Jim Hollingsworth – Several years ago, my father, my brother, and I were camped along a small stream in the middle of Utah, near to the town of Moab. Not far from us, another family was camped. The family was a mother, a father, and a pre-teen boy.

One evening, about dusk, the boy must have done something dreadful, and all of a sudden, the mother broke out in a tirade of swearing the likes of which I had never heard from a woman (and have not heard since). I wondered at the time how this boy was going to grow up having a healthy respect for his parents when they treated him so badly.

Most people truly love their kids — and yet, for some reason I am unable to explain, parents continue to place their children in circumstances that are tailor-made to turn them against what is good and wholesome.

There are public-school teachers who love America and American traditions and who fight for the good that is in America. However, most colleges, and especially most teacher’s colleges, are staffed by Marxist professors. It was that way even when I attended college many years ago.

Because of that, many teachers graduate with a Marxist, collectivist idea that the government is the answer to every problem, and they pass that viewpoint along to the children they teach. They may not even be aware they are doing so.

Parents who truly love their kids leave them in these government schools year after year and are then puzzled when, at graduation, those wonderful kids turn against them. It is the tragedy of our present age and is pretty general throughout the country. This philosophy is aided by the Marxist teachers’ unions and the textbook publishers.

Some parents have seen the problem but appear helpless to do anything about it. They know they ought to remove their kids from these schools but are helpless to do so. It is simple: both mother and father have to work just to balance the home budget. Neither of them can quit to home-teach their own children.

The question comes down to this: what is more important to you? Is it your job, your fancy home, your new furniture, and your wonderful car, or is it your children? Parents who understand the nature of the present battle, and who truly love their kids, have moved into an older home, drive an older car, own used furniture, and spend their days loving and teaching their kids. It is interesting how all their arguments fade away after just a few months of this. They are amazed at how much quieter and kinder their kids are and how rewarding it is to teach them.

One of the few benefits of the COVID lockdowns is that parents had to teach their kids or have them go uneducated. Once they saw what they were actually being taught in the various public schools, many parents determined never to send their precious kids there again. Not only that, but after they had basically taught their kids for two years, it helped overcome their fear of teaching. They realized that if they could teach their kids how to tie their shoes, they could teach them other subjects as well. Going online, they found a rich literature offering guidance for anyone looking to get started in homeschooling.

(You can also write to me if you have a particular question about schooling. If I do not have an answer, I will find one.)

Our children are precious to us, and it is criminal that we leave them in public schools to be indoctrinated in left-wing philosophy year after year. The end result of public education is that our great children graduate with an unhealthy reliance on government, little respect for our founding and our history, and no appreciation of our free enterprise system of economics.

It is an amazing system. We never think about it, but go into your local grocery store and look at the various items packaged there, and then realize that someone had to invent all the products and even the packaging. This rarely happens under a socialist system.

Our children need to learn how America became the greatest nation on the Earth. They need to realize that being free and having the ability to do productive work is a winner at all times. We may fail, but we also succeed. Thomas Edison said he conducted various experiments a thousand times before he found one that was successful.

Our schools have become proving grounds for any new philosophy that may come along. The current issue is transgenderism. Children are conditioned to believe that they may be living in the wrong body and that the great body that God created for them is not sufficient and needs to be changed. These changes for our teenage children have lifelong negative effects. Once these impressionable children reach adulthood, they realize that they will probably never be able to bear children, or nurse them if they are successful in bearing them.

It is possible that some teachers actually believe what they are attempting to teach, but the truth is that most of this teaching about changing your body to something other than what God created is just plain evil. Children who are given puberty-blockers grow into adults with the organs of a small child. This is a terrible travesty, and one has to wonder why any practicing doctor could ever prescribe such dangerous drugs or perform such mutilating surgeries.

Some states have realized the importance of parents protecting their children and have taken strong stands against these unwholesome measures. However, some schools have worked to ensure that parents never find out what is happening with their children at school.

Our own children are precious to us. We need to take steps to protect them. That may include removing them from the public school system. When you do, you may be surprised at what a blessing teaching your own kids can be.

SF Source American Thinker Oct 2023