sounds very familiar to the way the ChiComs do it. They orient kids toward one specific area that the state needs help in and they educate them on that and that’s it. And if they find these gifted students that are really smart then they assign them maybe to the party and give them the party apparatus as well. They used to do that in the Soviet Union. But why can’t you do both, why can’t you teach history and real world economics? I mean how long is a school day in rural Kansas?

CALLER: Well, right now it’s — we’re extending it just a little bit. It’s about eight hours.

RUSH: I have just been informed that in Palm Beach County, which is where we are here, that three years ago when you enter the ninth grade you are mandated to select a major, career.

CALLER: How is that a well-rounded education? I don’t know. It’s very frustrating. And it’s so frustrating to the point that I just almost don’t want to be a part of it, but then if I quit, who’s going to say no, who’s going to be an advocate?

RUSH: See, I could teach real world economics here in five seconds. Real world economics is Republicans are evil, corporations are evil, and capitalism is immoral. End of course. If you can repeat that you get an A, and we’ll move you on to the next subject. Look, the subject of education has been one that has interested me for a long time but not in the traditional soppy way. (crying) ‘We must educate our children, we must educate our children.’ I get so sick and tired of talking about funding and more money and education. The education system missed me. See, I knew when I was nine years old what I wanted to do and they didn’t care. They went the well-rounded route. Now, I understood it, it’s their business to educate people. There are people who are trained specialists at educating people, and they have to do it in a mass way because, you know, 30 to 40 people in a class. I’m talking about my little high school and junior high. But that was what was frustrating for me about it because I knew what I wanted to do and so little of what I had to do was oriented towards it. And I talked to my mom and dad about it ’cause I skipped school, especially when I got my first radio job at 16. I’d hang around the radio station all day.

They didn’t understand. They came out of the Great Depression. The opportunity for an education was like the greatest gift that you could have. And I’m bored. I don’t care. I don’t like the social aspects of it. I don’t like the teachers. ‘But, son, you’re not old enough to know what’s good for you on this yet.’ My dad, whatever happened at school they were right and I was wrong, that’s just the way it was. But I’ll be honest, I did soak up a lot when I was in school. I did soak up a lot that I didn’t know I was soaking up. But there were lot of courses I took at school, I took all the way up to calculus, I don’t even know what it is now. I did okay in geometry but I never use it and I don’t know if I could now. There’s a lot of stuff that when you talk about a well-rounded education… I can honestly say this, when I finally quit college for all the reasons I’ve told you, I don’t need to rehash ’em, it was probably about six months later when I had moved away from home, and suddenly like a big slap in the face I realized I was going to have to demonstrate what I know because I don’t have a piece of paper that says I know anything. I don’t have a diploma. I got a high school diploma but big whoop. But I don’t have this magic diploma from some college that tells anybody I’m educated, and that’s what gets your foot in the door in an interview. After that it doesn’t mean anything.

So that’s when I actually started reading voluminously, omnivorously, that’s when I started trying to soak up everything I could that interested me. Now, I’m not saying I am self-educated, ’cause I did spend all those years in school, I did soak up a lot of stuff, and particularly American history, literature and stuff, but I am convinced that I did more learning and acquiring of knowledge — well, I know it’s true ’cause I’m still doing it, and I’ve been out of school a lot longer than I was in it. And that’s another thing I found out about people. People, when they graduated college, they thought that was it, the paper, the diploma said it all, and their curiosity ended. They had met the objective of being educated. I haven’t fulfilled it yet because I never will, it’s an ongoing thing. As long as you’re alive and as long as you’re curious you’re going to be learning things, like I didn’t know what a cargo cult was until a couple days ago, and now I know a cargo cult is basically Obama, but I had never heard of it. So the whole subject of education is a fascinating thing to me, ’cause we do put faith in the people who are trained educators, here’s how to best give a young person a well-rounded education.

But I have to tell you something. If I was nine, and if I had been able to say, ‘I want to learn everything I can about the talent, skills necessary to do broadcasting,’ I woulda soaked it up and they woulda not been able to get me out of that school, but instead I was told, ‘No, no, no, no, no. You’re not going to stick with that, it’s impossible that somebody nine-year-olds knows what they want to do, or 12-year-olds even.’ So I don’t know, I have mixed emotions about it but I understand your suspicions, because a bunch of libs are now running these institutions, and the whole notion of not teaching history, I know exactly what that’s about. That is about making sure that those kids don’t have slightest idea what America really is all about, what it has been, and what it can still be.