We are going to home school our kids, but that’s only because we hate education

First, I’d like to treat you to a look at a few snippets of some emails I received yesterday, after a certain “controversial” segment on my show:

“I never realized you were so anti-education…”

“It figures that a teabagger would hate education so much…”

“….so it seems you would rather have a nation full of illiterates…”

“….I get tired of your anarchist propaganda…”

“I’m sure Hitler would be very proud of you…”

That last one — the obligatory “you’re as bad as Hitler!” charge — is especially ironic, considering the subject that prompted these responses: public education. Specifically, my belief that government education is an unmitigated disaster, and can only be remedied by more and more families deciding to remove government from the equation and educate their children themselves. That last emailer is, predictably, a proud product of public school. But you already knew that, in light of his hilarious historical ignorance.

Contrary to his claims, Hitler would not have been very “proud” of my pro-home school rhetoric. In fact, he would have been quite displeased. In fact, he probably would have expressed that displeasure in a manner which would have left no room for interpretation. That’s because Hitler actually outlawed home schooling (a law that’s still enforced in Germany today, and passionately endorsed by our own Justice Department). The Fuehrer was a huge proponent of public schooling — and that’s not an attempt to compare modern public school proponents to Nazis.

But, you know, if anyone comes close to mirroring the National Socialist Party on this particular subject, it obviously isn’t the home schooling folks…

Every day, people send me stories about madness in the public school system. Recently, I’ve had a lot of folks asking me to rail against the Common Core Standards, and Zero Tolerance Policies, and the efforts to “remove God from education.” Of course, I find all of these things repulsive and I have ranted and raved about all of them countless times. I was actually in the process of writing yet another piece lambasting a school in Indiana for actively promoting eugenics and population control, and a few other schools for expelling or suspending students who “brought” imaginary weapons to class. I made it about three paragraphs into my spiel, and then I stopped. And then I sighed. And then I hit ‘delete.’

No more.

I’m done. Seriously. I’m not going to complain about these things anymore. I’m not going to complain about bureaucracy and propaganda in government education, for the same reason that I won’t write a scathing blog post admonishing water for being moist, or criticizing heroin for being addictive. I won’t criticize a thing for being exactly what it’s meant to be, and doing exactly what it’s designed to do. Instead, if it’s warranted, I’ll attack the thing in its entirety. See, when you take something that is bad, and you randomly chastise a few of its essential parts and properties, you have succeeded only in perpetuating the myth that said parts can somehow be removed from the sum.

They can’t. Sorry. It’s not going to happen.

Government education is designed to be an instrument of propaganda and bureaucratic control. This isn’t a side effect —it’s the whole point. If you don’t want your kid subject to government propaganda and government control, then don’t send him to a government facility 6 hours a day, 5 days a week, for 13 years of his life. Or go ahead and send him — perhaps you have no choice, I understand that — but confront the reality of the situation.

Many of us screamed from the hilltops when Obama set forth on his plan to seize control of health care. Yet we seem to have taken it for granted that the government ought to control education. We don’t want any bureaucrat telling us what pills to take, but we’ll sure let them tell our kids what thoughts to think. We don’t want them controlling what we put in our body, but we don’t seem too intent on disabling their ability to control what’s put into our child’s mind. This failure to fundamentally question government education, is, itself, a major victory for government education. It’s also brought us into this mindless, numbing state where we generally approach every issue by arguing about the color of the leaves, and the lengths of the branches; yet we never discuss the tree itself, or dig down to look at its roots. Perfect example: all of the well-meaning conservatives who, in light of recent news, insist that we must now “reform” the IRS. Reform it for what purpose? To take away its power to steal, manipulate, punish, bribe, invade, cajole, and blackmail? Well, seeing as how the agency was invented for the express purpose of doing all of those things, perhaps we ought to be instead insisting on it’s complete and total destruction.

The Prussians were on the forefront of compulsory government education. Horace Mann studied the Prussian model of education in the 1840’s, and came away quite impressed. In Prussia, State education was devised as a means to develop obedient soldiers, subservient workers, and subordinated citizens. Our own system works toward the same end, and with striking results.

Sure, take a look at your Facebook newsfeed and you’ll find that most of us can’t write coherently, or express a formed thought on any topic, but government education has still been enormously successful. Decipher these ramblings and what do you find? Not much, and that’s the point. Score one for Government Education. Now try this: write something really outside of the mainstream box. Write something that questions our cultural values and societal priorities. Post it, and see what happens. The trolls came out of the ground like Lord of the Rings to viciously attack, probably wishing death and destruction upon you, right? Score two for Government Education.

Oh, it’s working alright.

And this is why people hate home schooling. They hate it because it’s against the grain. It’s too far “out there.” Almost every human being was “home schooled” for most of human civilization, but now many can’t even fathom the concept. These people have no rational or empirical case against it. By any standard or academic indicator, home schooled kids outperform their public schooled peers by wide margins. The critics might babble about how public schools are good for “socialization,” but in the next breath they’ll complain of the bullying “epidemic.”

So I’ll send my child to public school during her formative years, watch as her attention starved peers attempt to tear her to emotional shreds for the next decade, and then, at the end of it all, she’ll be “socialized”? Really?

What’s next? Should I soak in a tub full of sewage and hepatitis for the sake of “health and hygiene”? Thanks, but I’ll pass, on both counts.

“Oh, but you don’t want to be too protective of your kids,” I’m told. “You don’t want to shield them.”

Yes. Yes I do. That’s my job. I will shield them and I will protect them, because they are my children and that’s why I’m here. Again, I understand that not everyone can home school, but it’s truly insane, and dangerous, and appalling to pretend that a child benefits from the sort of bullying and social torment that is rampant in modern public schools.

Good Lord, look around you. Are you surrounded by well adjusted, mature, “sociable” individuals?

Where are they? Where are these “socialized” people I hear about so often? I don’t see many of them, but I do see a lot of narcissists, and substance abusers, and people on psychotropic medication, and people who have never been in a healthy relationship in their entire lives. I see a lot of dependency and insecurity. I see a lot of desperation and confusion. I’m not blaming all of this on public schools, but public schools certainly haven’t helped matters.

It’s very chilling to think that parents are sending their children to government facilities for the express purpose of being “socialized” by government workers. It’s one thing to send your kids there IN SPITE of the social “lessons” he’ll learn. It’s quite another to send them specifically FOR those lessons. I went to public school, and my parents spent most evenings trying to undo the “socialization” that so many other parents seem to embrace.

In any case, education is really supposed to be about, well, education. Have you ever looked up the definition of “education”? I have. Here it is: “the act or process of imparting or acquiring general knowledge, and developing the powers of reasoning and judgement.” Only in America (and other Socialist nations) could we look at that definition and think: “Hmmmm, that sounds like something that requires trillions of dollars and millions of bureaucrats!” Only in America (and other nations where the family structure is disintegrating) could we decide that parents are incapable of helping their children “develop the powers of reasoning and judgement.” In fact, in more primitive times, folks would have been crazy enough to think that ONLY parents are suited for that job.

Good thing we’re more enlightened now. Here in Kentucky, we spend about 5 billion dollars on “education.” That’s enough to buy 17 thousand Lamborghinis, or 50 round trips to the moon; it’s enough to construct another Large Hadron Collider, or purchase 84 million tickets to King’s Dominion, but apparently it isn’t enough to teach half a million kids how to read and write. Our education budget was “slashed” by a whopping .005 percent, and that’s prompted the predictable apocalyptic reaction from left wingers and politicians. “AHHHH THE CHILDREN ARE DOOMED! HOW SHALL WE TEACH THEM WITH ONLY A SMIDGEN LESS THAN FIVE BILLION DOLLARS?!”

But here I am, doing what I said I wouldn’t. I’m complaining about the insane amount of money wasted on “education,” as if there’s any chance that government education could ever be anything but expensive and wasteful. It can’t. It won’t. It’s not possible. This is how it is designed.

The problem with the government school system is that it’s a government school system. There are many good teachers and honest people who work inside these buildings, but that doesn’t change the fact that the State shouldn’t be indoctrinating our kids. A public system for youth-indoctrination shouldn’t exist in a supposedly free society. Period.

You might wish to think that, with proper reforms, the schools could be prevented from indoctrinating; restricted, instead, to simply educating. But indoctrination and education are dimensions of each other. Indeed, indoctrination can be defined as “teaching or inculcating a doctrine, principle, or ideology, especially one with a specific point of view.” Doctrines and principles are inexorable parts of the process of passing on knowledge and information. The question before us is: who ought to be in charge of this task?

I know my answer to that question.

Or maybe I just hate education. Yeah, that’s probably it.

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