Wow. Just, wow. Such strong words from a Roman Catholic. At times, Walsh sounds more like a fundamentalist. From Matt Walsh.
The One and Only Objective of the public school system is to create the kinds of kids who will cooperate with the public school system. I didn’t say this is the objective of every teacher. I said this is the objective of the system itself, even if some of the teachers have loftier goals. As professor Anthony Esolen explains in his brilliant book, Out of the Ashes, the system exists only for itself, not for any higher purpose. Its objective certainly is not to impart the truth, or to prepare students for life, or to bring them closer to God or their families, or to help them understand their purpose in the world, or to do anything that used to be defined as “education.” Indeed, it’s necessary to do the opposite on every count in order to fully achieve the One and Only Objective.
The Objective is not served by teaching kids about literature, so they don’t teach literature anymore. It isn’t served by teaching kids how to write well, so they don’t teach them how to write well anymore. It isn’t served by teaching grammar or geography or history or civics, so they don’t really teach any of that anymore. You can forget about art or philosophy, of course. Those aren’t “useful” at all. And you can forget about tech ed. That’s too useful, I guess.
And so we end up, unsurprisingly, in a country where 60 percent of American adults can’t name the three branches of government. 49 percent can’t point to New York on a map. A third of adults 18-29 can’t tell you which country we fought during the Revolutionary War. Thirty-seven percent can’t name the first book in the Bible and 47 percent can’t say if Judaism predates Christianity. Seventy-three percent can’t tell you why our country fought the Civil War.
It goes without saying that most of us don’t read adult books. This is to be expected, considering that half of us can’t read above an 8th grade level. And, consequently, most can’t write like grown ups. Writing has declined to such an extent that now the average American communicates in abbreviations and pictures. Incapable of expressing his emotions through the written word, he is reduced to conveying his happiness with smiley faces, like a primitive tribesman attempting to communicate with an explorer from the first world. Tweets and text messages look like slightly advanced hieroglyphics. It seems we have come full circle, from the cave wall to the Facebook wall.
So, when I see all of those man-on-the-street videos of college kids struggling to name the vice president or decide if the United States declared its independence in 1776 or 1976, I am not shocked. This is what our country is now, and has been for a while, and it is sheer insanity to exonerate the education system from all guilt. It’s like trying to determine who to sue for a botched surgery, but declaring ahead of time that it mustn’t be the surgeon.
You can’t tell me that I must send my kid to public school because I am ill equipped to teach him myself, and then, when he emerges on the other end a moron who can’t spell the word Constitution much less tell you what it is, promptly inform me that it’s still my fault.