The Coming Backlash Against Public Education

Michael Farris, President and CEO of Alliance Defending Freedom ---a conservative Christian-based law firm that specializes in religious freedom cases says a backlash against "woke public schools is coming," and it may be catastrophic.

He says the "reports coming out of Portland, Ore., and its suburbs, are simply terrifying," but it "isn't only Portland and Seattle," it's everywhere.

He and journalist Christopher Rufo take a deep look at what is really going on in public education in Portland, Seattle, and across the nation ---and why a major backlash is coming, and it's coming soon.

Be informed, not misled.

The coming backlash is nationwide.

Saying the "reports coming out of the school system in Portland, Ore., and its suburbs are simply terrifying," noting what many parents already know---"Children are being taught the narrative that America is fundamentally evil, and the rioters who continue to wreak havoc on the once beautiful, quiet city are held up as heroes."

Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Magazine from Seattle agrees: "The schools have self-consciously adopted the 'pedagogy of the oppressed' as their theoretical orientation, activated through a curriculum of critical race theory and enforced through the appointment of de facto political officers within the individual schools." 

And it's working. Rufo notes that the public schools have become "a school-to-radicalism pipeline."

If you live in Portland or have family in Portland, please read his article titled, "The Child Soldiers of Portland." 

Farris says, 

"But it's not just in Portland or Seattle where these forces hold sway. In my own home county of Loudoun County, Va., the radicals have seized control and plunged with abandon in a radical direction, leaving much of our community gasping at the temerity of their tactics and shuddering at the implication for the future of our community and our nation should they succeed."

I talked about a Christian public school teacher, Tanner Cross, last week on our daily live radio program. Tanner objected to the school board at an open meeting that as a Christian he could not in good conscience teach his kids the transgenderism materials the school is requiring. 

Because he objected, he was suspended.

A circuit judge reversed the suspension. Now the local school board has announced they are taking the case to the State Supreme Court.

Tanner is now a client of Alliance Defending Freedom. Farris says he was surprised when the lawyer for the school district volunteered the fact that Tanner is the eighth school employee in the past two years who has been suspended for "out-of-school speech."

Apparently, if the schools violate the free speech of teachers often enough it becomes the right thing to do.

Parents are beginning to realize that the curriculum in public schools has taken a hard left turn. Racial and sexual politics are the prime directive of the school system. Every child will be immersed. And every teacher will recite the party line. No dissenting allowed.

Farris says, "Coerced uniformity of opinion is the tactic of tyrants. In international law, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and related treaties all proclaim that parents have the right to insist that children receive an education that is consistent with the values of the parents."

He says, "Parents don't want their children sexualized with a constant discussion of gender fluidity and other concepts that were considered mental illnesses just a few years ago and whose treatments are still debated by medical experts around the world."

"And the parents of female athletes," Farris says, "are outraged that their daughters are losing spots on varsity teams and award stands to biological males who have subjectively identified as female. 

This is not a case that is limited to Portland or Seattle or Virginia. It is pandemic. It's a matter of how far it has progressed in your local school district.

This is a national crisis rooted in public education.

Rufo says, 

"We might be tempted to dismiss this as the work of a few harmless radicals 'keeping Portland weird,' but in recent years, their underlying ideology on race has become institutionalized. The city government has adopted a series of Five-Year-Plans for 'equity and inclusion,' shop keepers have posted political slogans in their windows as a form of protection, and local schools have designed a program of political education for their students that borders on propaganda."

Public education is being deconstructed before our eyes.

One example---and there are many: The nine campuses of the University of California system, which enrolls about 225,000 undergraduate students, has announced they will no longer consider standardized testing scores-- SAT and ACT scores-- for admissions, beginning this fall.

The reason? A legal settlement found the tests to be "racist."

Chris Rufo says, "There are only a few places on earth where radicals and their children  ritualistically burn the American flag and chant 'Death to America': Tehran, Baghdad, Beirut, Kabul, Ramallah---and Portland, Oregon."

He says the "Whitest city in America, Portland has become the unlikely headquarters of race radicalism in the United States. The city has elevated white guilt into a civic religion; its citizens have developed rituals, devotions, and self-criticisms to fight 'systemic racism' and 'white supremacy.' The culminating  expression of this orthodoxy is violence: street militias, calling themselves 'anti-racists' and 'antifascists' smash windows and torch the property of anyone transgressing the new moral law."

These results are predictable. Public education has created the narrative that America is fundamentally evil, steeping children in Marxist race theory--- rather than educating them, public education now merely indoctrinates them in a new kind of twisted morality.

The coming backlash.

Farris says we are faced with only two choices. "The wisest choice would simply be to depoliticize public education. Get back to an academic emphasis with very generalized instruction in values on ideals that unite Americans such as honesty, hard work, equality, and love of country."

I think he knows that won't happen. One of the reasons is that a precursor to our current crisis in education was the teaching of humanism and relativism---eliminating any basis for even knowing what is a value or principle and what is not. Nor is there any basis for knowing the truth, because truth is relative--- it's whatever I believe it to be.

Farris says the second choice is more likely: 

"The tactics of public schools are bonding together a sufficient number of families who want alternatives to the chaos reigning in their local schools. And a political and legal tipping point is fast approaching at which some form of educational choice where public funds follow the parents will be enacted by legislation or by litigation."

Former Attorney General William Barr is strongly advocating this in his public speaking.

Farris believes there is a backlash coming. So do I.

He says, "School leaders are extremely serious about advancing their radical agenda. But parents who are complacent about many things will not sit by idly while their tax dollars are being used to indoctrinate them."

Takeaway

Farris, himself a parent, says: "Parents have a limit. Public schools have crossed the line."

I personally believe public education is beyond repair. I agree that we have reached the proverbial tipping point---parents are fed-up.

It's important that Christians remember that the responsibility for educating your children begins with you---the parent in the home.

Given where we are in education, I personally believe that homeschooling---if possible-- is a very good option for our children today.

While Christian schools are an option, more and more of them are caving to a degree, to the very ideologies we're talking about. And the expense is significant.

If our children were school-age today, I would personally not consider sending them to a public school to be educated.

There are several ominous verses in the book of Deuteronomy where the Lord reminds His people of the curses of disobedience. In Deuteronomy 28:32 it says, "Your sons and your daughters shall be given to another people, and your eyes shall look and fail with the longing for them all day long, and there shall be no strength in your hand."

Verse 41 says, "You shall beget sons and daughters, but they shall be yours; for they shall go into captivity."

In chapter 6 parents are told to "love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. And these words which I commanded you today shall be in your heart" (v 5, 6).

And:

"You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the door posts of  your house on on your gates" (v7-9).

Public education, as we have known it, is about to collapse. The biblical formula for education will stand.

Be Informed. Be Faithful. Be Vigilant. Be Prayerful.