Government schools are a terrible idea.
In fact, they are the biggest mistake America ever made. As longtime radio talk show host Neal Boortz rightly noted, “If you go to a Catholic school, you get a pro-Catholic education. If you go to an Episcopalian school, you get a pro-Episcopalian education. If you go to a government school, you get a pro-government education.”
Our Declaration of Independence, the revolution to create this country, and the Constitution we thereafter wrote make up one long, unbroken push for less government.
We the People established a very limited government responsible and subservient to We the People. But we then relied on government schools to teach our less-government history. Oops.
It was inevitable that government would begin warping the things it teaches, to dishonestly justify government’s mass and never-ending expansion.
Colleges and universities have been Communist cesspools for decades. Conservative godfather William F. Buckley achieved national fame with his book God and Man at Yale about Yale University’s Leftism—way back in the early 1950s.
Government primary and secondary schools resisted the urge to fundamentally transform our nation leftward, until the early 1960s. But once they got the ball rolling, it began rolling really fast. Flash forward to today: government schools as education facilities are long gone. They have been transmogrified into leftist indoctrination centers:
How Public Schools Indoctrinate Kids Without Almost Anyone Noticing
Public Education as Public Indoctrination
28 Signs That U.S. Public Schools Are Rapidly Being Turned Into Indoctrination Centers
These government-school victims are among those burning down cities all across the country. They have been indoctrinated to hate America and to agitate for its destruction, by the government schools for which we overpay drastically.
We are now in the midst of the coronavirus shutdowns. But children are almost entirely immune to the virus, and they don’t convey it to adults. Which is why every country on the planet is opening its schools this fall.
Except the government schools here in the United States.
The Schools Should Be the First Thing to Reopen, Not the Last:
“Closing schools was the biggest mistake of this lockdown, with the possible exception of banning non-emergency surgeries. They should have been the last thing to close, not the first thing.
“In fact, given that there is, statistically speaking, close to a 0% death rate among school-age children from the coronavirus, schools should never have been shut.”
Unfortunately, government-school radicals never let a crisis go to waste. Behold the Los Angeles, California teachers union’s ridiculous litany of Leftist demands, which they say must be met before they’ll resume indoctrinating our children:
Federal Bailout – More money than the CARES Act and Heroes Act provide combined
Fully Fund Title I – additional funds given to districts with low-income students
Fully Fund IDEA – money for students with disabilities
Medicare for All – Yes, Bernie Sanders Plan….
Defund Police…
Wealth Tax: A new tax on unrealized capital gains to California billionaires only, 1% a year until capital gains taxes are met….
Millionaire Tax: Add a 1% surtax on (California) incomes over $1 million a year, and 3% for over $3 million a year.
None of that, of course, has anything to do with education. But neither do government schools have anything to do with education.
The shutdown of schools this winter was an immediate and unexpected shock to everyone, including the schools. So the teachers and administrators can be forgiven for not being ready to hit the ground running. But government schools are particularly ill-prepared precisely because they are run by government. They are as sclerotic and anti-agility as any other government entity.
Government schools are so slow to adapt that they still operate on an agrarian calendar. The reason children get summers off is so they can help their parents pick crops. Government schools missed the Industrial Revolution entirely, and they are now wholly unaccommodating to the Digital Revolution.
So despite the mountains of money We the People pour down the government school rat hole, our schools were wholly unprepared to shift to remote learning when the lockdowns hit. And the government-school bureaucrats did what government bureaucrats always do when faced with their failures: they blame someone else. And of course the leftists controlling the media have backed the government schools’ lie.
“Millions of Americans lack Web access, a digital divide that complicates educators’ efforts to continue instruction during a health crisis.”
“[A]ccording to the Federal Communications Commission, 99.99% of the U.S. population has access to one or more internet service providers offering cable, DSL, fiber, fixed wireless, satellite or another type of internet service of 4 Mbps or higher.”
What is true is that millions of people don’t adopt the service. They have access to at least one Internet Service Provider (ISP) but choose not to buy the service. ISPs have led the horses to water. They can’t make them drink. That’s the source of the so-called inequality: consumer choice.
These internet “access” lies are being told all across the country. And in their lies, these government shills can’t even get their numbers straight:
16.9M Students Still Lack Home Internet Access
More Than 9 Million Children Lack Internet Access at Home
I guess 16.9 is “more than 9 million.” But if you’re getting multiple numbers for the same “fact,” your grasp of the truth is not to be trusted.
Covid-19 School Closures Reveal Disparity in Access to Internet
Digital Divide: Lack of Internet Access May Affect Homework, Student Performance
Cost is an impediment, you say? Philadelphia is the home of Comcast, America’s largest ISP. Comcast offers everyone (qualified) everywhere a connection for ten dollars a month. That’s basically free.
Despite these inconvenient truths, the government-school bureaucrats’ internet “access” lie reverberates everywhere.
New Effort Aims to Address Students’ Lack of Internet Access:
“Education advocates have announced a new effort to address a lack of … internet access that has hampered online learning for tens of thousands of poor and urban Connecticut students during the coronavirus pandemic.”
‘There’s a Complete Disconnect’: Educators Race to Address Digital Divide in Florida:
“‘When they can’t connect because they lack the technology, it instantly means they’re not learning’….”
Lack of Broadband Access Adds to Challenges for School Districts in Greater Minnesota
Government school bureaucrats et al. tell this Internet “access” lie to cover the bureaucrats’ backsides for being ill-prepared and to tee up the next leftist spending spree and power grab. They never want to let a crisis go to waste and miss a chance to grow government:
$100 Billion ‘Universal Fiber’ Plan Proposed by Democrats in Congress
Again, 99.99 percent of Americans already have access. Democrats’ desire to spend $100 billion on that 1/100th of 1 percent would make them look really stupid. Thus the “access” lie is made ubiquitous to justify yet another government expansion.
Educators are spreading this false internet access story because that’s what government schools do.
All of which has nothing to do with educating children and has everything to do with indoctrinating them.
Originally published at RedState. Reprinted and edited with permission.