Where’s the ‘Public’ in ‘Public Education’?

What is “public” about “public education”? The only role the public plays in it is to get stuck with the tab.

In many school districts, “teachers” earn much higher salaries than the taxpayers who pay the school tax—to say nothing of fabulous pensions which the rest of us can only fantasize about. Oh, we get to elect the school board members; but they don’t represent us. They’re only there to carry out the state’s dictates.

The “pro-choice” leftists who own public education do nothing for us but take away our choices. We don’t have a say in what is taught, or who teaches it. All those choices are made for us by government.

In New Jersey, one of those choices made for the public by its Democrat governor and Democrat legislature is to teach seventh and eighth graders “LGBT history and contributions”. They’ll choose what kind of world you live in. You don’t get that choice.

The mayor of Barnegat Township, Alfonso Cirulli, has publicly called upon the people of New Jersey to demand that the new “law” be repealed.

“No group has a right to force others to comply with their beliefs, deprive them of their First Amendment rights—“ that would be free speech and religious liberty—“and strip the rights of parents of how to morally raise their children,” the mayor said.

Uh-uh, Mr. Mayor. These are “public” schools. Government, crack-brained education theorists, and Far Left teachers’ unions will decide what your children are to learn. Just shut up and pay your school tax.

Meanwhile at Denair Middle School in northern California, a “teacher” had to be stopped by the principal from handing out a worksheet to the kiddies asking them to reveal their “sexual preferences” and “sexual attractions”.

“The Gender Unicorn”—that’s the title of the worksheet—is published by some outfit called “Trans Student Educational Resources.” The alleged teacher had instructed his students not to call him “Mr.” anymore, but “Mx.”, reflecting the imaginary “gender” he has chosen for himself. He gets a choice; you don’t; shut up and pay.

This time the public got a bit steamed up, so the principal stopped the “lesson.” Mr. Mx., it seems, hadn’t asked her permission to impose it.

These classroom kooks are public employees–*our* employees. But we don’t get to decide which ones we want to employ and which ones we don’t. We don’t get to decide what they teach our children in those schools that we are compelled to pay for.

Early in our history, when Europeans marveled at America’s high rate of literacy, communities decided what kind of school they wanted, if any, built it with their own money and labor, and then chose whom they wanted to teach in it. No one in Washington, Trenton, or Sacramento had the right to nullify their choices. Nor did they have to contend with fantastically wealthy, politically powerful teachers’ unions.

Today the public has no choices, when it comes to education.

Oh! Wait a minute. We do have one choice left to us.

We still have the right to pull our children out of public schools and educate them at home or in a Christian school. That right took a lot of defending, back in the 1970s, when the Carter administration, having created a federal Department of Education, tried to wipe it out. To this day there is nothing the teachers’ unions would like better than to take away the choice to homeschool. Because most of what the “choice” crowd does is to take away our choices.

Kill public schooling, and American leftism dies. That’s a promise.

I have discussed these and other topics throughout the week on my blog, http://leeduigon.com/. Stop in for a visit; a single click will take you there. You can also find my articles on www.chalcedon.edu/.

E-Mail Lee Duigon: leeduigon@verizon.net