Review: Good back story to the Empire's Corps series, and a cautionary tale about failure to educate and "civilize" upcoming generations
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 12 3, 2013
More like a 3.75.I found Nuttall's "Reality Check"--the back story to the other volumes in his Empire's Corps series--to be a well-written cautionary tale, the story was exciting, and his main characters were well rounded, and not just stick figures.But, I see some reviewers here regard this work as merely a thinly veiled diatribe against today's politically correct educational bureaucracy and its predilection to push leftist indoctrination rather than to do the hard work of actually teaching, and to take the path of least resistance, to shy away in horror (and not a little fear) when it comes to applying discipline to their pupils in our increasingly litigious and often violent society, and that it is.However, it seems to me that "Reality Check" also presents a scenario that could quite likely be played out in the future.Has any society, any culture--even the longest lasting, many thousands of years old ancient Egyptian culture, and an almost equally ancient traditional Chinese culture, or that of the ancient Greeks and Romans--not ultimately fallen? In Colonial times it sometimes took months for a Royal edict to make its way from London by ship to the new American colonies.  Can we not imagine the problems of keeping together and controlling an Empire that stretches over vast stellar distances, where communication lagged as badly as it did in our colonial times, and this an Empire whose citizens were systematically denied the education needed to keep that empire functioning?As I understand it, and as was done in the past, schools are not only supposed to educate our children but to also teach them how to behave in society--to put it bluntly, to "civilize" them--and to teach them a common moral code; to give them practical lessons about how to get along with one another, so that our society can function, survive, and progress.Moreover, schools are also supposed to equip students with a common background and fund of information, to teach the story of our nation and to encourage patriotism. Schools are, above all, supposed to instill in each student our particular American mindset and ethos, thereby providing the cohesion, the absolutely essential social and cultural "glue" which keeps our society together and functional. All of which extremely important roles, it appears, many of today's teachers and schools have abandoned, or, are actively subverting.  Many "educators" apparently now see their role a la Bill Ayres as a "revolutionary" one, their aim being to try, in every way they can, to fracture and to dissolve that absolutely essential cultural and social glue that formerly animated and bound our traditional culture, society, and country together, to "fundamentally transform," to remake the U.S. into a new Leftist/Socialist Utopia.Have we not seen the rising tide of a new "barbarism," (to quote one very apt recent Internet post, "fifty years ago we were teaching Latin and Greek in high schools, now we are teaching remedial reading in College") in which increasing numbers of supposed high school and even college "grads" are pretty much unaware--except in the spottiest and most hazy of ways--of the great accomplishments, the pivotal figures, the art, literature, and music, the history, and the animating Judeo-Christian foundations and philosophy of our Western civilization, and are, in reality, functionally illiterate; just not equipped (and pretty deliberately so) to perform as educated, well-informed citizens having their own "agency," able to think for themselves, to be able to understand and dissect a speech, an  editorial,or an argument, and, perhaps, to question the official "line," or to pursue a trade, or craft, or profession, and earn a decent living?What about the alarming rise in violence in some of our schools, and the numerous attacks by students against, not only their fellow students, but also against teachers? How many, do you suppose, of the students who committed those violent attacks were met with swift and severe punishment, and how many such attacks were just swept under the rug, the perpetrators given little or no punishment, the victims, in essence, told to shut up about the incident so the incident could just "fade away?"How about the disdain and even hatred for America that is so often taught today in our schools?  What do we think the long term effects of that will be?So, can I see what the author posits happening given the situation as he has set it up?What is the logical end result of these trends if not the disintegration of a society as predicted in this story?