The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Dear Parents: American Schools Are Controlled by Democrats Who Hate You

Posted on | August 7, 2018 | Comments Off on Dear Parents: American Schools Are Controlled by Democrats Who Hate You

This story is the tip of a very large iceberg:

Shortly after President Trump’s inauguration, a group of public school history teachers in the posh Boston suburb of Newton pledged to reject the “call for objectivity” in the classroom, bully conservative students for their beliefs, and serve as “liberal propagandist[s]” for the cause of social justice. . . .
It was late on a cold and snowy New England evening in February 2017, and Newton North history teacher Isongesit Ibokette was venting at his keyboard about the new guidelines for avoiding bias in teaching. They had been sent out by Newton North’s principal that morning, prompted by the general ill will among teachers for the new occupant of the White House.
The guidelines asked teachers to remain objective while teaching about historical and current events; and to treat all students, regardless of political opinion, with respect. . . .
Ibokette was having none of it. He typed this reply: “I am concerned that the call for ‘objectivity’ may just inadvertently become the most effective destructive weapon against social justice,” and sent it to the members of Newton North’s history department.
Ibokette was responding to an email from another Newton North history teacher, David Bedar . . . [who] has played a significant role in the years-long controversy over anti-Jewish bias in the public schools of the heavily Jewish suburb.
Earlier that February day, Bedar sent an email to fellow Newton North history faculty, accusing President Trump and his supporters of “nativism, xenophobia, homophobia, etc.” . . .
After Bedar complained that he didn’t want to get fired for being a “liberal propagandist,” his fellow history teacher, Ibokette, wrote back: “David, if you get fired for doing exactly what history teachers, and indeed all rational and ethical-minded adults should indeed be doing, I will be right behind you.” . . .
Bedar’s direct supervisor, Newton North history department chair Jonathan Bassett, replied to his revolt against reason with this: “David: Your ‘essay’ is very good, and raises a lot of the questions that we are all dealing with. . . . We are in unprecedented times, and we are all struggling to do good.” . . .

You should read the whole thing. One of the things that any observant and curious parent will discover is that public school teachers have utter contempt for parents. No matter how intelligent or well-educated you are, no matter how successful you may be in your career, the bureaucrats who run the government education system believe that they are infinitely superior to you, in terms of knowing what’s best for your child.

Nothing could be more diametrically opposite to common sense than the stupendous arrogance of the government school bureaucracy. America’s prisons are chock-full of the victims of this perverse system, which every year hands out high-school diplomas to semi-literates who have spent 13 years being “educated” in this taxpayer-funded monstrosity. It is mainly a babysitting service or a juvenile detention facility, depending on the age and disposition of the helpless inmates.

Did you know that education majors (i.e., future teachers) have the lowest SAT scores among university students? While some reasonably intelligent people manage to become teachers despite the general mediocrity typical of teacher-training programs, the system is not defined or controlled by its best minds, but rather by the dimwit majority. This is one reason why the so-called “good” public school is a dangerous illusion.

What do we mean, after all, when we speak of schools in an affluent community like Newton, Massachusetts, as “good” schools? Well, the kids are the offspring of well-educated and successful parents, and tend to replicate their parents’ success in terms of standardized test scores. No one who has read The Bell Curve is surprised by this, but the myth of the “good” public school involves the illusion that it is the school, rather than the parents, who deserve credit for their children’s success. This false claim — that students in Newton do better than in South Boston because the teachers in Newton are better — is one of the prejudicial beliefs built into this system, along with the equally false belief that, unless someone has official certification as a teacher, they are unqualified to teach, much less to criticize what these so-called “professionals” are doing to children at taxpayers’ expense in the name of “education.”

Intelligent and curious parents must eventually become aware of problems in their child’s public school. The child comes home upset because of a misbehaving classmate, or there’s something about school policy or curriculum that seems sketchy, and so you inquire with the teacher. This is when you are told the well-rehearsed answer that you are the only parents who has complained. “Wait a minute,” you say, “I wasn’t complaining, I was just trying to find out what’s going on.” But the educational bureaucrat has been trained to defend the system against any nosy parent who might ask questions, and your curiosity about what’s going on behind the curtain of secrecy that surrounds the process of “education” — expressing concern for your child — marks you as a potential enemy. If you worry that your child is endangered by the disruptive bully in her kindergarten class, you are calling into question the system’s discipline policy. Parents who raise questions about the curriculum and pedagogy are, of course, dismissed as unqualified to judge what their child should be taught, or how best to teach them.

Public school teachers and administrators take extraordinary measures to conceal any problems in the system from parents. It is the preservation of the system — the taxpayer-funded government bureaucracy — to which the faculty and staff are fanatically committed, rather than to any benefit that this system might provide your child. So when parents begin to raise concerns about what’s going on behind this curtain of secrecy, the employees of the system will close ranks against the parents, like a Phoenician phalanx guarding itself against an attack by hostile cavalry.

Parents are the enemy — this attitude is deeply entrenched in the mentality of educational bureaucrat, and once you figure this out, you begin to realize that, in the minds of the administration and faculty, you are their inferior, unqualified to know what’s best for your child.

Well, never get me started on what’s wrong with the American public education system or I’ll rant until I run out breath. This situation in Newton, Massachusetts — where Jewish children are being taught by left-wing radicals who consider it “social justice” to support Hamas — is the tip of a very large iceberg, as I say. Our existing system of public schools is based on a flawed model, imported from 19th-century Prussia by Horace Mann, and has not been improved, but rather has become much worse, as a result of decades of efforts to “reform” it. My own personal policy is what I call Maximum Feasible Non-Cooperation. Don’t send your kids to public schools, don’t accept employment in the system, never say anything good about the system, and encourage everyone you know to do the same. If all the good parents would pull their kids out of the system, leaving the government bureaucrats with classrooms full of the offspring of bad parents, the system would collapse under its own weight. Then we could shut the whole damned thing down, fire all the employees, sell all the buildings and equipment at public auction, and thank God in heaven that future generations of American children will never have to endure this nightmare that has been foisted on our nation for so long.

(Hat-tip: David Bernstein at Instapundit.)



 

Category: Education

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