By Thomas Sowell | Townhall.com
One of the reasons is that many Virginia
parents are outraged by the "woke" propaganda their children are
being subjected to in the public schools -- and the governor has sided with the
education bureaucrats and the teachers union.
This is one battle in a much bigger war, and the stakes
are far higher than the governorship of Virginia or the Democrats and
Republicans. The stakes are the future of this nation.
When school propaganda teaches black kids to
hate white people, that is a danger to all Americans of every race.
Anyone at all familiar with the history of group-identity politics in other
countries knows that it has often ended up producing sickening atrocities
that have torn whole societies apart.
If you have a strong stomach, read about the 1915
atrocities against the Armenians in Turkey, "ethnic cleansing" in the
Balkans, or the reciprocal atrocities between the Sinhalese and Tamils during
their civil war in Sri Lanka.
Do not kid yourself that this cannot happen in America. The
relations between the Sinhalese and Tamils in Sri Lanka were once held up to
the world as a model of intergroup harmony.
They got along better than blacks and whites have ever
gotten along in the U.S. But then a talented demagogue polarized the country
with group-identity politics, to get himself elected prime minister.
Once he was elected, he was ready to moderate his
position. But you cannot just turn group hatred on and off, like a light
bulb. He was assassinated and the hatred continued on.
There is a point of no return in America as well. And
we may be nearing it, or perhaps past it.
Low-income minority students, especially, cannot afford
the luxury of having their time wasted on ideological propaganda in the
schools, when they are not getting a decent education in mathematics or the
English language.
When they graduate, and go on to higher education that
could prepare them for professional careers, hating white people is not
likely to do them nearly as much good as knowing math and English.
This may be a new issue to some people, but such
irresponsible indoctrination has been going on for decades. Back in 1993, my
book "Inside American Education" had a long chapter titled
"Classroom Brainwashing."
Anyone who reads the school propagandists' own words
quoted there can find that a sickening experience as well.
Parents who protest the arrogant abuse of a captive
audience of children are performing an important public service. They deserve
something better than having the Biden administration's Attorney General
threatening them.
But this whole issue is far older and far
bigger than the Biden administration. It will be a cancerous
threat to this country, long after the current administration is over.
Poisonous indoctrination will not stop unless
it gets stopped. But most parents and voters have lives to
lead, and cannot keep monitoring everything the schools do.
Most low-income parents lack the one thing that would get
them taken seriously by the education establishment -- an ability to take
their children to other schools.
Parents and voters in New York state can go on the
Internet and see the State Education Department's data on how many students in
traditional public schools and in charter schools pass the math and English
tests. People in other states may have something similar.
In low-income minority neighborhoods, most of the
students in unionized public schools fail both these statewide tests. But
most students in charter schools in the same neighborhoods pass those same
tests -- several times more often.
In 2013, a 5th-grade class in a Harlem charter school
scored higher in math than any other 5th-grade class in the state.
Neither the educational problems nor the propaganda
problems can be solved without allowing parents the option to take their
children out of the failing schools they are forced to attend.
Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the
Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His website is www.tsowell.com.
