We've already mentioned the two socialist strains, Swedish Lite and Socialist Amber. They could have two serious head-to-head-collisions in the next 4-8 years. One of those, addressed today, is Education. The other, Entertainment, will be addressed tomorrow.
     It has been charged by conservatives that the dumbing down of American children has been intentional. Even at the college level, the educational detours offered to students, to steer them away from being a part of any sort of productive role in society, has also been, in our view, intentional. Co-opting the best and brightest minds into vain and frivolous pursuits has always been a high priority with socialists who seek to gain control, even back to the 1930s when they penetrated British public schools, for they know that once the student matures and confronts the frivolity of his own choices, his own vanity will not allow him to publicly recant. So, they have secured either his steadfast followship...or his eternal silence. Whitaker Chambers and David Horowitz are but exceptions that prove the rule.
     Higher education has always been a bigger scam than either Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac.
     Again, it is with some sorrow and trepidation, rather than delight, that I can report to you that the current low state of public education in America will change drastically if the harder-edged form of socialism succeeds in America in the coming years. It will take 15-20 years to come to full fruition, so men like myself will not live to see it all unfold, but if you are younger than 50, you will be able to say, you heard it here first.
     At the Sands Institute our first ambition is to re-instill into American school children, at a time when it really matters (around the 4th Grade), a love of the heroes that made America possible. The 4th, 9th and 12th grades should be a succession of pep talks about the Constitution and the possibilities that exist to individuals because of it. Moses Sands had a schtick about teaching American history and government with enthusiasm. He called it the "shoulders we stand on" lectures. We have undertaken to design three curricula that do just that, and with the coming socialism, may very well have to take the endeavor dark. It will be our chief fundraiser, once that mechanism is in place (thesandsinstitute.org). If you go there, please leave a note. It's only just up, and still embryonic. I think we have an 8-10 year window.
     Now it is clear as to why a hungry Left, looking to create more and more dependence rather than independence, would intentionally understate the purposes of the Constitution, and minimize, even poke fun at, our founding heroes. Fighting that is our center piece at The Sands Institute.
     But the fact that a greater number of 1st and 2d graders cannot read by age 8, compared with their counterparts in 1950, including black children in what were then segregated schools, cannot be laid at the feet of a true socialist agenda.
     The same goes for the sciences and math. Socialism places a high priority on both, and will accelerate, not lessen, in these endeavors in coming years. So, the avarice of Swedish Lites, aided by the narrow-minded incompetence at NEA, will soon run head-long into true believers who have a completely different set of educational priorities. There's no question in our minds who will win.
     And the structure of public schools will change considerably, and although we have not yet read his educational treatises, we believe the Dept of Education will play a more prominent role in steering education toward a new streamlined socialist model, and William Ayers will be prominent in designing and managing those new models.

      In K-thru-12 we can expect a slow pulling back from existing pre-school baby-sitting programs, replaced by more streamlined European models. First and foremost will be far more strident requirements that kids learn to read, and learn to read on time. This means the NEA will learn there's a new sheriff in town, and failure will not be tolerated. Nor will extra money be offered up as incentives, as everyone in the education system has always known that if reading were the goal they'd always alleged it was, it would have been accomplished thirty years ago and at 1/10th the cost.
      There will be a show-down of sorts and the teachers' unions will lose. (More about useful idiots as we go along, for it is a constant thread in all our comments about how life will change under socialism. Just wait til I discuss Hollywood.) Inept teachers will be fired. Teachers themselves will have new criteria for things such as repetition and rote memory work....boring things they really don't like to do.  It will take ten years at least to clean the recalcitrant sludge from the gutters....a thing citizens themselves could have done had they just set their whole minds to it, or had the leadership to convince them it was something that needed to be done. This way their children will still be able to read much better, only parents will have no say in what their children will read.
      Children will be constantly tested, but more toward streaming their talents toward their most productive talents. It will no longer matter that Mom and Dad want Johnny to be in the band. If he can't show any measurable talent for the clarinet by a certain age, he won't be able to get in. Later, in say 30-40 years, exceptions will be made, depending on who you know in the party, but in the early years the rules will be a strident as TB test.
      Interestingly, competition will once again be encouraged, so expect to see more boys than girls at the blackboard doing speed math drills. (There's another 3 billion shot to hell.) In fact, most feminist-based school programs will be tanked unless they show some merit in advancing the education mission for students other than girls.
      It is impossible to say just how the new curricula will work out, and how long it will take to be in place. 10-15 years is only a guess.
What we do know is that the tolerated ineptness among teachers will no longer be tolerated. The same goes for teachers with their own personal agenda, which includes teaching the Constitution with enthusiasm. (Obama has already said what he thinks of the Constitution.) Nor will squeaky-wheel parents any longer get any grease. And finally, God will be run completely out of public schools, which, by the way, within 20 years, may be the only allowed form of matriculation in America. (A note on preventing that below.) To be sure, there will be private schools for select member of the political class, or can I be so bold, the nomenkaltura?, but those will also be based on the same rigid educational models. Those schools will be more about separating the classes than about streamlining curricula. From what we've learned from Imperial Communist east Europe, at about Year 40 this separate status begins to take on the appearance of an inherited birthright. A noble bloodline was almost ready to emerge there when the people revolted in 1989.  That yearning is great among the Swedish Lites, but less so among Obamailis, who will go a generation demanding merit...their version of merit.
     About athletics, it's hard to say about the changes, since much of it depends on the changed (diminished) status of college and professional sports over the next 40-50 years. We think it will be drastic, but not for some time. I'm quite sure that by 2040 the old Auburn-Alabama game will have lost some of its spark. We will see fewer, actually zero, students staying in school just to get their grades up so they can play at Tech. They will have long since been sent off to a vocational school (another conservative idea the socialists will steal). The new schools won't have the patience to see just how high some kid can jump, if he can't also read, write and cipher up to snuff.
    Also, advertising and peoples' ability to pay to see sporting events will have much to say about the salaries drawn by professional athletes. We expect advertising to change considerably, sadly again, by government mandate rather then by households and parents who've just said "No" to Coors Lite. One of the big three major league sports will fade into almost obscurity, we just don't know which. Our bet is baseball...unless Hugo Chavez gets a cabinet post after he retires as president-for-life in Caracas.
     China, another great facilitator of our profligate spending ways, will get a huge financial comeuppance when American public schools all start wearing uniforms. Again, it is with sadness that this will come about by state edict rather than local parental choices. But either way, China loses.
      On into higher education, the useful idiots in academe will once again be shown how the gods punish by first answering prayers, for degree programs in Underwater Basket Weaving at Southern Cal will be out. In fact about thirty percent of public university curricula will be unceremoniously tossed out the door, and once again, it's sad to say almost of all of it will be the same courses of study conservatives would like to have seen passed over to the pay-as-you-go format, but were too timid to fight for.
      We think home-schooling will be a thing of the past, but have recommended that parents form their own schools now, and if they can take say 20%-30% of public school children out they can change both the dynamic of  socialism, described herein, as well as state and local tax structures. If private schools in America become too big fail (to coin a phrase), the socialists will either lay back, or try legal/armed intervention. This could be significant if socialism is to survive, or the Constitution is regain the high ground. We see an eight year window. Laisser les bons rouller!
      I could take this another 5000 words, but why bother?

      Dumbing American kids down in grade school and high school, then steering them to narcissistic pursuits in college was a good solid Left-wing plan for achieving power, but I really doubt if the Pelosi's & Reid's and their cronies in the NEA seriously considered what they would do once power was achieved. Continue on or change course? Our view of the Swedish Lites of this wing of the socialist party in America is that they only wanted to be able to pluck the golden goose ever so slowly, never thinking it might someday be bald and ready for the oven. (They never do plan that far ahead, as the banking crisis has proved.) They are more bandits or facsists than true-heart socialists. It is why they always lose in the end.
      The condition American education is in today is unsustainable, and a battle looms, but we have given the edge to the people with an edge, for we know that hard core Marxists already have a plan. Pelosi & Co don't. They're forever locked in take-over mode, never considering what happens once it all gets took. Barack Obama stands poised to steal everything the Democrat Party has worked for, lo! these two score years, and take the whole shebang down another path altogether. The Mensheviks come to mind, for some reason. I have laid the Obamailis' plan out (as I see it) in simple terms, and it is rather draconian, but I think it's best to paint the ugliest picture possible, especially to you under-50 crowds out there, for you will be able to watch this all unfold....and take notes.
      It is a dynamic situation, as the Swedish Lites will kick up quite a dust over a broad front, especially once Hollywood realizes what's in store for them. It will be quite a melee, only we may not get to see it. Sadly, I believe ordinary citizens, the late un-lamented Republican Party and the very few conservatives I've talked to lately who actually believe the Constitution is for the common man, rather than uncommon conservative like themselves...will have very little to say about it.
      Much of what socialism will achieve in the short run, say one generation, will be things conservatives and families would also like to have done themselves. This is why I am so melancholy, for they will get some compliance from strange quarters. But in the second generation we (you) will get to see the great difference in the results between, one, (ours) offered with a hope of liberty, and two, offered with the hopelessness of state servitude, where there's always no hope, no how (Johnny Cash), except for the ruling class.
     If it sounds like I'm rooting for the Obamailis to win...well, if we can't...yes. The sooner the better.
VB