STUCK ON STUPID IN AMERICA
By Chuck Muth (01/16/06)
I hereby bequeath Citizen Outreach's 2006 Thomas Paine Award to ABC's John
Stossel for his 20/20 report entitled "Stupid In America: How We Cheat Our
Kids," a blistering expose of the government education system in the United
States today.
For those of you who learned American history education from a public
school, you might be surprised to know that in 1775 most colonists did NOT
support separation from England. Many actually preferred remaining as
subjects of the King. They were called "Loyalists." They wanted to
continue working within the existing system, but maybe with a few "reforms."
They were opponents of independence. They were anti-freedom.
Then along came Tom Paine and his pamphlet titled "Common Sense." As
Gregory Tietjen notes in his introduction of a reprint of this immortal
historical document, Common Sense "immediately became the moral and
intellectual touchstone for American colonists struggling to articulate
their case for independence from England." The pamphlet enjoyed
unprecedented distribution; the "first printing of several thousand copies
sold out in days, and the second, with additions, sold just as quickly."
Many historians consider publication of Paine's Common Sense to have been
the turning point of public opinion against the status quo and for a break
from the King. In that regard, we can only hope that John Stossel's "Stupid
in America" has the same effect over 230 years later.
Stupid in America has the potential for becoming the "moral and intellectual
touchstone" for Americans who have been fighting for independence from the
tyranny of government schools in this country for many years now. As in
1775, most Americans today harbor a belief, more a hope, that education
under the current system isn't all that intolerable; that we just need to
tinker around the edges a bit with a tweak here and a tweak there. Oh, and
more money, of course.
Stupid in America obliterates that flight of fancy (click here to watch
excerpts: http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Stossel/story?id=1491217).
I won't go into the details and content of Stossel's actual report here.
Rather, I'm suggesting that education patriots who have long supported a
break from the public school monopoly may now have a modern-day version of
Common Sense with which to finally turn around the majority of public
opinion. Stupid in America needs to be distributed far and wide. Every
elected legislator in the country ought to watch it, as should every
concerned parent and taxpayer. The case for complete and total education
independence will no longer be arguable after watching this report by anyone
but blind loyalists of the current system.
It's time to choose sides. To spit or get off the pot. No more
fence-sitting. You're either with us or against us. You're either for
total freedom, choice and independence from the government school monopoly
or you're an education "Loyalist," deserving of disdain and derision. And
that especially goes for our modern-day Lobsterbacks, the teachers union.
These militant foot soldiers of the status quo, as exposed in Stossel's
report, will stoop to any level in defending their monopoly control over our
kids' lackluster education - and they are 100% committed to crushing anyone
who dares threaten their power. It's time to strip away the Suzy Sunshine
face they portray in public and expose them for what they and their agenda
really and truly are: Anti-education. Or at least, anti-education
excellence. These people are Masters of Mediocrity. At best.
And if you are a teacher who belongs to the teachers union, thus helping to
perpetuate with your dues their iron grip on the current system, you, too,
are anti-education. There's just no nice way to put it. It's well past
time for you to...quit...the...union.
All of this might sound harsh if you haven't yet watched Stupid in America.
But once you see this eye-opener, you, too, won't be able to help coming to
the conclusion that the education monopoly in this country must be
obliterated - not just accommodated or reformed - once and for all. Which
makes it all the more important for education patriots to assure the widest
distribution and circulation possible of Stossel's Stupid in America.
It's just common sense.
Copyright 2006 Chuck Muth. All rights reserved.
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