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Townhall...
Barbara Bush: ‘No
More, You’re Killing Us’
By Chuck Norris
Former first lady Barbara Bush said on Greta Van Susteren’s “On the
Record” this past week: “We’ve got a real problem in public schools.
... This is a national crisis. It’s as bad as anything in our country.”
When Van Susteren was pointing out from Bush’s own op-ed piece that
“Texas (is) 36th in the nation in high-school graduates (and) 3.8
million Texans don’t have a high-school diploma,” Bush said, “No more,
you’re killing us.”
Bush was commendably protecting Texas pride as she told Van Susteren
not to cite any further degrading statistics about the state of Lone
Star education, though she herself references it in her op-ed piece:
--Texas ranks 49th in verbal SAT scores, 47th in literacy and 46th in
average math SAT scores.
--Texas ranks 33rd in the nation on teacher salaries.
Such low verbal and literacy scores make it even more unbelievable that
just this past week, some of the state’s educational administrators
joined the feds in seeking to mandate Arabic classes for Texas
children. No joke!
The Arabic studies program -- funded by a five-year, $1.3 million
Foreign Language Assistance Program federal grant -- was to begin this
semester at Cross Timbers Intermediate School and then spread to
neighboring schools in the Mansfield Independent School District.
Thank God for the parental passions and patriot fires of the almost 200
parents who showed up at a meeting last week to question the wisdom of
school officials. They are fighting in their own personal education
Alamo and presently have the upper hand. For the moment, the school
district has backed off plans for its Arabic studies program.
With 14 percent of American adults (32 million) incapable of reading a
newspaper or instructions on a prescription bottle, don’t you think
federal monies could be put to better use by helping Americans learn to
read and write English?
I appreciate Bush’s non-politically correct stance on the primacy of
English in America, which she echoed to Van Susteren: “I’m against
English as a second language. My great-grandmother came here as a
German. She didn’t have someone give her English as a second language.
She learned it in three months. It’s survival. And you see it in
schools all around now where you’re allowed to speak English only, and
you sink or swim. And they swim, because they’re immigrants from all
different countries. I’ve seen a school in Boston where they asked me
to read, and I said, ‘Read? They all speak 80 different languages.’ But
in three months, they learned English.”
What Bush and I (and others in this educational reform movement) are
essentially calling all of us to do is fight in a local education
Alamo! To square off and fight against all the negative forces that
besiege our children and impede their proper education. You don’t have
to have kids to engage in this culture war; you only have to be
concerned about their future -- America’s future.
It is people like the 200 parents helping to overturn that Texas school
district’s decision to mandate classes on Arabic who are showing the
way. They prove another point Bush made to Van Susteren: “I don’t think
government can do everything at all. Parents, grandparents, neighbors,
churches, everybody ... we’ve got to get ourselves geared up and not be
lazy parents and not be lazy neighbors, but we’ve got to help children.”
The only way to get America and its educational system back on track is
to take back the primary role of parenting from teachers and other
societal guardians (including Big Brother government). That also
includes our not expecting those who lead Sunday schools to be the
primary spiritual teachers of our children, rather owning that area of
their maturation, as well.
What U.S. educational reform entails is that we all find a place in the
battle. It might mean that you join an influential group that makes
decisions in your local schools or pressures those who do.
What I’m saying is this: Be proactive. Don’t wait for first lady
Michelle Obama to correct your children’s school diet before you do
something about it. Ensure that civic organizations in your area,
including tea party groups and churches, are activists for your public
schools. Call parishioners out of the pews and into school community
outreach.
My wife, Gena, and I are fighting for the next generation, and our life
mission is to take physical education up a notch in public schools by
offering our KickStart Kids program. For years, we also have supported
The Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy, and we encourage you
to do the same by going to its official website, at
http://www.BarbaraBushFoundation.com.
It all comes down to one question every citizen in our country must
answer: Are you spectating or fighting for America’s children in your
local education Alamo?
Read it at Townhall
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