With her well-researched studies and many books, education historian and former assistant secretary of education, Diane Ravitch has certainly evolved into a position to know just how an extended generation of the education establishment has managed to tear down learning in this country -- and American history along with it. Historical revisionists, censors and elements of the self-absorbed boomer generation are responsible for deconstructing education and reconstructing history in their own image. Indeed, they have robbed generations of students of their education.

It is simply unconscionable how the academic elite, hyper-sensitive pressure groups and selfish interests have dismantled history by distorting the meaning of America and democracy, and by engaging in the personal destruction of our "Founding Fathers," one by one. Hopefully, the ongoing efforts to restore education, by removing distortions and turning around the factories of ignorance, will stop the mass production of functionally illiterate children and save our students from culture sculptors and prescribed failure.

Ravitch is leading in the right direction. Her books, including her recently published, "The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn," should be required reading in teacher's colleges.

DBJ