OPINION:
This past week, Randi Weingarten, president and CEO of the American Federation of Teachers, the second-largest education union in the nation, said that her members “really don’t care” whether President-elect Donald Trump follows through on his promise to abolish the Department of Education. She went on to say that she was much more interested in “level[ing] up [educational] opportunities for children” than she is in supporting any “bureaucracy.”
Let’s assume we can take Ms. Weingarten at her word when she says she doesn’t want anyone to have more bureaucratic control of our nation’s schools and her top priority is simply to achieve a “level” playing field that presumably means a better education with better outcomes for all of America’s students.
Let’s also assume that such a “leveling” would include a review of the “progress” American education has made not only under the influence of the Department of Education, which Ms. Weingarten says she doesn’t care that much about, but also an overview of the outcomes realized under her influence, and that of her own organization, which was founded in 1916.
In other words, what has the American Federation of Teachers done for America’s students over the past 108 years? What has its teaching and educational paradigm accomplished for our nation and our schools, and what have its ideas realized for our culture?
Another way to say this is: What has Ms. Weingarten’s organization actually done for our children and our country?
For example, for 108 years, under the direction of unions like the AFT, our schools have increasingly disparaged “dead white European males” in our classrooms. For 108 years, our teachers have learned to pan a Judeo-Christian ethic and have praised its antithesis. For 108 years, we’ve taught one generation after another that “it doesn’t matter what you believe as long as it works for you.”
For over a century, Ms. Weingarten’s educational bureaucracy has told our youth that there is a “moral equivalency” between America and its enemies. For over a century, these bureaucrats have implied that our nation is evil and the rest of the world is right to hate us. For over a century, they’ve instructed our students to laugh at “right-wingers” who warned of communism and government largesse. For over a century, they’ve taught that Marxism has its merits and that liberation theology is the only “good religion.”
For five generations, students have been told that socialism is better than free enterprise. For five generations, Ms. Weingarten and her ilk have fomented class resentment, racial animus and entitlement. For five generations, they’ve preached that pastors and priests are stupid and that capitalism is the cause of crime. For five generations, they’ve fed our kids a diet of moral nihilism (known as sex education) and instructed our boys and girls to use condoms rather than obey God’s Commandments.
Why are we surprised by what we see in today’s news? Our judges can’t find the word “marriage” in the dictionary. Our State Department thinks the way to stop terrorists is to let criminals flood across our nation’s borders. Our current president says he appreciates the “legitimate grievances” of the terrorists who execute Jewish teenagers at an Israeli music festival, and the average graduate now thinks George Floyd was a better man than George Washington.
Why are we surprised by any of this?
Ms. Weingarten and her tribe of teachers have taught our country’s leaders to question the church and its standards. They’ve indoctrinated an entire nation of young men to believe their masculinity is toxic. They’ve brainwashed tens of millions of teenage girls to buy the lie that delusional men who dress up and act like women can steal the identity of the real women they pretend to be.
Why does any of this surprise us?
When your schools teach adolescent boys that pornography is harmless and that seeking “consent” is the only bulwark to their libido, and when your high schools and colleges promote “sex weeks” on campuses across the land, why are you surprised to see young men turn into act like cads, cheats, frauds and fakes.
None of this should shock you. After all, it was your school that taught your progeny that their sexual gratification mattered more than their character.
Ideas do have consequences, and the lousy ideas Ms. Weingarten and her lemmings in the educational class have been teaching for the past several decades are bearing themselves out daily before our eyes. Garbage in, garbage out. Teach lechery, and you’re going to get lechers. Tell our kids to hate America, and don’t be surprised when they do.
If you want to “level” the playing field and get a better education for your sons and daughters, the first thing we need to do is take the money out of the hands of arrogant bureaucrats like Ms. Weingarten and give it back to the parents who know a lot more about what they want their children to learn than she does.
• 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).
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