The entire education system must be discarded and rebuilt from the ground up in order to save education and overcome a real threat to the American way of life, Nicholas Giordano, a professor of political science and fellow at Campus Reform’s Higher Education Fellowship, said on American Family Radio this week.
Critical Theory, the predecessor of Critical Race Theory, is the product of 20th century Marxist thinkers who view all people as either the oppressed, who are the lower-class proletariat, or their wealthy, uncaring oppressors known as the bourgeoisie.
Critical Race Theory simply swapped minorities for the poor and whites for the rich bourgeoisie.
Rebuilding will require radical commitment
Saving education will require commitment from people who now would appear as radical as those who years ago began to lay claim to education, Giordano told show host Jenna Ellis.
“There are solutions. One of the things that we have to do immediately is start to pull all the funding away from this Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion agenda that has proven to be toxic within our society," Giordano said. "It's a cancer that discourages merit. It portrays the United States as inherently racist and evil, and that's why we see an entire student body that no longer has loyalty towards the country that they've been in their whole lives."
Research by Statista shows that only 39% of respondents currently say they’re “extremely” proud to be an American.
Numbers fall into the 20s when the questions become are you “very” proud or “moderately” proud? It only gets worse from there.
“How could our society survive if the people within it are taught to hate it? That’s the problem that people aren't seeing. Our education system is not educating students anymore. We’ve got reports that say SAT scores and ACT scores have dropped to their lowest levels in 30 years. This is after last year's history of dropping to the lowest levels,” Giordano said.
In 2021, Democratic Oregon Gov. Kate Brown signed a bill that “suspended” the requirement for high school students to demonstrate proficiency in reading, writing and math in order to graduate.
Proponents of the legislation said it was necessary to help struggling students after a year of remote learning but, in reality, the issue was race and the belief that minorities can't learn.
A spokesman for Gov. Brown said suspending the requirements will benefit "Oregon’s Black, Latino, Latina, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian, Pacific Islander, Tribal, and students of color.”
The Oregonian reported that the weakened requirements will be in effect for five years.
In New York, statewide testing, a graduation requirement for more than a century, isn’t going away, but credit toward a diploma could look very different with additional subjects, one of them “civic responsibility.”
“You have states that are redefining proficiency or eliminating it completely. You don't have to be proficient in reading, writing and mathematics anymore, so we have to look at it when we're investing over a trillion dollars a year in our education system from K to college. Well, what's the return on investment? And it's certainly not working within the United States yet,” Giordano said.
Sympathy for bin Laden from the young
Dozens of young Americans posted videos on Tik Tok last week, the Chinese-owned social media giant, sympathizing with Osama bin Laden, the mastermind behind the 9-11 attacks on New York and Washington.
The videos were responding to a letter bin Laden wrote more than 20 years ago criticizing the U.S. for its support of Israel. The letter, first published in 2002, attempts to justify the killing of American civilians.
“It really is disgraceful how far we've fallen. We're no longer producing students that are capable individuals ready to produce for society and improve the United States. Rather, we're producing ideological zealots. Just last week alone we saw TikTok videos of young Americans coming out sympathizing with Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. A lot of people are blaming social media, but the real problem lies in education from K-12 and throughout college where we can see this virulent anti Americanist (ideology) being pushed on us,” Giordano said.
Giordano said our education system hasn’t produced the “deep thinkers” who are in tune with world political realities.
“That’s why I take on the DEI agenda, because really, that's where it all goes back to," he commented. "We have young Americans who sit there and say, ‘Well, it's because of our support of Israel that has led Al Qaeda to attack us.’ That’s just fundamentally false. Osama bin Laden never attacked Israel. If that was the whole reasoning behind Al Qaeda's war with us, why have they never conducted one attack inside Israel? That tells you everything you need to know. We're not producing deep thinkers that would even ask those questions.”
The lack of critical thinking skills makes young people susceptible to whatever opinions are presented to them, Giordano said.
“They can't critically think, and we're producing undereducated, radicalized individuals that that are pushing a toxic ideology.”
Some states starting to move against DEI
There is a movement under way in some states to review, reduce or eliminate DEI in state-funded schools.
Through Critical Theory DEI forces Americans to choose sides, and a country without “2,000 years of history” is susceptible to such practices, Giordano said.
“We don't have a common culture, common traditions together. We're a bunch of different peoples from different places that have come together," he said. "Until now, we've actually coexisted very well together. We've made it work. Other societies can never make this work, but we have.
“You're seeing these pro-Hamas rallies, the anti-American rallies, the Marxist movement that's going on, and all these groups pit against each other to compete. If we don't have a nation that we're loyal to, and we put ourselves down into these groups, we cannot survive as a nation because where does the sovereignty lie? Does it lie with the nation, or does it lie within groups?” Giordano said.
