As school begins across the country, many parents are worried about their children’s exposure to anti-racist propaganda, discussions of gender identity and sexual orientation in the classrooms, positive portrayals of abortion, sexualized classroom literature, and anti-American rhetoric. Although the Trump administration has been seeking to mitigate some of these destructive aspects of the American educational system, there are certain limitations to what can be achieved. For instance, the administration can and has refused to fund schools that do not agree to comply with the president’s orders regarding racial discrimination and gender ideology, which is a positive step forward.
However, this does not mean that parents need no longer worry about these ideologies infiltrating their children’s classrooms. The topics that were only recently considered central and primary to these institutions are not going to just disappear overnight. Not only is this because the scope of this problem is nationwide and therefore presents a challenging landscape for implementing change, but the problem also requires total teacher compliance and absolute parental knowledge to be successful. If teachers can fly under the radar with their ideologies, and if parents are unaware of specific classroom discussions or certain reading material, these issues will continue to permeate our classrooms and shape our children. For the schools in liberal parts of the country, teachers won’t even have to go to the effort of concealing their activities, as they will have the open support of their administrators and even of many parents.
What can we do then, if we have our children in the public school system? To begin with, we must think strategically. We know that to succeed in any battle, we need to know and understand the enemy. This means that to fight against problems in the schools, we need to understand the true origins of the propaganda and what is really behind it.
Deeply embedded in the public school system is the idea of teaching children what the state wants them to believe. In other words, the public school system was not created with parents’ individual preferences and desires in mind. Schools today do not desire parents to run the show. Instead, modern American public schools were built around the concept of instilling in children the current priorities and ideologies. It is not a fluke that our children have been indoctrinated; it is not a fly in the ointment. It is the ointment.
Going all the way back to the 1800s, during the Industrial Revolution, ideas about American public schools began to take shape, and it was during that period that the fundamental principles about the purpose of modern education in America were established.
The initial new idea was that education was about shaping children into useful and patriotic citizens of the country. This was very different from the earlier and commonly accepted classical view of education, which believed that the goal of education should be the pursuit of knowledge, objective truth, and virtue.
As the shift in ideals continued, the purpose of an education transformed, and education was viewed as a means by which we could unify our country and create useful workers for our factories and growing industries. We could use education to achieve certain societal goals.
In the late 1800s, John Dewey, the father of progressive education, furthered these new ideals and added the concept of socialization as a positive means of “weakening” some beliefs in students while “strengthening” others. Dewey wanted children to experience socialization so they would conform to the status quo in their beliefs (not just in their actions), and he specifically stated that this was the job of schools and not the job of the parents.
Social pressure was to be used as a tool to help form students into what society desired them to be, both mentally and spiritually, a reality that continues to have a tremendous impact on our children today. Children are routinely discouraged from challenging the status quo and pressured into conformity. Social pressure within the classroom is often flaunted as a way to do this. This process threatens our children’s individuality, morality, and passion for learning.
We may ask again, what can parents do?
For parents who have literally any other option available, I suggest removing their child from that environment immediately. However, for those who truly have no alternatives, the fight must occur on a daily basis from within the home. If the root of the problem is a fundamental, historic belief that our educational system is a tool used to impart popular beliefs and ideologies to children and that the educational system should form children into what the state wishes them to be, then recognizing this fact significantly prepares us for the battle ahead. We can have no fantasies playing in our heads that this system is going to be a reflection of the way we would teach our child. We should not insist on a delusion that public schools are somehow not entirely antagonistic to our Christian faith in their teaching and that the antagonism doesn’t reach into even stories of history and science. We must open our eyes and see the reality before us.
We must have daily conversations with our children about the truth across a wide range of topics. Regular discussions about politics, gender, science, sexuality, history, Christianity, and other subjects they might encounter in public schools are essential. We are the parents, and it is our duty to instruct our children in the truth, whether they attend school or not. We cannot sit back and rely on our children to tell us when something outrageous happens in the classroom. We cannot just be on the defensive—we must be on the offensive. We must prepare them in advance, equip them for debate, and use God’s Word to strengthen their faith with a fervor unmatched on our part, so that our children can be continually strengthened as they seek to stand firm and grow into bold, god-fearing young men and women.
