OPINION:
This past Thursday, in his first press conference since taking office back on Jan. 20, 2021, President Biden opened with some brief comments before he turned to the press to take questions. In his opening salvo, the president said this:
“It’s time to Open the Schools … [Students] need the eye-to-eye contact. They need to be with [teachers] in the classroom.” Thus, Mr. Biden made it clear that the education of our nation’s youth is one of his top priorities.
Good for him. But I have a question: Why?
Why does Mr. Biden think it is so important to get our kids out of the house and away from their parents and get them back in school?
Why does he believe face-to-face time with their teachers is a top priority?
What exactly is it that he and his administration want to do with our sons and daughters when they return them to our nation’s schools?
What are Mr. Biden’s educational goals? What will the curriculum be? What are his ideological priorities? What does he want our students to learn?
Does our president want our progeny to learn how to add and subtract accurately? If so, then he better demand an end of the pabulum being peddled by teachers such as Brooklyn College’s Laurie Rubel, who argues that “the idea that math [is] … in any way objective is a myth,” and that “2+2=4 [is] trope … [that] reeks of white supremacist patriarchy.”
Does he want our 10- and 12-year-old students to understand the basics of biology and physiology? Does he want our boys and girls to understand the science of what makes them boys and the science of what makes them girls? Well, if he does, then he might want to reconsider his choice of Dr. Rachel Levine, as his assistant secretary of Health and Human Services, who apparently missed this class while attending medical school.
Does Mr. Biden want our junior high and high school students to learn how to speak and write correctly? Well then, he might want to ask his new Education secretary, Miguel Cardona, to immediately stop the nonsense advocated by institutions such as Rutgers University, where the English faculty have officially altered their writing standards to incorporate “’critical grammar’ into [their] pedagogy.” Translation: This means discarding pronouns such as he, him, his and hers in favor of gibberish like ze, zim, zis and zers, in case you’re wondering.
Does Mr. Biden want our students to learn of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of becoming a nation that judges people by the content of their character and not the color of their skin? Well, if so, that’s a good thing, but the president might want to take another look at that 1619 Project he’s now pushing into nearly every school in our country; a curriculum so laden with the assumptions of racial division; of “us against them” and Blacks against Whites, that its co-author, Nichole Hannah Jones has actually said, White people are “barbaric devils,” a “savage people” and “bloodsuckers in our community.”
Does our president want to protect and guard the innocence of our youngest students, our 5- and 6-year-olds who are in kindergarten and first grade? Does he want them to learn the basics of morality and manners, of “whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is pure, and whatever is right?” If that’s his desire, maybe (and call me crazy here) he might want to consider canceling a few Drag Queen Story Hours rather than Dr. Seuss.
You see, education in and of itself is not necessarily a good thing. Good ideas lead to good education, and bad ideas lead to bad education, and sending your kids back to schools that teach the drivel Mr. Biden and his political party are shoveling is not education that will end well.
History tells us that our schools can be used for both noble and nefarious ends. Stalin knew this. Mao knew this. Castro knew this. Hitler knew this. After all, he’s the one who reportedly said, “Let me control the textbooks, and I will control the state.”
At the end of the day, education is about propagating ideas (good or bad) in the minds, hearts and souls of the generations that follow us. More face-to-face time with teachers who teach bad ideas will only lead to more anger, resentment, selfishness and more sin. As your grandmother once told you, “garbage in, garbage out.”
Richard Weaver warned us in his 1948 seminal work by the same title that “ideas have consequences.” Solomon once said, “train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart.” If you want a virtuous nation, Mr. President, then you might want to reconsider sending our students back to schools that teach vice.
• Everett Piper (dreverettpiper.com, @dreverettpiper), a columnist for The Washington Times, is a former university president and radio host. He is the author of “Not a Daycare: The Devastating Consequences of Abandoning Truth” (Regnery). His new book, “Grow Up: Life Isn’t Safe, But It’s Good,” is due for release on April 13, 2021.
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