The Secret

The Secret We All Know But Will Not Speak Aloud.
By J. D. Longstreet
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July 2007
The Marxist based politically correct movement has given Americans a sense of deep shame. It has also given us a sense of vulnerability we did not have before The Political Correctness Movement arrived from Europe onto our shores.

As a result American dare not speak the truth… about anything. If one speaks the truth one may offend someone else and that is unacceptable in a society ruled by Marxism… excuse me, I mean… Political Correctness. Ask our cousins in the United Kingdom. They are smothered, practically to death, by layers of political correctness.

Political correctness has forced the US to turn out several generations of students from our public schools with mediocre, or less than mediocre, educations. We turn out some of the dumbest students on the globe! Many receive diplomas they can’t even read! Foreign students run rings around our public school educated students.

This country’s education system used to be celebrated, world wide, as the best. Then it collapsed.

So, what happened?

Integration happened. Then bussing happened. And between the two we managed to destroy the world’s best education system.

We saw the collapse as it happened, but nobody would stand up and point out what was happening and why. There was the looming Damocles Sword over the heads of anyone stupid enough to cry foul! And, so, we allowed our public school system to die a slow and horrible death.

Now, I am aware that I will get comments on this article calling me a racist and a bigot. I understand that. Because, as a southerner, I have come to expect that from those who are so ignorant they have no clue how else to respond. So, I’ll just overlook those comments and continue on.

First of all… I live in an integrated neighborhood. My neighbors, across the street, are black. My neighbors behind me, whose property abuts mine, are black. My neighbors, two doors down, are black. I hired the first black broadcaster and added him to the staff of an all white broadcast station in Southeastern North Carolina… in the seventies! So… if you still want to contend I am a racist… then have at it.

Did you ever visit several churches on a Sunday morning and observe how your community is segregated during the worship hour? It is probably the most segregated hour of the week in America. Folks are given a choice as to where they wish to worship, and with whom they wish to worship, and they choose, by the vast majority, to worship with other folks of the same race.

Now… visit your neighborhood school during the lunch hour and observe the way the students, when given the freedom to decide where they will sit in the cafeteria, choose to sit with other students of their own race. You’ll see the same phenomena at athletic events.

There is a tension between the races, in our schools, and there has been since integration was forced upon the students of America. Neither side particularly liked it. That tension exists and it is palpable in the schools you might visit today.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I think integration of public schools is fine. What I think is NOT fine, and is absolutely wrong, is… forced integration of those schools. And to make matters even worse, forced bussing of students to fill some quota, or other, of blacks vs. whites in the student bodies of those schools. NOBODY likes it.

If a neighborhood school has black and white students, by choice, then that is fine. Those students and their families want them to be there and they are comfortable and an atmosphere, conducive to learning, is not destroyed by dissatisfaction among the students and the parents of those students.

So… why are we doing it? And why are we continuing to graduate students from our public school system who are simply not educated enough to function in today’s society… let alone compete in the global marketplace?

I was fortunate in that I graduated High School before the integration of our schools began. Believe it, or not, a high school education in the 1950’s was better than a 2 year college degree today. The high school graduates of the 1950’s could stand toe to toe with, and best, nearly any two year college grad today. The quality of the education American students received in the 1950’s was so far superior to anything the American student gets today that it is shocking!

College professor friends tell me that, these days, the first two years of college is basically remedial. The college must teach the high school graduate what he was not taught in high school before he, or she, can embark on their college studies. That, dear reader, speaks volumes about the inferior education system we have in America today.

So… how do we fix it? I don’t think we can. I would suggest scraping the American public education system and starting over. To guarantee schools are allowed to actually teach their students, keep the federal government completely out of the new public school system. Each state should have it’s own public school system. No feds allowed.

Open the schools to mixed races. If the student s and their families wish to attend a certain school, then allow them to do so…even if that means having some schools predominantly black and others predominately white. Who cares… as long as the students are happy and are getting a quality education?

Private schools and home schools will still exist and that would be fine, too, for those who wish to go that route.

Do you see the problem with this, though? We have too many power hungry politicians in DC who simply cannot allow American students to go through 12 years of public education without being guinea pigs in their great social experiments with the young people of America. And that is exactly how we got into this mess with under educated students in America today!

All of the above is troubling. But… what is even more troubling is the fact that we Americans see the problems, we see the reasons behind the problem, we know how to fix the problem, yet… we allow it to exist and we continue sentence our young students to a life of mediocrity… all because we are afraid to speak up and correct an imminently correctable situation!

How can we do this to our kids? How can we do this to ourselves? How can we do this to our nation… and expect our nation to survive, and compete, in a world of scholars and in a global marketplace run by scholars? At some point it will all catch up with us.

If you doubt me on the effect on our society the destruction of the public education system in America has already had… I offer as evidence… exhibit “A”… the US Congress!

J. D. Longstreet

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