Commentary
The word “weaponized” has rapidly sprung into widespread usage in the past year or two.
The dollar has been weaponized as an instrument of foreign policy. The Department of Justice (DOJ) has been weaponized by identifying parents concerned about what their children are being taught in schools as “domestic terrorists” (even as the DOJ has been eerily reticent about “domestic terrorism” regarding the rash of
possible attacks on food processing plants and key parts of our
electric power infrastructure). The FBI is seen to have been weaponized for partisan political purposes.
The 10th plank in Karl Marx’s 10-point platform for how to steer a society to socialism was “free education for all children in government schools.” That may sound benign and even generous, but the purpose was to indoctrinate children to unquestioningly accept the economic plans and political commands of the elitists running the government. The goal was control of the masses, not the enlightenment and liberation of individuals.
The Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) envisioned a multigenerational strategy of infusing popular culture with Marxist notions. The German Marxist Rudi Dutschke rebranded Gramsci’s cultural Marxism as the “long march through the institutions,” but the goal remained the same: to propagandize and indoctrinate the masses in Marxist ideas until Marxism became the dominant ideology.
Fast forward to today, and we see controversy and conflict in our public schools. Both at the primary and secondary levels, students are being subjected to “lessons” that have little to do with developing intellectual capabilities but everything to do with promoting various progressive agendas.
The three most problematic topics are sexuality, race, and climate change.
Teachers and administrators have been bombarding children and adolescents (sometimes openly, other times
furtively) with activities pertaining to sexual issues, particularly gender identification. There has been some pushback against this, most famously, perhaps, the Florida law prohibiting sex and gender “education” for children up through third grade. But why stop there? Why spare only those in third grade and younger? My generation didn’t have any instruction pertaining to sexual mores all the way through high school.
If you think we didn’t know anything about sex, well, don’t kid yourself, but we did have a lot fewer abortions, out-of-wedlock births, broken families, and so forth. The advocates of teaching about sexuality in school don’t have any basis to claim that their way is better. And to those who would accuse us of being anti-gay because we don’t think it’s appropriate for sex to be taught in schools, please realize that just because we want sex left out of school curriculums, it doesn’t mean that we’re anti-sex.
Many progressives inject critical race theory (CRT) into their curriculums. If you’re one of the many people who are under the impression that CRT is something going on at colleges and not secondary schools, you should know that the National Education Association (the largest teachers union) adopted
a resolution that explicitly defends the teaching of CRT in public schools. CRT shouldn’t be forced on anybody. Many Americans opposed to racial prejudice rightfully object to the CRT approach of viewing social issues through a racial lens. We’re seeking interracial harmony, whereas the proponents of CRT are obsessed with racial discord. They can live in the past if they want to, but most of us are ready to move forward.
As for climate change, as
I wrote in this space several years ago, it’s a form of professional malpractice and child abuse for schools to teach children that the world is careening toward a climate apocalypse. The psychological effect on children of frightening them needlessly is cruel and unconscionable. In the first place, there’s
no proof that that’s the case, and in the second place,
humans are winning the battle against climate change by reducing the death toll from weather events by 99 percent. Chill out, catastrophists!
The net result of the public schools’ assaults on traditional values and the infliction of psychological harm on vulnerable young people is that the river of students trying to escape public schools is turning into a flood. Last summer,
Arizona adopted legislation that allows all primary and secondary schools to spend their share of the state’s education budget to attend the school of their choice. In January 2023, both Iowa and Utah passed
similar legislation, and several other states are moving rapidly in that direction. There’s still a long way to go, but these signs are encouraging.
Naturally, the entrenched educrats are howling. In addition to their unhappiness at losing the leverage to force LGBT, CRT, and climate change propaganda on students and losing students to schools where traditional values aren’t trashed, they particularly object to taxpayer money helping to pay tuition at religious schools. That shows their Marxist stripes: Marx explicitly called for the abolition of families, religion, and private property in “The Communist Manifesto.”
The leftists have been weaponizing our schools for decades. Judging by the current pushback in multiple states, they may finally have gone too far, too fast. History often moves back and forth, pendulum-style, over the decades. The current successes of the school choice movement indicate that the education pendulum has started to reverse. Let’s hope that reversal gains momentum.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
