The Plague Is Hitting the Public Education Myth Pretty Hard
This could very well be so much anecdotal confirmation bias on my part but, what the heck, sometimes these wandering thought experiments of mine can take us to interesting places.
It isn’t exactly a closely guarded secret that I am no big fan of modern-day American taxpayer-funded education. While I was educated a very long time ago, I did go to six years of public school and six years of Catholic (with real nuns), so I had a rather good basis for comparison then. That was before the Dept. of Education was turned into a Cabinet-level monstrosity by Jimmy Carter (seriously, did he do anything right?) and became an untenable bureaucratic nightmare.
I should preface this by saying that I don’t think all public schools or public school teachers are bad. Two of my favorite teachers ever were in a little town in the mountains of Arizona at a public school.
My wrath tends to focus on public-sector teachers’ unions and the aforementioned bloated bureaucracy.
This infernal plague year has taught so many of us a lot of tough-love lessons and we have learned a thing or two about education these past several months.
Parents Actually Can Still Teach Their Kids Some Things
Yes, homeschooling parents were aware, but many others have been surprised at how well they could do it.
It didn’t take many parents to express a possible plague-induced interest in homeschooling before academics and their evil allies in the mainstream media began a full-scale offensive against all things homeschooling. A lunatic Harvard professor (redundant, I know) came out swinging way back in April, calling for a ban on homeschooling because it’s “dangerous.”
Nothing terrifies academia and public-sector teachers’ unions more than the thought of increased interest in homeschooling. Homeschooling dispels the notion that teachers are the keepers of the keys to some secret way of passing along knowledge to the youth of America and directly threatens to break down the liberal indoctrination machine.
True story: UPS accidentally delivered a big box to me last week that was from a company that supplies learning materials to homeschoolers. There may not be an overwhelming number of parents who can even take this route, but enough have expressed interest that it’s kept the MSM full of negative chatter about the prospect for four months now.
Public Teachers Are Mostly Just Concerned About Public Teachers
This won’t win me any friends, especially since I have a few who are teachers, but it’s an unpopular opinion I’ve held for a long time, so I may as well repeat it.
Again, this is mostly a beef with the unions and the media. Whenever the teachers’ unions are making a pitch for more money, they portray teachers as these saintly beings who we are graced to have walked among us as they give of themselves to better our children.
It’s crap.
This is what teachers are up to this week:
Teachers bring coffins, guillotine while protesting NYC schools reopening plan https://t.co/69nlaIWOUG pic.twitter.com/NM9wJCej1Y
— New York Post (@nypost) August 4, 2020
Who would be comfortable leaving their kids alone with people this unstable?
They’ve been shrieking for a month about safety and distance protocols, but have been finding time this week for labor organization and protests. With the Democratic Socialists of America, no less.
The public-sector teachers’ unions are, first and foremost, radical leftist political lobbies. Their only concern about your kids is for their use as political pawns in a progressive indoctrination long game that they have been playing for decades.
And they corrupt the good teachers who are still out there.
The Los Angeles Unified School District is the second-largest in America. When the union representing its teachers gave its demands for returning to class to the school board, it was what my friend and RedState colleague Jen Van Laar aptly referred to as a “ransom note.” It was a progressive political push that looked as if it were written by Bernie Sanders.
They’ve operated behind a veil of media protection for so long that they probably think people aren’t noticing what’s going on. The teachers’ selfishness has been on full display for the regular folk to see.
Since March we’ve learned that college kids can learn just fine without being in a classroom or spending $300 on a textbook, which probably has all of the faux-commie grifters in academia sweating a bit now too.
There are solutions to keep the elementary and high school teachers safe while the kids return to classrooms, but they’d rather use this time to pimp their Democratic overlords.
At the very least, what’s happened in the last several months should give plenty of cause to reexamine American education at all levels. That will be an opportunity that may not present itself again anytime soon.
A little more time away from the indoctrination mills might be good for the kids anyway.
The Second American Civil War Has Already Been Fought and Academia Won
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PJ Media Senior Columnist and Associate Editor Stephen Kruiser is the author of “Don’t Let the Hippies Shower” and “Straight Outta Feelings: Political Zen in the Age of Outrage,” both of which address serious subjects in a humorous way. Monday through Friday he edits PJ Media’s “Morning Briefing.” His columns appear twice a week.
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