William F. Buckley Jr. famously defined The National Review‘s mission as standing athwart history, yelling Stop. Conservative extremists now advocate doing in 21st century something more radical than what segregationist Gov. George Wallace did when he stood athwart the doors to the University of Alabama to keep out Black students in 1963.
Education that is not conservative indoctrination has long been a bone to gnaw for the right. It is why schools like Bob Jones University exist — as safe spaces for parents to send their kids where that Old Time Religion will not face questioning. The hissy fit over “critical race theory” would scare conservative parents into thinking public schools will turn their kids liberal or gay or something. Rather than standing in the schoolhouse door again, conservative extremists now advocate buring down the schoolhouse itself.
Someone on Twitter yesterday assembled a set of tweets with the phrase “abolish public schools.” On the heels of their hissy fit over “critical race theory,” abolishing public schools is now a cause célèbre for the American right and/or for trolls in St. Petersburg. A principle troll on this side of the Atlantic appears to be Matt Walsh of The Daily Wire.
Democrat Adam Christensen lost his bid for Congress last fall in Florida’s 3rd Congressional District. He paused his Twitter break to respond.
To start out and head off all of the right wing talking points.
1. I have been homeschooled
2. I have attended private Christian school
3. I have attended Christian college
Most of those making this argument fall back on “I have kids that were homeschooled and they’re fine”
The example I would like to focus on is Prince Edward County, specifically FarmVille Va.
The Closing of Prince Edward County’s Schools | Virginia Museum of History & Culture After Virginia’s school-closing law was ruled unconstitutional in January 1959, the General Assembly repealed the compulsory school attendance law and gave the state’s counties and cities the option o… https://virginiahistory.org/learn/historical-book/chapter/closing-prince-edward-countys-schools
When Virginia was forced to integrate schools PEC decided not to. In fact what they did instead was to close down all of the public schools and open a private institution for the white students. They were able to do this because of state funded grants to cover the tuition.
So in 1957 they closed down their public school system. The richer white kids were able to get an education, while the poor white and black kids were not. Those schools stayed shut for another 5 years. An entire generation grew up missing 5/10 years of education.
Those kids are now in their 70s. Because they were uneducated they remained poor, they were unable to build generational wealth, and their kids and grandkids suffered because of it. Most never moved away.
One of the main reasons that state and federal money is no longer able to be used to fund private school tuition is because of Prince Edward County. “Let us use tax dollars for private school or homeschool” is one argument that people like Walsh make.
The issue is that the times when this policy was allowed it was used in a way that was racist and classist. Rich white kids “escaped” and everyone else was left behind and future generations suffered. Walsh knows this.
Obviously CRT isn’t taught in K-12th grade. It’s a law school level course. But @MattWalshBlog doesn’t care about facts like that. He is using the classic white racists argument for abolishing public education that segregationists used.
The dude is a political grifter, we all know this. But now he is falling back to old tropes, historically disastrous policy, and pushing it to people as a “reasonable” solution so that religious schools and homeschools can try to get federal and state dollars.
This is a TERRIBLE and dangerous idea. Rooted deeply in system racism as the mechanism that segregationists used to shut down public education for black children and poor white children. In saying we should get rid of CRT, he is in fact proving why CRT matters!
If he had his way, discussing the history behind the closing of public education as well as tax and tuition credits for private schools would be illegal. That he now also wants to put cameras in all public schools to monitor all state employees is just the tip of the iceberg.
I started off this thread by saying that I have experience in 1. Homeschool 2. Private schools 3. Christian colleges.
Do not take anyone’s argument of “I have 5 kids who were homeschooled and they are top of their class” seriously.
If you are financially gifted enough to homeschool (or have parents that work at the private schools) to go there, great! But lots of kids and families don’t benefit from those circumstances. And advocating to remove their only opportunity to get educated is evil.
That someone who claims to be a pastor or a theologist is pushing these crazy/racist ideas is scary, disturbing, and undermines people of faith as well as private school teachers and educators.
Alright that’s all I have to say for now. I’m going back on break. My mental health has been way better the last couple days not being on here (and seeing crazy shit like this). But some things can’t just go unchallenged. And this was one of them.
I’ve addressed before what a grift school vouchers and “tax credit scholarships” are. They are either ways many religious conservatives get taxpayers to pay for sending their kids to church schools or else schemes for rendering private school tutition tax deductible by laundering it through private tax-credit scholarship funds.
But now extremists are taking their culture war against modernity to the next level and calling for entirely abolishing public schools they once merely wanted to cannibalize. (And, of course, they want to abolish teachers unions.)
Short of starting a second civil war (still not out of the question), conservative extremists demanding public schools be abolished is about as un-American as un-American gets. Colonists and the founders supported public schools in this country since before the ratification of the U.S. Constitution.
Last I looked, public education is stipluated in the constitutions of 48 states and guaranteed free in 35.
But never mind. Extremists fear they are losing the culture war they are waging. Everything they claimed to value as American is disposable now. All they’ve got left is the American flag, and they’ve reduced that to Trump merch.
