by Lee Duigon
September 19, 2024
My wife once showed me a sample of her mother’s handwriting, produced by her mother, who left school in the third grade.
You never saw such beautiful penmanship. I’m old enough to remember being taught how to write, starting in the first grade. First you learned to print the alphabet, on lined paper with wide spaces to accommodate a child’s scrawl. Then we moved on to cursive, grown-up writing—and we were all expected to master it. I didn’t know anyone who didn’t.
We also had to learn reading, arithmetic, general science, basic geography—gee! Not much time left over for Gender Studies, Critical Race Theory, or Marxism Really Does Work (We Should At Least Try It!) studies. “How do you know you really are a girl? Have you at least thought about your gender?” No, we had no time for anything like that.
But what if they had tried to bring it in, back when I was in, say, seventh grade?
Ah! This doesn’t require a very vivid imagination; because, back around 1970, “educators” decided our children were in dire need of Sex Education. How they came to that conclusion was never made clear.
As if by magic, parents came out in throngs to tell the school board that they didn’t want Sex Education—especially the kind dreamed up by free-lance social engineering knot-heads and unelected bureaucrats in Trenton. Those board meetings were spectacularly well-attended. Our local school board got the message loud and clear—and out the window went Sex Education.
For the time being.
Toward the end of the 70’s they tried again. We had a shiny new State Dept. of Education—might as well make use of it. And now the local boards were off the hot seat, because this was being handed down from The State [cue in awed gasping sound effect].
Our town still didn’t want it, but who in Trenton cared for that? By the magic of government, local school boards were transformed into rubber stamps. Any time a government can do mischief, it will do mischief.
So that was that. Year after year the Far Left Creepy twaddle was pumped into our schools. Objections were in vain. Eventually the crowds stopped coming to the meetings. The local school board members whom we elected were on our side, but powerless. When the town council cut the school budget, the state simply restored the funds.
Please don’t get the idea that these things happened only in New Jersey. It was all over the country, everywhere you looked. With the creation of the federal Dept. of Education, the cage was locked. No escape.
You could still take your child out of “public education” that despised the public, and opt for home schooling or a private religious school. So far, for all their dreams of total supremacy, they haven’t yet been able to close off those escape routes. Then I guess we’ll have to teach our children to dig tunnels.
Indoctrination into thorough-going leftism begins in kindergarten and continues up and up right through college, teachers’ college, and grad school. The goal is—we quote Obama—a full and “fundamental transformation” of America into a socialist basket case.
And so far they continue to get away with it.
I have discussed these and other topics throughout the week on my blog, http://www.leeduigon.com/ . Click the link and stop in for a visit… while it’s still allowed. My articles can also be found at www.chalcedon.edu/ .
© 2024 Lee Duigon – All Rights Reserved
E-Mail Lee Duigon: leeduigon@verizon.net
