The Problem with the Public School System is the Public School System

Every day there’s another story in the news about total insanity and confusion in the public school system. Every week you could write a new book as thick as the Bible on the subject. And every week it would be the saddest, most depressingly bleak and apocalyptic book in the history of humanity. A true-life novel about the public school system would probably read like a monstrous non-fiction blend of Lord of the Flies and 1984. With a touch of 50 Shades of Grey, due to the extra-curricular activities you hear about pretty frequently these days.

With that said, you gotta love the latest tidbits from our illustrious bureaucratic learning institutions. A girl at a high school down in San Antonio is continuing her fight against a policy requiring all students to wear tracking devices. Meanwhile, a 5 year old in Pennsylvania was suspended for “terrorist threats” after attempting to shoot BUBBLES at a kindergarten classmate. This, only days after an elementary schooler in Maryland found himself suspended for pointing his finger at another student. Keep in mind, the bubble wielding assassin and the finger pointing jihadist now have a record. A record that will follow them for the rest of their childhood and adolescence.   
 
So that brings me to the crux of the issue. We have to start attempting to see the proverbial forest instead of concentrating on a random twig and a falling leaf here and there. Yes, all of these examples are outrageous. Yes, there are, as I mentioned, a million other anecdotes any one of us could easily produce. But what’s the problem? What is the underlying problem that leads to our kids falling victim to this lunacy? 
 
The problem is that we send our kids off to whittle away their formative years in government facilities. The problem is that we have utterly surrendered our children to a bureaucracy that will rule over them 6 hours a day, 5 days a week, for 12 or 13 years. They want to brand and track your kids like livestock? They come up with harebrained politically fueled policies that have a disastrously detrimental impact on everyone involved? They permanently label your child a dangerous delinquent because he threw a punch during recess? They shove propaganda down junior’s throat, you say? Well, what did you think was going to happen? We are allowing the government to educate our kids. Government is force, not wisdom. Government can kill, not teach. This is a job far too big, far too important, far too nuanced and delicate to put in the colossally clumsy hands of Uncle Sam. I mean, we’re actually surprised when the state controlled propaganda machines act like state controlled propaganda machines? That’s like the people that are surprised when their pet python eats their poodle. The python is just doing what pythons are designed to do, just as the propaganda machine is simply doing what propaganda machines do.

So let’s junk the damn thing rather than blabber on about ways to “reform” it.

Now I know I’ve lost the Statists and Neo-Liberals here. You people see the State as a just and loving omnipotent force, pre-ordained by the cosmos to rule over every single facet of our lives. I don’t expect you to understand why these gods of Olympus shouldn’t have a role in education. I realize you view my assertions as blasphemy and, if you get your wish, one day people like me will be forced to repent for our sins publicly or be drawn and quartered (in the most tolerant and progressive way possible, of course).

But what I don’t quite comprehend is why so many self described conservatives, Libertarians and “small government activists” see no problem with the entire concept of a government run school. Many of the same people who are still doing angry back flips over government healthcare will look absolutely perplexed if you attack government education. You don’t think they have any place in your doctor’s office but they do have a place in the classroom?

Huh?

It just goes to show. Give any form of tyranny about 10 or 15 years to sink in and people will accept it. They will accept it simply because it exists, and for no other reason.

Well, for one other reason that is related to the first. We accept it because we’ve chosen, as a society, to live in such a way that requires us to depend on it. We bought into the lie that parents, somehow, despite thousands of years of proof otherwise, aren’t capable of teaching their own children. We subscribed to the absurd fiction that education ought to be mass produced and sold in bulk, like toothpicks or toilet paper. Except in this case mass produced and sold in bulk by the government, like bullets or grenade launchers.

I know a lot of people send their kids to public school because they truly have no other choice. I understand that. And there is no quick fix or easy answer. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t ANY fix or answer. I don’t have it all worked out but I do have the first two steps:

1) Come to the realization that government education is profoundly flawed on a fundamental level and must ultimately be abolished.

2) Re-establish the family as the unbreakable foundation of society and as a child’s ultimate source of wisdom, education and moral teaching.

The first step we can all take pretty much right now. The next will take a bit longer. But we can certainly start the process on an individual basis.

I know I won’t be sending my kids to the government learning centers. I’d sooner send them into the woods to be raised by squirrels than to a public school. But that’s just me.