Years ago when I had a group of graduate students that needed my class for certification as teachers and none of these could write a paper worthy of a college freshman I faced the fact there was no hope for reform in our schools. I would say to Lou Dobbs and others who are tackling the problem of the failed educational system in America to go back to “Reconstruction” in order to understand how we have come to this sorry pass. Professor Claude G. Bowers had pinpointed many of the potential problems for education in his definitive book “The Tragic Era,” and how so-called “Reconstruction” had opened the way to Harper Lee’s lament of Alabama schools in the 30s.

Shortly after Lincoln’s War we came under a Federal Triune Dictatorship from which our nation has never recovered. What followed was a gradual takeover by the federal government of the schools of America, not to mention so many other institutions of our nation. The latest attempt by the totally unqualified Caesar Bush trading on the outright fraud of Rod Paige that gave Bush the presidency and the utterly foolish No Child Left Behind is the ultimate damning indictment of why there is little hope of reclaiming our system of education. This together with a “Press one for English” Balkanized America dooms our system of education.

My abortive run for the California State Senate some years ago was doomed from the beginning since I chose a platform of reform in education. I knew that, but being so well qualified in the field of education I felt the need to at least try to get attention on the failing schools here in my native state. However, having already failed to get the attention of Sacramento politicians years before my run for the Senate left no doubt in my mind that any attempts at real reform in education would prove Quixotic.

One result of our failed system of education in America is that an unfocused, illiterate TV generation without imagination and little in the way of real education has no chance of keeping up with computer literacy. So many millions having never learned to focus the needed attention on reading books of great literature and has such a short TV sound byte attention span acknowledged by the cacophony of beating drums and other noise even on news channels to get the attention of viewers is bound to encounter a host of problems demanding focused attention. This makes many easy prey to spammers and hackers; as a computer tech friend of mine has shared with me many times. This is no different than the way unscrupulous money lenders, auto mechanics and others take advantage of ignorance in a great number of ways. In the case of computers, pressing one for English and talking to someone in India in attempts to fix problems with servers and computers is much too often an exercise in futility even for those few who have a good working knowledge of computers. After all, even software writers are showing the signs of illiteracy. And one has to wonder whether English is the native language of those in charge of large computer systems like those of the federal government and airlines.

It was being told by one honest publisher my doctoral dissertation of 1975 on accountability in education was “too hot an issue for them to handle” I realized there was little possibility for improvement in our schools. As one respondent to my research wrote concerning vocational education, “If we could put a jockstrap on a lathe we would get all the funding needed.” But then, shop teachers have generally been the most vocal critics of the schools since they became the lame ducks where the “rejects” were dumped. As I witnessed the change during the 60s everyone in high school was going to go to college and become doctors and lawyers so the practical skills classes were no longer going to be needed. To emphasize this, high school administrators and counselors came through the Ivory Tower system without ever getting grease or dirt on their hands earning a living in the real world and had no idea how to do vocational counseling, only how to counsel getting into college.

While Harper Lee had already sounded the alarm over the schools in Alabama during the 30s having already engaged in “innovative designs in learning” leading to years of unrelieved boredom for children, because of the universities of America, leading to Ms. Lee’s harsh but deserved criticism of the universities, by the 60s this was the mantra of schools across America. Henry Higgins had his joke on the French that it didn’t matter what you said as long as you pronounced it correctly. The universities of America approved it didn’t matter what you said, but unlike the French you didn’t even have to use correct pronunciation.

Along comes desegregation and Affirmative Action, the lowering of academic standards as a consequence and suddenly we are confronted by the 1983 Blue Book “A Nation At Risk.” I had only to look at the names to realize the same people that created the problems in education were being asked to solve the problems. Lunacy! Professor Damerell follows in 1985 with his damning indictment of this problem with his “Education’s Smoking Gun. How teachers colleges have destroyed education in America.” Rousas J. Rushdoony in 1961 published his own indictment of education titled “Intellectual Schizophrenia” in which he sounded the alarm that in 1954 the lowest achieving college graduates were choosing education as a career.

Certainly I applaud those like Lou Dobbs who are trying to focus attention on the failed system of education in America. But unlike the situation we faced decades earlier there is now the matter of millions of illegal aliens, millions of unqualified teachers, and leaders like Bush that do not read books and have no idea of how to fix the problem.

All the books have been written, all the history is there, all the alarms have been sounded, the problems are obvious, but none dare fault the universities of America, the institutions responsible for the schools of America, or attempt to hold them accountable. And if this is not even possible the result is that no one is going to fix our schools.