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... esty and unemployed welfare recipients will be able to achieve their political goals by manipulating local, state and national elected officials on policies and issues that incidentally favor them. And then radical ACLU lawyers and liberal activist judges are eager to distort the idea of freedom of speech to encompass lewdness, utterances of obscenities and vulgarities in public, nudity, hate speech, college professors voicing anarchy, insurrection, rebellion and class-warfare revolution and the dissolution of Christian holidays and symbols associated with Christmas, Thanksgiving, Halloween, St. Patricks Day, St.
Valentines Day and Easter. In its original context Freedom of Speech simply meant challenging arbitrary and capricious government edicts. Its definition and implementation had little to do with the explicit obscenities indicative of rap music lyrics and of nude dancing and pornographic literature emporiums in American communities. When a country loses the stability evident in its past it begins losing its moral identity in the present and in the future. Nowhere is the negative influence of too much democracy translating into mediocrity as much evident in todays America than that which is apparent in our lackluster public schools. In this new arrangement called cooperative education the teacher (authority figure) is reduced from being the significant knowledge person guiding the class through a lesson and now his or her new function is to wander from classroom group to group being a general resource person known as a facilitator.
The new educational democracy emphasis is on the group (instead of the professional authority individual) determining its own goals, roles and methods. Now heres where quality time-on-task education ultimately suffers with this new child centered curriculum. The classroom groups waste valuable time bickering, debating, selecting, compromising, and talking while student individual will (along with teacher authority) is surrendered to conform to student majority opinion. When teachers are compelled to divide classes into groups to engage in cooperative learning they are adhering to an educational trend that postulates getting along with others (in a newly established and recognized pecking order) transcends the need for individual academic achievement and accountability. Just like in the American political structure, in public school education socialism is disguised and marketed as democracy and group dominance prevails. Many lethargic members of those classroom groups heavily rely on the group managers to do both their work and homework for them.
And so public high schools produce many students that cant read and cant write because someone in the cooperative group had done those things for them (just like in the political welfare system) since those other conscientious students wanted to get good grades for themselves on their report cards. Schools are now producing many doltish graduates that are unskilled, untrained, and unprepared and unless theyre going to college the seniors are bound for and being herded into minimum wage employment. But despite those horrendous salient facts school administrators are edified to know that the graduates have learned how to get along with one another in cooperative democratic groups. The group technique in American education has dismally failed because the suspect method has been and is producing a society of empty-headed gossipers and not a nation of independent thinkers. When students are divided into groups for cooperative learning the stronger-willed ones and the more intelligent ones will naturally dominate the groups power structure. The more dynamic student leaders tend to be ambitious and are concerned about doing well because they selfishly want to earn a good grade for their group contribution.
The more industrious student leaders not only determine the direction the group will take but also wind-up doing the bulk of the work for the lazy students in the group that lack sufficient motivation to achieve on their own. But when the non-workers and the non-contributors become the dominant decision makers later in life in either American democratic education or in the American political structure, then mediocrity will prevail (just like Plato had asserted) and excellence is automatically stifled. Does this trend in American democratic education sound familiar? American education is redundantly mimicking the failed democratic (socialistic) welfare system that ensures the continuation of individual irresponsibility being rewarded by the U. S.
federal and state governments for citizens habitually practicing a lack of motivation and / or bad habits! And please remember that the Marxist/Lenin Russian Communists used to call their failed agricultural system Cooperatives. When an educational scenario exists where the better-motivated students produce work for the more lethargic ones and when the less motivated students profit from the labor of the more motivated gifted-students, then the endgame is educational socialism and not educational democracy. The same principle holds true in adult America where the influence of non-productive members of society on vulnerable and power-hungry American politicians has become the standard. In our American democracy irresponsibility is rewarded and mediocrity is now the clarion call. Democratic education (as interpreted by educational psychology) has led to a very dangerous notion that students should be equal.
Student academic performance and behavioral differences are minimized in todays public schools regardless of individual ability. Excellence is sacrificed and mediocrity results when both ends of the educational spectrum (A and F students) are forced to gravitate toward a sociological median. And in the functioning of American government, the productive members, employers and corporations through their hard-earned tax dollars must support those people (citizens) that are unmotivated and dependent on government assistance despite the fact that the social parasites had equal opportunity to learn in public schools and now have equal opportunity to advance in the American free enterprise system. The economic playing field is now available for ambitious minorities but first blacks and Hispanics must overcome the irresponsibility and apathy syndromes that prevail in the culturally isolated city ghettos. While the needs of the group are magnified in democratic education the input of the students that contribute the most is devalued in terms of individual reward in American education (the same truth exists in American politics). The smarter ambitious students in school and the smarter ambitious citizens in society then become subordinated to the needs of the group and must tow the weight of the weaker non-motivated students and unmotivated citizens.
By craftily inter playing psychological and philosophical terminology like cooperative learning, democratic education welfare, justice and sharing, the truth becomes blurred and nebulous in the eighty-percent middle area gray zone and is increasingly more difficult for the average citizen to distinguish and fathom. And so socialism (group work and re-distribution of wealth from the motivated to the un-motivated) is advanced and stealthily masquerades around disguised as democracy (individual pursuit) in both education and in American politics. Thus our great Republic is constantly and egregiously being endangered by democratic (socialistic) initiatives. I have been and right now am disturbed that if the prevalent practice in public school education and in American politics is indeed socialism, then the exercise ought not be labeled and marketed under the title democratic education or under the guise of American democracy. Our beloved country has drastically wandered from our original American Constitutional precepts (individual pursuit and individual rights) as prescribed by our Founding Fathers wishes both in our society's daily welfare-oriented activities that have been more recently redefined and instituted in our public schools. This socialistic deviation from true democratic (free enterprise) principles has weakened our national moral fiber and has spontaneously and simultaneously weakened our American Republic.
Being politically correct and being influenced by sound-byte messages in popular American society have taken precedence over the need for individual sacrifice and individual accomplishment (resulting from hard work) directed toward attaining a personal goal. Smart students are labeled nerds and geeks and freaks by their dumber peers and the academically gifted teens are also labeled selfish by the educational powers-that-be because some smarter students refuse to share their knowledge with their peer intimidator's. And in the society at large those incentive-oriented individuals that practice free enterprise must also support those vegetable citizens that are perfectly content living at a lower standard while either doing little for themselves or for their fellow man or even caring to benefit or improve either condition. Both our American society and our public schools are losing their sense of purpose, are shrewdly hiding their weaknesses and are destroying the sacred foundations of our American culture that were originally predicated on self-sufficiency. By attempting to accommodate the needs of those students that cannot measure-up to the rigorous standards of individual pursuit of happiness, free individual enterprise, the American dream and the pioneering instinct as ordained by Thomas Jefferson, public schools (and our deficient American democracy) have adopted the course to use socialistic methods to attain democratic goals, thus making our Republic vulnerable to weakness and in jeopardy of eventually dissolving from the inside.
Todays teenagers (and many of our lackluster dependent adults) misconstrue the pursuit of pleasure as the definition for the pursuit of happiness heralded in Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence. As a result our American culture is becoming more hedonistic than intellectual and more volatile and less stable. So in conclusion our cherished American democracy is destined to wallow in mediocrity by tolerating individual misconduct, increasing crime, non-motivated people and by over-protectively looking out for their un meritorious interests by sympathetically calling slackers unfortunate citizens. I agree with Plato.
The best form of government would be a no-nonsense Republic that treats rights as privileges that (first of all) must be earned through achievement and accomplishment, maintained by commitment and by dedicated volunteer service to the society with the requisite understanding that those privileges would be revoked should an individual fall into practicing bad habits and demonstrating continual irresponsibility. A new governmental paradigm is needed and it should be one that manifests citizen privileges as opposed to espousing unalienable rights for everyone. A fundamental problem with democracy is that not everyone pulls their own weight and those that dont are rewarded with welfare and Medicaid (Guess who pays for this? ) In addition to the welfare quagmire evil and malicious people cannot be trusted and ought to have their privileges revoked. The Communists were partially right; some lawbreaking people cant be credited with equal rights and must be controlled on the basis of past negative performance.
Some people cannot be trusted with absolute freedom (and must be controlled), especially when their self-centered actions endanger the rights and / or safety of themselves and others. American Representative Democracy is an inefficient form of government that makes hard-working upper middle class citizens contribute almost fifty percent of their annual incomes in taxes to subsidize others (in terms of housing and public school education) that live just a tier below them in terms of material comforts and medical and social benefits. Jay Dubya (author's initials) John Wiessner
Free research essays on topics related to: form of government, pursuit of happiness, freedom of speech, thomas jefferson, cooperative learning
Research essay sample on Pursuit Of Happiness Freedom Of Speech
