Teaching Reading, The Alphabet, and Literacy

[From article]
Public schools are expert at creating illiteracy. Our K-12 system can usually guarantee that students don't become fluent readers. The system is nearly foolproof. Parents and teachers can make children illiterate or semi-literate simply by following this well-tested seven-step formula:
1) FORGET ABOUT THE ALPHABET.[. . .]
In her strikingly insightful 1970 book Programmed Illiteracy in Our Schools, Mary Johnson noted: "It was frequently stressed that English was 'not a phonetic language' and that children did not need to be told the separate letter sounds. 'Surely we don't have anyone here who is old-fashioned enough to tell children the sounds of the letters!' teased one consultant [from a publisher]."
2) MEMORIZE SIGHT-WORDS.
[. . .]



3) GUESS OR SKIP. The ultimate advice given by Whole Word and Whole Language gurus really came down to two ways to surrender: guess or skip. Frank Smith argued that "the first alternative and preference is to skip over the puzzling word. The second alternative is to guess what the unknown word might be." If you're in a foreign country and trying to make sense of a menu, what are your options? You can guess each word, or you can skip each word. This is what illiteracy looks like. Real readers do not guess or skip.
(4) USE CONTEXT CLUES. The official method says that children can use context (i.e., the nearby words which they often can't read) to read the word they are trying to read. Unless you rig the example, this is typically a useless technique. "The man looked out the window and saw a ____." Even the smartest, best educated people can rarely figure what X is.
[. . .]



5) USE THE ILLITERATE'S MANY HANDY WORKAROUNDS. Pre-read; post read; prediction; picture clues; summarizing the passage; relying on prior experience; and, of course, guessing. If there's a picture of an animal you can identify, assume that the word will be in the passage somewhere. Go ahead and find it. Again, all of these techniques are what any illiterate person does when he doesn't know how to read. None of them is reading. All are floundering.
6) PIT (sic) A GOOD SPIN ON FAILURE. When you experience weird reading problems, view them as "a gift." This is how dyslexia organizations describe the cognitive disorientation that sight-words induce in children. Not to worry. We are told that many of the world's smartest people were dyslexics. This claim is supposed to make you feel better about being abused by education professors.
7) ACCEPT THAT DRUGS WILL BE AN IMPORTANT PART OF YOUR READING PROGRAM. You won't be able to read, but you won't care, thanks to the magic of Ritalin and other chemicals. So don't waste time being fidgety, impatient, and unhappy. This is the brave new world of school-induced acceptance of mediocrity.



As you see, this is a simple, straightforward program. Follow the seven steps, and you can turn anybody into a functional illiterate. If you do it to a high degree, he will simply be illiterate; he won't function at all.
Conversely, if you ignore all these rules and do the opposite – i.e., what all phonics experts tell you to do, your children will become real readers and real students.
NB: Summer is a good time to teach children to read, before the schools can mess them up.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/06/how_to_create_functional_illiteracy_in_7_easy_lessons.html

June 9, 2016
How to Create Functional Illiteracy in 7 Easy Lessons
By Bruce Deitrick Price

How To Improve Learning in Public Schools

[From article]
Anew study in the New England Journal of Medicine has a surprising conclusion. It finds that over the past decade, 1 percent of physicians accounted for 32 percent of malpractice claims. In other words, health care providers could eliminate one-third of malpractice and its associated health, legal and economic costs by removing the worst 1 percent of doctors.
It’s called the “law of the vital few” — better known as the 80/20 rule. It states that a disproportionate impact comes from a small input. Eighty-four percent of total income tax payments, for instance, are paid by 20 percent of earners. And more than two-thirds of all drunken-driving fatalities are caused by the tiny fraction of drivers with at least a 0.15 blood-alcohol level (the hard-core drunk drivers).
[. . .]
Perhaps nowhere is this rule more apparent than in the U.S. education system. Education economist Erik Hanushek has found that a small percentage of teachers are responsible for virtually all of the United States’ poor global education ranking. (U.S. students score worse on international tests than students from countries like Vietnam, Poland and Latvia.)
According to Mr. Hanushek, replacing the bottom 5-8 percent of teachers with average teachers could move the United States near the top of international education rankings.
[. . .]
It’s said that there are three ways people leave a job: some quit, others are fired, and some quit and stay. It is this last group that is most troublesome in any workplace. To solve this youth unemployment crisis and its associated ramifications, teachers who quit and stay must be fired.
But it’s easier said than done. Militant teachers unions like the American Federation of Teachers led by Randi Weingarten make it virtually impossible to fire the worst teachers. Less than 0.1 percent of teachers are fired each year in major districts nationwide. As a colleague of hers once said, “Randi Weingarten would protect a dead body in the classroom. That’s her job.”
The single most effective reform to make it easier to fire ineffective teachers is ending tenure, which virtually guarantees teachers jobs for life after as little as two years in the classroom.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/feb/8/richard-berman-ending-teacher-tenure-would-get-rid/

Teachers who can’t teach
Ending tenure would rid classrooms of incompetents
By Richard Berman - - Monday, February 8, 2016

Acting On Pattern Recognition

Pay Attention! Whether you are crossing the street, watching your city council meetings, your state legislature, or the legend-in-his-own-mind in the White House. You need to act on what you see. That's all you have to do.

[From article]
This man has never seen a car or a streetlight before, nor does he know anything about laws and customs that drivers have become accustomed to obey intuitively. Imagine, however, that he is instructed, in his own language, to simply sit there and observe how these strange foreigners and conveyances move about.
Within an hour or two, I'd lay a strong wager that the man could explain in a fundamental way how this system works, despite the fact that it's entirely foreign to him.
[. . .]
There is a reason that he can very likely accomplish this feat with relative ease: because recognizing patterns is the most fundamental skill of humankind.
This is no accident. It is our most fundamental skill because it has been honed by evolutionary necessity.
[. . .]
Of course, merely recognizing a particular pattern is of no usefulness if expectations and behavior are not amended as a result of its recognition. Civil societies have been cultivated primarily due to sensible action in response to such observations. Herein lies the foundation of the agricultural, commercial, and industrial practices that provide for the world, the basis for religion and philosophy that nurtures men's souls, the genesis of the laws of science, and the reason for the refinement of all of the above.
[. . .]
Is it not, therefore, the most damning of facts that the "progressive" left appears to find no usefulness in logically appraising and acting upon the patterns we routinely observe? Rather, they buck every natural compulsion by not only ignoring patterns, but by acting in direct defiance of logic and survival instincts that we humans have inherited.
How else can one describe a group who could read a report that shows that 450 out of 452 (or 99.6% of) suicide terror attacks in 2015 were perpetrated by Muslims and carried out in the name of Allah, only to insist that Muslims are not uniquely linked to global terrorism?
Or consider this. With the exception of the shooting of Gabby Giffords in Tucson, Ariz. in 2011, "every public shooting since at least since 1950 in the U.S. in which more than three people have been killed has taken place where citizens are not allowed to carry guns."
[. . .]
And suffice it to say, "Muslims shouldn't be subject to added scrutiny as potential terror threats" and "we need more gun-free zones in America" are the farthest thing from those useful responses. Yet both of those statements embody bulwark positions for the American left.
Sensible Americans can see that the national debt has nearly doubled in past seven years, reaching an unfathomable $18.8 trillion (and it's still rising at ludicrous speed). And they observe, quite reasonably, that it took Obama seven years to accumulate nearly the amount of debt that the previous 43 presidents had accrued over a 220-year period.
[. . .]
We discovered that we couldn't keep our health care plans or our doctors if we liked them, despite our president's promises. We also found that we're paying more for health care now than ever before,
[. . .]
We've noticed all the violence and racial animus created by the grievance peddlers in the Obama administration who stoked the fires of Ferguson and Baltimore, all the while making villains of our nation's law enforcement officers.
We've seen an administration that provided deadly weapons to Mexican drug cartels while seeking to circumvent the Bill of Rights by denying such weapons to law-abiding Americans interested only in protecting their homes, their families, and their God-given right to defend their liberty.
We've watched our president ignore federal law by allowing criminal lawbreakers to enter our country, effectively depressing wages for American laborers while the invaders reap benefits (like health care, education, welfare, etc.) that drown taxpayers in liability.
[. . .]
And we recognize, beyond all shadows of doubt, that none of this is George W. Bush's fault.
[. . .]
All you have to do is pull up a chair, open your eyes, and choose not to ignore what you see.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/01/the_lefts_problem_with_nature_and_logic.html

January 23, 2016
The Left's Problem with Nature and Logic
By William Sullivan

Internet Diminshes Need For Universities

[From article]
The printing press changed the world in a few decades in the 16th century. The internet is even more revolutionary.
Even more so than the press, the internet has evaporated prior means of didactic instruction. The printing press created change, but only the rich could afford to buy one. For less than $100 today, one can get a domain and start a media empire on the web.
[. . .]

 

Craigslist has done a runaround on newspapers by offering free advertising, thus cutting their revenues. Newsprint is collapsing. Paper after paper has gone broke. The Media Elite are gone.
[. . .]
Anybody with an anti-Israel bent can open up a website. [. . .] The borderline anti-Semitic site Mondoweiss now has the new media's ear. There are more smartphones in the hands of Muslims than Jews available to contest the narrative.
[. . .]

 

One can self-educate her or himself up to a Masters degree in civil or mechanincal engineering on the internet. Indeed, the only thing truly provided by schools today is a space for lab work. All else can be acquired online at little or no expense.
[. . .]
True, research has to be centralized, but everything up to a bachelor's can be achieved gratis. Entrance to graduate school will be solely by exam, along with a small syllabus of lab courses, and nothing more. To the enterprising student, this can be accomplished with home study, and a year in commercial labs in capacity as a trainee; an arrangement once familiar to medieval guilds,
[. . .]



Academia will soon die out. The relic courses designed only to make work for obsolete professors will no longer be tolerated. The debt, and the social bloat, will have to collapse. Education has now become truly democratized. Only Engineering, the Sciences, and Medical Education will survive -- and these in only an abbreviated form.
[. . .]
This has the advantage of removing the last holdouts of a vestigial intellectual aristocracy which distorts our Republic with claims of expertise, and high salary requirements. However, the downside, as evinced by YouTube reporting, will be the total lack of responsibility.
[. . .]



Academia was the last vestige of medievalism.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/11/the_end_of_academic_elites.html

November 28, 2015
The End of Academic Elites
By Mike Konrad

Cambridge Public School Students Learn Outside of the Classroom

Dr. Jeffrey Young 

Do the many partnerships divert student focus from classroom learning? Who schedules these opportunities? Do teacher unions need to approve them? Are teachers paid extra (taxpayer) monies? Does this essay explain why the nation's students are becoming more dumbed down every year? The Superintendent does not discuss all of the splendid benefits from diversity, especially from the children of asylum seekers who bring their deep and vigorous love for the United States and the Constitution. His essay omits benefits from living on earth and studying nature without being controlled by public school bureaucrats. How many great historical discoveries resulted from conformist regimentation by public schools run by labor unions? Is his argument students in Cambridge have more learning opportunities outside the classroom than New York City students?



[From article]
the two parts of this op-ed piece demonstrate that public schools cannot do it alone. We rely on our generous partners, and they deliver in the most extraordinary ways.
CPS is partnering with MIT and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation to develop a graduate-level program for teachers in secondary school math and science (STEM) education as a means of building a pipeline to the profession in this area of critical need. For 20 years, MIT’s KeyPals program has been pairing Cambridge fifth graders with volunteers from MIT, Draper Labs, and IBM to help foster the students’ writing and computer skills.
[. . .]
Some of our Technology Department staff have been working with the MIT Lifelong Kindergarten group around the Family Creative Learning project, which involves providing workshops to families to learn and play together
[. . .]
the Cambridge Science Festival — founded by MIT and co-sponsored by Harvard, the city of Cambridge, and a number of local industries — which brings thousands of residents and visitors to the city to celebrate their curiosity through a week of free workshops and events open to the public.
Every eighth-grade student in CPS participates in the Student Science and Engineering Showcase at Harvard University where they share their learning and engage in rich dialogue with Harvard students
[. . .]
Working in collaborative teams within a virtual world, students use this immersive interface to learn science by exploring and solving problems in realistic environments.
[. . .]
Lesley University and the Kennedy-Longfellow Elementary School have partnered to transform teaching and learning through the use of innovative technologies for students and teachers. With support from Lesley, our students have become “makers” — creative participants in the educational process by using a variety of hardware and software as they engage in authentic learning opportunities driven by personal interest and 21st Century dispositions and skills.
[. . .]
The CPS/Lesley Professional Development School has a history of assigning students to serve as intern student teachers in our schools to the mutual benefit our kids as well as Lesley’s developing professional educators.
[. . .]
Students who complete three summers receive a $3,000 scholarship to the school of their choice. The Cambridge-Harvard Summer Academy is funded by Harvard and serves as Cambridge's summer high school program offering remedial and enrichment classes for more than 300 high school students on an annual basis.

http://cambridge.wickedlocal.com/article/20151009/NEWS/151005662/?Start=1

Guest column: University partnerships enrich Cambridge students
By Jeffrey M. Young
Superintendent of Schools
Posted Oct. 9, 2015 at 1:39 PM
Updated Oct 9, 2015 at 1:42 PM

Editor’s note: The following is Dr. Young’s (medical doctor? or PhD. doctor?) first column in a two-part series discussing the strong partnerships Cambridge Public Schools has with the university and business communities in Cambridge.

Trust Us, Nothing To Fear From Computers Taking Over, Said The Spider To The Fly

Hehehe

[From article]
Computers keep getting smaller and faster. That’s been happening for decades. But almost all of them are programmed to do what humans want them to do, the way humans want them to do it, and nothing more.
Now computers are beginning to learn — on their own. Years of research into artificial intelligence are beginning to pay off.
So-called machine learners already are diagnosing diseases, winning on “Jeopardy” and helping make rich hedge fund investors even richer. Machine learning is behind Facebook’s ability to figure out who your friend is by recognizing a picture of her face. Siri and Google Voice Search voice recognition? Machine learning is behind those too. And driverless cars.
Machine learning appears to be poised for rapid proliferation, with enormous implications for the workplace, the economy, politics and human culture.
Pedro Domingos, computer science professor at the University of Washington, offers an overview of the current state of machine learning in his just-published book, “The Master Algorithm: How the Quest for the Ultimate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World.”
[. . .]
There’s much to embrace and fear in machine learning, and much that we can do to make the most of it. Machine learning lightens the information overload, helps us find jobs and dates, lets cars drive themselves and lets our smartphones understand what we say.
Machine learning will eliminate many jobs, but also create many new ones.
Perhaps the biggest danger is that machines will cause damage while trying to serve us because they take our wishes too literally, or because they lack common sense.
[. . .]
People worry that computers will get too smart and take over the world, but the real problem is that they're too stupid and they've already taken over the world.
[. . .]
Being intelligent and being human are two very different things. AI algorithms don't have a will of their own: They just search for solutions to the problems we apply them to, and the more powerful the computers they run on, the harder the problems they can solve.
Computers are just extensions of us. You don't worry that your left arm will slap your face, so why would you worry that a computer will magically turn evil?

http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-your-future-boss-a-computer-algorithm-it-s-closer-than-you-think-20151005-story.html

Your next boss: A computer algorithm?
LOS ANGELES TIMES
An IBM Watson supercomputer.
BY RUSS MITCHELL
October 5, 2015, 8:50 p.m

Students Stand At Their Desks In San Francisco Schools

Students at standing desks at Vallecito Elementary in San Rafael. 

(John Ramos/CBS)
[From article]

In four of the school’s classrooms, chairs have been removed and students spend the day standing at their desks. Some parents, concerned about how sedentary kids have become, donated money for the new desks.
[. . .]
The teachers are convinced. They say the kids are calmer and more attentive and parents say the children sleep better at night. What seemed at first like a kooky Marin County idea is having a real benefit.
“You know, you can roll your eyes all you want, but you need to come and see it,” Zink said.

http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2015/04/24/marin-county-elementary-school-adopts-standing-desks-students/

Marin County School Nixes Sedentary Education With Standing Desks For Students
April 24, 2015 7:07 PM
CBS News San Francisco CA

Home Schooling For Students Over 50

Most of our generation 50+ was
HOME SCHOOLED in many ways.

1. My mother taught me
TO APPRECIATE A JOB WELL DONE .

"If you're going to kill each other, do it outside.
I just finished cleaning."

2. My mother taught me RELIGION .

"You better pray that will come out of the carpet."

3. My father taught me about TIME TRAVEL .

"If you don't straighten up, I'm going to knock

You into the middle of next week!"

4. My father taught me LOGIC .

" Because I said so, that's why."

5. My mother taught me MORE LOGIC .

"If you fall out of that swing and break your neck,

You're not going to the store with me."

6. My mother taught me FORESIGHT .

"Make sure you wear clean underwear, in case

You're in an accident."

7. My father taught me IRONY .

"Keep crying,
And I'll give you something to cry about."

8. My mother taught me about the science of OSMOSIS .

"Shut your mouth and eat your supper."

9. My mother taught me about CONTORTIONISM .

"Just you look at that dirt on the back of your neck?"

10. My mother taught me about STAMINA .

"You'll sit there until all that spinach is gone."

11. My mother taught me about WEATHER .

"This room of yours looks as if a tornado went through it."

12. My mother taught me about HYPOCRISY .

"If I told you once, I've told you a million times.
Don't exaggerate!"

13. My father taught me the CIRCLE OF LIFE .

"I brought you into this world, and I can take you out..."

14. My mother taught me about

BEHAVIOR MODIFICATION .

"Stop acting like your father!"

15. My mother taught me about ENVY .

"There are millions of less fortunate children in

This world who don't have wonderful parents like you do."

16. My mother taught me about ANTICIPATION .

"Just wait until we get home."

17. My mother taught me about RECEIVING .

"You are going to get it from your father
When you get home!"

18. My mother taught me MEDICAL SCIENCE .

"If you don't stop crossing your eyes,
They are going to get stuck that way."

19. My mother taught me ESP .

"Put your sweater on; don't you think I know
When you are cold?"

20. My father taught me HUMOR .

"When that lawn mower cuts off your toes,
Don't come running to me."

21. My mother taught me
HOW TO BECOME AN ADULT .

"If you don't eat your vegetables, you'll never grow up."

22. My mother taught me GENETICS .

"You're just like your father."

23. My mother taught me about my ROOTS .

"Shut that door behind you.
Do you think you were born in a barn?"

24. My mother taught me WISDOM .

"When you get to be my age, you'll understand.

25. My father taught me about JUSTICE .
"One day you'll have kids,
And I hope they turn out just like you !"

Reading Online Differs From Reading Books

[From article]
The 2011 Freshman Survey from UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute found that the top reason for attending college was "to be able to get a better job" (86 percent of respondents, up from 70 percent just five years earlier).
[. . .]
(Adult fiction remains the best-selling category of e-books in both the United States and Britain.)
[. . .]



The bottom line is that while digital devices may be fine for reading that we don’t intend to muse over or reread, text that requires what’s been called "deep reading" is nearly always better done in print.
[. . .]
In this country, 26 percent indicated they were likely to multitask while reading in print, compared with 85 percent when reading on-screen.

http://chronicle.com/article/How-E-Reading-Threatens/147661/

July 14, 2014
How E-Reading Threatens Learning in the Humanities
By Naomi S. Baron

Teachers Unions Prevent Improved Student Learning

Three articles about teacher's unions preventing improvement of student learning.

http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/hentoff061114.php3#.U7qC7d0--yM

Jewish World Review

June 11, 2014 / 13 Sivan, 5774
Expanding the reach and lifelong impact of teachers
By Nat Hentoff

* * *

http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/hentoff061814.php3#.U7qDt90--yM

Jewish World Review

June 18, 2014 / 20 Sivan, 5774
Personalized education while changing places of learning
By Nat Hentoff

* * *

http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/hentoff062514.php3#.U7qEXd0--yM

Jewish World Review

June 25, 2014 / 27 Sivan, 5774
Teachers' job security more important than kids' futures?
By Nat Hentoff

Video Games Beneficial To Youth

[From article]
To many it might seem counter-intuitive, but researchers have found that playing video games – including violent shooter titles – may boost children’s learning, health and social skills.
This conclusion comes from a review of studies into the influence of video games that will be published in the American Psychological Association’s flagship journal, American Psychologist.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2513832/Study-finds-video-games-good-mental-health.html

Video games are GOOD for you: Even violent shoot-em-ups boost learning, health and social skills, finds study
Findings published in the prestigious journal American Psychologist
Authors say findings have 'critical implications for education'
Other benefits include improved reasoning, a sharper memory and lower anxiety levels
By TED THORNHILL
Daily Mail (UK)
PUBLISHED: 09:50 EST, 26 November 2013 | UPDATED: 11:04 EST, 26 November 2013

Equalizing Opportunity Through Education

http://www.city-journal.org/2013/23_1_vocabulary.html

E. D. HIRSCH, JR.
A Wealth of Words
The key to increasing upward mobility is expanding vocabulary.
City Journal
Winter 2013
Vol. 23 No. 1

Obama's US Standards Undermine MA Successes Improving Public Education

[From article]
"The U.S. Department of Education claims that its reforms replicate the Massachusetts model. The truth is that they fall short of the standards established by that model—and are now reversing the very policies that led to the Bay State’s achievements.


JAMES STERGIOS, CHARLES CHIEPPO AND JAMIE GASS
The Massachusetts Exception
The state’s knowledge-rich standards have made its schools the best in the country.
City Journal
Summer 2012 Vol.22No. 3

Family Wealth Not Determining Factor for School Success

Does intelligence have anything to do with learning and achievement? Child with IQ of 100, son of billionaire, vs child with IQ of 160, son of disabled parents with no high school diploma. Hello are some factors missing?

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2012/3/13/peterson-income-education-harvard/

Gov. Professor Questions Link Between Income and Student Achievement
By ETHAN G. LOEWI,
Harvard CRIMSON STAFF WRITER
March 13, 2012

Cambridge School Committee Prefers All Learn at the Same Rate

Only Pat Nolan comments on the merits of this petition to provide accelerated learning for above average students. How many wasted lives result from this pattern of neglect. Remaining silent are the politicos of the School Committee Richard Harding and Marc McGovern who demand that the City Council elect a Mayor. Isn't that a conflict with their insistence that last year's Committee vote on the Superintendent's contract before newly elected members could vote? Wouldn't want to allow voters to have any say in that do we boyos?

http://www.wickedlocal.com/cambridge/news/x1622355836/Cambridge-students-block-plan-to-end-advanced-study-program#axzz1lLvawtTp

Cambridge students block plan to end advanced study program
Unsigned
Cambridge Chronicle
February 3, 2012

Colleges Are Businesses Not For Learning

Rich Lowry shocks the conscience advocating that "colleges foster 'a culture of learning.'" (Rich Lowry, "The college rip-off," New York Post, May 20, 2011) Non profit colleges are businesses and a place to accumulate wealth. Harvard's current President earns $874,559; presiding over a $27 billion endowment. Educated citizens create a threat to the larger business of corporations and government unions stealing taxpayer funds. This is clearly not the hope and change of Barry Obama.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/the_college_rip_off_Ol3fdTLBk2jflWEQn0tHBI

The college rip-off
Tuition skyrockets -- while learning plummets
Rich Lowry
New York Post
Last Updated: 4:27 AM, May 20, 2011
Posted: 10:51 PM, May 19, 2011

Obama, Slow Learner?


Who knew Obama, who holds a Harvard Law degree, was such a slow learner?

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/editorials/on_iran_LVybtN8jl52eRTkeULt5EN

O's F on Iran
Editorial
New York Post
Last Updated: 11:48 AM, November 15, 2009
Posted: 1:32 AM, November 15, 2009

Psychiatry's War on Civil Society


In this essay Carroll argues that big government works contrary to human relationships which create stable society. The same logic applies to abuses of psychiatry in place of human relationships. Read his comments (replacing red words with mauve). Statistics show that learning has gone down since psychiatry has entered the schools and violence has gone up in and out of schools with the emphasis on psychiatry.

"As (government) psychiatry claims responsibility for more tasks, it absorbs the allegiance that citizens once placed in other relationships and forms of association. When the (federal government) psychiatric industry assumes more responsibility for fulfilling the moral obligations among citizens, it tends to undermine the perceived significance and authority of local institutions and communities.

This encourages citizens, instead of looking to their families, churches, or local communities for guidance and assistance, to depend on (the government) psychiatry for education, welfare, and various other services. As individuals begin to look more consistently to (the government) psychiatry for support, the institutions that are able to generate virtues like trust and responsibility begin to lose their sway in the community. Excessive bureaucratic centralization thus sets in motion a dangerous cycle of dependence and social decay."

http://blog.heritage.org/2009/08/20/president-obamas-war-on-civil-society/

President Obama’s War on Civil Society
August 20th, 2009 at 3.16pm in Ongoing Priorities.
The Foundry
Heritage Foundation
By Conn Carroll