OPINION:
This is what it means to go back-to-school in America today.
Instead of being taught the three R’s of education (reading, writing and arithmetic), young people are being drilled in the three I’s of life in America today: indoctrination, intimidation and intolerance.
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Indeed, while young people today are learning first-hand what it means to be at the epicenter of politically charged culture wars, test scores indicate that students are not learning how to succeed in social studies, math and reading.
Instead of raising up a generation of civic-minded citizens with critical thinking skills, government officials are churning out compliant drones who know little to nothing about their history or their freedoms.
This is how you groom young people to march in lockstep with tyranny.
Claiming to promote tolerance and diversity while seeking a homogeneous mindset, many schools have become increasingly hostile to those who dare to question or challenge the status quo and are intolerant of any but the most politically correct viewpoints.
Anything that might raise the specter of controversy of cause offense is avoided at all costs.
A growing number of schools have also become particularly hostile to the First Amendment rights of students whose religious or moral views run counter to hot-topic issues of the day such as abortion, gender identity, and sexual orientation. The cases abound.
This is censorship, driven by a politically correct need to pander to those who are easily offended.
This “safe space” mindset has become a fixture within the nation’s public schools, which continue to adopt policies — such as zero tolerance policies — that promise to steer young people clear of anything that even hints at danger, controversy or non-politically correct thinking.
Unfortunately, all too often it is common sense and individual liberty that get trampled underfoot: a student gets suspended under the school’s zero-tolerance policy against drugs for chewing on a Certs breath mint; a kindergartner is suspended under the school’s zero-tolerance policy against violence for playing a make-believe game of cops and robbers using his finger as a gun; and a school trip to see “A Christmas Carol” is canceled because of the school’s zero-tolerance policy against anything that is in any way offensive.
What’s worse, the motto today seems to be “When in doubt, throw it out.”
At the slightest hint of trouble, government officials (and corporations) are inclined to toss anything that might be objectionable. So whereas Mark Twain’s classic “Huckleberry Finn” used to at least make the list of banned books every year, it now rarely even makes an appearance on school reading lists. It has been scrubbed out of existence.
See how that works?
Zero-tolerance policies are ultimately about programming people into compliance with the government’s dictates.
Consequently, under the direction of government officials focused on making the schools more authoritarian (sold to parents as a bid to make the schools safer), young people in America are now first in line to be searched, surveilled, spied on, threatened, tied up, locked down, treated like criminals for non-criminal behavior, tasered and in some cases shot.
From the moment a child enters one of the nation’s 98,000 public schools to the moment he or she graduates, they will be exposed to a steady diet of:
- draconian zero tolerance policies that criminalize childish behavior,
- overreaching anti-bullying statutes that criminalize speech,
- school resource officers (police) tasked with disciplining and/or arresting so-called “disorderly” students,
- standardized testing that emphasizes rote answers over critical thinking,
- politically correct mindsets that teach young people to censor themselves and those around them,
- and extensive biometric and surveillance systems that, coupled with the rest, acclimate young people to a world in which they have no freedom of thought, speech or movement.
The fallout has been what you’d expect, with the nation’s young people treated like hardened criminals: handcuffed, arrested, tasered, tackled and taught the painful lesson that the Constitution doesn’t mean much anymore.
So what’s the answer, not only for the here-and-now—the children growing up in these quasi-prisons—but for the future of this country?
Thomas Jefferson recognized that a citizenry educated on “their rights, interests, and duties” is the only real assurance that freedom will survive.
If we want to raise up a generation of freedom fighters who will actually operate with justice, fairness, accountability and equality towards each other and their government, we must start by running the schools like freedom forums.
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Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His latest books The Erik Blair Diaries and Battlefield America: The War on the American People are available at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.
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