The Patriot Post® · Blame Republicans for Bad Schools?

By Thomas Gallatin ·
https://patriotpost.us/articles/94936-blame-republicans-for-bad-schools-2023-02-14

Elections in America have in one way or another always focused on some set of issues. For the two major political parties, various issues are combined to form their broader party platform — what their respective candidates aim to see advanced should they win their respective elections.

But politics is also a game of personalities and identities, and Democrats more so than Republicans have been the party to elevate identity politics often over and against policy. This, of course, doesn’t mean that Democrats don’t have a party agenda; it’s just that they like to disguise their increasingly hard-left agenda as somehow mainstream, while at the same time labeling their opponents on the Right as scary extremists.

In seeking to dupe the electorate, the Democrats can count on the mainstream media to back up their dubious and often flat-out false narratives smearing Republicans.

Recently, the Associated Press tacitly engaged in this type of Republican smear campaign with an article suggesting that presumed GOP presidential candidates see the “‘parents’ rights’ movement and lessons for schoolchildren” as “emerging … flashpoints” for their campaigns. To be fair, Republicans do correctly see the ongoing problems within America’s public education system as a significant issue to campaign on, but that’s exactly what one should expect a politician to do.

However, in reading the AP’s article, one gets the sense that Republicans are creating divisions by attacking an institution that has few if any problems, other than a handful of parents still disgruntled over the “inconvenience” of COVID lockdowns on their children’s schools.

The article observes, “The effort has prompted criticism from LGBTQ advocacy groups, teachers’ unions, some parents and student activists and those worried about efforts to avoid lessons about systemic racism.” Furthermore, it obtusely notes, “Democrats have cast the efforts as race-baiting and improperly injecting politics into schools.” That’s rich. Projection of their own nefarious agenda onto Republicans is what Democrats deem as a show of good faith.

What Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has done in the Sunshine State, what Donald Trump has begun stumping on, and what former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley has warned against is the politicization of schools. They’re far from the only Republicans doing this, of course, but those three have either already announced presidential bids or are expected to. Schools are immensely important, and presidential campaigns reflect that.

While Democrats and Leftmedia talkingheads dismiss critical race theory as nothing more than a useful tool to expose America’s racist past and its current “systemic racism,” the reality is that CRT is actually a Marxist-inspired tool specifically designed to undermine America’s cultural values and ideals. And Republicans rightly are concerned that CRT is corrupting America’s youth and undermining this nation’s commitment to promote and protect life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The notion that politicians would not only seek to expose but also promise to address and correct corruption that has developed within America’s institutions — especially when that institution is the nation’s public education system — is exactly what one should expect from a politician.

Parents care about what their children are being taught, and since parents are their children’s primary and most direct authority, anything that would reduce or eliminate this relationship is rightly viewed as a threat to American’s social order, of which families are the primary building blocks. Conservative Christian parents have long recognized their responsibility as parents is to raise up their children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord; into their faith. Teach a child the way he should go, and even when he is old he will not depart from it.

The crux of the issue in America’s public education, especially when it comes to CRT and the redefinition of racism, is that this intentionally divisive curriculum is being used to indoctrinate children into the religion of radical secularism, often away from and against their parents’ values and beliefs. And to make matters even more insidious, it’s all being done in the name of promoting “justice.”

Finally, the real reason Democrats and their Leftmedia cohorts are griping over the Republicans’ focus on education and parents’ rights is because they’ve been exposed. They know they are vulnerable on this issue because they have been guilty of pushing this hard-leftist indoctrination in America’s schools. They know that controlling what children are taught goes a long way in directing the next generation of voters.