Word Games, Public Education, and Critical Theory

As some of you may know, I am a fan of word games, but not a fan of either the public schools or Critical Theory. 

Scrabble, good. Statism and Marxism, bad. That’s the big idea.

Imagine the mixture of emotions I feel, then, at this Harris Rigby post at Not The Bee highlighting undercover reporting by Accuracy in Media.

Here we have public school teachers and administrators in Iowa and Tennessee caught on camera openly admitting that recent legislation banning the teaching of CRT in their states basically is negated by their ability to modify their language while still communicating the core ideas and principles of CT, CRT, DEI, et cetera to their charges.

This sounds familiar. It almost reminds me of some concerns I’ve raised about a woke author of books on church leadership seeming to talk in his book about diversity, equity, and inclusivity, the patriarchy, and so-called toxic masculinity without using the specific terms which would trigger theological, social, and political conservative consumers. Huh.

Some people are smart enough to use synonyms and euphemisms to convey the same ideas, it seems. And maybe just maybe we should not be surprised that the folks who think Marxism is a moral imperative would find workarounds to roadblocks and opposition, including but not limited to being very careful and clever with their language.

But alas, it also reminds me of cautions I wrote into my own book on why my wife and I homeschool.

You see, it’s not enough for parents to tell activist public schools that they don’t want their kids being taught to experiment sexually with one another, or change their gender, or hate capitalism, or deconstruct their whiteness, or check their privilege, or throw out the Constitution, Bill of Rights, and Declaration of Independence. It’s apparently not enough even to get laws written and passed forbidding the same.

And as it turns out, the particular words sounds are not the really dangerous thing. It’s the substance of the remarks and ideas which really matter.

The Left knows this. Establishment Progressives grin wryly, therefore, resolving to keep on doing what by their own admissions they are true believers in. They still have most of our children in their monopolistic public education system, and they still have many of us getting our news from them when we grow up into adults. Thereby, they’re controlling what both we and our children think, telling us what to think without teaching us how to think rightly.

The parents who think they can keep their kids in these public schools if we just roll back a few of the most recent and egregious examples of Statism remind me of playing computer games when I was a kid and accidentally quick-saving right before my character fell off a cliff and died. Reloading my quick-save over and over yields the same result. And while funny, a winning strategy that is not.

But the only way to win in such cases is to reload the save file from before the critical mistake which is going to invariably lead to losing again and again. And if you can’t do that, perhaps you play a different game.

So also, it is not enough to tell public schools not to teach CRT and Gender Theory. Reload the save file from before our children were being taught to regard the State as their god and father and mother. 

Don’t think you’re smart enough? Don’t feel like you’ve got what it takes? Remember where it is that you got your schooling. And if, as the statistics would suggest, you got your education in the public schools, why would you want your kids to get theirs from the same place when you’re not so sure you got a good one there?

Bear in mind how we got to the point we’re at now where our economy is in shambles and society is being ruined, where free speech is under constant assault, and both mothers and fathers are expected to work outside the home in order to barely make ends meet.

At a certain point we have to do the long-game cost-benefit. At a certain point we have to actually do the thing the Left has for so-long hijacked in word only – “Do it for the kids” – to justify their irresponsibility, only we’ll actually mean it. We have to get our kids out of these Leftist indoctrination centers known as public schools.

And this is why we homeschool.

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