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This Speakout has not been edited.

By Eric Christen

It is amusing to watch the defenders of the educational status quo sink into a morass of incoherence when it comes to their views on America and the place our government-run K-12 education system has in it. The latest example is occurring right now in Colorado’s version of Wonderland — the city of Boulder. It is here that the pampered prodigy of “progressive” white statists attend school to learn how to take the truly heroic step of walking out of class to protest the requirement that school children recite the Pledge of Allegiance each morning. After witnessing the “outrage” these victims and their enablers conjure for public consumption, one is left wondering if they are even capable of seeing the irony in what it is they are opposing, that being government compulsion.

For over two hundred years there was no compulsory education in this country. It was only in the 1870’s that states started mandating, under threat of force, that children begin attending schools up until a certain age. In places like Barnstable, Massachusetts government force meant going to school, quite literally, at gunpoint. This is a history the children of Boulder have most assuredly never learned or that those who indoctrinate them have never taught. But while we are certainly less free than our ancestors, we can rest assured that our schools have become the “great melting pot” when it comes to indoctrinating our children in what it means to be an American, right? Not anymore. And here is where the defenders of government education fail to recognize just what it is they have wrought.

You see, when you argue for compulsory schooling, what you get is what the government gives you in a one size fits all package. Parents are told where to send their kids to school based on their ZIP code, period. Should you wish to exercise the same freedom to choose that one uses whenever shopping for food, gas, or toothpaste, your choices are to either homeschool your children or send them to a private school despite the fact you already pay taxes for the government schools you have deemed unfit to educate your children in the first place.

In the past decade a sliver of choice has also been injected into the existing government school monopoly with the advent of charter schools. These are government run schools, but with somewhat less government, no teacher union, and something called “accountability” as they either perform or close. The future of this choice remains questionable, however, with Democrats like Representative Mike Merrifield in the majority in Denver. You’ll remember it was Mr. Merrifield who predicted in an email that charter supporters had a “special place in hell” waiting for them.

While Mr. Merrifield and his ilk want to pretend he was only referring to me and others on the District 11 school board in Colorado Springs, who cared more about kids than a system that was failing most of them, they would be lying. It is obvious to anyone who has ever met this troubled individual that his almost canine affection for the educartel in general and teacher union (of which he belonged) in particular, has led him to oppose even this limited choice.

Those who continue advocating for the current government monopoly in education must understand the consequences of the one size fits all deal you are getting. In exchange for a “free education” you get government indoctrination. From math programs that fail to teach students multiplication tables to reading programs that de-emphasize phonics and leave many of our students illiterate, you get whatever curriculum, pedagogy, and values the state is cooking.

For the students in Boulder this includes being forced every morning to stand up, cover your heart, and pledge allegiance to a country you cannot stand and refer to a God you may not even believe in. To argue against “being forced” to say the Pledge while you attend a school system that only survives through force and compulsion, is what is referred to as cognitive dissonance. Compulsion is compulsion folks, you don’t get to pick how much of it you get.

This Boulder nonsense should also put to bed the oft repeated argument against school choice that bloviates about how our government must run education so that we can all be assimilated in “common American values.”

As we see in Boulder the last thing they are getting in their schools are values that most Americans share. If you doubt it, go visit your local high school sometime and start randomly asking students to recite for you even two of the rights contained in the Bill of Rights, and to define what those rights mean. Their answers will tell you all you need to know about just what it is government compulsion breeds and why it is that those who demand the nanny state take care of all their educational needs are the last ones who should be complaining when that same state demands total and complete fidelity.

Eric Christen is a former school board member of Colorado Springs School District 11. He is a resident of that city.

READER COMMENTS

Jim, you are spot-on. Parents are told to keep their mouth shut, then they are blamed for the failures of their schools. The "professional educators" always expect a free pass and will take responsibility for nothing. As for the dislike for Merrifield, he deserves it. He has done more to undermine parents than most people in the state. He is a hard-core labor union thug whose remedy for improving education is to provide more art education for our kids! He actually wrote those words in the Colorado Springs Gazette, where he also claimed that math and science were no longer important because we now have computers. God help us.

If one can filter out the angst and extreme dislike that the author has for Representative Merrifield, his letter makes terrific sense.
One look at the gross decline of "smarts" exhibited by the average High School "Graduate" in America today is enough to understand that compulsory education in Government ruled schools is an abject failure.
One needs to understand that parents have been taken out of the equation, except those that toe the line, to know that those who "understand" education are responsible for it being an abject failure.
Lastly, one needs look no further then the refusal of "educators" across the Nation to allow ANY form of merit based evaluation, instead looking now to blame "bad" parenting, for the answer to the problem.
Children today are no more or less able to learn then in decades past.
But teachers today are NOT the dedicated and competent souls they were in decades past.
Else why the Nation wide loss of educational excellence?
But God forbid that a teacher be held to account for his or her incompetence, right?

VOUCHERS, CHOICE AND COMPETITION ARE THE ONLY WAY TO ESCAPE THE RELENTLESS LUNACY OF FAILED PUBLIC EDUCATION.

Monopolies are always hostile to the consumer and educational monopolies are among the very worst.

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