That thunderous noise strangely like the crashing of the New York City Twin Towers is the collapse of the government school system. Traditional public school enrollment is plummeting as parents withdraw their children for alternative educational arrangements. Public education is already feeling the impact with schools across the nation closing their campuses.
According to Education Next, a nonpartisan research organization, non-charter public school enrollment dropped from 81% of school-age children to 76.5%, nearly 2 million students, between spring 2020, when the U.S. enacted pandemic lockdowns, and 2022. A further drop to 47 million students by 2030 is projected by the National Center for Education Statistics.
Meanwhile, enrollment in free-market education options is surging as parents flock to private and parochial schools,micro-schools and learning pods. Homeschooling reached record enrollment levels, doubling from 3.3% of children, as reported in 2016 by the U.S. Department of Education, to 6.6% in 2022. Homeschooling among black households jumped six-fold, from 3% in spring 2020 to 18% in spring 2021.
Of the surge in conservative Christian schooling, driven by pandemic issues and radical sex instruction, E. Ray Moore, founder of the Christian Exodus Mandate, said, “This is a once-in-100-year moment for the growth of Christian education.”
The bloom is off the rose. The decades-old premise that public education is one of the most important institutions in America has been exposed as a fraud.
Rather than learning how to read, write and cipher, students learn about white supremacy, transgenderism, pornography, drugs and how to be Mao-style political activists. Classrooms sport Pride flags and teach the Black Lives Matter curriculum. The anti-American 1619 Project has been implemented in more than 4,500 classrooms. Using the framework of Culturally Responsive Teaching, political lessons are fused into academic content.
State bans on the teaching of Critical Race Theory have not stopped it. While conservatives believe laws are to be followed, left-leaning educators sneeringly flaunt the laws, rebrand, and face few to no reprisals. LGBT books are openly accessible to students in school libraries. Students are encouraged to use pronouns in addressing themselves and warned by teachers not to tell their parents. Hardback textbooks have been thrown out in favor of computerized learning in class – lessons that parents rarely get to see. Social and Emotional Learning, or SEL – ostensibly to improve student mental health – is a Trojan horse to push Critical Race Theory and radical sex into lessons across the spectrum.
When parents confront school boards about what their children are being taught, they are shut down with some arrested and jailed. They are labeled “domestic terrorists” and targeted by the the U.S. Department of Justice.
There is a “great divide” between what public schools decide children should learn and what parents want their children to learn. This was quite clear in the recent “Purpose of Education Index” survey by the national think tank Populace. Seventy percent of respondents believe much should change about the educational system, including 21% who believe the system should totally change.
Instead of college being the end goal of K-12, respondents believe that students should be taught practical skills such as managing personal finances, preparing a meal and making an appointment. They should learn the basic 3 R’s and necessary skills to be competitive in the local job market. Learning good character traits (e.g. honesty, kindness, integrity and ethics), and not social norms, would be a hallmark of a successful education.
Many decades ago, public schools taught good character traits and a classic education that prepared students for the workforce and adulthood. Boys learned practical skills in shop classes, and girls learned to sew and cook in home economics.
It is a widely held belief that if parents can get rid of Marxism, transgenderism and Social and Emotional Learning, they can “take back” their schools – yet public schools have always been and always will be government-controlled – not parent controlled. Until the purpose of public education is changed, it cannot be reformed. A nationwide system of public education with corresponding teacher colleges was not founded because colonial education was woefully inadquate, or only for the elites, as the standard histories would have us believe. Public education was intended to serve as the vehicle for gradually shifting the U.S. to socialism and replacing Christianity with secular humanism.
Socialists have skillfully intertwined deep tentacles within the system, rendering it impossible to reform. This is evident with the string of reform programs since the 1970s that have increased spending more than twice as much per student (after accounting for inflation) and vast wealth to ed-tech companies, created high-paying jobs for a bloated education administration and enriched public officials who also profit from reform schemes.
Numerous federal statutes, that also created the U.S. Department of Education, have gradually shifted an incredible amount of control to the federal government, although forbidden by the Constitution. Common Core and Social and Emotional Learning have been codified at the federal level with SEL now the primary purpose of education. In 1994, legislation forced states to create statewide curriculum standards and tests, which now must be approved at the federal level or risk losing federal funding.
Public education has been highly successful in achieving its founding purpose. A majority of our youth now identify with socialism/communism and reject Christianity. Purposely, students have been dumbed down – two out of three cannot read at basic level – so they will be incapable of becoming self-governing adults.
It is easier, and often cheaper, to build a new house than to repair one with a massively decayed foundation and structure. Parents fleeing public schools understand this axiom. How our children will be educated is already changing. Future education will look nothing like the public system of the past century.
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