What do you mean, if you treat your “customers” like dirt, refuse to do your job, and insult them, they’ll go elsewhere? This reality obviously applies to business. But it also appears operative regarding government schools, which have of late been bleeding students as much as they’ve been shedding common sense with politically correct agendas.
What’s more, perhaps partially explainable by way of the anti-white wave sweeping academia, white students appear the most likely to bolt.
Mainly at issue is that because teachers are refusing to go back to work, with their unions falsely claiming pandemic-related danger, parents are seeking schooling alternatives. As the Associated Press reports, detailing matters in the Golden State:
California public schools have experienced a sharp decline in enrollment this year as the pandemic forced millions into online school, according to data made public Thursday.
The drop came as the state’s school districts dawdled in bringing children back to the classroom, making California one of the slowest in the country to reopen schools.
The California Department of Education data shows that the number of students at K-12 schools dropped by more than 160,000 this academic year, most of them at the K-6 level, to a total of 6 million.
The drop is by far the biggest decline in years and represents the clearest picture yet of the pandemic’s devastating toll on California public schools.
“The annual snapshot of fall enrollment shows a sharp one-year decline as the state and nation grappled with a deadly pandemic that disrupted all aspects of public education,” the education department said in a statement.
Yet this is actually happening all over, points out commentator Monica Showalter. “Detroit, New York City, Baltimore, D.C., Austin, Tucson, Minneapolis, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Janesville, Wisconsin, Chautauqua County, upstate New York, plus the entire states of New Jersey, Iowa, Vermont, Arizona, Colorado, Michigan, Hawaii, North Carolina, Texas, Oklahoma, Minnesota, Washington, Virginia, and quite likely all of the others are reporting public school enrollment drops. I didn’t have time to finish going through the list.”
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At least in California, although this likely reflects a general trend, white students are the most likely to secede (from the government school system). In that state, “they constitute 22% of school enrollment but account for half of the exits” and are switching to private schools and homeschooling, Showalter also relates.
An obvious reason for this is that white families generally have greater means than do blacks and Hispanics, who can be more easily held hostage by the government school cartel. (It would, however, be interesting to learn how many Asian-descent Americans are leaving the government schools, as they generally have higher incomes than whites do. But I couldn’t find relevant data on that demographic.)
Yet it’s not hard to imagine that academia’s recent embrace of full-throated anti-white ideology — known as Critical Race Theory — has also played a role.
Schools, the government variety especially, have long been left-wing propaganda mills. But they’ve used the George Floyd incident and Black Lives Matter agitation as pretexts to ratchet up the leftist indoctrination, with a special focus on Hating Whitey 101. It’s so bad that even relatively liberal people such as journalist Megyn Kelly (she’s no hard-core conservative) have recently pulled their kids from their now-former schools.
Yet that Kelly’s children attended a ritzy private institution illustrates how the moral and intellectual rot is widespread. Thus is homeschooling the best option; it’s realistic, too. More and more parents are realizing that teachers today possess no special knowledge; in fact, many educators are quite uneducated. Intelligent fathers and mothers can often do a better job — and omit the PC propaganda.
Add to this the slap in the face that is teachers’ refusal to return to work. Data conclusively show that youths are not imperiled by COVID-19 and that young children don’t readily spread it. Moreover, it hasn’t escaped parents’ notice that grocery workers have long been dealing with many more people — with adults, in fact — every day than teachers must, safely and without complaint.
The salt in the wound is that some education officials and teachers have also displayed a haughty, let-‘em-eat-cake attitude. Just consider, for instance, the Oakley School Board of Contra Costa County, California, whose members mocked parents who wanted schools to reopen as pot-smokers “looking for babysitters.” (Video below.)
Then there was California teacher Alissa Piro, who said earlier this month that “I dare them [parents] to come at me.” (Video below.)
The good news is that many teachers’ refusal to work and demeaning of their “customers” not only make seeking alternatives to the government schools necessary, but also make homeschooling more conceivable. People are creatures of habit, after all, conservative (as in status-quo oriented) by nature. To those raised with the government schooling norm, homeschooling can seem bizarre and radical. Yet forcing kids into distance learning creates an intermediate step toward homeschooling.
For children tend to slack off when learning remotely; thus, parents are compelled to play teacher to an extent and enforce discipline within the context of education. In other words, they have to partially homeschool. This can break the ice and create the realization, “Hey, I can do this — and maybe I should.”
Hopefully, this will also break the government school cartel. Of course, statist politicians will try to maintain its funding and even attempt to legislate against homeschooling. But at least what’s happening now is a step in the right direction, proving that even the COVID con cloud has a silver lining.
