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Headlines suggest that American education is in freefall---a death march of sorts---preparing America's children for what?
Abraham Lincoln said, "The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next."
John Dewey, who hijacked Noah Webster's model for public education in America and remade it to be a tool of leftist activists to push the culture toward a godless, so-called "progressive" culture, disagreed with both Lincoln and Webster.
Dewey said, "Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself."
So in Dewey's mind "education" is the "noble end" to secular humanism---a bridge to nowhere.
Therefore, it should not surprise us when students attack anyone and everyone, physically and otherwise with whom they disagree.
They have been schooled for such a time as this.
Be informed, not misled.
A quick glance at today's headlines about American "education," it's clear to sane people we are on the wrong path.
NBC's Chuck Todd claimed on Sunday's "Meet the Press" that Gov. Ron DeSantis is going out of his way to politicize history by pushing lessons on the evils of communism.
DeSantis is promoting plans for an annual lesson on the negative impact of communist regimes. The lesson will be taught one day per school year.
These are a few headlines, out of many, that is telling the story of the decline and fall of American education:
- Marymount University students launch protests after school axes majors like math, English, and religious studies.
- Indiana medical students are subjected to DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) instruction on gender as part of the basic human structure course.
- Diversity director says she was fired from California college for questioning antiracism "orthodoxy."
- Oregon eyes mandate for climate change lessons in schools.
- Stanford DEI dean slams the invited federal judge to his face at a campus event, asks if free speech is "worth it?"
"Stolen Youth: How Radicals Are Erasing Innocence and Indoctrinating a Generation."
A new book just out with that title asks, "Whose child is it?"
It’s a question that, not so long ago, we didn’t feel we needed to ask. Now it must be asked.
In October of 2021, Virginia gubernatorial candidate, Democrat Terry McAuliffe, said, "I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach."
Taken on its own, the comment might be benign---at another time in history. Parental involvement in education has always been a key factor for student success.
A 2010 study called, "Parent Involvement and Student Academic Performance: A Multiple Mediational Analysis" by researchers at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, found "children whose parents are more involved in their education have higher levels of academic performance than children whose parents are involved to a lesser degree. But should parents be designing a curriculum? Maybe not."
The exchange, however, wasn’t about which math curriculum to use. It was about whether parents had a right to demand pornographic books be pulled from the library. Suddenly the question of parental involvement seemed clearer to most people.
The Left says it doesn’t happen, pornography in libraries is a right-wing bogeyman, and yet parents at school after school keep discovering these books at the school library.
What’s happening here?
The war on the family.
We encapsulate the current moment into the word "wokeness" and it really took hold during COVID. Leftism has always existed but wokeness is something new. Wokeness demands that up is down and black is white and pressures you to believe it too. Wokeness pushes a separation between parent and child.
Wokeness pushes a separation between parent and child.
We open our book with a history chapter and the roots of this wokeness in totalitarian regimes of the past. We trace how places like the Soviet Union, Mao’s China, Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge, and others, tried to sever the family connection as a way of pushing their indoctrination onto the kids and, by extension, the parents.
We are seeing it happen in America today. Kids are told to keep secrets from their parents. Sometimes the secrets are life-changing.
Just recently the story broke about a Long Island teacher who had transitioned a child from girl to boy behind the backs of the parents. The child is 9.
The teacher assigned the student a new boy's name and referred to the child as a boy. The parents were only alerted to what was going on when the girl started having suicidal ideation.
The important point about this story is that it took place in a "red" area. It happened in a red hamlet of a red town in a red county. Parents who think they are safe from the reaches of wokeness because they live in a conservative area have to think again.
We heard so many stories like this one, about parents being cut out of their child’s life.
The authors say, "Part of the reason we wrote this book is we saw the concern that so many people have, correctly, about the indoctrination that happens at college campuses. What alarmed us is that it starts far earlier than college now and parents seem unprepared to grapple with the onslaught."
Continuing, they say, "This wokeness doesn’t just target children at school. We trace the way this forced conformity has taken hold at medical schools, teachers’ colleges, publishing companies, and so on."
Everyone is afraid to speak up and step out of line.
In the book, the authors chart parents who have shown bravery in fighting for their children and show other parents how to take a stand.
The bottom line, they say: "It’s going to take a fight but it will be worth it. Because whose child is this? Yours. Fight for them."
Takeaway
He was interviewing authors Bethany Mandel and Karol Markowicz when protesters disrupted the event by throwing drinks at him and toppling a book display.
The book was "Stolen Youth."
He was talking with co-author Bethany Mandel when suddenly "a woman seemingly out of nowhere was angrily yelling almost incoherently about matters that weren't related to the subject of the book."
"The books themselves were pushed off the counter landing on the floor while simultaneously she tossed a drink our way," Forbes said. He and Mandel were soaked.
Markowicz told the conservative news outlet Daily Wire News that she saw "two wild-eyed young White women run up to our party and scream ‘Black lives matter!'"
"They threw their drinking glasses at the wall where our books were displayed and ran off," she said.
"Suddenly I heard screaming, had books thrown at me, and I was soaking wet," Mandel said. "I realized the young women with short, dyed blue hair were screaming at us ‘Black lives matter, trans lives matter!’ I tried to talk to them, but they ran off."
Mandel, an author and homeschooling mother of six, says she has avoided sharing photos of her children's faces in public because "it was clear that a large number of leftists are unhinged and willing to target children."
"The fact that my newborn baby narrowly missed being assaulted at his mother’s book party speaks to how right I was to protect my children from the public," she said.
I have not read the book yet, but I plan to read it soon. I would encourage you to read it as well if you have children or grandchildren.
Here's where you can get it.
Be Informed. Be Discerning. Be Vigilant. Be Engaged. Be Prayerful.