https://www.theepochtimes.com/american-public-schools-rip_5054350.htmlAmerican Public Schools, RIP
By Jeffrey A. Tucker
Feb. 13, 2023
Excerpts:Many of the bizarre features of the pandemic response can be explained by industrial self-interest, graft, power lust, confusion, and so on. One feature doesn’t have such an obvious explanation: the closure of public schools in some places for as long as two years.
The extremely low-to-minimal risk to the kids was known from very early on. They could have stayed in school the entire time as they did in Sweden. Scared older teachers—realistically at very low risk—might have found substitutes. There were surely other workarounds besides utterly smashing education.
What civilized society does this? None.
It appears that school closures were just part of the mix of the panicked response. “Indoor and outdoor venues where groups of people congregate should be closed,” said Trump’s sweeping and astonishing edict on March 16, 2020, and that included schools. Period.
What happened to the kids? They stayed at home and parents left work to oversee them. They pretended to learn as they were able but enrollment in the school system collapsed by 1.2 million nationwide. Some 26 percent declared themselves to be homeschooled. Private-school enrollment also grew by 4 percent, though it was limited by capacity restrictions, shortages of offerings, and the sheer expense (not everyone can afford to pay both taxes and tuition for school).
But here is what’s extremely strange. According to The Wall Street Journal, “an analysis of enrollment data conducted by Stanford University in collaboration with the Associated Press found that there were no records last school year for more than 240,000 school-age children living in 21 states and the District of Columbia, which provided recent enrollment details.”
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The point is that none of this would’ve happened had the schools been healthy and functioning. The lockdowns were the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. A dysfunctional system finally fell apart. That’s where we are today, and the replacement that is emerging is not something that comes from someone’s idea of “reform.” We’ve had more than enough of that. What’s emerging is spontaneous, cobbled together, partially the result of noncompliance, but in keeping with the always passionate desire on the part of parents that their children are well-educated.
Homeschooling has become completely normal, and I personally know many businesspeople who are looking to start whole franchises of private schools with a greater emphasis on classical methods and content. Various religions are fully engaged to provide their own educational systems apart from the public ones, and on a more extensive basis than ever.
It might not be obvious right now but in a few years, we could all look back and observe that March 2020 marked the beginning of the end of the great Progressive experiment in public education. Something else is emerging now. This isn’t a story that any responsible person would’ve scripted but the end result, and despite all the carnage along the way, might be a better overall system for the next generation of students, parents, and teachers.
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