| Thursday GOP presidential hopefuls Michele Bachman, Rand Paul and Herman Cain descended upon the Iowa Christian Homeschoolers annual Capitol Day to preach fire and brimstone about the U.S. Department of education, describing it as-among other things-- a threat to our nation's children and unconstitutional.
This particular tent meeting is hardly the first time Bachmann and the GOP lunatic fringe (oh wait, are they still fringe?) has made such an attack. In courting evangelicals for the presidential bid, Republicans have been more and more donning the mantle of Reconstructonist Theology to paint Public Education as an opium den to destroy the minds of this nation's children. This is of course all taking place while Beelzebub (aka: the Democrats) steal Americans' hard-earned money (via the Satanic tools of the public school teachers and their godless commie unions).
Rand Paul told the crowd in Iowa: |
The public school system is now a propaganda machine. They start with our kids even in kindergarten, teaching them about family values, sexual education, gun rights, environmentalism - and they condition them to believe in so much which is totally un-American.
Bachmann, who homeschooled her own 5 children--some would say with little grasp of some academic subjects herself , stated: "The family has a level of authority that the government may have trampled on. We need to make sure that families enjoy their untrammeled right without state interference."
"Enjoy" their "untrammeled right?" As a progressive parent very familiar with the workings of my own public school district and its teachers, I am wracking my brain to cobble together a list of what rights my kids' public education is trampling upon. here's what I've come up with:
A right to a safe, cost-free and quality instruction for children of all ages, creeds and needs?
A right to interventions and therapies for children with special educational needs and disabilities?
A right to eat a cost-free hot breakfast and lunch if their family is in poverty and can't feed them?
A right to be exposed to a diverse curriculum and population of others which expands the child's worldview?
A right to learn the essential academic canon without the bias or undue influence of any one individual's or groups personal faith or political ideals?
Access to athletics, art, music, languages and other enrichments that would otherwise be cost-prohibitive for most families on their own?
The most frightening part of all the anti-education rhetoric coming from the GOP 2012 camps-including from Tim Pawlenty, who in comparison sounds like a reasonable moderate with some of the anti-teacher snake oil he's trying to sell-- is just how dangerous the increasing "mainstreaming" of Reconstructionist ideas about education are. Writer Judy Ingersoll from Religion Dispatches described the gravity of these fundamentalist fringe "Christian" ideas best:
Whether through homeschooling or Christian schools, the goal is to "replace" public education... is considered unbiblical. According to Reconstructionism, the Bible gives authority for education to families-not the state-and the Bible does not give the state the authority to tax people to pay for the education of other peoples' children. Reconstructionists are therefore opposed to public education, not only for their own children, but at all. They long have been proponents of dismantling the federal Department of Education and reducing funding for public education at every opportunity. |
