Back in the very early days of the Unitarian/socialist inspired public brain laundry movement, there were some men like Robert Owen the socialist and Amos Bronson Alcott, the meandering Transcendentalist, who firmly believed that public education was the best way to reform society, and the best way to do that was to get the children out of the hands of their parents at the earliest possible age.
These men and others became avid supporters of something called the Infant School Movement, a program designed to get children out of the home as early as two years of age. The poor kids supposedly learned all their nasty habits at home during those early formative years. So, if you could get the kids out of the home and into the infant schools of the public school promoters, you could then get rid of all those bad habits, and by the time the youngster was six years old, the public "educator" (change agent) basically controlled him body and soul.
Even though such men, and women, did succeed in foisting their radical government school program on a mostly Christian populace that should have known better, they had somewhat less than spectacular results with their infant school program. A few years later, one of their spiritual contemporaries came up with the kindergarten program, designed to get children out of the home at about five years of age. Who, you might ask, came up with this "new" kindergarten program? None other than Margaretta Meyer Schurz, wife of the 1848 socialist revolutionary Carl Schurz. Mrs. Schurz established the first kindergarten in this country in Watertown, Wisconsin in 1856. Kindergartens were private at that point. However by 1873 the first government-run kindergarten had been established in St. Louis, Missouri, another area strongly influenced by the Forty-eighter socialists in the Midwest. The possibility of using such schools to advance a socialist agenda had not been lost on these radicals. It apparently had not been lost on the Prussian government in the German states either, because the Prussian government, in 1851, a short three years after the socialist revolts there, outlawed kindergartens. That being the case, the socialist revolutionaries simply brought the concept to America. Now kindergartens are pretty much mandatory all over.
And it seems that the social(ist) engineers just never quite give up. They may lay aside some programs for awhile if they seem to be drawing opposition or hostility. But they realise the public has a notoriously short memory, and so they bide their time and await a further opportunity to foist their socialist programs on an unsuspecting public, in the form of some "new" and exciting and "innovative" program. The same old socialist junk with a nice new Red ribbon tied around it!
A few years back I read an article in the Washington Post about how, at that time, there needed to be new plans made for reaching children at an earlier age. Supposedly studies had been done showing that children that are exposed to government school propaganda at an earlier age do much, much better in their overall studies than do those poor unfortunates that are never exposed to such grand educational "opportunities." The writer of the article bemoaned the fact that there just wasn't enough money around to get all the kiddies involved in these wonderful pre-kindergarten programs. Sound familiar? Awhile back I had also read parts of a report that said all these youngsters who get involved in programs like "Headstart" at earlier ages, in the long run, don't seem to do any better than those who don't. Of course this newer report disagreed with that. Anyone surprised?
Of course if some innovative educrat can manage to sell an early education program to the government school bureaucracy, then think of all the new teachers they will need, and all the new school buildings that may have to be built, or old ones that will need additions, and just think of all the increased property taxes that will need to be raised for it all to be paid for. I can see the dollar signs in the bureaucrats' eyes now!
We have now had over 150 years of the public school movement in this country. Our children are more poorly educated now than they were fifty years ago, and we're spending a hundred times as much. We have an Education Department in Washington (the one Ronald Reagan told us he'd get rid of) that contributes exactly zilch to the education process. However, it sure does keep a lot of fat-cat bureaucrats in nice, fancy jobs so they won't be forced to go out and find honest work. And now these ninty day educational wonders want to start the whole process even earlier--the exact same way the socialists did 150 years ago. The more things change the more they stay the same. Anyone who thinks the public school system is about education really needs to wake up and smell the coffee.
And now we have a new situation in Kalifornia, where, according to Steven Greenhut, senior editorial writer and columnist for the Orange County Register "A state court of appeal has basically outlawed home-schooling. As the Los Angeles Times reported 'Parents who lack teaching credentials cannot educate their children at home, according to a state appellate court ruling that is sending waves of fear through California's home-schooling families'." Seems like the public sector really hates competition, especially competition that makes it look bad.
According to this ruling "A primary purpose of the educational system is to train school children in good citizenship, patriotism and loyalty to the state (emphasis mine) and the nation as a means of protecting the public welfare." "Loyalty to the state"--how nice! Hitler and Stalin would just love it! To put it into perspective, how different is this court ruling than the comment made by a senator back in the Lincoln administration who said that, in support of the Morrill Act, "the role of the national government is to mold the character of the American people." That was fertilizer then and it still is--but it shows plainly the statist mindset. The bureaucrats really think your children belong to them--the property of the state--to do with as they please while you pay for it all. I can't think of a better reason to tell the government school system to go fish and to remove your children from it (and from Kalifornia if needs be).
Public education is nothing more than an experiment (a failed one by decent standards) in state socialism--and that is all it has ever been since day one. Don't buy into the counterproductive line that you need to get in there, join the parent-teacher group in your area and "reform our public schools." They have been peddling that line for 100 years now and it has kept many people fat and happy in the school system that, had they ever begun to realise the truth, would have gotten their children out.
More on this situation in Kalifornia in future articles--Lord willing.
