Aldous Huxley at Auraria?

Last week I was on the Auraria campus of CU-Denver a couple of times for notable events. On Sept. 11, President Hank Brown launched a new lecture series under his personal sponsorship, hosting John Agresto for a discussion of lessons about the American character in light of our Iraq experience and the struggle against terrorism. Then on Sept. 15, a statewide teen conference in honor of Constitution Day was presented on campus by LibertyDay.org, the national civics project headed by Andy McKean of Littleton.

Several impressions stayed with me. One, education for citizenship isn't quite as dead at our high schools and colleges as curmudgeons like me sometimes claim, though it still needs a lot of reviving.

Two, the Auraria campus buildings and grounds look great -- well-appointed, attentively maintained, and with visible signs of expansion. No evidence of the alleged financial crisis of Colorado higher education meets the eye.

Three, it always saddens me to see Auraria's grand old churches (including our state's first synagogue) now serving mostly as museums, historic sites, or secular meeting facilities rather than houses of worship. You couldn't have a more vivid symbol of our current practice of drawing down the West's moral and spiritual heritage, rather than sustaining it as integral to the process of cultural transmission and learning.

Fourth -- and in my opinion the most revealing detail of all, though seemingly small -- what volumes were spoken about our times by a men's-room vending machine in one of the classroom buildings.

The items for sale were condoms, Excedrin, Tylenol, and Tic-Tacs: little packages, none more than a dollar, fully equipping your modern college guy for the day's eventualities of pleasure, pain, and politeness as he acquires higher learning.

Will it occur to him, if Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" happens be assigned in one of his English classes, that the state-sponsored, responsibility-sapping availability of Soma bliss and recreational sex envisioned by Huxley is not far from being realized in the here and now?

And even if it does, will he recognize the danger this poses to himself, his generation, and our country? I hope so, but I doubt it.

[Cross-posted at PoliticsWest.com]

Radio links from 9/9 show

Constitution Day student conference registration is here. Charles Kesler on what's next in Iraq, this link. Mark Hillman on the Ref C money shuffle, oped from Friday's Rocky. Plus that nagging lecture set to music, Total Momsense. Thanks for listening to Backbone Radio!

For better schools, don't overspend, overcome

Since I don't see many first-run movies today, because of the high prices and low quality, here's an older cinematic analogy to illustrate how Democrats and Republicans differ on the approach to government. Today's script comes from House Speaker Andrew Romanoff's state-wide education grandstanding tour. There's a 1992 movie with Daman Wayans titled Mo' Money. That seems to be the Democrats' answer for everything. Recent examples include Amendment 23 and Referendum C. Remember how Bill Owens, Bruce Benson, the Denver Post, Rocky Mountain News and almost all state Democrats promised us this would be the answer to Coloradoans' dreams? We'd see fully-funded schools, freshly-paved roads and highways, and they wouldn't be asking for another tax increase again.

But - surprise, surprise - in today's Rocky Mountain News, we're told to look for the premiere of "Amendment 23: The Sequel." That's because Romanoff sees these (gasp!) schools with bad sewer systems, unacceptable gym equipment, and golly-gee whillikers, that's not good enough for Colorado kids. And what would that mean for state government if this big-government pipe dream comes true? Mo' Money, Mo' Money, and Mo' Money in state coffers - and out of taxpayers' pockets.

It's painful to be right at times, and I was in my 2005 post about Democrats' almost insatiable appetite for taxing and spending. Romanoff also opines in this article: "Coloradans haven't been dared to dream about what their schools could be... There's a real appetite for this conversation."

Note to the Speaker: There already has been some dreaming (and doing) with educational alternatives in Colorado. Some parents have chosen to home-school their kids, and others have opted to send their kids to charter schools - where some have waiting lists in the hundreds, and sometimes thousands for kids to get accepted. Not to mention the push for educational vouchers, so parents (and not some state bureaucracy) could decide where their children would be educated.

But that doesn't set well with the Democrats biggest supporters, the CEA and teachers' unions. Remember what Rep. Mike Merrifield said about people who supported choice in education? "There must be a special place in hell for these Privatizers, Charterizers and Voucherizers. They deserve it!" Since Dems can't offend their biggest source of campaign contributions, they obey the CEA's marching orders.

Let me think about this: Liberal Democrats defend to the hilt a 'woman's right to choose' an abortion (also known as killing an unborn human being), but parents of living children don't have the right to choose where, how and by whom their kids are educated? Another example of liberal logic - the ultimate oxymoron.

Contrast the Democratic "Mo' Money" approach to the Clint Eastwood movie, Heartbreak Ridge. Eastwood plays Marine Sergeant Gunny Highway, whose three words about overcoming adversity best reflect my (and most conservative Republicans') approach to improving education: Adapt, Improvise, Overcome. Alternative schools such as Hope Online Learning Academy are using the Gunny's approach, giving disadvantaged kids an alternative to the failure of public schools.

But that doesn't tow the Dems' company line on education, so they have the Rocky Mountain News criticize Hope Academy . Publish a story about a non-public school succeeding? That's not in the big-government, big-education playbook, so they can't allow that to happen.

However, support is rapidly gaining for charter and online school alternatives. A recent Gallup poll showed 60 percent of adults polled favored charter school alternatives, and 40 percent approved of online choices. That's up from 42 and 30 percent respectively in a similar poll back in 2000.

Americans are increasingly fed up with the Mo' Money approach to government and education. Private-sector, free-market alternatives that adapt and improvise are (and always have been) the best ways to overcome challenges and promote positive change in America.

Charter school opens at Reunion

"I am a Landmark student. I strive to achieve academic excellence," recited 400 kids in unison on Thursday morning. "I exemplify high moral character. I work diligently to prepare for the future. I know that my success in school and in life is dependent on my own effort." Landmark Academy, a K-5 charter school in the vast Reunion development on Commerce City's north edge, was holding its ribbon-cutting ceremony two weeks after the first classes began. Students, parents, teachers, staff, and VIP guests were aglow. This visitor was mightily impressed. Nobody there seemed deserving of that "special place in hell" which charter supporters allegedly merit, according an email last year from state House education chairman Mike Merrifield to state Senate education chairman Sue Windels.

At the ceremony, booard chairman Tim Gallagher spoke of neighborhood families seeking a way to "make lemonade of lemons" after Adams District 27J lost a school-construction bond issue in 2005. Steve Ormiston, VP of Shea Homes, worked with them and the district on a national search for a proven charter-school contract operator. National Heritage Academies of Grand Rapids MI got the bid, breaking ground on the new academy's building only this March. It opened on schedule, with personnel that principal Catherine Witt brags about.

The Landmark Student Creed, quoted above, gives an idea of NHA's educational approach. No soft bigotry of low expectations here. This is the company's 55th school since 1995. Founder and CEO J.C. Huizenga was on hand to greet the school community personally. He showed me the Parents' Room, front and center next to the handsome building's main entrance -- but with a separate outside door and combination lock, so moms and dads can have 24/7 access. "This is their school," said Huizenga.

Present and former staffers of the Colorado Department of Education's charter school office were also there. One said District 27J has the state's most welcoming attitude toward charter schools and choice options. "We really believe in it," Superintendent Rod Blunck told me. It's possible that Dwight Jones, newly appointed state education commissioner, believes too. There will be a charter authorizers' training event this fall, a first for the department. Maybe I was too hard on Jones about that fiasco with the Constitution booklets in Fort Carson, where he used to be superintendent.

After the "go to hell" email surfaced on FacetheState.com during the 2007 legislative session, Rep. Merrifield (D-Colorado Springs) quickly vacated his chairmanship, but word is he'll resume it come January. One more sign that charter-school opponents remain influential in state government, in an oddly inverse relationship to the notable achievements and burgeoning enrollment (3000 in District 27J alone) of these innovative and thoroughly public schools themselves.

Something is definitely backwards here, as David Harsanyi noted in a recent column. But meanwhile, for the bright-eyed kids and excellence-minded educators of Landmark Academy at Reunion, everything is rightside up and fast forward. The Voldemort shadow of Merrifield and Windels doesn't seem to darken their horizon at all.

[Cross-posted on PoliticsWest.com]

Ignorant educators at it again

How about that Dwight Jones? The newly appointed Colorado Education Commissioner, in one of his last official acts as superintendent of Fountain-Fort Carson school district, made sure the students in his 2007 graduating class were protected from such dangerous propaganda as a pocket booklet containing the US Constitution and Declaration of Independence. Whew, that was close; well done, Dr. Jones. Erin Emery reports in the Denver Post that Jones's District 8 was one of two in the Colorado Springs area that rebuffed the gift offer from El Paso County commissioner Douglas Bruce last spring. Officials in Lewis-Palmer District 38 also stood vigilant against the suspicious stranger offering political candy to kids. At least 12 other districts accepted the booklets for distribution to graduates.

A District 38 spokeswoman explained that the school board, administrators, and principal decided "if they let him hand out something that he thought was innocuous then, of course, we couldn't say no to anyone else." Indeed, what might be next: Hare Krishna tracts, oil industry climate propaganda, perhaps even condoms? Us guardians of young minds had best draw a firm line and keep'em all out.

Now consider: if high-ranking educators made a language blooper like using "us" as the subject of a sentence, everyone might -- might -- notice and protest. But these ignoramuses in D-8 and D-38 have committed a far worse civic and philosophic outrage, and you can bet this story will have no legs at all. A controversial citizen, Bruce, gets the brushoff from a well-credentialed PhD, Jones -- so what? The world yawns.

Do I exaggerate? It truly is a civic outrage when D-38's Robin Adair can damn America's charter of self-government with faint praise as "a lovely document [that] we have[n't] anything against." And it's a philosophic outrage when she can describe the Constitution, on behalf of the people's elected board of education, as "something that he [Bruce] thought was innocuous."

Notice the intellectually fashionable, scrupulously neutral relativism in those words. The school board isn't saying the booklet with our founding documents is noxious, but they're not saying it's innocuous either. The latter is just some guy's opinion -- handled sniffily with rubber gloves and tongs by the antiseptic agents of officialdom. Post-modernists everywhere applaud, while in Beijing and Havana ironic smiles break out: they know quite well how noxious Doug Bruce's little gift really is.

What we're really glimpsing here -- at least in the Lewis-Palmer case, since at Fountain-Fort Carson no reason was given -- is the toxic multiculturalism that now pervades American education at all levels. Prof. Thomas Krannawitter of Hillsdale College defined it well in the Investor's Business Daily the other day:

"Multiculturalism... agrees on balance that there is no objective truth, especially no moral or political truth, to be discovered by human reason.... The real test of multicultural education is whether one has freed one's mind from the trappings of one's own culture -- especially... American culture..." Bingo. Ms. Adair probably had no idea that's what she was voicing. But she was. Shame on her, her employers, and Commissioner Dwight Jones. What over-educated fools they all are.

To end on an up note, though, Coloradans can be grateful and proud that we have in our backyard the Littleton-based Liberty Day organization, a national volunteer powerhouse dedicated to giving students across the country -- you guessed it -- pocket copies of the Constitution and Declaration.

Andy McKean, the founder, is working with high-schooler Jimmy Sengenberger to host a statewide conference for students on Saturday, September 15, at CU-Denver, where a spectrum of speakers (me included) will talk about what the Constitution means and why it's so noxious to tyrants of every size, grand and petty alike. Do you know a teen who ought to attend? Here's the link for more information.