January 31, 2004
ONLT THE FOURTH "R" MATTERS:
Our Foreign Legions: Lessons and cautions from Europe on assimilating immigrants. (FRANCIS FUKUYAMA, January 31, 2004, Wall Street Journal)
Americans, looking at Europe, should be glad that they have made their country an assimilation powerhouse. But as the authors of a new volume on assimilation edited by Tamar Jacoby indicate, this is not something that we can take for granted. During the big immigration wave of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the largely Protestant native-born elites deliberately sought to use the public school system to assimilate the newcomers from southern and eastern Europe to their cultural values. The 1960s and '70s gave rise to multiculturalism, affirmative action and bilingualism, which sought to reverse course on assimilation. The '90s saw a backlash against this kind of divisive identity politics with the passage of Proposition 227 in California, which wiped out public school bilingual programs at a stroke. This was our version of the headscarf ban, one that worked well because it was supported by a great many Hispanic parents themselves who felt their children were being held back in a Spanish language ghetto.It is in this context that we should evaluate President Bush's recent proposal to grant illegal aliens work permits. Many Americans dislike the policy because it rewards breaking the law. This is all true; we should indeed use our newly invigorated controls over foreign nationals to channel future immigrants into strictly legal channels. But since we are not about to expel the nearly seven million people potentially eligible for this program, we need to consider what policies would lead to their most rapid integration into mainstream American society. For the vast majority of illegal aliens, the law they broke on entering the country is likely to be the only important one they will ever violate, and the sooner they can normalize their status, the faster their children are likely to participate fully in American life.
It is no exaggeration to say that the assimilation of culturally distinct immigrants will be the greatest social challenge faced by developed democracies over the coming decades. Given the subreplacement fertility rates of native-born populations, high levels of immigration have become necessary to fund not just current standards of living but future social security benefits. Divergent immigration patterns will unfortunately deepen the wedge that has emerged between America and Europe in foreign policy. We cannot do much to affect European policy, but we can take steps to see that their problems do not become our own.
Turning our schools back into training grounds for fit citizens of the Republic would seem a cause around which nativist and immigrantophile could unite. Posted by Orrin Judd at January 31, 2004 11:04 AM
It will have to be undertaken against the tooth-and-nail resistance of the most powerful factional interest in this country: teachers.
Another model would be to discredit the schools, and begin their gradual replacement with homeschooling -- which is inexorably developing into neighborhood-schooling, with parents pooling their resources to education larger groups of children.
It wasn't all that long ago when whole towns of American children could say that they were educated -- well-educated -- by the "old maid (or widow) in the big house down the street." And that old lady damned sure taught them to be citizens and patriots. We can have that again.
Posted by: Paul Cella at January 31, 2004 11:12 AMPaul:
You guys talk so tough when it comes to a bunch of powerless aliens, you can't be scared of a bunch of teachers?
Posted by: oj at January 31, 2004 11:18 AMoj -- Right on the head. This is the real nexus of common interests. Nativists should be mostly interested in reverting the de-Americanization of America in the classrooms, and leverage those efforts to compromise with immigrationphiles and admit immigrants and help them assimilate. In fact, it is Balkanization (of proper Americans) and lack of assimilation (of recent immigrants) that is the main problem.
Posted by: MG at January 31, 2004 11:25 AMMr. Judd;
There's one other place besides education where there is a conflict, and that's the social safety net. Because of that a much larger set of immigrants can be net econonmic negatives.
Posted by: Annoying Old Guy at January 31, 2004 11:45 AMPowerless aliens my ass; they have the LAPD running scared, along with most major metro police departments.
We should be tougher of teachers, but why bother when a better model (the model first propounded by one St. Benedict) is available.
Posted by: Paul Cella at January 31, 2004 11:47 AMUntil our late cultural revolution of the 60's and 70's, public schools in the U.S. took diverse students from many lands and taught them to read, write, do arithmetic, geography, history, government & civics, domestic arts, mechanics, and through reading lessons they also taught ethics, polite codes of behavior, how to grow up and become proud American citizens -- the melting pot that was America united us.
When we allowed public schools to be taken away from local control and created one of the most vicious bureaucracies ever conceived by the mind of man -- state and federal departments of education under the iron fist of the teachers' unions, we destroyed our educational system which was once the envy of the world.
We also allowed leftwing nutcases led by Moscow to turn our society on its head and corrupt our culture and institutions. The public schools no longer teach students to be self sufficient American citizens. They teach all students, not only children of immigrants, to balkanize themselves into an ethnicity, a religion, a race, a sexual persuasion, etc. by irrational political correctness, multiculturalism and diversity. As in most movements of the far left, "New Speak" is employed by using words to mean the opposite of their true meaning. These devices are used to divide and conquer society and turn each of these groups against each other while stressing leftwing propaganda instead of the tried and true methods of teaching kids the three R's.
I noted that in California one the new governor's proposals is to return much of the control of public schools back to the local community. I pray he is successful and that other states follow his lead. Public schools in the U.S. are a dismal failure as costs skyrocket, students who graduate from high schools are less and less prepared to make their way in the world.
Until our late cultural revolution of the 60's and 70's, public schools in the U.S. took diverse students from many lands and taught them to read, write, do arithmetic, geography, history, government & civics, domestic arts, mechanics, and through reading lessons they also taught ethics, polite codes of behavior, how to grow up and become proud American citizens -- the melting pot that was America united us.
When we allowed public schools to be taken away from local control and created one of the most vicious bureaucracies ever conceived by the mind of man -- state and federal departments of education under the iron fist of the teachers' unions, we destroyed our educational system which was once the envy of the world.
We also allowed leftwing nutcases led by Moscow to turn our society on its head and corrupt our culture and institutions. The public schools no longer teach students to be self sufficient American citizens. They teach all students, not only children of immigrants, to balkanize themselves into an ethnicity, a religion, a race, a sexual persuasion, etc. by irrational political correctness, multiculturalism and diversity. As in most movements of the far left, "New Speak" is employed by using words to mean the opposite of their true meaning. These devices are used to divide and conquer society and turn each of these groups against each other while stressing leftwing propaganda instead of the tried and true methods of teaching kids the three R's.
I noted that in California one the new governor's proposals is to return much of the control of public schools back to the local community. I pray he is successful and that other states follow his lead. Public schools in the U.S. are a dismal failure as costs skyrocket, students who graduate from high schools are less and less prepared to make their way in the world.
I think that the School Choice initiatives have the best chance for breaking the power of the teacher's unions. At some point, if School Choice is successful, and a thriving private education industry takes off, public education will go the way of the dodo, and government will be involved only from the standpoint of providing vouchers for low income families.
Now what was that cliche?Something about tragedy and farce,wasn't it?
So,is this where we start laughing?Or at least start to a giggle a bit?
Posted by: M. at January 31, 2004 5:49 PM