Let's Say "No!" to Pre-School For Everyone
While watching a recent news clip, I noticed a "Pre-School for Everyone" wall banner appearing behind the Secretary of Health and Human Services. This progressive department head was enjoying a carefully orchestrated photo op within a classroom of very young useful idiots at a Child & Family Network Center in Alexandria, Virginia. This naked propagandizing was gut-wrenching.
There are so many reasons why I found this staged scenario to be unsettling. First, anyone believing in the preeminence of the parent-child relationship knows inherently that "pre-school" children should not be subjected to public school. As the adjective implies, "pre-school" means before school. It is a time when our very youngest - and most impressionable - should be receiving their fundamental training about life and their acceptable behavior within it from the security of their family nests. Although it is the solemn responsibility of mothers, fathers, and close relatives to impart basic truths and proper behavior to their young ones, we find these, our most vulnerable citizens, being subjected to force-fed propaganda, as a captured audience within public classrooms. While their little brains are being inculcated with big-government nonsense, these children are learning too little - if any - about the indispensable tools of reading, writing, and arithmetic. You know... those basic skills needed to qualify measurable values and calculation?
It is believed that Vladimir Lenin said this: "Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted." He knew that those precious early years are when each of us is imprinted fundamentally. I find it mind boggling, therefore, that we unquestioningly deliver our innocent toddlers (some as young as 3 years old!) into the jaws of central planning indoctrinators. It's even crazier that, in accordance with the 2015 budget proposal of the current Deceiver and Chief, these partisan bureaucrats are now pushing to control Americans from "birth to 5."
In 1979, President Jimmy Carter foolishly signed into law the establishment of the Department of Education. From that day forward, the ever-growing tentacles of that cabinet-level department began dismantling what had been the finest educational system in modern history. Feel-good nanny legislators have continued to pour fuel on the fires which purge us of a once-exceptional system of highly skilled professional teachers, whose jobs depended upon the quality of instruction they provided and the number of self-reliant graduates they helped to mentor.
It was created at a time when high school graduates were still strutting away proudly with well-earned diplomas, completely primed with purpose and direction. Having been gifted with the then-highly-renowned excellence of American public education, many such graduates immediately married and began families of their own. Because of well-founded traditional education, they understood and were well equipped to live up to their civic duties and responsibilities as independent adults. Of course, today's world bears little resemblance to pre-DoEd America, wherein we senselessly allow poorly educated students to graduate simply to meet federal funding criteria. I'm sure I don't need to dwell on the calamitous reality of this national policy that has devoured countless of millions of taxpayer dollars with a shameful lack of success, while killing so much precious individual potential.
Nevertheless, according to Arne Duncan, the U.S. Secretary of Education, lawmakers believe they can raise the bar for our failed educational system by getting an even earlier crack at our children. It seems the kindergarten-through-12 indoctrination period is not enough for the feds; they now want to massage the little brains of our babies with more tripe to more strongly ensure they will continue to be unsurpassed as incompetent, and often illiterate, members of their generation.
The federal government has no constitutional authority to invoke public education requirements or training for any State. Those little things known as Amendments I and X preclude such interference. Yes, the monolithic, Big Brother Department of Education has been lording over and dictating to Americans for far too long as to how and what their children should learn. Although a decades-long failure, it is so entrenched politically, that there is little legislative will to reverse its authority. I say that this is all the more reason for us to begin now. Let's not waste any more time; let's take note of the damage being caused to America's families and their offspring, and then push back. Like so many federal programs, this "pre-school" mentality will also serve to waste taxpayer funds in return for more illiteracy and insulting indoctrination of our youth.
Let's take the first step toward that end. Let's say "No!" to pre-school public education. Let's return the training of our vulnerable sons and daughters to their trusted families and states. Rejecting federal diktat is not easy, but it must be done if we, the parents and family members, are to remain the gatekeepers of our children's futures. Tell the feds to keep their bribes of federal funding. States already have a track record of functioning quite well without progressive interference, and have even more reason to do so now.