The Choice Channel

One of my editors asked me to write a back-to-school column this week. This assignment is difficult for two important reasons:

1. To me, back-to-school means buying school supplies. Unfortunately, I know little about that process. When I was six, my mom overbought book covers, pencils, and folders. It was the only time we ever went shopping for school supplies-ever.

2. I have a desk job. This means my entire life revolves around sitting at a desk, checking the clock, then checking it again because I didn’t really check it the first time. It’s hard for me to get back into that back-to-school mindset. Years after graduation, I feel like I never left.

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The public “government” school system has become a nightmare of its own making. For decades, its proponents have done everything they can to keep the public “government” education machine going. Moreover, they have claimed that, without public schools, American children would not be educated and that parents are not fit to decide how their children should be educated. They often say that public schools are needed because children need to be socialized at a very young age and that the state - not the parents or any legal guardian - has a vested interest in the learning development of our children.

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I had lunch with a friend of mine on Saturday. She and I hadn’t seen each other in awhile, and we had some real catching up to do. Unfortunately, some of what she had to tell me was more than a little unpleasant to listen to. She wanted to talk - like most mothers - about her children. Though I’m quite a bit fonder of cats than kids, I was happy to listen to what I thought would be a litany of this year’s proud accomplishments by her two school-age children. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

Her middle school daughter had, up until this school year, attended a Catholic school. Though the family isn’t Catholic, they believed that the quality of education she’d get at the parochial school was better than she’d receive in a public school classroom. Unfortunately, finances dictated that she’d have to attend a public middle school this year.

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Many school elections have low participation from students and are dominated by a small political class (sound familiar?); who like this sort of stuff. As a general rule, most students not in that political clique do not vote. It can be a big boost in the prominence/ effectiveness of your club to influence a student body election. This often means turning out only a few dozen voters. At my alma mater of 5,000, the 30 or so votes we mustered for our candidate made the difference in getting her into a run-off. A combination of getting somebody from your club to run and endorsing the candidates who takes your positions is optimal.

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As an attorney, I believe that government schools should be unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment ban of unreasonable searches. The recent police-state raid in Goose Creek, South Carolina is another in the growing list of proofs.

Government schools have a special exemption under the 4th Amendment, a lowered standard that promotes police-state raids. A raid was caught on videotape when gun-toting police burst into a high school, ordering students to lie flat on their stomachs in hallways as they searched for drugs at Goose Creek, South Carolina on Nov. 7, 2003. Police handcuffed anyone who apparently didn’t comply quickly enough. The tape showed police waving their guns and searching lockers.

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“Ms. Stanley, I don’t think we should have to read Toni Morrison’s Beloved because we cannot relate it back to ourselves,” Greg said. Ms. Stanley just got through screaming at our class because no one was speaking about the book. It was an Advanced Placement English class, and Greg had thought that he could pave his own destiny better than the district curriculum. But he was shut down quickly. “You know, Greg, I really don’t see what the problem is,” Ms. Stanley replied. “We have to read this book, and it does relate to you, believe you me.” Not wanting to argue with the determined teacher, the class gave in. Students began discussing the book, forced against their will, in order to please the teacher — the very person who would determine their grade. The problem with the book was simple: We, as white, upper-class, suburban high school teenagers had a difficult time relating Beloved, the chronicles, trials, and struggles of an African-American family after the Civil War, to ourselves. But all of that was irrelevant to the teacher.

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Being a mom I want the best for my child as any good parent does. In 2004 she was going into the 10th grade when I was faced with the ugliness of public schools in NC. Unlike school when I was in high school where the only thing you had to worry about was getting your homework done and hope no one has the same shirt on as you do that day.

These days our children face metal detectors, temptation of drugs and personal attacks on a daily basis. Not only was my daughter scared but also she was bored out of her mind because the classes have to stop or be slowed down because of the bad behavior of her classmates. Let’s face it, keeping your mind on schoolwork when someone beside you has a weapon or is wanting to do bodily harm to you is asking a bit much. All of this on top of being a teenager at that.

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America’s system of public education has earned an extraordinary distinction in comparison to the public schools of our international competitors. Only in America do we commit such egregious malpractice against our children that they actually get dumber every year they remain trapped in the public school monopoly.

Public schools suffer the same defense as members of Congress: “They’re all terrible except for mine.” As I am a candidate for Congress and a product of American public schools, I feel I have an obligation to speak truth to power. Your public school and your Congressional representative are - statistically speaking - probably both dismal failures, and for the same reason: neither is truly accountable to constituents.

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Good intentions will surely be the downfall of individual liberty and personal freedom. The greatest motivation that mankind has to abandon the principles of freedom is simply being afraid. And, fear plays right into the hands of legislators that use good intentions, whether quite sincere or merely conjured, to usurp individual freedoms and parley them into collective power. The consequences of this exchange is a bloated beast called Bureaucracy controlled by a tyrant, or group of tyrants, that seek to enslave the masses for their own good. In other words, Freedom dies. Remember my personal credo, “More government ALWAYS translates into Less freedom.” In no area is this more evident than the realm of government education.

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A few years ago I wrote an open editorial for a local newspaper in which I informed the superintendent of my daughter’s public school district that his services were no longer required. As far as my family and I were concerned, it was the day we fired the local bureaucrats and took our child out of a failing education system. I said it then and I say it now, government today is filled with politicians that think it is their job to take care of us. Either we are too lazy to care for ourselves and our children; or, we are too stupid to know what is best for our precious offspring and ourselves. No matter the reason, the majority of politicians in this country today believe in their hearts that they must save us from ourselves. Even to the point of promoting failing children so as not to ruin their self-esteem.

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