Review of Bernstein, Andrew. Why Johnny Still Can’t Read or Write or Understand Math: And What We Can Do About It. Bombardier Books, an imprint of Post Hill Press, 2022, 256 p.
In this eye-opening, root-cause analysis of the sharp decline of American education over the past century or so, philosophy professor and prolific author Andrew Bernstein quotes the Reverend Jacob Duché on American erudition in the late 18th century:
The poorest laborer upon the shore of the Delaware thinks himself entitled to deliver his sentiments in matters of religion or politics with as much freedom as the gentleman or scholar…. Such is the prevailing taste for books of every kind, that almost every man is a reader. (p. 9)
Alexis de Tocqueville similarly observed:
[I]n the United States, the instruction of the people powerfully contributes to the support of a democratic republic; and such must always be the case, I believe, where instruction which awakens the understanding is not separated from moral education which amends the heart.…[I]f the Americans had not been gradually accustomed to govern themselves, their book-learning would not assist them much at the present day.
(Tocqueville, Alexis de, Phillips Bradley, Henry Reeve, and Francis Bowen. 1945. Democracy in America, Vol. 2, New York: Knopf, p. 323)
Today, regrettably, American educational institutions often ensure the opposite outcome. They produce misguided proponents of utopian causes, indoctrinated to despise their country, traditions, civilization, and even themselves. Many graduate from university with a crippling debt and useless pseudo-knowledge, while remaining ignorant of humanity’s greatest achievements and unable to think outside the box.
Despite the ever-increasing cost per pupil in the public school system, the quality of education has dramatically deteriorated. A growing number of high-school graduates are woefully deficient in basic skills such as reading, writing, and math. Taxpayers are in effect sponsoring an educational system that is not only lacking in academic rigor but encourages groupthink allegiance to progressivist and socialist concepts disguised as politically correct platitudes.
In Part One: The Current Crisis of American Schooling and How It Happened, Bernstein delves into the reasons for this catastrophe: replacement of an outstanding educational tradition, which taught people how to think, with a mind-numbing indoctrination inspired by progressivism, Marxism, and collectivism. Chapter One: The Terrible State of American Schooling provides a sobering diagnosis: “[T]here is no escaping the ugly truth that the prime cause of today’s educational disaster is the schools—and the forces that lie behind them” (p. 8). Chapter Two: Superb Education in America’s Past discusses why American education was exceptional in the 18th and 19th centuries—it employed phonics in teaching children how to read and trained them how to think by having them study the great works of Western civilization and follow what is now known as a liberal arts curriculum. Chapters Three through Five focus on how leftist academics and government bureaucrats began a “war on reading and learning” and aimed to produce uniform thinking and obedience to the state. Chapters Six Through Nine examine the education policy conflicts between progressivists and Marxists, on the one hand, who advocated dumbing down the curriculum and advancing an anti-Western ideology, and “supporters of literacy and learning” in the best traditions of humanity, on the other. Bernstein exposes the detrimental influence of Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, which has become, unfortunately, the gold standard of history teaching in high schools and universities, despite its low academic quality, serious errors, and blindly prejudiced pseudo-scientific claims.
Part Two: How We Can Fix the Educational Disaster offers concrete steps for overcoming the obstacles that obviate educational success. Chapter Ten: Teacher Training—The Mess that It Is and How We Can Fix It emphasizes the importance of high-level mastery of the subject matter in teachers’ training, supplemented by an engaging delivery when educating young minds. Chapter Eleven: The Impregnable Fortress describes the “interlocking directorate” of educational policy institutions that control the majority of schools and are impossible to reform. Chapters Twelve through Fourteen analyze the importance of parental involvement and suggest various models of successful schooling, such as home schooling, micro-schooling, and tutoring. Chapter Fifteen: The Educational Bonanza of Privatizing Government Schools examines the advantages of abolishing the inefficient and coercive public school system and replacing it with private school options, which offer academic freedom and superior curriculum quality. Creating a competitive private school market would also reduce the tuition cost across the board. Chapters Sixteen and Seventeen discuss respectively “what schooling could and should be like” and the ideal “curricula and order of presentation.”
“If education is to be vastly improved,” concludes Bernstein, “parents—and nobody else—must have 100 percent control over what is and is not taught to their children.”
Bernstein’s book is written with in-depth knowledge and understanding of the problems as well as masterful eloquence. It reads as a fast-paced thriller; yet it swiftly brings the reader back to reality with its painstaking statistics and wealth of factual information. It evokes just indignation when recounting the horror stories of modern educational failures; yet it inspires cautious hope that we can restore the standards of excellence and noble purpose of American education through reinstating the phonics method and curricula with proven success; exercising complete parental control; and privatizing the public school system.
Why Johnny Still Can’t Read or Write or Understand Math: And What We Can Do About It is a must-read for anyone who cares about American education and the future of our country and humanity in general. Education is the long-term battleground for saving the West. We can keep treating the symptoms of the irrational anti-American indoctrination that is destroying our institutions, but in order to succeed in disarming it, we must also address the root cause of the disease.
The root cause is the toxic progressive/Marxist/totalitarian ideology that dominates the education of our children from kindergarten through graduate school. It has infected mainstream media, government institutions, and even private corporations. In contrast, Classical liberal arts education has proven invaluable in teaching students how to think and write, partake of ancient wisdom, and understand their innate rights and freedoms as human beings as well as American citizens. Once we return to sanity and the time-honored models of meaningful learning that trains the mind, we will no longer produce semi-educated “elites” that despise their nation and reject the proven paragons of political and economic liberty.
Even when possessing detailed factual knowledge in a narrowly specialized area, these “elites” are not accustomed to exercising free thought; nor do they appreciate the centuries of wisdom and intransient principles that lie beneath the American founding. As President Reagan famously remarked regarding leftist intellectuals, “The trouble … is not that they’re ignorant; it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.”
Dr. Bernstein’s book makes a powerful case for reforming American education, empowering parental choice and free enterprise, and restoring the meaningful purpose of our schools.
Nora D. Clinton is a Research Scholar at the Legal Insurrection Foundation. She was born and raised in Sofia, Bulgaria. She holds a PhD in Classics and has published extensively on ancient documents on stone. In 2020, she authored the popular memoir Quarantine Reflections Across Two Worlds. Nora is a co-founder of two partner charities dedicated to academic cooperation and American values. She lives in Northern Virginia with her husband and son.
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