Life Among the Liberals Part III: Education

Kim du Toit
April 5, 2002
12:44 PM CDT

One of the more interesting ironies of Lake Shore Drive Liberals is that they are in complete support of public schooling?while they themselves send their kids to private schools. This isn?t unique to Chicago, of course?I still get the chuckles at the memory of St.  Alban?s alumnus and would-be POTUS Al Gore Jr. [spit] whining about people refusing to support their local Washington D.C. public school. 

But this isn’t about liberal hypocrisy, tempting a target though that is. It’s about how liberal thinking can screw up a good thing, in this case, the Jeffersonian ideal of public schooling. Adding Government to the mix just guarantees the presence of the landmine in the footpath. 

Here’s a quick pop quiz. Who said the following: 

"You can’t make Socialists out of individualists. Children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society which is coming where everyone is interdependent."

a.) Karl Marx, author of The Communist Manifesto
b.) "Big Brother" from George Orwell’s 1984
c.) Joseph Stalin, former leader of the Soviet Union
d.) John Dewey, reformer of the American public school system
e.) V.I. Lenin, leader of the Communist Revolution in Russia

If you answered "Dewey", you?d be correct, even though the concept would have been familiar to all four of the others. Unhappily, Dewey would be proud of what his "reforms" have since wrought in the public school system. 

But don’t take my word for it. Just take a trip to any public school classroom, and look at what adorns the walls. Instead of study aids like multiplication tables, the alphabet, and stuff like that, you’ll see Orwellian placards that contain nonsense like: "A polite student is a good student", "A good student will help his friends", and my favorite, "A quiet classroom is where we learn." (So don’t snore, kids!)

In other words, what’s important is behavior, not education.  Conformity is the mark of a "good" student, not achievement. And if behavior is more important than education, then why are we surprised that Ritalin is just the next step in the public schooling process? 

It will come as no surprise to everyone to learn that our two children are home-schooled. Child #1 is a witty, intellectual child in her early teens. She’s also mildly obese. Needless to say, public school for her was a nightmare—forced participation in gym class (embarrassment about her appearance), perpetual teasing by the other kids (her appearance and above-average intelligence), ostracization and forced learning of subjects in which she had no interest. I can still remember dragging her, sobbing wretchedly, to the bus stop every morning—and I mean, every morning. (As a side note, whenever stupid people ask me about the supposed lack of socialization for home-schooled kids, I always point out that she really, really misses all the embarrassment, teasing and cruelty.)

So we pulled her out of public school, in the sixth grade. The change was almost immediate. Instead of a surly, sullen child who admitted to us that she had contemplated suicide, we discovered in her a happy, intelligent person with a devastating wit. Academically, she improved her Math skills almost immediately?she?d tested at fourth-grade levels just prior to leaving school, and three months (months!) later, she aced her seventh-grade Math tests. Now, nearly three years later, she?s learning Celtic, guitar, and web design?and each day she seems to get happier and happier. 

Child #2 is a different story altogether. At an early age, he was diagnosed with mild form of autism, which meant he was late in speaking, late in physical coordination, late in, well, everything. So we thought that Special Ed. Class would be perfect for him, with a hope of eventual "mainstreaming."

All went well for a year or so, until we noticed a change in him.  The little boy who had delighted in doing his homework, delighted in doing class work, delighted, in short, in doing the right thing, had changed. Now he was fearful, couldn’t sleep, burst into tears for no apparent reason. Our immediate fear was: is he regressing?  (It’s a constant fear for parents of autistic children: the synapses can as easily become disconnected as connected.)

So my wife and I went to the school to talk to his teacher and the principal. Imagine our surprise when we saw on the walls the Orwellian slogans I described earlier. Imagine too our surprise to see, also on the walls, the pupils’ listing of all behavioral transgressions (aha! public humiliation—that works so well, especially with learning-disabled kids). His teacher, a bouncy little thing of, oh, twenty-odd summers, informed us that the instructional model they were using was that of Boys’ Town.  In other words, the school was applying standards designed for kids with severe behavioral problems, on kids with learning disabilities. 

We told young Miss Ratched that our son would no longer be participating in this little Hitler Youth conformity exercise, and furthermore, if she attempted to impose this on him, or set about ostracizing him for this non-participation, there would be legal problems. 

Two weeks later, we got a "general distribution letter" from this teacher about some class activity or other. I knew it was for general distribution, because it said "Dear Parents." Clearly, it had been created with word-processing software, and printed out.  

Now, you have to understand that Special Ed teachers are supposed to be the creme de la creme of the teaching establishment—they get paid more, their classes get more funding, and so on. 

You will understand my consternation when I tell you that, in a letter of some fifteen lines, I discovered no fewer than eight misspellings and seven instances of incorrect grammar or syntax. So I sent the letter back, with all the literary transgressions noted (eg. "verb does not agree with subject"; "you’re should read your", and so on). Finally, I gave the letter a grade: F-minus. 

The next day, we pulled Child #2 from public school. He’s currently learning Japanese, music, and rudimentary computer programming. He’s eleven. 

Life Among the Liberals