PUBLIC EDUCATION IS UNDER ATTACK!!
It is becoming increasingly obvious that the public education system in the US is being dismantled bit by bit. School vouchers, privatized charter schools, book bans, personal pronoun bans, gender identity bans, religious indoctrination. It’s all designed to take the education of children – yours and mine – and put it in the hands of people who may not make it their top priority. People who want your children and my children to learn what they want them to learn, whether it is factual or not. Teach them that slavery was beneficial to the enslaved. Teach them that there was a worldwide flood 4,000 years ago that wiped all but 8 humans off the earth. Teach them that what they are feeling about their bodies is wrong! Teach them whatever they want to teach them because you, as the child’s parent, have no say in the matter if you want your child to attend that school … or any school. If public, state-funded schools disappear, we’ll be left with for-profit schools that will teach them whatever they’re being paid to teach them. Capitalism as an education model.
Imagine having to “shop around” for which school to send your child to. You’ll have to do it the same way you shop for a car or a TV. You’ll have to weigh up all the options – what histories do they teach? Will science be taught at all? Can we afford it?
Public school has always been vital to the success of this country. The founders knew that. That’s why they made state-funding of public schools a provision for newer states joining the union. They knew that a well-educated electorate would only strengthen the fabric of democracy. As access to education erodes, so does public involvement in government. And as public involvement erodes, conservative government expands. Education leads to enlightenment. Enlightenment leads to questioning, and thereby threatening, their authority. Questioning their authority leads to removing their power. And they can’t handle that.
Public education has been the bedrock of society in this country by creating and maintaining a commonality among its citizens. It is a basic human right for people to earn a quality education. An educated public is a more engaged and contributive public. The more we know, the more we are capable of. And that may be at the root of the issue.
Conservative bigots have been going after public schools since desegregation. (Brown v. Board, 1954) The very idea that non-white students could attend the very same schools as white students was an abomination to their “still salty about that whole ‘civil war’ thing” values and a threat to their presumed (white) supremacy. To think, it only took 90 years to get there, too. Then there was the removal of state-sanctioned prayer in public schools. (Engle v. Vitale, 1962) That ruffled some feathers among the Evangelical set. And since “evangelical” and “conservative bigot” are often used to describe the same people, they have been trying ever since to “rid the country of liberal bias” beginning in school.
Fast-forward to 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic. Schools were forced to close to reduce the spread and children were forced to learn remotely over the internet. Parents were upset because now their source of childcare was taken away, forcing some of them to have to quit their jobs to stay home with the kids. That gave way to “hybrid learning” – some days at home, some days in class. Of course, the in-class days meant kids wearing masks. Oh, the horror!! The kids didn’t mind the masks nearly as much as their parents. The anti-mask crowd descended upon school board meetings like flies on shit, screaming their fool heads off – unmasked, of course – about how masks were tyranny!!
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
