Educational Wrestling Match

Regardless of how much Strother (and others) would like to make criticism of the government-run school system about me and my views, it simply is not. It is convenient for them to portray crazy old Steve ranting and raving on his pet peeve, but that is just rhetorical illusion. Mainstream authors and pundits write on the subject all the time. Note that Strother didn't attack Dr. Sowell or John Stossel, he attacked me. I didn't ask Dr. Sowell or John Stossel or any of the other critics to write what they did, but to read Strother's response, one would think I was solely responsible. Note also that he didn't rebut a single substantive point made by Sowell, Stossel, or me. He tried unsuccessfully to create some fantasy about my wounding by public schools as a reason for my "hate," then he simply resorted to twisting one small part of my response. Predictably, he was attacking my motives and not the substance of what I posted. When I called him on it, he resorted to pretending to be "just having fun" and attempted to divert the topic again. Dr. Sowell, Ann Coulter, Mike Adams, and others have written volumes on this tactic so I won't go into it further here.

Homeschooling is growing at a rapid rate. Private school enrollment is up all across the country. There is increasing pressure on politicians at all levels to provide for economic competition with the government-run schools. Not surprisingly, there is a backlash from the purveyors and apologists of the government schools institution. I categorize the more vehement responses in several basic groups.

First, there are the people who have been immersed and indoctrinated into the sanctity of "public education" all of their lives. Garrison Kiellor called them "earnest Luddites." It has become a religion for them. As with every religious system that is founded upon a lie, adherents react out of fear that their entire framework of reality will be torn down before their very eyes. These are the "useful idiots" who line up at protests and spew venom at government-run school critics.

Second, there are the ideologues who press the agenda of government-run schools as a social indoctrination mechanism. This group reacts because its agenda is being exposed to an increasingly irritable public and is in danger of failing utterly. These are the people who seek to legislate limitations on any competing form of education and who devise the agit-prop campaigns to provide talking points for the useful idiots in the first group.

Third are the politicians who benefit from being "champions" of education. I offer that no one could produce any evidence that a single one of these people had ever improved education in this country in any quantifiable way. These are the implementers of the agenda of the second group and stand to loose position, power, and ego when government-run schools are diminished.

Finally, there is the teachers' union. Their reaction is the most understandable since the demise of "public education" would also mean a loss of power and money for them. They are the scavengers who feast off the activities of the first three groups.

I maintain that government-run school apologists fail to adequately and substantively rebut criticism of their system because it is largely indefensible. I fully expect the tactic of personal attacks and marginalization to continue unabated.