Another Brick in the Wall
“We don't need no education; we don't need no thought control.”
Pink Floyd’s anti-ed anthem may have been a bit overstated, but four decades later, it looks like they were on to something after all.
Even before the late-seventies classic, inner city schools were failing for the poorest of students a ‘free’ public education was designed to help the most.1 But the crisis in elementary and secondary education has now spread to the suburbs and it can’t be fixed within the existing system.2
It is irreparable.
Let me say, I don’t come to this lightly. My own memories include mentors in the classroom and on the playing field who have stayed with me for a lifetime. But that was long ago and a world away. The pedagogical art is a noble endeavor that, like so many others, has lost its nobility.
Our schools fared far better when there was a distinct American consensus on how to educate youngsters. It a was a time when parents, teachers and administrators agreed that kids should stand for the pledge, use separate restrooms and, oh yes, math wasn’t racist.3
Those days are gone, along with the values that defined them. And make no mistake, schools will always impart values—it’s just a question of whose. Today, it’s the ‘wokeist’ of the woke who think Mom and Dad are ‘domestic terrorists.’4