The Origin of the Left’s Discontent

By Joe David

America is collapsing on almost every crucial level. Our great universities, which were once a fortress of reason, are shamelessly responsible by producing men and women hell-bent on destroying our free nation.

In the last decade especially, corruption has become so widespread in America that many citizens accept it as the norm. This collapse of law and order didn’t occur overnight, even though it is fashionable to think so by blaming it on the Trump administration. It began years ago when educators systematically began to encourage student disrespect toward America by romanticizing globalism.

The anarchy that I predicted in the 80s in my nationally acclaimed novel The Fire Within has today become a reality. Many of the schemes to break down societal order, first tested and perfected in inner-city schools, have spread throughout the public school system, and into our great universities. This has left many parents bewildered and searching for an explanation. The excuses often echoed by prominent educators and publications like Education Week are almost always the same with parental neglect, stagnant school spending, lack of diversity, and even racism usually getting top listing.

Rarely are educators heard sharing the real reasons for the problem. Those credentialed men and women who have the knowledge and the willingness to shed light on what’s happening are not being allowed to speak out publicly. Whatever crucial information that they may have to share is silenced by disagreeable students and the endless blast of denial and propaganda from the mainstream media. Our great universities, which have the skill to unite the country, are working hand-in-hand with the media to divide it.

To circumvent this national trend, many prominent leaders committed to open dialogue and freedom of speech are boldly resisting this trend by attempting to speak out on campuses against the organized movement to silence them and to subvert freedom. What they are facing almost everywhere for their efforts is armed resistance. The very institutions that once peacefully guarded our freedom and nurtured our independence are encouraging rioting. UCLA-Berkeley is an excellent example.

In a Los Angeles Times article, one demonstrator, disturbed by the negative news coverage campus protestors were getting, wisely believed that such continued coverage would turn the public against the student movement. Unfortunately, the demonstrator didn’t seem to realize that this was exactly what the masterminds behind the rebellion wanted. In order to break down order in a powerful country like America, they needed widespread discontent. The best way to do this was to train students in Alinsky-style protesting and turn one group against the other.

As a young man, educated traditionally in the forties and fifties, I wasn’t prepared for the modern classroom. In my day, the schools were orderly, not a fist-fighting, pill-popping jungle. Although I was sometimes smart enough to spot the mendacity and propaganda that was creeping into the schools during my school years, the schools were generally a safe place for traditional learning. Most students were taught to understand through education and hard work that they could realize their dreams.

When I decided to teach in the sixties and seventies, I saw for the first time the raw reality of change, especially in inner-city schools. Understanding the cause for this rising breakdown of order didn’t come easily for me. It took time – and much reading, thinking and testing to identify. Like so many teachers, I was concerned about the students’ freedom to run wild and to destroy property with immunity. At first, I blamed the principal, attributing the disorder to his inability to motivate the students – until I realized that the principal was in place, not because of some accident, but because he was exactly the person needed by the system to advance such chaos.

This was true, not just where I taught, but at other inner-city public schools as well. Many principles were used like pawns, carefully chosen, to set in motion activities that would accelerate the disintegration of education. They did this by employing a myriad of activities, like mismatching teachers and subjects, encouraging student power, and supporting academic programs that would handicap learning. (Several examples of the latter included teaching the look-say reading method, the confusing new math system, and even revisionist history.) To give purpose to the chaos that followed, ruthless teachers who thrived in failing classrooms were hired to advance their political agenda, in lieu of reading, writing, and arithmetic.

When I finally stepped through the cloud of deception, carefully created to blur my understanding of the problem, I began to see a very dark force at play. Quite by accident I came across Dr. Maria Montessori’s book, The Absorbent Mind, which was published many years earlier. This honest, and easy-to-read book immediately clarified the problem for me. Instead of advancing the moral relativity inherent in pragmatism, taught in most government schools, Dr. Montessori advanced a philosophy of education that respected the moral and intellectual growth of each child. In my novel, The Fire Within, I identified these two diametrically opposing views of education and set them against each other to demonstrate what would happen when they were put into action. After publishing my book, I went on the road in the early 80s to promote it. Through hard-work and design I was booked by many talk shows, locally and nationally.

I believed then, as I do today, that the surest way to societal salvation begins with the right educational philosophy. This can best be achieved through an education system, like the Montessori system, which respects moral development and individual freedom. Unfortunately, pragmatism, which basically conflicts with the Montessori system, has a stronghold on today’s education. Ending this stronghold isn’t going to be easy. But if we are to survive as a free and independent society, we must succeed. What is happening today all around us should convince us of the urgency.