The liberalism virus infects our schools

OPINION:

Bill Gates, a man who has worked tirelessly to influence children’s education, warned back in 2015 about the likelihood of a global pandemic within the coming 20 years. He wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine, “[O]f all the things that could kill more than 10 million people around the world, the most likely is an epidemic stemming from either natural causes or bioterrorism.” He ignores the current national trend toward the biggest killer of the recent century, socialism, which is responsible for more than 100 million deaths in the last century. 

With more than 90,000 cases reported, 3,000 deaths worldwide and a 2 percent overall mortality rate (49 percent in the critically ill), the COVID-19, first detected in Wuhan, China, in late December 2019, seems to fit Mr. Gates’ prediction. In an environment seemingly ill-prepared to handle a global contagion, the only effective counter-measure is avoidance. As of March 2, 2020, schools in France, Germany, Puget Sound and California have closed due to fears of an outbreak. The California Healdsburg School, a private elementary, shut down last Monday “due to coronavirus concerns after someone associated with the school came into contact with someone who is a confirmed coronavirus patient, according to school officials.” More school closings are happening in Italy and elsewhere.

Caution is the better form of valor, and goodness knows we want our children to be safe, but we miss the bigger picture. Infecting the minds of our youth with what passes today for education but what clearly has morphed, over the years, into simple indoctrination may have a worse effect than illness. There is, after all, the strong potential of recovery from illness, but the disease of liberalism — intolerance of the truth, and a reluctance to learn (all promoted in our government schools and institution of “higher learning”) — is much more threatening. It poisons its victims with dangerous assumptions about political correctness, unearned self-worth, and gender confusion, not to mention the academic confusion resultant from the coerced Common Core agenda. 

It positions them for lives of disappointment and struggle, where their only savior is the state. Note the “March for Our Lives” children stupidly petitioning at the Capitol to redress the failures of their local school and community. Note the Super Tuesday youth voting resulting overwhelmingly for socialist (communist) “Bread-line” Bernie Sanders.

According to CNN, while no reported cases exist in Alhambra, “more than 14,000 people are urging the local school district to close until the outbreak ends.” Why don’t parents have a similar response to school shootings or inappropriate sexual content that is dispersed as “literature” in a 10th-grade classroom, or the evident lack of proper education in institutions expressly convened to offer just that? 

The answer is that they are already infected, themselves, with the disease of liberal, school-trained acquiescence. 

Parents often confront me with their own feelings of inadequacy regarding teaching their children. “I could never home school. I don’t know how.” High school graduates, who feel incapable of teaching their third-graders, robotically sacrifice their progeny, their pride-and-joy, to the system that clearly disabled them of reasoning. Instead, they should recognize how misguided they truly are. Instead, the cycle of non-thought, rote programming continues, and gets progressively worse. That is how “progressives” operate. Theirs is a creed of impoverishment — not simply satisfied with reversing the positive world wealth trend via the industry-killing Green New Deal, burdensome taxation and overbearing regulations, they are intent on restricting thought via intimidation (political correctness) and imposed silence. The hush they demand on college campuses translates into loss of intellectual capital and a corresponding inability to think. Use it or lose it.

With the recent coronavirus, school closings and the new ones that are sure to develop, an opportunity for learning and growth may also emerge. Parents who demand protection for their children from the infection of the body may realize they can simultaneously guard them from the degradation of thought rampant in our schools and colleges. Home education should figure among their options, as homes are deemed safest by health authorities. My book can help explain how easy it is to educate your child in a truly safe environment.

There is already a virus in your local schools, and its deadlier than the coronavirus. 

• Sandra Lynn “Sam” Sorbo (SamSorbo.com) is an American actress, author, and talk radio host.