Dr. Fred Eichelman: What Has Happened to the Schools of America?

Dr. Fred Eichelman

“School Days, School Days
Dear old Golden Rule Days
Reading and writing and ‘rithmatic
Taught to the tune of the hickory stick”

How many of you remember that song? It certainly does not describe where education is going today. If two of the things mentioned in the opening of the song were practiced in most schools today the teacher would be fired. Can’t have “The Golden Rule” (too Biblical, religion in the schools) and a “hickory stick”? Child brutality, with a guaranteed prison term.

I remember my own school days in the 1940’s. I frankly was bored from kindergarten to grade three. The Dick and Jane books, now considered collectible classics, were lame as my parents started me reading before I entered school. I will never forget The Wind in The Willows series that my mom read to me as a child. I was also big into comic books: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and Buck Rogers had better story lines than offered in school. The school librarian resisted my desire to read older books. I was ready for The Hardy Boys, but they insisted The Bobbsey Twins was better for me. And now there are groups saying the Twins were racist…

It was not until 4th Grade when Mrs. Radachy became my teacher that I truly enjoyed school. She not only let me read what I wanted but also encouraged me to write stories. And to even be in plays. During my teaching years I used to say it was not just me who entered the classroom, it was Mrs. Radacy and several others I could name who greatly influenced me in the classroom. Sad they would not be permitted to teach in our public schools today.

In our classes we did not have time to study Critical Race Theory, or fake history, or listen to people telling us we were all one gender and that our nation was evil causing most of the world’s problems.  It was reading and writing and arithmetic. Plus, patriotism was a major key to our learning. Each morning there was the pledge to the flag and a prayer.  During World War Two after school, we walked the streets doing our patriotic duty in scrap and paper drives and selling war stamps and bonds. We loved our tasks as we loved our country.

Somewhere something went wrong.  Maybe some of the anti-American kids of the sixties studied to become teachers under socialist college instructors and they have taken over. What we called
“education associations” during my forty years of teaching have become unions that are wings of the progressive socialist Democrat Party. If I were a college graduate now, I would never teach in public schools, only public or private schools. Then again, I might not be a college graduate as I might be kicked out for being a conservative, a patriotic conservative.

In my younger years I was a big reader of science fiction stories: Brave New World, 1984, Fahrenheit 451 and Invasion of The Body Snatchers. Good reading, but something that I believed could never happen to what was described as a “brain-dead America”. But it has happened.

Thomas Jefferson warned that education would keep our nation free. When Jefferson was president, he was also the head of schools in the District of Columbia. He required that every classroom have a Bible and that it be taught from. Now we hear much on the news about public schools and colleges where patriotism and Christianity is despised and taught against. But it is not too late. This November at the polls we can hopefully take our nation back…

Dr. Fred Eichelman

Dr. Fred Eichelman is a retired teacher and a director for Point North Outreach, a Christian media organization. He recently had a book published, Faith, Family, Film-A Teacher's Trek. Fred is a former local Republican Committee chairman and has attended hundreds of conventions from political to science fiction. He sees the two as compatible. Fred also tells us he values very much a title we gave him since he could not be a PolitiChick. PolitiDude.

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