Teachers can’t educate, but boy, can they indoctrinate
OPINION:
The Colorado Teachers Association has passed a resolution condemning capitalism, and I couldn’t be more delighted.
Public education is a socialist institution. Taxpayers are forced to fund it. Families are forced to provide students, aka customers. The product is crafted by bureaucrats and unions.
That’s a reality conservatives must confront. Abolishing state schools should be high on our list of priorities.
The resolution charges that capitalism exploits children, perpetuates the so-called patriarchy, is inherently racist and anti-LGBTQ and is responsible for climate change. They forgot the common cold and the heartbreak of psoriasis.
The manifesto follows decades of resolutions by the state association’s parent body, the 3 million-member National Education Association, which could have come directly from the Democratic Socialists of America. The Colorado group’s genius was putting it all together in a few hackneyed phrases.
The resolution reflects the mindset of the ideologues who preside over public schools. That’s why they’re blase about reading, math and science scores but passionate about critical race theory, environmentalist indoctrination and the Gender Unicorn, which holds that gender identity is fluid based on how people feel about their own gender identity.
Public schools in Seattle push the idiotic notion that American education is “part of a race-based white supremacist society.” A high school in Newton, Massachusetts, hosted a drag show to celebrate Transgender, Bisexual, Gay and Lesbian Awareness Day. The Santa Ana, California, Unified School District teaches in ethnic studies that Israelis are colonizers.
The slogan of public school teachers should be “We can’t educate, but boy, can we indoctrinate.”
When I was a student at Boston University back in the 1960s, education majors were widely reputed to be the dumbest bunnies at the school. Now, they’ve managed to outdo themselves.
If capitalism is so awful, can the Colorado Teachers Association, the National Education Association or the American Federation of Teachers explain how Venezuela went from being one of the richest nations in the hemisphere to one of the poorest after two decades of socialism, or why a nighttime satellite photo of the Korean Peninsula shows all of the lights in South Korea (socialists are great at turning lights out), or why we need to build a wall to keep immigrants out, while East Germany built one to keep refugees in?
Public education in America was pioneered by Horace Mann, an alleged reformer, in Massachusetts. Mann vehemently opposed religious schooling. He believed in centralized control of education following the Prussian model. His goal was to take the children of immigrants and turn them into cookie-cutter citizens who would think and vote exactly as they were told.
After decades of failure, the educrats and union bosses who run our schools have nowhere to hide.
The greatest challenge to their reign of error isn’t capitalism; it’s the parental rights movement. That’s why the Biden Justice Department tried to label parents protesting at school committee meetings as domestic terrorists.
At last count, there were 85 bills in state legislatures promoting school choice.
Democratic North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper — a cat’s paw of the education establishment — declared a state of emergency to keep the Republican-controlled legislature from overriding his veto of a bill that would allow parents to take education dollars to the public or private school of their choosing.
Mr. Cooper believes in public education so much that he sent his three daughters to tony private schools. The most vociferous champions of public education — including ex-Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama — invariably vote for private education for their own children.
On average, it costs $15,621 a year to educate a student in state schools. A large part of that goes to bloated teacher salaries. In California, the average teacher earns $78,711 for roughly nine months of work.
Some of the loot is siphoned off in union dues to help elect Democratic candidates who will do the bosses’ bidding. In fiscal 2020-21, the National Education Association spent $2 on lobbying and political donations for every dollar it dedicated to activities such as collective bargaining. Overwhelmingly, their donations went to Democrats, with a few RINOs thrown in for camouflage.
Ironically, they’re called public schools when the public has no say about how they operate. When the public tries to assert itself, they’re branded a threat to democracy. It’s like the word “People’s” in People’s Republic of China. It’s a public relations gimmick that has no relation to real life.
The next Republican presidential nominee should make alternatives to state schools a high-profile part of his campaign.
In condemning capitalism, the Colorado Teachers Association declared war on America, which cannot survive without a free-market foundation. Conservatives should counterattack.
• Don Feder is a columnist with The Washington Times.
