The latest "thing" in government education is "critical race theory," in which our children are to be taught that racism is everything, and "equity," in which, well, let Keri D. Ingraham explain:
Identifying and labeling students based on their socioeconomic and ethnic or race group dominates the education conversation, with group academic performance based on these demographics the frequent focus. Any differences in academic performance between demographic groups (especially based on race) are labeled “achievement gaps,” the remedy for which is more equity.
So, the explanation of everything is racism. And the solution of everything is racism.
Meanwhile, the AP is breathlessly reporting that homeschooling is exploding.
The rate of households homeschooling their children doubled from the start of the pandemic last spring to the start of the new school year last September, according to a new U.S. Census Bureau report released this week.
But here's the big thing.
Black households saw the largest jump in rates of homeschooling, going from 3.3% in the spring to 16.1% in the fall.
Breitbart expands:
Charmaine Williams, a parent in the St. Louis area, said she is using the National Black Home Educators curriculum to homeschool Justin, age 10, and Janel, age 6.
“There’s no turning back for us now,” she added. “The pandemic has been a blessing — an opportunity to take ownership of our children’s education.”
Wow. As a devoted racist-sexist-homophobe I sure do like to read about blacks getting on the homeschool train. Come right in, folks, the water's fine.
But what on earth is all the rubbish about critical race theory and equity really about? I mean, this is crazy-cakes stuff.
The answer, of course, is trivial, but telling.
The answer is that the only warrant for government power is existential peril. Back at the dawn of public education, the peril was that millions of children were growing up unlettered. The "common school" was the idea of Horace Mann.
The reform movement he led sought to create the virtuous republican citizenry needed to sustain American political institutions, the educated workforce required to expand the American economy, and the disciplined generation necessary to forestall the social disorders so common in American cities in the decades before the Civil War.
Mann was a Protestant and a Unitarian. Today, we call them "transcendentalists." But was there a hidden agenda? The Irish Catholics reckoned that the common school movement was all about curing them of their Catholicism, and so the Catholic Irish, inspired by John "Dagger" Hughes, developed the idea of "first build the school, then build the church." You will notice, if you drive by a Catholic church, that there is a school attached.
Yep, we couldn't have those dangerous ignorant Irish Catholics irradiating their children with crazy Catholic doctrine. So let's have a government school system where kids study the King James Bible not the Catholic Bible. That's how the whole thing started.
Now, of course, we need government schools to make sure that children are taught ruling-class ideas on race and sex and gays rather than the primitive bigoted ideas of their parents.
But it's really all about power, and the fact that no politician or bureaucrat can ever admit being wrong.
Actually, most government programs, most of the time, Make Things Worse. Of course they do, because if you strip away all the narrative and the division, government programs are about one thing, and one thing only: rewarding the supporters of the government.
So if politicians can never admit a mistake, and government is all about loot and plunder, what do you do when the public schools are persistently failing to boost blacks into the middle class.
It can't be because blacks are a standard deviation below whites in IQ.
It can't be because all government programs are loot and plunder.
It can't be because the real clients of government education are the teachers and administrators that support Democratic politicians.
It can't be because affirmative action doesn't work.
It can't be because No Child Left Behind doesn't work.
It can't be because Every Student Succeeds doesn't work.
It can't be because Common Core doesn't work.
It can't be because every Baldrick's Cunning Plan of the education blog Makes Things Worse.
Do you see that the one thing that our liberal friends cannot admit, will not admit, is that their politics is a failed politics, and their programs are failed programs?
Because if they did that then the only decent thing to do would be to retreat from politics and hand over their power to a successor regime. And they are not going to do that, because politics is their religion and power is their drug.
So, our liberal friends will always be coming up with some new dodge to marginalize and humiliate ordinary middle-class Americans and justify their continuing grip on political power.
Until we show them the door.
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