Regarding schools, skip the courts and go for direct action
With schools failing because they’re substituting cultural Marxism for education, maybe voters will finally be willing to pull the plug on funding them.
A few weeks ago, it was a big story when it emerged that the administrators at a very high-level academic high school (read: mostly Asian students) in Fairfax County, Virginia, withheld from students the sole notification they’d have that they were National Merit scholars. This matters because identifying yourself as a National Merit scholar is a good thing to put on a college application, provided your college of choice isn’t overly woke.
The reason for withholding this information was that not all the students (read: non-Asian students, perhaps Black or Hispanic) received that distinction. It was Kurt Vonnegut’s Harrison Bergeron in real life. Vonnegut wrote the story in 1961 before he moved hard left with the rest of America’s intelligentsia.
It’s now emerging that this was not an isolated event. Two more schools did the same. Because Virginia’s Attorney General, Jason Miyares, is a Republican, he’s investigating what happened. Parents can also sue, of course.
I want to suggest that these judicial solutions are a waste of time. Too many judges are either partisan animals, idiots, or cowards. This is a certainty in leftist areas, a likelihood in conservative areas, and a growing truth in the federal court system. Putting your child’s fate in a judge’s hands is an expensive, time-consuming crap shoot. (My apologies to the continuously shrinking number of honest, brave, and smart judges out there, but what I’m saying is true.)
It’s time, instead, to put the matter of crazy schools to increasingly disaffected voters. Point out that their school system is more interested in teaching about race, gender, sexual practices, and a lowest-common-denominator “equity” than it is in educating students with the subjects that will allow them to succeed in life. Add that, besides a few “academic” schools, the system is churning out people who can neither read nor write above a minimal level.
Then, have a ballot initiative: Defund the schools entirely, with all money sent to parents in the form of a check (per child) that they can apply to the private school of their choice. These initiatives failed a few decades ago, but that was before the school districts went bat-fecal-matter crazy and embrace cultural Marxism. That is, it was one thing for them to fail to teach students — parents complained, but voters tolerated that. With this new generation of teachers encouraging racism and sexual dysfunction, the initiatives may be more successful.
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