A valuable measure of social success is educational advancement, which is to say, steady improvement in student performance in basic skills of reading, mathematics and scientific pursuits. Since 1980, when the federal Department of Education was created, net educational skill levels have declined, bit by bit, and then more abruptly during “Covid.”
In 2020 and 2021 schools were closed for fear of covid, initially, and for excessive lengths of time after the true nature of covid infection was understood. The foolish extensions of school closings were largely due to the political influence of national teachers’ unions, and were unbelievably expensive in terms of retrofitting school buildings, and damaging in terms of educational regression for all but the best students.
Since becoming a cabinet-level department in its own right, Education has spent nearly a Trillion Dollars, which is to say, ONE THOUSAND BILLIONS of dollars, for those who matriculated prior to 1980. There are hundreds of good jobs at good wages, as old socialists like to take pride in, but damned little to show for all the meddling and expenditures over the past 44 years. The Covid experience had a silver lining, however: Parents, those pesky, independent-minded nurturers of children forced to attend public schools, could see and hear for the first time, the clap-trap being taught and injected into the cognition of otherwise healthy youngsters. The curricula of public school now included such topics as: Trans-genderism as a real possibility; the dangers of CO2; the evils of so-called “fossil” fuels and everyone involved in obtaining and refining them; climate change and its effect of making severe weather more frequent or more severe; rejection of classic literature and history; rejection of American history; critical race and gender theories; new theories of word meanings, sentence structure and vocabulary, generally; and a hundred other insinuations of socialist or communist economic theories and benefits. Hardly anyone learns or understands the U. S. Constitution but, lately, we know how oppressed the people of Gaza are and how undeserving of nationality the Israelis are.
It is the obligation of a society and a culture to impart those same beliefs and inter-personal covenants along to their offspring – at no point is it legitimate for a government of, by and for the people to intentionally upset and dissemble social and cultural norms UNLESS, and only if, practices within that social compact interfere with the rights and personal integrity of other members of society. A case is easily made for putting a stop to segregation and physical interference in the lives and rights of black citizens, for example, but NOT for indoctrinating schoolchildren with ideologies that interfere with their relationships with parents, grandparents and others, or that interfere with their biological integrity. Those students are forced into those schools by law and then forced to learn ideas that are mere opinion and lessons that are deviant from fact. That is, schools have no right to denigrate cultural norms and the social compact derived from historical facts any more than they have the right to avoid or deny historical fact.
The primary purpose of taxation (by force) of the income of citizens for the purpose of education (by force) is to reinforce truth while imparting skills necessary for successful maturation into the social compact and in alignment with cultural norms. A school committee can be rightly questioned on whether any teacher’s belief system was ascertained before his or her employment to fulfill the primary purpose! What are we trying to accomplish by hiring and never firing teachers and professors who evidently hate the United States and its founding? Have we decided that our laws that were conceived from thousands of years of traditional belief in rights, are now, via clever, contorted interpretation, a strait-jacket on our own traditions and founding philosophies? Did we allow the design of a legalistic suicide pact?
Politics can bring out the best and worst of ideas… and the best and worst of people. Ms. Kamala Harris built her political career as a prosecutor, a District Attorney in San Francisco and an Attorney General for California. During those times and during the George Floyd riots in 2020, Ms. Harris seemed to be very concerned for the rights of criminals. First in terms of reducing bail, decriminalizing certain crimes, and, before she was done, failing – refusing – to investigate hundreds of sexual assault claims in the San Francisco Diocese. As a U. S. Senator she encouraged the continuation of destructive riots and supported a fund to bail out those arrested for the worst riot infractions. All in all, she has been very sympathetic towards those who break local, state or federal laws. For nearly 4 years she has cooperated in a policy to facilitate illegal entry into the United States – over 10 Million illegal entrants’ worth.
Another aspect of Ms. Harris’ political pandering is a slavish adherence to the interests of teachers’ unions. Displayed at its worst during Covid, the influence of teacher unions on local and statewide public school policies – even to the opening or closing of schools – has grown stronger and stronger over the past 60 years, the very period of time when educational progress has reversed, with student proficiencies in basic skills dropping steadily. The costs per student have risen dramatically across virtually all school systems during that same period. American history instruction has shrunk to a state of confusion.
Maybe the “prisons” that Ms. Harris wants to keep criminals out of should include the ones we call public schools, in which our children are entrapped. She could allow school choice, of course, so that trapped public-school prisoners could escaped the failing systems and find real education somewhere else. Probably not, though.