FrontPage Magazine recently received a devastating letter from a former Philadelphia public school teacher, in response to FP's blog entry entitled, "The left's war on black children." The letter-writer describes the decline from integrated classes and Victor Hugo to a system where "there wasn't a shred of knowledge, decency or honesty left in anyone's heart, soul or brain" in painful detail:
As you well know, 1968 was the cut-off point, like B.C. and A.D. (Before Counter-Culture and After Devastation). You went to bed one night with one set of values in place and you woke up in a strange new world. It was exactly like "The Invasion of the Body Snatchers"....
By 1972 the school was entirely Black and firmly entrenched in an irreversible policy of passing the greatest number even if they had no skills. This was presumably some sort of reparation for the past cruelties to Blacks and some sort of redemption for racist America who was waging a racist war in Viet-Nam....
Teachers went crazy trying to find things for them to do that would hold their interest. It was all in vain. The behavior in the classroom was out of control, the same way terrorism is out of control today. They knew ONLY TOO WELL what they could get away with...
Many left the system - there was a mass exodus out of teaching back in the seventies. The newcomers were often poorly educated, or naive "missionaries" or - people with a political agenda. Sometimes a voice would be raised but the iron curtain of political correctness stifled all attempts to establish honest discourse among "professionals". It was no longer a profession but a type of dull ritual devoid of meaning.