I turned this week from reading the ongoing assurances of our state's Democratic politicians that things will surely get better in the government schools if the stingy taxpayers will only OK a state lottery to throw yet more millions at the existing bureaucracy, to a piece by a former Washington, D.C., high school math teacher in this month's DeWeese Report headlined, "How teaching has been rendered impossible in government schools."

"The discipline of arithmetic has seemingly been about 90 percent eliminated from the curriculum in D.C. and in government schools nationwide," Charles R. Lewis reveals.

But, "Arithmetic was not the only institution that has gone by the wayside. Teaching in general had been all but banned," Mr. Lewis, former director of studies at Washington's World Charter School, finally figured out. "A genre of lesson planning and required 'pedagogies' had sprung up that allowed a maximum of about 10 minutes of actual teaching per class period. The remaining class time had to be devoted to a combination of 'touchy-feely' techniques, politically correct propaganda, and 'activities.'

"Additionally, teachers had been de-fanged," Mr. Lewis writes. "For one thing, teachers could no longer eject disruptive pupils. ... Any teacher who put students out of class --- on other than the rarest of occasions --- became branded with the indelible stigma of having poor social director skills. ... Instructors were not permitted to tell pupils (who generally chatted, argued, screamed, and offered a cacophony of other noises their entire time in the classroom) to shut up. This was something of which students were keenly aware. In fact, pupils were the ones who informed me of this rule --- indignantly and on countless occasions.

"Nor could a teacher raise his voice to students. Twice administrators reprimanded me for shouting at extremely unruly pupils. I was seriously admonished for describing a pupil as 'immature.'

"I not so long ago looked into some federal funds for preschool reading programs under the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act," Mr. Lewis continues. "I was initially optimistic, as I had recent success getting 3- and 4-year-olds reading fluently. ... On inspection of the grant materials, I found I did not qualify for the simple reason that the government 'absolutely' did not encourage the teaching of actual reading to preschoolers. Recognition of the letters of the alphabet was the maximum acceptable instruction.

"You do not have to accept that there is an organized conspiracy to keep our kids ignorant to get the picture. As long as you realize that things are exactly as they would be if there were such a conspiracy, that will suffice."

Locally, our school administrators busy themselves assigning "multicultural committees" to censor school plays about the history of African-Americans by purging bad racial epithets, any mention of the Ku Klux Klan, or anything else that might tend to imply slavery was anything but a happy and inoffensive songfest around the campfire.

But Nevada's legislative Democrats assure us everything will be just hunky-dory in these youth propaganda camps, if only we will reach down into our pockets and dump a few more billion into the gaping maw of this "public school" butterfly farm.

Those whom the Gods would destroy, they first make insane.

--- Over the past decade, after England and Australia effectively banned private possession of all handguns and most effective rifles and shotguns, crime rates skyrocketed.

Economic researcher John Lott of the American Enterprise Institute reports the violent crime rate in Britain has risen an astounding 69 percent since 1996 --- with robberies alone up 45 percent. This despite that fact that from 1993 to 1997 --- the years immediately preceding the English self-defense ban --- robberies had fallen 50 percent.

The thugs know their victims are unarmed --- and that if someone does try to defend himself (like Norfolk County farmer Tony Martin), it'll be the homeowner who goes to jail, not the thugs.

The trend continues. Numbers released in October show violent crime in Britain jumped another 11 percent in the second quarter of 2004.

So, is British Parliament finally ready to give up on victim disarmament?

Of course not. Harsher victim disarmament laws: That's the answer!