Education Has Reached Peak Absurdity, But There Is Hope – The American Spectator

On Jul 13, 2023

It didn’t seem possible that school could get more ridiculous than me as a fourth grader hiding under my desk with a three-inch-thick textbook on my head to protect my noggin from a tornado or nuclear fallout. Yet here we are in the United States of America defending our children’s right to not have their innocence ruined by gay pedophilic rape books in elementary school libraries.

Peak absurdity wasn’t Silent Spring. Peak absurdity is now: children’s test scores are sliding and their IQs are declining because teachers aren’t teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic. Instead, teachers churn out barely literate cretins skilled in the art of condoming a banana but unable to authoritatively state that two plus two equals four.

If I recall correctly (and this was an eternity ago), my crimson-lipsticked, former cover model (she informed us while sitting cross-legged on her desk) public school English teacher played The Day After in 1983 to scare us seventh graders into a no-nuke stance. These days, she’d have rainbow flags and ally pins and secret meetings with students encouraging them to be their “true” selves and wear chest binders without telling their parents. (READ MORE: How Teachers Unions Co-Opted School Boards)

My point is that the academic world didn’t turn upside down yesterday or even with Randi Weingarten’s pandemic response; it’s been a mess for a couple of generations. Millennial parents don’t know what they don’t know because of their own miseducation and couldn’t correct most inaccuracies in modern curricula. What hope do their kids have? It turns out they have quite a bit. We’re excited to share these hopeful changes in the pages of this magazine.

Addressing education in the print edition of The American Spectator has been a dream of mine. The various college-ranking books and magazines mostly stink. They do not address the most important considerations and options for schooling. Conservative parents — heck, good old-fashioned liberal parents — would like to have their children’s minds inculcated with what used to be understood as the basics: English literacy, fluency in writing, mathematical competency, scientific knowledge, fact-based American and world history focused on the triumphs of Western Civilization, and a broad-based survey of the arts, with some practical knowledge thrown in. In generations past, a student could graduate high school with the skills to be a hairdresser, cook, or mechanic. Basically, American parents could count on the public schools to produce a literate graduate who would become a fully functional citizen and taxpayer.

No more. Parents are fortunate if their children graduate high school as agnostic heathens seeking satisfaction in the material realm. The worst public school outcomes include brainwashed potheads with purple hair seeking meaning at their local black-bloc Antifa meetup. Stupid and violent and disordered is no way to make it in the world, yet far too many products of the education system end up that way.

Turning the tide is going to take rehabilitating many formerly trusted but decrepit institutions, including religion, marriage, and medicine. Education is only one piece of the puzzle, but since so many resources both nationally and locally are spent on such obvious failure, it’s a good place to start.

The articles herein are wide-ranging. We don’t rank colleges and universities; we offer them and hope that you and your child will be surprised by the expansive and unique choices and find one that suits you. We likely have missed some excellent schools. We urge you to share your ideas and feedback with us.

We don’t believe that there is one primary educational solution for your children or grandchildren — our writers discuss many of them, from homeschooling to online learning to classical education.

Our writers also address structural issues. Who created this dystopian education situation? Public-sector teachers unions deserve much of the blame. Randi Weingarten is feverishly attempting to rewrite history, but she and Anthony Fauci were consistent, pint-sized villains during the government’s response to the COVID pandemic. Teachers unions must be held accountable not just for harming children by shutting down schools during the pandemic, but also for defending failing school administrators and teachers while leaving children behind.

We are honored to have Betsy DeVos, the former secretary of education, write about the institution she attempted to reform. Like all distant, powerful bureaucracies, the Department of Education’s one-size-fits-all policies harm rather than help improve education. Ms. DeVos offers some radical solutions to the radical institutional problems she faced.

The government’s failure to educate America’s youth has created opportunities for real change. Parochial schools, classical schooling, and homeschoolers have remade the education landscape. The weaknesses of public school education illuminated during the COVID crisis accelerated reforms. Many states have passed school choice policies in which funding follows the student.

I grew up with the fear of nuclear annihilation — a legitimate fear, as it turns out. But most of the rest of the nonsense poured into heads in the years hence has been useless propaganda. Acid rain, the ozone layer, the Amazon rain forests dying, the mini ice age, global warming, and now climate change are used to instill irrational fear in America’s youth, robbing them of hope. In the internet era of narcissism and isolation, 25 percent of Gen Zers identify as one of the “Alphabet People,” as Dave Chappelle calls them. The kids are not alright.

Change happens one motivated parent at a time. Parents are running for school boards. They’re challenging curricula. The pain that the public schools inflicted on American families ignited a fever that has yet to cool off. Americans are angry at what was revealed to them. Furious. And well they should be. The amount of money thrown at education in America is astonishing. The outcomes are embarrassing.

We hope that you will be heartened by what you read here and empowered to make better decisions for your family. We hope that you’re instilled with hope. One of our writers is an eloquent 15-year-old who shares the joys of her unique and effective educational method. The future is bright for her, and she’s not alone. That’s a comforting thought.

Subscribe to The American Spectator to receive our print magazine.

Current Wisdom: A Special Education Edition