OPINION:
The media recently burned over Elon Musk, who brought his little boy to the Senate for his initial meetings on the informal Department of Governmental Efficiency. After his much-publicized criticism of “woke” ideology for, in essence, killing another of his children through “gender-affirming care,” it’s understandable that Mr. Musk would seek to keep this offspring close. Perhaps Mr. Musk realizes that preserving the family is a pinnacle goal.
By “bringing his son to work” with him that day, Mr. Musk exemplified home education in the most practical, traditional sense. Most of us who went to school confuse schooling with education, but the two things are vastly different.
Education is the process of opening a child’s mind to appreciate truth, recognize and emulate good, and distinguish beauty from the mundane. It involves equipping the soul to keep searching and discovering.
School is quite the opposite, where children are programmed to conform, accept only what their “betters” (“the experts”) tell them and fall victim to whatever ideology their overlords dictate with impunity because they are inured to reality itself.
That’s why it’s laughable when people think that homeschooled children are the “sheltered” ones. Youth who are educated at home are typically much more social and able to navigate the world — they have years of practice — whereas schoolchildren have been isolated from their peer group for a decade or more.
Would anyone argue that Mr. Musk has more to offer a child in the way of instruction than a newly minted teacher, even one with a degree from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education and its “Queering Education” class, having learned how to combat the “heteronormativity” and “cisnormativity” in the American classroom? Somehow, we are to believe that “negotiating gender and sexuality norms” will help children’s reading scores. Still, Mr. Musk, a successful, hardworking businessman, lacks the ability to transfer his knowledge to a child! He doesn’t have a degree in teaching, after all.
Mr. Musk showed the world that while meeting senators and others in Congress was important, his child had value beyond that, and accommodating both was entirely reasonable and doable. We ought to applaud that instead of doubting it or, worse, deriding it.
Society’s generalized hatred of children has recently reached a fever pitch. Abortions have climbed since Roe v. Wade was overturned because of the proliferation of abortion pills, and Planned Parenthood says they’re safe, effective and legal in states where abortion is legal. They are not safe for the children they kill.
Gender mutilation surgery is being argued in front of the Supreme Court, with proponents asserting that parents’ rights to irreparably damage their children and enslave them to the pharmaceutical industry for the rest of their lives shall not be abridged.
According to the House Select Committee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Report, the actions of the American Federation of Teachers and its president during the pandemic substantially harmed American children and students, resulting in avoidable lifelong psychological, financial, physical and educational damage. Society has long held teachers organizations out as pro-child, but they have effectively renounced that mantle, reverting to self-interest instead.
The report revealed that Randi Weingarten and the AFT lobbied the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for policies that harmed children without any research or supporting scientific evidence. It was that they didn’t want to go back to work.
The report reads: “The evidence makes it clear that any public health response that warrants closing schools should face the highest levels of scrutiny. School closure policy should be informed by science and data, not fear and politics.”
We should apply the same scrutiny to schools in general to discover why they are generally performing worse for children each year while costs continue to rise.
Or we could simply choose to do the logical thing and what societies had done for millennia before our great school experiment: parental education of their children.
On this side, we see the world’s richest and most innovative man, a father of 12, putting his little boy at the top of his priority list (and, affirming symbolism, on top of his shoulders). This is the path forward.
Home education involves exposing the child to more than just academics because academics alone won’t get one very far. We fail to grasp the importance of parents and parenting in raising a child to be a successful adult because, after decades and generations of school experiments, we are an unparented society.
In contrast to age-based segregation in our institutions, multigenerational family involvement better equips children for real life by amplifying their value to the community and solidifying their roles in society. In contrast, corralling children in classrooms and even colleges to instruct them in specific areas effectively infantilizes our youth. New college graduates have a term for reluctantly adopting the responsibilities of maturity: adulting.
Perhaps Mr. Musk could also define DOGE as the Department of Good Education and prescribe a more “take your child to work” ethic in our culture. Throw in a little math and great classic literature, and you’ll have a well-educated and, more than likely, well-adjusted young society.
• Sandra Lynn “Sam” Sorbo played Serena in the television series “Hercules: The Legendary Journeys” and hosts “The Sam Sorbo Show,” a syndicated weekday radio program.
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