Richard Dreyfuss, Liberal, Wants to Save Our Country

Richard Dreyfuss, Patriot

“I want to save my country. I think that we are a political miracle, I think that we are the most unique nation in the history of the world, and the only ones who don’t know it are our own kids because we don’t teach it anymore”

~ Richard Dreyfuss

The remarkable actor, Richard Dreyfuss, is a liberal, a liberal who is very concerned about the United States. He believes there is a lack of civic education in our country.

Because of his dedication to changing it, he has created a nonprofit corporation, The Dreyfuss Initiative, “to revive, elevate and enhance the teaching of civics in our school systems. The goal is to enlighten kids about the power they have in a democracy and to educate them on how to effectively use it”.

Richard Dreyfuss wants our children to grow up to be leaders who can run the country. As he says, if we don’t run the country, someone else will.

This is one of the many things that liberals and conservatives, for the most part, agree on. We should be able to work together on many initiatives but not in this divisive climate, which emanates from D.C.

As an educator in NY, I’ve found that the unfunded mandates forced on the educational system have grossly intruded on instruction in our schools. Teachers are required to teach children about sex ed, bullying, self-image and so on. Most of these federal and state mandates are unfunded and used to fall in the province of parents.

Every instructional area has a lobby which results in children being pulled out of classes to go to music lessons, special ed instruction, special art, gifted education, counseling, and on and on. The result is the teacher doesn’t have the children together for any period of time and children who are pulled out miss their regular instruction. There is no way for a teacher to make up all the work they miss – they’d have to be miracle workers. Leave the children in the classes and they would be better off in most cases.

Then there are the endless tests.

There are so many tests and so many unnecessary “programs” to be included that something has to give. That something is usually social studies or science or both.

Richard Dreyfuss’ initiative is laudable and worth looking over. Parents need to consider picking up some of their children’s education and I hope they consider starting with civic education. Read more: The Dreyfus Initiative

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