What’s Next in Education?
Published in Marietta Daily Journal (GA), Nov. 12, 2022
First
it was simply a broad path, a strip of mud lined on both sides by humble
mercantile stores, a local bank, a doctor’s office, a sheriff’s office, and
possibly a hotel, depending on the size and location of the emerging town or
village. There were no side paths just yet, only one long strip. After many
long, long decades the muddy strip, now called a street, would either be
partially covered with boards – commonly called “planks” – or gravel if the
area was blessed by a nearby “gravel pit” or quarry. Gravel or small rocks
would be a vast improvement over the muddy mess created by heavy rains and defecating
horses and mules tied to posts just outside the commercial establishments.
Years and years hence would bring asphalt or concrete.
No,
this isn’t just a scene from a western movie. It is the way we were as our
American forefathers trekked from New England three thousand miles across a new
continental nation, building towns here and there. As the nation moved its
boundary westward, the villages that were built changed over the years. The
first major change was from a strip town to a town square. Now each town had a
center around which commerce and community activities gathered. Marietta,
Georgia is a good example of a city that still manages to maintain a vibrant
town square. Not destroyed by a nearby interstate highway as some towns have
been, Marietta is unique.
Commercially,
the history of American towns has taken the following path: 1) a strip of a
road that would typically become Main Street, 2) a town square that became a
social and political as well as commercial center, 3) a “strip mall” on the
edge of town that drew shoppers from the square, and in the case of larger
towns and cities, 4) a mall that would become a walled city within itself
further drawing shoppers from downtown. But now we’re told that malls are in
their last days. What’s next for our small towns and cities and populous rural
areas?
Notice
that in the above scenario there were no schools that lined the muddy streets
of the New World’s first “population centers.” But that doesn’t mean there was
no learning, no transmission of wisdom, and no interest in the educating of
children. It means that parents had to take care of those responsibilities
themselves. For starters, children were taught the basics, that is, how to
acquire food and water, how to keep a roof over their heads, how to gather
fuel, how to acquire transportation, and how to secure a line of work. While
the northeast had a measure of public funding for schools in the late 1780s,
the concept of free public schooling would not begin its slow spread until the
1830s.
Spread
it has. Today every state provides free public schooling and also has
compulsory school laws. Since 1979, thanks to President Carter and his debt to
the National Education Association, the US has had a federal level Department
of Education despite the fact that the 10th Amendment to the
Constitution prohibits it. The one-room school house is no more and bureaucracy
reigns.
Compulsory education is a good idea but drag
queen hour is not. Local school boards are what the Founders intended but
strict limitations on what parents can say at board meetings is not. The
teaching of language, mathematics, science, history, computer literacy, and the
broad humanities is good. Turning biologically-based sex ed into
acknowledgement of every deviation under the sun is not. Teaching teens to
think for themselves is good. The “What is your preferred pronoun” malarkey is
not. Cultural literacy is good. Multiculturalism that pretends America is not
special is not.
In
a previous column I related my surprise at how my four children, all products
of our public schools, chose either home
schooling, private schools, or a planned mix to educate their own children.
While they all loved and appreciated their teachers, it turns out that they
knew more about the halls and restrooms and negative peer pressure than I did
after 37 years of hall duty and restroom duty. Neither parents nor teachers can
know the undertow of what is going on when hundreds of teens are in one place
having far more influence on each other than parents ever have.
Covid
and the war on parents have taken a toll on our schools. Homeschooling and
private education are growing. If our schools are on fire as many are claiming
and if the sexualization and the indoctrination taking place in liberal states
continues to spread, it will be time to make some changes again. I sense we
best be ready to make them.
Roger Hines
November 10, 2022
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