Bruce Deitrick Price nails it once again — this time comparing the K-12 system to faulty and fake products such as adulterated milk:
In the 1800s, adulterated milk was common. Milk produced by swill herds, as muckraking journalist Robert Hartley wrote in 1842, was “very thin, and of a pale bluish color,” the kind nobody in his right mind would buy. So distillers added flour, starch, chalk, plaster of Paris, or anything else they could get away with to make the milk look healthy. This adulteration only increased the bacteria in milk that we today would consider undrinkable.
The common theme in adulteration is that you pay for A, but they give you B. It’s not what you want. Additionally, it’s likely to be dangerous to your financial health, your physical health, and your mental health.
In recent decades, the adulteration of olive oil was such a scandal that 60 Minutes presented an exposé. The Sicilian Mafia figured out a way to reach across the Atlantic and steal from the wealthiest Americans, people who wanted only the best virgin olive oil.
Food fraud has been common through the centuries. The worst cases involve maple syrup, vanilla, apple juice, coffee, orange juice, and honey. Mix in something really cheap, and you’ve got a winner.
Fake medicines, according to Interpol, are killing people. It’s a worldwide problem. In some cases, these counterfeits have been found to contain highly toxic substances such as rat poison.
. . .
Whole Word, a theory that children can learn to read by memorizing sight-words, is a lot like living with Chinese drywall. You get headaches and respiratory problems. Your health is shot from worry and failure. After years of going to school, the victims still have nothing to show for all that work and expense. Memorizing sight-words is difficult to do and counterproductive. Once you have these designs in your brain, you can rarely be a fluent reader. More than 40,000,000 people, known as functional illiterates, are victims of this peculiar adulteration. Reading is promised but not delivered.
Read more: American Thinker
Image credit: www.frontpagemag.com.
