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‘Educators’ Want to Take Your Kids from You
The focus of schools at every level has changed since the Left became the education establishment, in case you haven’t noticed. Prior to the “revolution” in education initiated by the radicals conducting sit-ins in the deans’ offices around the country, there was a pretty broad consensus about the purpose of education. It used to be that education in America was meant to inculcate in students the ideals and principles that made America what it is (was), even if their studies included other countries and cultures. It was meant to form good citizens informed about civic structures, civic life, and civic duties. And it aimed to build competence in subjects essential for living — reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic. Not anymore. Not since the lunatics took over the asylum.
My first run-in with a blatant attempt to separate me from my child occurred nine years ago when I was touring colleges with Elder daughter. It happened right here where we live near Colorado College. We didn’t believe CC would be a suitable match for Elder, but I wanted her to have a taste of what was out there, and this was right on our doorstep.
When we arrived on campus, the first bad sign occurred at check-in. There were several women behind the desk and not one of them would speak with me or make eye contact. They warmly acknowledged Elder, but I was a non-entity. My “do you know who’s going to be paying for this?” alarm meter was pegged.
Elder and I sat next to each other during the indoctrination introduction speech, where students who were obviously better suited to CC asked such pressing questions as, “I understand Colorado Springs is a conservative Christian city. Should I be triggered?” I might be paraphrasing…. My unspoken response was, “Oooo, scary conservative Christians!”
After the Q&A, we were told parents were to stay in the indoctrination conference room for more uplifting thoughts about scary conservative Christians (or whatever) while potential students took the tour of the campus. I wasn’t even to see where my child might be living. This is when I leaned over to Elder and whispered, “we’re out of here.” She didn’t hesitate. We stood up and walked out. Together.
Elder, after touring 13 other schools throughout the Midwest and being on the “reserve” list for the University of Chicago (her first choice), ended up attending Hillsdale College. When I told the head of parent relations at Hillsdale the tale, her response was, “Thank God!”
The moral of the story is, why in heaven’s name would you send your child to a school hostile to your values and trying to separate her from your family? And, guess what? This is happening at every level of public education and right up through graduate school at all but a handful of universities. Maybe not even that many. The money you have to shell out for these indoctrination camps is secondary to them trying to take your kid away from you. Get your kids out! No matter what you have to do — transport them daily to a (free) classical charter school, homeschool, … even no school! (Certainly, college is overrated at this point.) Get. Them. Out.
Addendum: There’s a great article (a series, actually) about conservative accommodationism in education. It helped inspire this post.
Addendum 2: Elon Musk sees the danger.
Published in General
And by the way, a similar hostility to Catholics is why Catholic schools were started. They used to be some of the best schools around, although they’ve lost a lot of cachet with me since the culture has influenced them (I’m looking at you Notre Dame) more than the other way around.
Same as any other cult. I’m surprised they didn’t have them all sit in a circle and sing “Kum Ba Yah.”
good post and Hillsdale a great school. Did she take any courses from Paul Rahe? Old friend from HS debate. Our three got through Catholic schools through HS 20 years ago and got through colleges before the brown shirts took over. Lawyer friend has a daughter touring colleges now and is now at Reed in Oregon. Can’t wait to hear what that one is like.
She did not. But, her parents got to meet him there with @rushbabe49 and Ray!
On a related note, is it possible to get a young adult book published these days without explicit homosexual sex?
https://twitchy.com/brettt-3136/2023/04/29/axios-books-most-targeted-for-censorship-in-california-all-included-lgbtq-themes/
Elon Musk agrees education is indoctrination, now.
And more transinsanity withheld from parents. Also close to home.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/madelineleesman/2023/04/29/parents-defending-education-school-district-n2622517
Dr Arnn should do an interview with Mr Musk for Radio Free Hillsdale.
Same with Georgetown
The nearly universal description college “professionals” use for involved parents is “helicopter parents.”
There is such a thing, I think. Jonathan Haidt has done a pretty good job of describing how helicopter parenting has damaged free play in children, for example, and how that impacts their sense of empowerment (internal locus of control or external locus of control?). But, caring about what your kid’s school is teaching is not that.
I have to say, CC was the most overt of the colleges we toured about trying to isolate kids from their parents/families. The vibe at Hillsdale is completely different. Hillsdale acknowledges that 18-year-olds (20, 21, 22, . . . ) are not fully formed and their parents need to know what’s going on in their lives. When your kid enters Hillsdale, you all become part of the Hillsdale family. I can’t recommend it highly enough. Even non-Christian, left-of-center families will find it hospitable. And the education is the real thing — top. notch.
Originally helicopter parents was a useful description, particularly when applied to the parenting of children. It has become a useful pejorative label for engaged parents.
Perhaps more later.
Separating an individual from family and friends is exactly what cults do . . .
Every child from the “oppressor class” (white heterosexuals) which is lured into “transitioning” ends the possibility of an additional oppressor class family.
As do narcissists. And it strikes me that narcissism, as a personality trait, “lives loudly” in many of these university people.
So is indoctrination, which is what the vast majority of schools at every level are engaged in. They’re certainly NOT educating our kids in any meaningful sense of the word.
That the public schools are indoctrinating young minds while at the same time doing an increasingly mediocre job at teaching them the basics is not a secret anymore. The truth is out there for all parents to see. Why, then, are parents still sending their kids to these failed institutions?!
One possible answer might be found in the story related to me by another Ricochet member at the recent Stillwater, MN meetup: This member was involved in a Christian school with a classical curriculum. A family she knew sent their daughter to the school, but not the son. The mother explained that if she were to send her son to the school as well, she’d have to give up her horse. That was amazing – having the horse outweighed the son’s education! Clearly the attitude here -let’s call it what it is, selfishness or at the very least an unwillingness to make a sacrifice for the child – is a problem.
Should have sent the boy, given that public schools are now heavily slanted towards educating girls.
If I’m remembering correctly, it was the boy who expressed the most interest in attending.
Girls are also the ones most affected by transgender social contagion. No thanks.
The problem with Christian schools for many people, and private schools generally, is they cost money — they’re not freeee like public schools are. I’ve run into people (a young woman working the Walgreens counter looking to place her young son in a more conservative/classical/Christian-friendly school) who don’t know (and I’m not sure I was able to make it clear to her) that classical charters (like the ones my girls attended) are publicly funded. AKA taxpayer-funded. They receive the bare minimum per pupil rate (because government-run schools don’t like the competition for your kid’s soul), their teachers tend not to be unionized and are paid less than public school teachers (naturally) and you typically have to win a lottery to get in. Larry Arnn tells a poignant story about the school his daughter runs in Texas where three times as many families applied as slots available, and people cried when their kid didn’t get in.
A lot of people seem to think charters charge tuition, though. It’s certainly not the case in Colorado and I don’t think anywhere else.
The sacrifice you have to make (if you can call it that) is having to get kids to and from the school, since busing is not provided. That’s it. And when mine were very young, I car-pooled with another family to cut down on the number of trips. There really is no excuse if you can afford the gas, except maybe mom and dad are working and can’t get away for drop-off and pick-up.
Also, when LMA was beginning her medical crisis (really, before we knew what we were in for), I homeschooled her for a year using Seton Homeschool’s most excellent curriculum. I think it cost me, books and all, under $300 for the year. And Seton provided teachers who would instruct and grade whenever I felt myself out of my league.
And grandmas and grandpas? You can take up the slack if any of the above is a problem for parents of your grandkids. It’ll be worth it.
The education system in America is an absolute travesty.
But in some ways I blame conservatives. For too long, too many conservatives were too willing to give the Lefturds and their indoctrination schemes a free pass. Only recently when the indoctrination became so heavy handed did many conservatives start to pay attention.
In my book this is s very simple constitutional issue where all generally represented viewpoints should be “protected” and presented in a nuetral fashion to all our school kids. That way the kids will develop those critical thinking abilities just deciding their religious and political hbeliefs .
But back to issue at hand. Who the hell gave the Lefturd Whackjobs the right indoctrinate our kids in the first place? But of course the version of the GOPe down through the decades acquiesced to this nonsense in legislatures and the courts thus legitimizing the Left’s claim to indoctrinate which is of course completely unconstitutional.
What has to happen now is that we need to harshly prosecute those responsible for this abusive indoctrination from Superintendents of Schools all the way down through the Adminstrstors to the teachers. Any thing less will be an utter failure.
The constitutional argument doesn’t move me. I don’t think all viewpoints should be represented, especially before high school, when kids only begin to truly develop critical thinking skills. No one should care what kids think about economic systems or structure of government. But, that’s what makes “public” education unworkable at this point. The Left IS the education establishment and has made the whole thing toxic to young minds.
The immediate thing to be done is to get. them. out. My evil genius plan at one time was to keep your kids out for count day and then use up state resources by sending them for the rest of the year. But, kids are young only for a short time and are too vulnerable to the influences extant in public schools. I find it inexcusable that ostensibly caring, conservative parents continue to send them into the cesspit. On that we agree. Conservatives bear responsibility, too.
NOTE: It only took sending my oldest to public school through 2nd grade to see how awful these schools are for kids. Both my kids attended charters thereafter. The best you could do at the “good” neighborhood public school was for the adults to be indifferent (the principal, in this case). Otherwise the teachers were either leftwing cultish or incompetent. And that was in the early 2000’s.
I think it needs to be a full court press. Provide tax credits for home schooling. My favorite. Break up the huge worthless high schools and elementary schools in the big cities and add at least 50 charter schools in each one. Bet with the commercial real estate bust will be lots of empty buildings. Another preference is to light a fire under the Catholic bishops to restart the shut down Catholic schools. Tough when you don’t have lots of nuns and priests who work for free like the ones who taught me. But there must be a fair no. of Catholic billionaires who valued their education. Just spit ballin’.
This is too simplistic. If Left-leaning students are the ones gravitating towards teaching careers and then are educated in Leftist colleges, they will of course create what we have now, Left-leaning public schools in all grades. This is not something that can be changed overnight, nor do I see how the “GOPe” is responsible for this. The “GOPe” didn’t decide who would become teachers. I think there are a number of places where one can assign some blame, one being a complacent parent population, which was, in many cases, simply not aware of what was being taught until the Covid school closures brought the garbage to light. Now many parents are stepping up and demanding reform, getting elected to school boards, examining what’s in school libraries, etc. However, I don’t see it reforming quickly because of the Leftist training of Left-leaning teachers. That’s a harder nut to crack.
One of the problems is the left has done a good job of creating curricula that supposedly “meets” the state educational standards. Few teachers have the ability or are willing to make the effort to produce anything comparable on their own.
@unsk
I don’t know that few conservatively minded teachers are not making the effort.
But I think anyone who would take on the task of producing a curriculum or a book series that is in line with conservative values has to be smart enough to understand how major political connections are needed for an such efforts to become part of a state’s curriculum design, or part of the state’s lexicon of text books.
Look to how Gavin Newsom’s own wife has received magnificent funding for her film endeavors to enlighten the Golden State’s children.
https://californiaglobe.com/articles/californias-first-lady-produces-gender-justice-films-sells-to-state-public-schools/