Public Education's
Coming Collapse
by
Linda
Schrock Taylor
by Linda Schrock Taylor
It
has been said that one can build a crooked house on a strong foundation,
and the house will stand. Conversely, one can build a well-crafted
house on a substandard foundation, and the house will fall. Consider
public schooling in America, for it is doubly flawed – a crooked
structure atop a crumbling foundation – and its collapse is
inevitable. The flaws are too many; reform is a pipedream; gravity
is a force too powerful to be resisted.
When
we apply an architectural analogy to schools and schooling, we better
understand the problems, as well as the eventual repercussions,
of the public education system.
Legislators,
far removed from the various 'construction' sites, unable to conceptualize
the goals and processes of the project, and lacking consistent,
unifying blueprints, have developed top-heavy, illogical, unmanageable
warehouses. Their policies have crafted an infrastructure that lacks
symmetry, balance, and effectiveness. If this 'house of errors'
does not topple due to its defective construction, then it will
fall because of its fractured and damaged foundation. Federal regulations
have called for counterproductive and unnecessary repairs –
repairs, which replaced the solid materials and intelligent constructs
found in prior schooling designs. Poorly conceived mandates have
demanded that all foundations be modified using mortars developed
from weak and destructive elements.
Consider
schooling structures of the past. Buildings were well crafted using
local workmen applying local wisdom. Roofs were steep to speedily
shed rain, snow, and ice, thus lengthening the life of the shingles,
saving the community frequent and costly repairs. Windows were tall
and numerous, reducing the need for artificial lighting. Easily
maintained heating systems warmed the buildings, using readily available
and inexpensive fuels. Hundreds of those buildings still stand and
house families, township halls, community centers.
Education
in these earlier structures was based on values, strengthened by
familial and neighborhood loyalties, bound with mortar made of honor,
decency, and hard work. This strong mixture cemented and held the
foundational 'stones' – literacy, arithmetic, core knowledge,
true U.S. History and government, philosophy, classical rhetoric
and literature, problem solving. Costs and curriculum were choices
made by parents and neighbors. The structures were solid; both in
the framing, and in the integrity of the principles underlying the
educations that children would receive within those walls.
But
strong local cohesiveness threatened to undermine a federal government
intent on overstepping its Constitutional limitations, and violating
the Original Intent for this United Sovereign States of America.
Legislators, pretending to be architects, designed 'consolidation'
and set the stage whereby children's ties and loyalties – to
parents, to communities, to churches – could be broken.
First,
the effective one-roomed schools – strong in design and solid
in foundation – were closed and the children sent to 'big'
schools of 4–8 rooms in neighboring small towns. Sometimes
the people were allowed to believe that a ballot mattered, but despite
the outcome of the election, and the objections of the electorate,
forced consolidations continued to close schools and reduce the
number of autonomous school districts.
When
this unnatural state of hauling children ten and more miles from
home for schooling was in place, and without an uprising of the
populace, the next wave of consolidations began. Those 4–8
room schools were closed, and the students were sent to schools
twenty, thirty miles from home. Currently, another round of consolidations
is being 'forced' – this time by new federal laws, so laden
with requirements and restrictions, that smaller districts are unable
to maintain 'legality' unless they consolidate with larger school
districts. Citizens are no longer accorded even the pretense of
voting on this issue. 'Local' school boards, gagged and shackled,
make the 'decisions' to further separate children from their families.
It appears that the ultimate goal is for an America divided into
only a few, probably less than ten, educational regions. How far
from you will they bus your children then?
The
goal of these anti-family and constitutionally unlawful actions
– consolidations, Goals 2000, School-to-Work, No Child Left
Behind – is to leave no child who might miss indoctrination
towards a 'changed America' in its new and global role.
Neighbors,
no longer bonded together around the neighborhood school, will be
less likely to form groups, alliances, even militias, to resist
the final stages in the takeover of public education – of public
life – by the federal superstructure.
Families
separated and fractured by busing and consolidation; children exposed
to values contrary to the teachings of the homes; churches with
messages marginalized – will all be weakened and less likely
to lead the way in raising up children to be individuals with strong
characters, and insisting that this be accomplished within schools
based on strong foundational values.
Hours
that children should spend with parents where love, trust, beliefs
and values should be taught and modeled, are spent, instead, on
long bus rides with unworthy peer groups, exposed to filthy language
and inappropriate behaviors. On these buses the children are transported
to and from the crooked (literally and figuratively) buildings that
house the indoctrination centers that fail to teach reading and
math; fail to provide knowledge and educations; force children to
spend unproductive years without even learning how to understand,
claim or protect their God-given rights.
These
crooked structures certainly fail in the opinion of the population,
but are great successes in the eyes of the socialist/communist architects
and central planners. Unwieldy 'dormers' are added – new-new
math; whole language; rewritten history; misleading government;
misused special education classes; wasted literature classes; wasted
grammar classes; wasted educational chances. Then follow the inevitable
additions, built onto already overburdened, deteriorating foundations
– alternative high school programs; unwed teen parent programs;
adult education programs; punk prisons (whose inmates end up consolidating
with the massive state and federal prison systems.)
Dangerous
additions, attached to crooked buildings, set upon compromised foundations.
None based on dignity, freedom and legality. None that can be repaired,
reformed or salvaged. None strong enough to resist the powerful
pull of gravity.
Considering
the rate at which it is disintegrating, the public education cartel
cannot continue to stand much longer. We have our child out of public
schooling and he is kept at a safe distance from the decay. Have
you yet taken steps, or made plans, for your children's escape to
safety at home, or within real schools founded on strong ethics
and principles? If not, you may want to act soon. Every day of a
child's life is precious, and every lesson learned should be parent-approved
and sensitively taught.
 September
26, 2005
Linda
Schrock Taylor [send
her mail] is an educational
consultant, homeschooling mom, and public school special ed teacher.
She is available for presentations, inservices, and workshops.
Copyright
© 2005 LewRockwell.com
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