Newspapers / Jones County Journal (Trenton, … / March 4, 1971, edition 1 / Page 2
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,i ■ Never Forget That These Editorials Are The Opimton Qf One Man - v _And He May Be Wrong ■ . Public School Model - Washington, D. C.? to the past few years millions of words have been written on the general sub ject of what is wrong with our public schools, and all of these learned elders who have written dodge the central is sue; which is forced integration. All jmyone has to do is to look at Washington, D. C. Twenty years ago Washington had one of the very finest school systems in the world — for both white and colored students. But then about 15 years ago President Eisenhower ordered that the public schools of Washington be made models of racial integration. Today our na tional capital has one of the very sorriest school systems in the world for both white and colored students. Now the en rollment of the Washington schools is 97.5 per cent colored and 2.5 per cent white. Last year there were two murders in the schools of Washington, countless fell onioiis assaults, rape too frequent to be mentioned, extortion, dope peddling, as saults upon teachers, and principals. Police have to patrol the halls of all schools, and the cost of operating the Washington schools is something in the order of three times today what it was when President Eisenhower issued his infamous order. No one has benefitted; most of all thq students have not benefitted. Van dalism runs into millions of dollars each year- This has come about because white teachere have not been able to deal firmly with that incorrigible element who are neither interested in education nor their own welfare. Because of a criminal few students, the education of all students is being irreparably damaged. To a degree the identical situation exists in all schools where forced mixing of the races has been brought about - ... . and public cowardice. White school officials have found that they cannot count on the backing of their superiors if they insist upon dis cipline in their classrooms. Students who deliberately disrupt classes are either let off with ho pun ishment or so little punishment as to be laughable. To an exactly equal degree unruly white students run over colored teachers who are also afraid, or at least reluctant, to be as firm with a white student as they would be with a stu dent of their own race. Breakdown of discipline is the root of all the evils in our schools today. Of all the places in the world where discipline is an absolute must, school rooms come first. Sin of Omission Last Wednesday an 18 year-old'Bich lands housewife was arrested by tlnited States Customs officials for accepting delivery of 21 pounds of marijuana which had been mailed to her by her husband in Viet Nam. For a long time it has been well known by all levels of law enforcement that a large part of the flood of illegal drugs that our young people are being ex posed to are coming through the mails from Viet Nam, and by units returning to the states by air and sea who had the opportunity for large profits. This teen-age bride and her yobng husband are now in very serious trou ble because of their greed, but to a large degree we feel the United States gov ernment itself is an accessory. In World War Two all troops overseas had every letter to anyone either in Europe or back home censored, and even ridiculously trivial things were igic acts of slavery. J First, with toe hauling of countless f thousands of slaves from Africa under f conditions too miserable to retell to I continued slavery here where people I had left Europe to find freedom. I This slave trade made "many of New r England’s Puritan families very rich, but nothing their descendants have beep able to .do can erase the scar on the na tional co&cience of this evil traffic. * Then a later greed for quick protits by those same New England, shipping families led to the enslavement of many more million people, when English and rl American traders introduced opium to f China and dragged .fixe world’s largest, most cultured and proudest people down, i . Now the evil of both of these en slavements hangs heavily upon the world. pThe understandable hatred of all for V eigners which the Chinese exhibit today | is not simply a national psychosis but 'is the ugly memory of what outside forc es did to that great nation. For a hundred years England, Japan, Germany, France and the United States lorded it over the people of China and continued to sap the mental and physical vigor of that great people. Great fortunes were made by pirates whose interest was in money and not in people. All the thousands of mis sionaries that penetrated China from one end to the other could not in ■ thousand years erase the exploitation of this proud people, nor compensate with any amount of rice and Christian charity for their debasement So today inside our country we are faced with a flood of narcotics that Com munist China is repaying us with. It is equally fruitless for White Amer ica to try to salve its conscience with a wide assortment of compensatory con cessions to the grandchildren of those African slaves who Were dragged in chains across a long and deadly ocean. cut out of the mail of every serviceman. Every package mailed home also went through the same tedious inspection. Now for a long time our higher echelon officials have known, or surely should have known, about this flood of narcdtics which is pouring into our country in this manner; yet, nothing intelligent or effective has been done. For every Individual who has been caught there has been a thousand who got away with these criminal acts. That is why all of the large military bases are considered to be worst areas of drug addiction and drug distribution. That has been a key in the great flow of illegal drugs into and through Kins ton — the nearness to these military bgses. It baffles the imagination to attempt to assign reasons for this dereliction by our top leaders in both military and civilian positions. There are sins of omission as well as sins of commission and in this par ticular area there has been and still exists the grossest sin by omission. In addition to the huge, traffic in narcotics there has also been a flood into this country by service men, the most of whom merely havje larceny in their hearts, but many of whom have revolution on their not to be allowed to i is apt i A hundred years «, historian predicted that tne united stal es would be destroyed in the 20th cen tury by vandals from within; that the country would either sink beneath the trouble sea of anarchy or turn to some form of dictatorship. Either way, he predicted, the United States with its great freedoms for the masses would perish. It is hard to con tradict this hundred year-old prediction which one tries to comprehend the bomb ing Of the nation’s capitol building. When a few scattered ROTC buildings, and a. few corporate office buildings have been bombed it did'not bring into harsh foc us the monster proportion of this nih listic disease. Most of those who have known the immensity of this disease have been afraid to talk publicly about it, and that few who have been willing to speak out have been either laughed or sneered at. Discipline has collapsed from the cra dle to the grave. It began in otir homes and has now spread to every corner of this troubled land. (Jmiaren are not taught to obey sim ply because they are children, but in stead have been fed on a steady, dan gerous diet of permissiveness which has left them like ships without rudders. If the child is not made tp obey the sinfc- ; plest rules of the home he will inevitably grow into an adult who will disregard more complex rules of modem sotiety. Perhaps as that farsighted Englishman predicted so long ago: this collapse of discipline was biiilt into our system o|L government, since it contained the seeds of anarchy that are inevitable when the masses are hoodwinked into believing that their government can give them something it has not taken from them. this is a disease not only suffered by the very poor; if anything it is suffered' worse by the very rich since the meas* ure of their rape of the republic is far worse than that for the welfare recip ient. Did you see where one doctor had collected over $140,000 just from med- . icaid patients here in North Carolina in just one year? Or did you read about the Grifton druggist who had overcharg ed $18,000 for medicaid prescriptions. So it is a dangerous fallacy to Mama our national problems on Russia, or Viet Nam, or Red China. These bastards are our very own get. Now I'm sorely afraid that the only remedy for the problem we have created for ourselves is very bitter medicine — medicine that will purge our system of many of those freedoms we have taken for grafted; freedoms now threatened by our own neglect. Freedom is the most difficult system of all because we must have the character as individuals not to abuse these freedoms and the courage to de fend them. Today all too many of us lack both -i the character to control our own-greed and the courage to flight those who blind ly aie destroying this nation. ■
Jones County Journal (Trenton, N.C.)
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March 4, 1971, edition 1
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