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It’s Time To Ask: Do We Want Them Teaching Our Kids?
From at least the summer, if not the late spring, I’ve been sounding the alarm on the critical need to reopen schools. It’s perhaps a strange wheelhouse for a homeschooling mother to find herself in (which I’ve been told by a number of editors who refused to run pieces on the topic), but one that I’ve occupied because I’m not just a mother, but a former kid. If I grew up during this time with the same circumstances I did as a child, my life would have turned out very differently. My single mother would have been at work a full day and left me alone at home, and I can tell you one thing: I definitely wouldn’t have been logging into “distance learning” on my own. I would have lost at least a year of my education and instead sat around watching television and engaging with Internet content that would have stolen my innocence along with it.
I have a number of friends in the foster care world, and I also know that while my circumstances would have been far from ideal, they would have been a walk in the park compared to the abusive and neglectful situations millions of American kids are facing right now.
But for the average parents with the means to choose alternatives struggling through distance learning facing teacher’s unions representing teachers who don’t want to return to the classroom at least this year, I must ask:
Do you want them teaching your kids next year? Or ever again?
These are, quite simply, not people who care about your kids. If they did, we wouldn’t see headlines like this:
BREAKING: Stunning data for Fairfax County, VA's largest school system, shows HUGE academic cost of online learning — Fs up by 83% this year.
Vulnerable children struggling most: Fs for students w/ disabilities up by 111%, for English learners up by 106% https://t.co/wrkIy2V9k2
— Hannah Natanson (@hannah_natanson) November 24, 2020
Already, millions of parents around the country are pulling their kids out of public schools, choosing to either homeschool them or send them to private. There are probably millions of other parents who pulled their kids out and who gave up on educating them completely; we’ll never know how many fall in each category.
But this question is for the former group, those who gave up on distance learning and opted for a more kid-friendly form of learning, either in person or true homeschooling: Why would you send them back? Why would you entrust them with your children ever again?
I think we’ll see a lot of parents grappling with that question over the next few years. And quality American education will become even more a privilege of the rich.
Published in General
Bethany,
You are a great champion on this issue. The lies, as the American family continues being decimated by left-wing pseudo-culture a 50 year-long downward slide, continue to get worse and worse. You are speaking for all of the children in this country and all of the remaining responsible parents.
I defer to your good judgment. What you are saying makes perfect sense to me. Whatever you do, keep punching and don’t pull your punches either. Everyone needs to hear the truth. We are letting the kids down completely and abandoning the parents who want to do the right thing but are abused at every turn by a corrupt and perverse system.
More power to you Bethany.
Regards,
Jim
Do you want them teaching your kids next year? Or ever again?
No.
Maybe the solution is to expand school choice programs.
Which won’t happen under a Biden administration – in fact just the opposite. Although it will be interesting to see how teachers’ unions will make their, case for fewer options when they are not providing the schooling they insist only they can provide.
Question asked and answered for my kids’ education many years ago. We took my oldest out of our neighborhood public school (the “good” one our pocket neighborhood had to petition to get into) in third grade and put her in an E.D. Hirsch Core Knowledge (classical) charter. The youngest never attended regular public school. In high school they attended a Hillsdale-curriculum charter. I would never subject any child to the nonsense in regular public schools if I were king of education. It’s over. It’s been thoroughly corrupted by the Left.
In my oldest daughter’s second grade class, “science” consisted of teaching recycling and the extinction of gray wolves in the US. I spent more time deprogramming my child than she did learning anything true and useful. And that doesn’t even begin to address the behavior problems that were ignored or tolerated (because black child has been orphaned and is being raised by his 18-year-old brother and his girlfriend — so what can we do??).
Quality education doesn’t have to be available to only the privileged rich, though. Hillsdale College’s Barney Charter School Initiative has the goal of opening K-12 charter schools in every state, and its curriculum is available to anyone.
Listening to Larry Arnn talk about this, he doesn’t just view it as an educational enterprise — he sees it as a moral obligation. And the Hillsdale graduates teaching in these charter schools do too. They’re typically paid less than public school teachers, are teaching in poor neighborhoods, and, in my view, working twice as hard. But, most important, they have a commitment to truth. Something drummed out of teachers in 99% of education schools.
Public education establishment delenda est.
It will be interesting to see what long-term effect the school closings have on education. In higher ed, I think the beginning of the college bubble collapse has begun; this will probably hasten it. But I’m particularly interested to see if small private schools and homeschooling will get a lasting boost.
Our own little Catholic school, the one my younger three attended for high school when I stopped homeschooling them, has struggled in recent years to stay open. Now we have a waiting list, and space limitations that prevent us from taking in the refugees from local public schools. (Ours is the only school in the region that still does in-class teaching, five days a week, K-12.)
One of the very few silver linings to 2020, perhaps.
This was prescient: Peter Drucker on education, 1969
…especially his thoughts on Power and Responsibility:
The central moral problem of the knowledge society will be the responsibility of the learned, the men of knowledge. Historically, the men of knowledge have not held power, at least not in the West. They were ornaments…But now knowledge has power. It controls access to opportunity and advancement. Scientists and scholars are no longer merely “on tap,” they are “on top.”…
But power and wealth impose responsibility. The learned may have more knowledge than the rest of us, but learning rarely confers wisdom. It is, therefore, not surprising that the men of knowledge do not realize that they have to acquire responsibility fast. They are no different from any other group that ever before entered into power..They too believe that anyone who questions their motives must be either fool or villain, either “anti-intellectual” or “McCarthyite.” But the men of knowledge, too, will find out that power can be justified only through responsibility…
It is highly probable that the next great wave of popular criticism, indignation, and revolt in the United States will be provoked by the arrogance of the learned.
For the most part, they’re people who care about seeming to care about your kids.
I have no children, being a 25-year-old singleton who seldom leaves the house. But if I do, they won’t be seeing the interior of a public school — not if I can help it. Been there, done that. It offers nothing of value.
I see signs around my home town of Dover, Delaware that read “Keep Our Teachers Safe” Really? The kids they would be teaching are among the lowest risk of passing along COVID. Grocery clerks, delivery people, and all manner of other occupations are performing vital roles in the economy, not to mention healthcare workers, many of whom are my former colleagues, who are carrying on. But somehow I’m supposed to look upon teachers as some sort of treasured resource whose safety, though not really at risk, must be protected at all costs, even to the demonstrated detriment of an entire generation of children? Give me a break!! Teachers: You are valuable. You have an important job. America’s children need you in the classroom. BUT you’re not heroes! Get back to work!!
Most school choice programs are conducted at the state level. For example, in Florida and in my state of Indiana.
So, I do think that school choice can be expanded. However, the federal government, under Biden, won’t be encouraging this process. In fact, Biden’s secretary of education is going to be teachers’ union hack.
Reason #gizillion why, please G-d, the Republicans keep the Senate. No to Randi Weingarten.
I posted a while back about our school district still being open (since Labor Day) and in person learning at about 92 percent (we have to offer both options). The superintendent of San Antonio’s largest district wrote an editorial in the local paper stating how important it was to keep schools open, and stated that they are at 55 percent in person. That’s in a district with over 65,000 students. That means the parents of about 30,000 kids are keeping them home deliberately (in just that one district). And there are 19 different school districts in San Antonio.
I’m sure that will be a top priority of the Harris/Biden admin.
Not.
But hopefully the GOP state legislatures and GOP governors will continue to expand school choice programs, as they have in my state of Indiana.
Watch the Feds start to whack school systems that allow choice by withholding federal funding, or sending the DOJ to sniff around to look for “disparate impact” on minority students.