A CALL TO RAISE OUR SCHOLASTIC STANDARDS – HENCE IMPACT ON POLICY

Why was JFK killed? We as in Americans have consumed more-so an answer, “how” was JFK killed? A lone person took a shot and one bullet in a twist of fate killed President Kennedy, exited his throat to hit Governor Connally’s chest, ricocheted from his wrist to lodge into his thigh. This gave us a one or a single-bullet theory and a lone gunman behind the assassination.

I am not making a point to disbelieve or to believe the aforementioned findings of the Warren Commission where a bullet traversed through “15 layers of clothing, seven layers of skin, and approximately 15 inches of muscle tissue.” Let’s for a moment support the aforesaid findings with our belief in magic or with our understanding of unexplained anomalies that can happen in a test environment too.

As far as why JFK was killed? We can accept the Warren Commission’s answer too. If the Commission has done a good job, we can say, Americans are better off and someone else has done thinking for them. If the Commission has performed poorly, Americans are not better off, have allowed someone else doing the thinking for them and Americans have submitted to poor workmanship.

Here, I am not taking a stance on whether the Commission has done poorly or remarkably. Though, I am saying is, in the American way of life, how much intellectual thinking from higher order critical thinking is mustered to shed some perspective on “someone else doing the thinking” for us.

Higher order critical thinking perpetuates one’s ability to ask essential questions for their own-wellbeing. It is an essential exercise to make America great. In the case of JFK, America should have asked essential questions. One: Was JFK assassinated for his views on policies?

No one is hatching conspiracy here, but we are pursuing means to thought investigation and placing wisdom behind our assessment and judgement. It is a method and learning to involve in better policy making. Therefore, was JFK assassinated because of his famous speech. “The very word ‘secrecy’ is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies.” Another name for the secret society is The Milner Group, and it exists in some form today.

The Milner Group are the globalist and the colonialist. (Remember, the American Civil War was fought to pursue globalism and colonialism—I argue this in my book by detaching slavery as the main or the only reason. Slavery was not even a tertiary reason.) So, is there a possibility that JFK was assassinated because he was anti-imperialist and he desired to end the Cold War?

Before we answer that question, we must find out if JFK was an anti-imperialist? If our K-12 education had benefited from the ancient ‘ole’ educational principles of Trivium and Quadrivium that teaches distinguishing fact from fiction, any student with such schooling would have judged from all of JFK’s policies if he was an anti-imperialist.

Oliver Stone thinks JFK was anti-imperialist and as example Stone highlights JFK’s policy dealings with Nasir of Egypt, Sukarno of Indonesia, and the Alliance for Progress (Africa/Congo.) To have the power to own the knowledge, I would not take Mr. Stone’s word, but to investigate.

The idea here is not to revolt against our government or a message to have less faith in our government. The message is to raise our scholastic standards to watch out for the vital interest of the United States in an intellectual manner to directly benefit our children.  

Others and I have argued, K-12 teaching methods is “dumbing us down,” which impacts our domestic and foreign policy. Now, there is no secret that our invasion of Afghanistan under the State Department’s policy framework AF-PAK, failed to achieve our objectives. Do we blame our policy failure on those that have called themselves expert on AF-PAK or the K-12 teaching methods?

The simple answer quite astonishingly is K-12. A sense of the full blown explanation is found in my book that claims how K-12 teaching methods are exploited to further the American domestic or foreign policy that is stopping America from becoming great again. However, a well rounded education should have made us ask, does it take one-hundred-fifty-thousand American soldiers to address, around a few thousand al-Qaida terrorist at that time in Afghanistan?

Let’s say fifty-percent Americans agree; yes it would require that level of troops. Democracy is at a stalemate now! To make a headway on the right course, a well rounded education should help Americans ask another essential question.  Do Afghans have a sense of sovereignty?

Let’s agree again that fifty percent Americans agree that Afghans have a sense of sovereignty, and that is asking a whole lot more from Americans conditioned from K-12 teaching methods! Now the challenge becomes for one fifty-percent to sway the other half from a well-crafted argument to have better understanding of the issue towards scrutinizing policy.

We do that by asking other essential questions. One is, does France and other countries that have joined NATO have a sense of sovereignty? The answer is, they do not have a sense of sovereignty, else they would not have joined NATO. Now we are getting somewhere to use a higher order thinking mechanism to persuade towards a better policy-making towards Afghanistan or colonizing Afghanistan.

No, United States was not in Afghanistan to fight terrorism. “Newt Gingrich said that our presence in Afghanistan can be prolonged as long as Americans are led to believe that the American presence in Afghanistan was to fight terrorism.”

To inject specialty, experience and expertise into associating NATO is-to sovereignty or no-sovereignty is not this simple. Pakistan is not a member of NATO, but does not have a sense of sovereignty. To address complexity, certainly requires more than a well-rounded K-12 schooling to get Pakistan right.

Evolving thought and the ethos in modern literature deflects from my anticipated thought in scholarships. I very much reminisce the intellectual grand panacea to thought in the writings of the past. I fall so short.

I hope I am able to part from the JFK example is self-development from a robust intellectual thinking and benefiting our agencies and institutions when we join them. A certain ethos at the top is making policy and assessment, and at times (or in the current times, many a times) a policy may not be best for the American people. Therefore, the K-12 teaching should become our fundamental and intrinsic intellectual self-defense in guarding the interest of the American people. I make this case through my scholarship.

In December 2022, I published my book MANIPULATION OF THE MIND: Our Children and Our Policy at Peril. The contextual takeaway from my scholarship is a call to raising our scholastic standards by improving critical thinking in our K-12 curriculum as means to fetching the people’s interest in our policies. How else can we make America great?

Americans in a controlled K-12 curriculum develop a behavior from (skipping difficult problems, first gut feeling choice selection and making choices not decisions.) They learn connectionism in their K-12 curriculum that is based mostly on multiple-choice and true/false patterns, which represent the whole truth. Unfortunately, these connections are the choices student make are someone else’s, as is the “truth” on which it is based. Connectionism involves lower order thinking taught consistently in public education. Children learn facts associated with a truth that is presented to them as an unquestionable reality.

The reliance on multiple-choice exams and SAT drills throughout their early education encourages students to make choices rather than decisions based on some evaluation constructs. In their adult life, the American people continue to be victims of the same conditioning as they confront social issues, domestic and foreign policy.

A subjective “Pew Research study has given us a start to build my logic. Per PEW, the ratio of Academic Skills to Thinking Independently skills taught in schools is 42:48 percent for the U.S. It should not be surprising our children not faring well.

If we take the aforesaid 48 percent emphasis on creative and ‘Independent Thinking,’ and compare it with the scores of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), which is a test taken by more than 500,000, 15-year-old students around the world every three years; the U.S. ranked 38/72 among participating countries. Author Hurlburt, points to circumstantial evidence of countries doing well on PISA are also those countries that emphasize creative and independent thinking in the PEW’s study.30

Some harsh criticism if you have not just concluded the American K-12 teaching methods is “dumbing us down.” One measure of our own assessment is by having the ability to ask essential questions to fetch the interest of our children.