School Corruption: Here and Now

The words School and Corruption are seldom, if ever, seen together. Why? Because most people simply refuse to believe that something so sacrosanct as school can be connected with illegal and immoral acts. We just do not expect those who are responsible for the education of our children to be capable of being irresponsible, let alone guilty of corruption. However, that is exactly what is going on.

It is time to address this huge problem. School budgets have reached the point where too many people have their hands in the pies, and when people mix with other people’s money, we should always expect problems.

Armand Fusco, former superintendent and author of “SCHOOL CORRUPTION,” writes, “School corruption takes many forms, but it falls into three main categories: I: cheating and deceit, II: waste and mismanagement, and III: fraud and stealing.” He should know. Many people sense that the schools are dishonest, but few will admit it about the schools in their community. Take a look at ours.

Category I: cheating and deceit. Let me count the ways:
About 60% of my town’s tenth graders fail the state test of basic skills based on information taught up to eighth grade, but the employees tell us that they are delivering “excellence in education.” The terrible results tell us that the school system has the children for ten years to provide an eighth grade level schooling, and still only 40% can pass according to the state. Are we being deceived about the quality of the schooling offered? Is 60% failure a high quality result?

Next, who benefits when 75% of middle schoolers are placed on the honor roll? If we know that only about 40% are at their grade level, then we know that a large portion of the kids on the honor roll are below their grade level. What’s going on? It’s called cheating by the schools, just like the times when teachers change the students’ tests in order to show a higher percent of achievement. I’ll get back to this a little later.

Are we justified in calling it cheating by the employees? You bet. It deceives the children; it deceives the parents; it deceives the community. This practice of putting failing students on honor rolls is fraud, and fraud is a form of corruption. The same goes for all the occasions when courses are dumbed down and children who do little are given passing grades. Maybe the worst example: the brightest students are ignored. They are cheated and used by the employees. Is that corrupt? You bet.

“Edspeak” is the language of school employees. It is a language designed to deceive.

There is another big category of school corruption. It is the corrupting of the very purpose of school-- that is, the education of our children. The government has never been interested in truly educating our children. Its schools’ original purpose, back in 1840 was to turn out the millions of factory workers for the industrial revolution, plus a good supply of soldiers. Government officials were clear in their requirement that the masses should not be too well educated…their goal was to train obedient workers and predictable consumers. That has not changed, in fact, academic instruction has been steadily watered down over the years while psychological conditioning has emerged as a main goal today, training our children to have certain government-approved attitudes and opinions, but not to have the creative intelligence to become leaders or innovators.

The result is a total corruption of the very idea of education. Conditioning to certain ideology is the opposite of education. Education is training children how to think; while the methods our state-run schools use are therapy, or mind-changing methods.

I'll get to catagories II and III later.