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Violation of a Sacred Trust
Public schools have broken a sacred trust. Parents have both the right and responsibility to care for, teach and train their children. When they send them to a public school (or a private one, for that matter) they are allowing that school to teach those children on their behalf. It is a sacred trust. The parent is trusting the school to provide education for the children on behalf of the parent whose job and right it is to bring up their children as they see fit.
It is not up to the educator to decide what kind of person they would like to produce. It is not up to the educator to instill values in their children that are contrary to the wishes of the parents. It is not up to the educator to make the children do something the parent does not want them to do. For educators to do this, as it is being done today, is to break a sacred trust.
I live in Virginia. We have had school board meetings that have made it into the news. Some of these meetings have gotten almost out of hand. Many parents are upset and angry and rightfully so. Public schools are promoting the LGBT agenda and critical race theory along with sex “education” that involves pornographic material. They have no moral right to do this. People like former governor McAuliffe have said out loud that parents have no right to tell public schools what they ought to teach. And too many people agree with him.
Most parents are not angry enough. Please do not misunderstand me. I am not advocating some kind of violence when I say that anger is an appropriate response. It’s a proper emotional response when people are messing with our kids. In public there are right, and effective, ways to respond. And respond we should.
Unfortunately, there are many parents who do not care what their children are taught. They forsaken their responsibility and simply turned everything over to the state schools. And public school authorities think that this is great. They think that education is ultimately their responsibility and that parents ought to quietly submit to whatever the school system says is right. This is one of the biggest problems as I see it. Who has the right to determine what children are taught? And furthermore, where did they get these rights?
In my view, parents are given children by God and God gives parents the responsibility to teach and train their children. And, of course, that is the way that it was until recent decades. Public schools were started by local parents who organized and taxed themselves and hired a teacher to teach their children. This became formalized over the years and local governments, then state governments, began to get involved.
Despite the fact that these became government schools, there was an agreement, a trust, as to what the children would be taught. We used to have a moral, and to some extent a religious, consensus, about how and what children should be taught. It was easy for parents to trust their local schools especially since local school boards (who were supposed to represent the parents) were still in place to ensure that parents and educators agreed on what was to be taught.
But progressives always have plans to make things “better”. They have slowly but surely taken over everything from the training of teachers and educators to influencing the school boards who are supposed to represent the parents. The progressives want our children. They think that they know better than the parents. Parents are despised as regressive and ignorant if they oppose the progressive agenda. But it is an evil agenda. We are seeing it unfold before our eyes.
Some parents, years ago, left the public schools for homeschooling, religious schools, or other private schools (though you have to watch out for some of them as well). Our children were homeschooled and then went to a Christian school where my wife was the high school teacher. The last one graduated in 2003.
More parents are waking up to what the public school system has become. Public schools are run by elite progressives who care little about traditional academic subjects and a lot about making your children in their image. I hope that more and more parents wake up to what has been happening in our public schools even apart from the hot-button issues being debated today. Those of us who forsook it years ago didn’t even have to deal with some of the garbage that is taught today. We simply did not want godlessness and immorality taught to our children. They almost seem like the ‘good ole days’ compared to what is going on now.
I don’t really know if it is possible to reform the public school system, at least in the short and medium run. It is time for parents to abandon it and insist on vouchers or tax credits to build healthy religious and private schools. That means that we will be needing a lot more private schools. So it is like we have to start all over again creating the kind of schools that are public schools were supposed to be. Perhaps the real problem was that we trusted the government. That does not usually turn out well.
Published in General
What a great post! A thought has occurred to me. Have you ever thought of running for the local school board?
I think this is very true, and I would like to challenge those private and religious schools to also be an option for parents of kids who require special education and, at least in my state, are absolutely the prisoners of the public school system. I would have loved for my kids to go to Catholic school, but because they had developmental and intellectual disabilities, they could not be accommodated. The only private schools that would take them had to be contracted through the school district, with the district’s approval and payment. It would have been very difficult to adequately meet their needs with homeschooling—but if they were in school now, I’d have to try, because my son would long ago have been expelled for mask noncompliance.
Surely there must be a template for religious and private schools to become fully inclusive and provide needed services. Please, somebody, make it so.
My wife works in a Christian school and I have a special needs grandson. The school is relatively inexpensive for parents – about $6700 per year. But they would have to charge a lot more to accommodate special needs students. This is where vouchers would come in. The public schools are getting a lot for these students and if that money were given to private schools, I am thinking that they would do a better job with them than the public schools. The money should follow the parents.
Thanks and no. I stick to church boards and Christian schools.
I sure hope this happens. Even for parents who ultimately stay in the public schools, it would be lovely to have another option to use as a negotiating tactic in IEP meetings, which are so often take-it-you-can’t-leave-it affairs.
Having the school system decide what kind of person your child should be is like the babysitter deciding that from now on your child will be a vegan.
Mr. C has been lamenting for several election cycles, why, oh why, don’t Republicans make school choice their top issue??
Once I saw what was happening in regular public schools (my oldest was in 2nd grade), I moved my kids into the classical charter system. Private schools and homeschooling aren’t the only options and, depending on the availability of classical charters, not even the best ones.
These are publicly funded and have to jump through the accreditation hoops (which is another whole lefty takeover), but the Core Knowledge and Hillsdale charter curricula are solid and turn out educated critical thinkers. My kids even read the Bible in high school in literature and history classes. Charters also have to provide accommodations, often using resources available in the public school district, at least in Colorado — it might depend on your state.
The tradeoff is, you might have to win a lottery to get your student into one. Larry Arnn tells about the heartbreak of the 2/3 of families whose kids were denied a place at the charter his daughter opened in Texas. Like a public school, they have to take any applicant who wins a place, even if the student needs to “catch up” (be held back) academically.
Overall though? Public education establishment delenda est. It’s worse than being uneducated at this point.
Because they will be accused of being racist. Never mind that school choice, done properly, is a way to win African-American votes.
One of the most despicable things a Republican ever did was when Gov. John Engler of Michigan refused to let school choice (I forget in which form) onto the ballot in Michigan, because it would bring black voters in Detroit to the polls, and in addition to voting for school choice they would vote for Democrats.
Well, then, Republicans are worse than cowards.
Are school boards required to have children in the school? If not, that would be a start. The leftist boll weevils are activists, they invest in getting elected to things .