It seems that almost every day we hear some new horror story from our universities and public schools, which are now tightly controlled by government agencies dominated by hard core leftists. Educational standards are declining and discipline in the classrooms has broken down. Students often learn little math, science, reading, or history, but are indoctrinated in the glories of Islam and the joys of promiscuity and perversion. They are taught that all Whites are racist and that Blacks are an oppressed minority, in no way responsible for their present situation. American history, to the degree that it is taught at all, is portrayed as a history of racism and colonialism. The universities seem to go out of their way to hire communists, Muslims, homosexuals, and lesbians and to deny the right of free speech to any students or faculty who have not drunk the leftist koolaid. Christians are not allowed to pray, and, often, not allowed to wear crosses. This did not happen overnight.

In America’s early years, most schooling was done at home, by the parents, with uneven but often very good results. And there were private schools and universities. Then the 1785 Northwest Ordinance set aside land grants for schools, leading, by 1862, to the first state universities. Public elementary and high schools began in Pennsylvania in 1790 and New York in 1825, and Boston established the first public high school in 1820, and made public school attendance compulsory in 1851. Under the influence of such men as Horace Mann and John Dewey (both of them “progressives”) the idea spread until every state had a public school system, and the idea came to be taken for granted – along with the taxes to fund it and the more centralized government control it led to. Yet things seemed to go well enough for a long time, with school prayer being encouraged, traditional values being taught, and standards maintained. But, gradually, court decisions and new laws began to change this.

Control of the schools was gradually wrested away from local school boards and taken over by the states, which established departments of education. Then, on 10/17/1979 the great Jimmy Carter, the man to whom so many owe so little, created the US Department of Education. The Tenth Amendment to our late, great Constitution does not permit the federal government to control local schools, but now the feds began “giving” grants for education (with strings attached) to the states. No one saw the obvious: they were merely giving back a small portion of the money they had originally stolen (with the income tax) from the people in each state. Slowly, insidiously, federal control increased. On 1/8/2002 George II (Bush) signed into law the very fine sounding No Child Left Behind Act, essentially reauthorizing the Secondary Education Act of 1965. The law gives extra funds to help “disadvantaged” students, meaning those belonging to approved ethnic groups – Blacks and Hispanics. It also set standards for schools, which, interestingly, led to a decline in standards. No one is left behind if no one goes anywhere. Then came Common Core, with standards set by a council of governors and state education leaders, de-emphasizing literature, teaching a newer new math that makes it nearly impossible for children even to learn simple arithmetic, and teaching a leftist view of American history, depicting America as the Evil Empire. Bill Gates (the same man who wants to suddenly and drastically lower the human population of Earth) funded the development of Common Core, and the idea is enthusiastically supported by Obama’s militant homosexual head of the Department of Education, Arne Duncan.

It is becoming increasingly obvious to many of us that the public schools and state funded universities are broken beyond fixing. They do so little good, and so much harm that they should be abolished. Private schools and universities can take their place, competing with one another and offering real choices to parents and children. Government-backed student loans should also be abolished; they bankrupt the students and drive up tuition costs. The idea that every young person has a “right” to attend a university is absurd; most high school graduates now read at a seventh grade level. Also, jobs are hard to find, even for students who major in fields like engineering. Private schools with high standards, especially if the school year was lengthened from the usual nine months to eleven months, could educate children to a very high standard. Two extra school months each year for twelve years equals well over two and one half of the nine month school years – the brighter students would graduate from high school with almost the equivalent of a college degree, including, for example, two years of calculus and several of hard science. As to the universities, the concept of students attending lectures by teachers needs to be reconsidered, especially with the online options now available. It would be possible for a high school graduate, for example, to attend an engineering school for one year and emerge as a fully trained engineer. People who wanted more and broader education, could, on their own, take online courses in foreign language and the great books, for example.

To such suggestions, the usual leftist suspects would cry “racism,” their designated debate stopper. They would claim that the poor urban minorities could not afford private schools. Aside from the fact that many such schools would offer some scholarships, there is always the option of home schooling. Parents could begin teaching their children at a very early age. For high school, if the parents had an insufficient mastery of the subjects, they might send them to a private school, or form co-ops and hire a few tutors for the more difficult subjects. There are many print and online resources for home schoolers, such as k12.com, Calvert School, A Beka Book, Bob Jones Press, and Alpha Omega Publications to name but a few, and co-ops already exist in many places.

And people like Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton could fund schools for inner city minorities, or at least fund scholarships – but, count on it, this they will never do. And our exalted political leaders, like the government officials in Sweden and Germany, oppose home schooling. Like Hitler and Stalin, their aim is to degrade, dumb down, and indoctrinate America’s children – and they are doing an excellent job of it.