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TOUGH PIECE ON EDUCATION
Kenneth Wells, while president of Freedoms Foundation, presented the foundation’s National Leadership Award, at a
ceremony in Valley Forge, to Kenneth W. McFarland. His introduction of McFarland, at the presentation, was short and correct
"I shall identify our Freedom Leadership Award winner with a simple, unqualified statement - he is the greatest public speaker
in the United States."
I was fortunate enough to hear Dr McFarland speak before he passed away in 1985. He was the greatest. His usual themes
were: patriotism, belief in God or a higher power, individual responsibility as the price for liberty, and the importance of
teaching traditional American values in education. And he practiced what he preached during his tenure as the
superintendent of Topeka, Kansas schools.
Dr. McFarland’s family and educational background was very similar to my favorite uncle’s; including three degrees, in
education, followed by the privilege of using Doctor before one’s name. The dissimilarities between Dr. McFarland and my Dr.
Uncle, at their deaths, was, however, stark. At his death, one year after retiring from a major university, my uncle professed to
be an atheist, a socialist, and a believer in a socialist one world system.
How could two men, similarly born, raised and educated end at opposite philosophical poles? I think the answer is peer
pressure from a now entrenched “education union” that has adopted a Stalinist / Fascist methodology to intellectual pursuit.
Kill it or shout it down.
I loved my uncle, but he was truly best described by Dr. McFarland as “a fellow who obviously had been educated beyond his
intellect.” Education is now in the hands of those of my uncle’s ilk.
God help us!
Kenneth Wells, while president of Freedoms Foundation, presented the foundation’s National Leadership Award, at a
ceremony in Valley Forge, to Kenneth W. McFarland. His introduction of McFarland, at the presentation, was short and correct
"I shall identify our Freedom Leadership Award winner with a simple, unqualified statement - he is the greatest public speaker
in the United States."
I was fortunate enough to hear Dr McFarland speak before he passed away in 1985. He was the greatest. His usual themes
were: patriotism, belief in God or a higher power, individual responsibility as the price for liberty, and the importance of
teaching traditional American values in education. And he practiced what he preached during his tenure as the
superintendent of Topeka, Kansas schools.
Dr. McFarland’s family and educational background was very similar to my favorite uncle’s; including three degrees, in
education, followed by the privilege of using Doctor before one’s name. The dissimilarities between Dr. McFarland and my Dr.
Uncle, at their deaths, was, however, stark. At his death, one year after retiring from a major university, my uncle professed to
be an atheist, a socialist, and a believer in a socialist one world system.
How could two men, similarly born, raised and educated end at opposite philosophical poles? I think the answer is peer
pressure from a now entrenched “education union” that has adopted a Stalinist / Fascist methodology to intellectual pursuit.
Kill it or shout it down.
I loved my uncle, but he was truly best described by Dr. McFarland as “a fellow who obviously had been educated beyond his
intellect.” Education is now in the hands of those of my uncle’s ilk.
God help us!