“In my day” (I am 58), most people rebelled against brainwashing. Whatever we were taught about sex, contemporary music, contemporary entertainment — we generally questioned it. Kids taught by Catholic nuns in the 1950s and 60s almost always questioned them; today’s leftist school officials and college professors are met with blind acceptance. Often we were right and sometimes we were wrong, but we questioned, back in the day. I see NONE of that today. The great majority of young people, if raised by woke and leftist parents, adopt these woke attitudes themselves. If raised by more conservative and rational parents, then they rebel — against their parents, not against the authorities in schools and culture who taught them to be woke. Back in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, brainwashing almost never worked. Today, it almost always does. What is going on?

Here are some of the reader replies (from Facebook):

Parents have stopped teaching their children HOW to think, HOW to reason, HOW to think for themselves! For some reason parents nowadays feel like teaching their children HOW to reason is “overstepping” their boundaries as parents!!! IN OTHER WORDS: STUPID thinking by parents has enabled communists and liberals to seize our children’s minds.

AKA: CRITICAL THINKING … Essentially parents have set their children up for the ripe picking from communists.

It’s made for a generation of Americans that all disagree with each other!

Social Media, through fear and intimidation, drives many young people to conform or be socially mocked and shunned…which they feel is a fate worse than death. Same goes for adults in the workplace, whether it’s a corporation or academia. 

Adults today are themselves often self indulgent , obsessed with eternal youth” , their outward appearance and status in the community , with friends and family while independent and free thinking goes extinct. A shallow existence and narcissism has crept in in our society leaving children ripe for brainwashing by the state. with little parental input . Parents have been unaware and unwilling themselves to take charge. Many are waking up to this nightmare and many have seen it coming like a speeding train. The shift away from family values centered on the children they brought into this world is profound and adults are often more like their children seeking out a “ friendship “ from them rather than being the mature adults they are called on to be as a responsible parents. The foundation is falling out from beneath the family and slowly a new world of separation, intercession and disruption is being built in it’s place destroying and replacing the bedrock of a solid family and faith oriented society into a faithless, state authority.

In the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s it was the left challenging the mostly conservative establishment.

Socialism and Marxism were already ideologically imbedded in the culture, in music, literature, movies and art.

To be ‘critical’ in those times meant, being a leftist. They wanted total control of the institution’s, especially in all levels of education.

Now they have it and they do not plan to let it go. So now our children are being indoctrinated to be good leftist and not challenge the leftist establishment.

Concepts like ‘criticism’, ‘opposition’, ‘freedom of speech’ and ‘critical or independent thought’ have always been of instrumental value to the left. They are to be used as instruments to get the left in power. Once they are in power, those concepts are no use to them anymore.

The left is only concerned about one thing; to get in power by any means necessary so that it can implement they nihilist and destructive program.

Michael, I said the same thing and asked the same question 30+ years ago as an immigrant with two kids going to school (private and public). It was the parents who hated me the most for fighting the system for the benefit of their kids.

Helicopter parents not allowing their children to make mistakes and free range and social media addiction I believe are two factors in a majority of young adults unaware of the reality of (to use their term) “adulting” and believing in something.

I always had the freedom to read anything, and I chose my own books. And my mom was a socialist. I had the intellectual curiosity to find answers. Barry Goldwater woke me up. 😉

My thought is when we grew up we read books and went outside interacted with other kids explored which led to an experience that forced our brain to develop in a different way than kids force fed so much from thousands of tv shows social media and biased media/ schools. Think about the difference between reading a book and having to flood that image into your brain vs being fed that image into your brain. Think about interacting with other kids with no adult supervision at an early age learning to problem solve and resolve conflicts vs no interacting.

There is no attempt to provide guidance on critical thinking. There are no consequences for making mistakes. They are taught from an early age to blindly accept authority and never question ANYTHING. Peer pressure, social media, and lots of other things enter the equation as well.

I think they are browbeaten into it in order to “belong”. Belittled & called names… not the tactics normal, compassionate people use…. not tactics used by those who believe you have the right to your own opinions & beliefs.

Most of the last two generations of parents failed. Raised the current stupidity. Some of us are now trying to save our own kids. How many over 50 caved to masks and vaccines knowing more than anyone the past? They created most of the “parents” of today and only have themselves to blame.

The public education system and other government funded entitlements have achieved their goals through systemic indoctrination for decades. Most parents gladly deposit their children on the doorstep of indoctrination because they have been programmed to believe the government will be a better parent and is truly concerned about all children. Parents are merely vessels to produce obedient voters and voices. Questioning the authority leads to being ostracized by the group. Being ostracized by the group leads to probably losing the entitlements you’ve come to depend on. And if you have never learned critical thinking skills it is too overwhelming to venture too far from your comfort zone. Frightening scenario we are in.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

Our Education Establishment brags about its wonderful doctrines and the many advances seen in our public schools. The real story is quite the opposite, and chronicles a steady and unnecessary decline.

Notre Dame Professor Patrick Deneen says that many students at even the best schools are know-nothings and cannot state who won the Civil War. Deneen concludes that such dismal ignorance could not possibly be accidental. Ergo, it’s what our schools are designed to do—i.e., stupefy young brains with cultural amnesia.

Students emerging from high school, after 12 or 13 years in classrooms, remain shockingly ignorant. That’s nearly 10,000 hours of class time. Think how much children could learn if schools were designed to teach.

Once upon a time, children went to school to learn essential knowledge. No more. They learned the satisfaction that comes from mastering complex information and dealing with more difficult challenges. No longer.

When children are young, we often hear, they think like children. Traditionally they moved on to thinking like adults. In many societies the age of reason was a mere seven years old. Think about that. Clearly, children matured fast. No more. Now they are encouraged to remain children. Deliberate stagnation fosters infantilization, and in time adults who are less independent and less resilient than in years past.

Imagine for a moment what it feels like for so many millions of wretched young people trapped in our public schools. Most are not learning much, not doing anything interesting or important, certainly not having any fun. What is the point of all this empty activity? Where is the meaning?

Two psychologists recently published an article about “existential health.” They argued that “a large and growing body of research shows that meaning in life is critical to human flourishing. Individuals who view their lives as lacking meaning, compared to those who have a strong sense of meaning, are more likely to be depressed, anxious, and suicidal.”

Who allowed our schools to become meaningless? Here is the central mechanism. Progressives view school as a way to create new kinds of children. Once schools become highly invested in social engineering, they place proportionally less value on academic advancement. Infantilization begins.

Problem was, the professors had to justify their new approaches so John Dewey and William Kilpatrick, our two most famous “educators,” raved about the educational benefits of Activities, Experience, and Projects. This hype signaled no love for knowledge, quite the opposite. Think of children building sand castles. The children may be passionate; they may spend many hours pleasantly. But they’re not learning anything new. Trouble is, the Education Establishment pretends that building sand castles is education. Pretty soon, that’s all the children do, build another sandcastle. Hardly aware of it, the children are dumbed down and ground down.

Progressives created classrooms where familiar wheels appear to spin. But nothing important is taking place. That’s why students never can reach the age of reason. They’re trying to fulfill a socialist template that does not value cognitive content. The children remain perpetually children, as dumb at 16 as at six. There is the tragic accomplishment of our socialist educators.

The common pattern is, with great fanfare, to create a steady dose of meaningless activity, starting in kindergarten and lasting through graduation from high school. Here’s what the school system loses in the process: pride, confidence, enthusiasm, optimism, a can-do spirit, and a continuous immersion in intellectual activity. Meaningful intellectual work is aborted. Children are kept soft, formless, and amorphous. More jellyfish than vertebrate.

Public schools are not easy to fix because John Dewey and his gang built social engineering into the fabric of the school. If they stop doing this for a second, the entire Education Establishment might have a nervous breakdown. What’s the point, the professors would want to know. You would answer them patiently: The point is learning about the world so students can become adults. The professors would scream, Stand back, we are creating a New World.

So the wheels turn, the sun comes up and goes down, the months pass, and nothing substantive happens. Nothing essential is learned. There is no deeper understanding of anything.

How can I say this so confidently? Because so many reach the end of high school without knowing the names of the oceans. They cannot find Spain on a map of the world. They can’t multiply 23×19 without a calculator. There is a vast Sahara of emptiness; a dry and pointless wind mocks all human endeavor.

What, throughout all those thousands of hours, is learned? Something academic, or something practical? Not too likely.

Imagine Sherman marching to Georgia. He wanted to destroy the South thoroughly; he wanted to burn down everything standing. He wanted to twist every piece of train track. Sherman’s march through Georgia was all about leaving nothing and this is what Progressive educators seem compelled to do when they march through the traditional curriculum.

The whole gimmick for 100 years is simply stated. Teach as little as possible. Don’t ask children to memorize anything. Okay, starting now, let’s do the opposite. Present as much academic content as each teacher can manage. Encourage children to memorize when helpful or appropriate. By all means, let’s sing songs, dance, and have fun. But at the end of the week, children should know more than on Monday.

Here’s the disgraceful victory our Progressives pulled off. Many students are as ignorant on Friday as the week before. That’s what is killing us.

—–

Bruce Deitrick Price’s new book is: Saving K-12 — What happened to our public schools? How do we fix them?

The State is teaching second graders “restorative justice.”. High schoolers are instructed that their families “reinforce racist/homophobic prejudices.” Government officials –  teachers and school board members – are targeting parents for their opposition to the teachings of critical race theory.

And we grovel to the State, begging them to make it stop.

This is not the profile of a free people.

The fight against the government’s efforts to teach and promote evil will always exist as long as there are public schools. The evil may be different in degree – it won’t always be critical race theory or the like – but it’ll still be present. The struggle to control curriculum will take place not in the classroom but in the courts, the legislature, the school board, and the agencies.

And this struggle, this fight against the State, will continue until we address the greater problem. Until we excise the cancer. Until we end State control over families.

What I mean is this: The State has no authority to compel a child attend public school. It is time to end compulsory education.

A Brief History

Mandated education is a relatively new idea in the West. In America, it grew from colonial-era laws requiring towns to appoint teachers or create schools once they got to a certain size. Around that same time in Europe and England, schools emerged within the community and from the churches to provide religious training and practical instruction.

Public education in America proliferated in the early 1800’s.1 By 1890, “the majority of states and territories had passed mandatory attendance laws,” providing penalties (usually unenforced) for truancy and offering exemptions for equivalent education.2

By the early 1900’s, compulsory education laws were even more common in the United States. The Supreme Court had endorsed State power to “compel [school] attendance.”3 Save for a few publicly dissenting voices, the authority of the State to “impose reasonable regulations for the control and duration of basic education”4 has gone unopposed.

One would have to think that this has to do with public opinion. It’s tough to find parents that disagree with K-12 education generally. Every parent wants their child to be educated. Instead, they differ on the specifics: private or public school, the subjects emphasized, secular vs. religious instruction, etc.

Similarly, the Supreme Court has no appetite for considering laws compelling public schooling. (One of the failures of originalism has been their silence on this issue.) Instead, it takes up cases involving the rights of students. They’ll decide on matters involving the violation of a 13 year-old student’s Fourth Amendment rights after a strip search. They’ll consider whether, under the First Amendment, a school may ban student speech that promotes illegal drug use.

A young person may be forced to go to a government school – a restraint of their movement and freedom – but at least the Court lets them speak. Their freedom of association might be violated, but at least they can’t be subject to unreasonable strip searches. Even prisoners have rights.

This gets us to the question of authority.

By what authority does a State have to compel attendance at a government school?

The Supreme Court has held that students do not shed their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse gate.5 What of the right to not attend school?

Is the right to not be forced to attend a government school lesser than the freedom of speech?

To this you might respond that society needs to have an educated populace, for kids to stay off the street. A more discerning mind might say that public education is a babysitter so the parents can work. A true cynic would agree with all of that and add that the public school system is a jobs program. Anyway, those are all State interests; they have nothing to do with State authority.

A Christian might observe that God created three institutions: the family, the church, and the civil government. Each has a separate jurisdiction. The government enforces civil and criminal laws; the family is governed from within, with parents providing discipline and educating their children as they see fit; and the church has jurisdiction over matters of religion and its members. Under Christian philosophy, then, the State exceeds its jurisdiction when it involves itself in matters reserved for the family. Something to think about.

But I digress.

And I’ll rephrase the attendance question in a way that’s more accurate:

“By what authority does a State have to force a child attend a government school, where they are taught poisonous and evil doctrines?”

I disagree that this is a power inherent to a State. This wasn’t a power accepted at the formation of this country or when the Constitution was drafted. Even where there were laws mandating schooling, they didn’t mandate public education. There’s a big difference there.

To that you might say it’s the consent of the governed: “The voters gave the State the authority to compel public education.”

My parents never gave the State that authority. Did yours?

Oh, you might answer that democracy allows for such laws. The majority – by way of votes – determines the education of the country’s youth.

Ah, the cliché of democracy. Voters that don’t know your child can control how your child is education?

Which one of you would give a stranger that power? Do you not see the problem?

Here is the truth: the consent of the governed is a myth.

And even if there were consent – and there certainly is not – consent of the governed isn’t good enough. It is the consent of the parents that matters.

And what is the parental consent? There is none. Even the concept of “Parental Oversight” of public schools and teachers is a legend promoted by those interested in retaining their power.

Let’s say your child goes to a public school.6 If you disagree with their curriculum, that means you’re in the minority. Too bad. The majority – through their elected officials, not yours – have already picked what’s being taught.

And if you fight their curriculum in court, they have the law on their side. The Supreme Court has held that educators have broad discretion to set curriculum so long as it is “reasonably related to a legitimate pedagogical concern.”7 This would include curriculum and viewpoints against which the parent or child disagrees. Their values, not yours.

With little chance for relief in the courts, you’re going to need to change the decision-makers to exercise your God-given parental right to oversee the education of your child.

Good luck. Your plan of action would be: (1) establish an agenda; (2) recruit candidates; (3) rally voters; (4) get your people elected; and (5) have the elected officials carry out your wishes.

Not one parent can change the agenda of the educational “elite.” And even if you are successful (a near impossibility), it would be too late. Your child has already been brainwashed, and thus victimized, by the nonsense they’re peddling.

Where do you re-educate the child who has been taught he is an oppressor?  

How do you heal the psychological damage to a 9-year old who feels guilty for being white?

And even if there is change at the local level, how much will it really matter?

The Biden Department of Education plans to promote racial equity in schooling, brainwash students on “their own biases,” and endorses the inaccurate (and terrible) “1619 project.” Their plan to revolutionize American schools includes quotes from radicals Ibram X. Kendi (who alleges “Trumpism is the violent defense of white male supremacy”) and Becki Cohn-Vargas (who wants to educate young children on anti-racism and has endorsed garbage articles that claim “objectivity” or “neutrality” are parts of white supremacy culture).  

All the while, mere disagreement with the insane educational priorities of the racially obsessed will make you a target. They’ll fight you every step of the way. If not in court then on the streets. If not at the school board then on the internet. Exercise your First Amendment rights and these government officials will put you on their list.

It’s happening in Loudon County, Virginia. Teachers, school staff, elected officials, and even the county prosecutor were part of a Facebook group that:

compiled a lengthy list of parents suspected of disagreeing with school system actions, including its teaching of controversial racial concepts — with a stated purpose in part to “infiltrate,” use “hackers” to silence parents’ communications, and “expose these people publicly.” (Source: Luke Rosiak of The Daily Wire.)

After some parents objected to the teaching of critical race theory, one teacher promised to shut down their “hateful garbage” while another teacher called a parent a “douche.” They fight with the support of the NAACP, which had e-mailed school officials to inform them that a teacher’s husband had criticized critical race theory. According to Rosiak, the e-mail stated the NAACP was hopeful the teacher “does not share the same ideologies as her husband.”

Loudon County is the exception, not the rule. These brawls typically aren’t so public. (Though Loudon County shows just how audacious these people have become.) Likewise, the change in policies aren’t done out in the open. Instead, they’re done in the bureaucratic back rooms, within the school boards, at the school districts. Most parents don’t know what’s going on until it’s too late.

One final point.

For the sake of argument, let’s say that the government does have authority to compel a child attend a public school. What happens when “education” transforms from reading, writing, and arithmetic to critical race theory and the LGBTQ agenda?

Does the State have the power to compel such education?

Under current law, yes.

If you accept the State’s authority to compel education, don’t you accept the State’s authority to define “education”?

You can think about that answer.

Conclusion.

It’s hard to overstate what this fight is about, because it’s about nearly everything. It’s not just about what gets taught in the schools. It’s about the power of the State over the rights of the parents. It’s about indoctrination starting in elementary school. It’s about retaliation at the local level, fights in the courts, and forced compliance with their twisted worldview.

To break this down in its simplest form: this is good vs. evil fighting over the mind of a child.

Victory is removing the child from their grasp.