When I was growing up there was no question who was in charge of me. It was my parents. I was blessed with going to one of the finest public-school systems at the time — Shaker Heights, Ohio. It was clear the schools were responsible for educating me to read, write, learn mathematics and science, and teach me about history, particularly American history. The responsibility ended there. Have things ever changed.
I saw a transition when my own children attended school. The Beautiful Wife and I chose to send them to a Jewish school system. We knew of the degradation of the public-school systems (in the ‘90’s) and wanted our children to have our Jewish values reinforced during the long school days they experienced. When they were in elementary school the only indoctrination they were subject to was spelling correctly and multiplication tables.
Challenges began by the time they got to high school. There was a required health course that was a poorly disguised sex education course. Reviewing the curriculum, I questioned some of the materials and was told by the school headmaster it was a required course by the state of California for my children to graduate. Otherwise, tough luck sir.
The following year was dedicated to teaching the elements of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. I had seen the movie and found it to be a load of malarkey. There were predictions in the movie passed off as being truths about the future which have subsequently turned out to be incorrect.
For a meeting with the principal and science department head, I arrived with a stack of counter evidence to what was proposed in the movie. I started by holding up my well-worn copy of Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb. I spoke of how when I was my kids’ age the book was spoken of as gospel. Virtually everything in the book turned out to be hogwash. In fact, even the Left leaning Wikipedia states, “Paul Ralph Ehrlich is an American biologist best known for his pessimistic and inaccurate predictions and warnings about the consequences of population growth and limited resources.” I told them Al Gore’s movie would end up being thought of in the same manner. It had no scientific basis. Unfortunately, they went on with their misguided celebration of the movie.
The challenges we faced 17 years ago are insignificant compared to what is being spread in the public-school systems today in coordination with the two national teachers’ unions propagandists. I don’t know what I would do today if I were faced with the degradation of the school systems in my area. I am sure I would pull up stakes and relocate to an area where my children were not being indoctrinated. Alternatively, they would be home schooled.
That is exactly what I see happening. Every group that ever wanted to change a society has drafted the children into their movement and trained them in their thinking. Lenin did it. Stalin did it. Mao did it. You can rest assured that Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il did it and Kim Jong Un is continuing in their footsteps. We know Palestinian children are being indoctrinated to hate and want to kill Jews.
You can fight back. My friend, Barak Lurie, recently wrote a book, Keeping The Kids All Right, a handy guide on how to protect your kids from indoctrination.
Many people are pessimistic because the teachers’ unions have such a death grip on the educational system. It would be moderately acceptable except for the epic failures of educating the kids in the basics or reading, writing and arithmetic. That is why they call for abolishing standardized tests — to hide their malfeasances.
Recent wins by parents wanting traditional education along with parental control in the schools have given me reason to be optimistic. Parents who for a long time trusted that their school boards and schools were doing the right thing have become activists. Many parents are running for school board positions instead of allowing the Education Cartel to control their schools.
The bigger move is taking back control and returning it to the hands of the parents. As of today, there are ten states with universal or near-universal school choice programs, meaning that all or virtually all students in the state are eligible to participate in a school choice program. That puts parents in charge of choosing their kids’ school instead of being told their children are sentenced to an underperforming indoctrination factory.
These states are Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Utah, and West Virginia. These programs allow students to use public funds to attend a private school, charter school, or other non-public educational setting. Six more states have legislation to adopt universal school choice.
In the next five years or so we will begin to see the contrast in performance among states. My money is on the states that provide freedom of choice to parents. You know where the school funding follows the students as opposed to the performance in New Jersey, New York City, Chicago, and California where children’s futures are sacrificed to the god of unionized teachers. We used to blindly trust our school systems before teachers’ unions took over.
Those days are gone. Parents need to be and are once again involved in their children’s education. They must take back control. It needs to be done before we have a generation of uneducated, indoctrinated zombies created by inferior schools.
