The Patriot Post® · Breaking Up the Public School Monopoly

“Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted."—Vladimir Lenin

Every serious problem this nation currently endures can be traced back to a single source. To be blunt, we’re creating legions of useful idiots in public schools across America. At least two generations of Americans can no longer add and subtract simple numbers in their heads, know next to nothing about the nation’s history or government, and cast a jaundiced eye toward inalienable rights guaranteed by the Constitution — all while remaining well-versed in progressive ideology. The time for complaining is over. It’s time to do something about it.

"One of President Trump’s promises to the American people was that he would provide billions to fund private school choice for parents, especially low-income families,” writes columnist Glenn Delk. “By allocating zero dollars for school choice, congressional Republicans, in their $1.3 trillion spending bill, made it crystal clear, to both the President and families with school-age children, that they have no intention of ever fulfilling that promise. Given the congressional slap in the face, President Trump should now order Attorney General Sessions to file suit on behalf of the United States against all 50 states seeking to break up the monopoly known as public schools.”

Americans should be clear on this point. Despite education being controlled by the states, public schools remain monopolistic, unionized fiefdoms of unaccountability that have promised — and failed — to deliver reform for over 40 years.

And it shows. A 2017 Pew Research Center survey reveals that American 15-year olds who took the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests in 2015 finished in 24th place in science, 38th place in math, and 24th place in reading out of 73 countries. Marc Tucker, president of the National Center on Education and the Economy sounded the alarm, warning, “The United States cannot long operate a world-class economy if our workers are … among the worst-educated in the world.”

Why did the decline occur? Tucker insists it’s because “the standards movement was stolen by the accountability movement.” In fact, he writes, “Facing tough sanctions from the federal government for low test scores, many states lowered whatever standards they had for high school students, so they could escape the consequences of poor student performance.”

Thus, as he further reveals, “High school textbooks that used to be written at the 12th-grade level for 12th graders are now written at the 7th- or 8th-grade level,” and “many community college teachers do not assign much writing at all to their first-year students because they cannot write.”

And as night follows day, the lowering of standards engendered the inevitable fraud necessary to maintain them. Two Google searches, “public schools issue worthless diplomas” and “public schools, grade fixing scandals” reveal the intentional dumbing-down of our nation’s youth to satisfy contemptible political interests has occurred all over the nation.

Yet while education dies, progressive indoctrination flies. As columnist Daniel Greenfield reveals, schools in New York City, Minnesota, Virginia and Missouri are force-feeding the Left’s “white privilege” agenda to kindergarten students. That agenda includes “separating whites in classes where they’re made to feel awful about their ‘whiteness,’ and all the ‘kids of color’ in other rooms where they’re taught to feel proud about their race and are rewarded with treats and other privileges,” the NY Post reports.

Unsurprisingly, the transgender agenda has also been inflicted on kindergarteners in California, Washington and Minnesota. Moreover, California’s state legislature purposefully excluded “gender identity” from their parental opt-out requirements — meaning parents must either withdraw their child from school or allow them to be subjected to an agenda replete with LGBT-inclusive textbooks.

Civics? A 2017 report released by the National Association of Scholars reveals that U.S. civics education, “if it exists at all, is being transformed into a political machine to push left-wing causes, undermine American government, and incite civil unrest,” reveals The Federalist’s Joy Pullmann.

Why do so many teachers embrace indoctrination masquerading as education? “Since the publication of the English edition in 1970, Pedagogy of the Oppressed has achieved near-iconic status in America’s teacher-training programs,” explained Manhattan Institute senior fellow Sol Stern in 2009. Stern further revealed how this “ed-school bestseller” serves the progressive agenda, noting that it is “a utopian political tract calling for the overthrow of capitalist hegemony and the creation of classless societies.”

That is only part of the picture. When two Supreme Court rulings made in the ‘60s asserted Judeo-Christian ethics were an “establishment of religion” and removed them from the classroom, an intellectual/ethical vacuum was created. It was filled with the Left’s secular humanist worldview — one that became non-rebuttable as a result.

This paradigm shift — despite the reality the Left’s socialist utopian agenda is as much a faith-based proposition as any religion — remains the status quo.

Steven Calabresi, a Northwestern University law professor, and the Federalist Society’s chairman of the board, envisions a remedy. In a number of law review articles, he makes it clear that a system with a 90% market share that is sole recipient of state education funds is no different than 19th century monopolies.

Monopolies outlawed by the 14th Amendment.

Delk also reminds us that the Justice Department successfully ended monopolies enjoyed by the likes of Standard Oil, IBM, AT&T, and the airlines, and that the same pressure should be applied to public schools. He urges Trump to seek a Supreme Court decision ordering state governments to make vouchers available to any student who wants a private education — secular or religious.

That would be a second Supreme court ruling in that regard. In the 1954 case, Brown v. Board of Education, SCOTUS unanimously ruled that education is “a right which must be made available on equal terms.”

Ever since, “Big Ed” has made a mockery of that ruling, and Harvard Graduate School of Education Dean James Ryan spells out exactly why, stating, “Right now, there exist an almost ironclad link between a child’s ZIP code and his/her chances of success.”

In 2013, Slate columnist Allison Benedikt revealed the Left’s genuine public school agenda, insisting that if “every single parent sent every single child to public school, public schools would improve,” she wrote. “This would not happen immediately. It could take generations … but it will be worth it, for the eventual common good.”

Few things are more despicable than the notion one should sacrifice the future of one’s own children for the “common good.” Yet far too many public schools continue to embrace this socialist/Marxist worldview, along with the Left’s unrelenting effort to “fundamentally transform the United States of America” — one indoctrinated child after another.

This de facto sedition must be met head on. While Sessions sues, Congress should hold nationally televised hearings and put the white-hot spotlight on “educators” who see nothing wrong with teaching children what to feel instead of how to think, or using them as cannon fodder for leftist political causes. That same spotlight should also shine on politicians who champion public schools — but put their own children in private ones.

America has endured this contemptible combination of indoctrination, incompetency and hypocrisy long enough.