…and a new Education Model in America can provide both employment and justification for veterans service.
For a few years I managed a veterans website called “VeteransTales”. It was constructed by my author-friend and colleague, @DavidMPoff. We stopped publishing after the passing of our dear friend PumabyDesign, probably the only Bible-reading Christian in Brooklyn…still missed by one and all down here. I marked her passing here, in 2019.
VeteransTales was a place for veterans to come and share stories, but one of our major themes was to pitch the idea of veterans standing in front of students in classrooms to teach generally the areas of Civics (pride and understanding of the way out nation was designed) and some history. I’ve also learned that a veteran with only one arm or leg can’t escape without telling the kids how he/she lost it, and the things they had to go through to get patched together again.
Since 1973, all those veterans were volunteers serving in all the post-9/11 wars America has known in the Middle East; Afghanistan and Iraq.
Thankfully, since World War II wars have gotten smaller. With my generation, the Vietnam War touched far fewer men and their families, probably less than 20%, while World War II touched almost 100%. And the Middle Eastern wars, where we still have men deployed, even fewer from the general population. Enough so that unless you live in a military town with a nearly military station, you scarcely see people in uniform.
There has been a downside to that, I’ve learned, having spent 5 years in uniform, mostly in Asia at the end of the Vietnam War; there is no longer any handshake between our military members, and veterans, and the population-at-large.
When I was a kid, in a town of 1000, virtually every kid in that school had a dad who served in WWII. Our high schools didn’t even bother to teach WWII in the classroom since the kids were getting an earful of it at home, around the dinner table, family gatherings, etc. There were still 4th of July parades there, and veterans marched with their VA cap,
It was a part of the passing show. By the time I was in college, and Vietnam started, every town had a few men in uniform, but mostly from the working classes. College kids were exempt. So, large chunks of small cities had no direct touch with the military. Or about the war their collective sons and daughters were fighting. At least they could follow events on CBS, NBC and ABC News at 6 PM.
After 9/11 most communities hadn’t a single person in uniform. I recall one parent, from California, Cindy Sheehan, who began a campaign against GW Bush because she’d lost a son in Iraq. Her son volunteered against her wishes and made her look bad in front of her coffee klatch. She had to blame someone. Elsewhere, a Pennsylvania college prof had his son enlist, based on all the virtues his father had taught him. But when his father okay’d his decision, his university colleagues blackballed him.
The last 20 years have been especially rough for America on the patriotic front, as you’ve no doubt noticed. As my colleague, David Poff just wrote about “covenants” this past week, part of the American covenant with its past is passed on around the family dinner meal, at church, and of course, in school.
There are key critical handshakes and acknowledgements to the shoulders we all stand on found in all three of those war settings, only of late, two of those three have fallen dangerously out of fashion.
If you haven’t noticed, America is not just in a learning slump, it is also in a morality slump that has become so noticeable, especially among our more affluent classes who do not have to match work and effort with material success. America’s enemies have now launched watered-down religious lures to change the language and meaning of prayer itself. So we’re hurtling toward a survival crossroads.
The Soros Model
George Soros gets credit or blame for everything his money causes to happen, thereby allowing those people who actually put fingerprints on those misdeeds to escape notice or sanction because the public only hears “Soros, Soros”. In the Vote-stealing racket alone, let alone government corruption, (e.g., his Attorney General Project) his name alone appears, while 100’s of people who should be in prison, or at least afraid to walk past a graveyard without whistling, are not even known to the general population.
I only mention this because understanding how Soros designs it can be of use to us.
We can defeat many of the Left’s “structures” if we will devise ways to counteract Soros plans.
Our objective here is to establish a Veteran teaching presence in public schools on select subjects involving good citizenship, patriotism, and relearning America’s “exceptional” history.
I already know this works, it’s just never enough money has been thrown at it to be done comprehensively.
SitRep
Even small-town schools need a Veteran teaching presence, starting in 4th or 5th Grade. Kids at that age respond to visual stimuli and nothing grabs an 11-year old like a veteran in camo fatigues, giving a 45-minute lecture.
They would teach patriotism to young Americans the same way 10-year olds were taught Bible wonders in Sunday School, in 45-minute segments.
Moving up to 8th or 9th graders, teaching gets into more of a historical framework of Civics, explaining the hows and whys of the Constitution, and why it’s different from the way the rest of the world has organized their systems. (There are clear differences beginning with the fact that the United States was built from the bottom-up, unlike all the other countries that were built from the top-down…and that those histories go back so many hundreds of years, they really don’t know how to undo it.)
Again, these are foundational lessons kids never really forget.
So by 11th or 12th grade, the student is ready to read and real American History and American government. These classes would normally be carried out by certified school teachers from authorized texts (ensuring that Howard Zinn’s Peoples History is not that text…recommending Schweikart and Allen’s Patriot’s History), but timely veteran appearances for a few segments again, seals the students’ memories.
Now there are things citizens can do to carry this forward into college, only, looking into the near future for several years (at least a generation), the value of a liberal arts college degree will fall below that of learned trade skills, since those departments in America’s public universities have been almost totally debased the last 50 years, and will require a renaissance of their own to return to public approval. The Obama-era “everyone who wants to be anyone must have a college degree”…and we’ll loan you the money to do it, then forgive the debt once you find out no outside of Kohls is hiring people with degrees in Underwater Basket Weaving…has to be buried and society has to deal with those victims, which, if you’ve not already noticed, George Soros ground-planners are using with some success in certain cities and states to burn some of America to the ground.
When America’s Baby Boomers went to war in Southeast Asia, fully 70% of them went there without a college degree, and today, they make up the majority of the grandparents who are now watching everything our fathers fought for…and against…in 1942-1945, and their justifications for fighting fascism, and hating communism be ridiculed, those definitions and histories being rewritten.
Returning proven and proper teaching to kids ages 7 through 18 is the key to saving America-as-founded and continuing the “handshake-covenant” mentioned above for several more generations.
I’m just an aging Boomer, late 70s, who’s been around the world, seen and done enough things to know the differences between being misinformed and bald-faced lying, and justified indignation and teat-fittery. And I live on a fixed income.
1. To be able to do this, there has to be a curricula designed. That takes money, and a team of experts has to be hired to draw those up. (George Soros has been doing this for many years in training people in how to tear down this country, not just in education, but law enforcement.)
2. Veterans have to be recruited, hired, and trained, much like Basic Training; a few weeks. That also takes money. The schools should hire them as adjuncts, so that no state certification would be required.
And the schools that hire them should do so at the insistence of the taxpaying parents, so, a public campaign (leaflets, door-to-door, volunteers, a Twitter presence, see the way the @PrecinctProject is being marketed) which may even require to get ballot initiatives in states (and we know a few) whose governments will not want such programs in their public schools. Private schools should be offered the programs as well, as I predict a coming competition between pro-America teaching programs and wealth-and-elitism based systems.
(I’m not trying to pit state against state here, but am suggesting that such programs will likely pit class against class in many states. See your red and blue maps, for that is probably a good thing for the country over the long run.
As you can guess this will take several years, but if you live in a town of 2000-10,000, it can occur more quickly.
There are all sorts of veterans groups out there, but most appear to be trying to right many of the wrongs the VA and government have done to veterans, usually in areas of mental health and various forms of rehab. Gary Sinise does very good work, as does Wounded Warrior Project.. Code of Vets does great work on Twitter.
But I think many veterans are just waiting to be handed a new mission.
I think uniformed vets (Camos are the coolest) are the best way to get and keep kids attention (these days many suburban kids have never seen one up close), and disabled vets elevate the Hero-image in ways you can never know.
Kids often do logic better than grown-ups.
But it all requires an over-arching plan of attack…just as George Soros has used for years. Many towns’s citizens are itching for something like this to be offered to them. They’ll supply the manpower if someone out there will deliver the plan.
