When Parents Say that Public Education Is Terrible, What Do They Mean?

The other day I ran into a young couple with an infant, who live in a rural part of the U.S.  I happened to overhear the father saying that the quality of public education where they live is “terrible,” and that they’re thinking about home schooling.  And so, as if it were any of my business, I asked him by what metric the schools in his area are, in fact, terrible.

He responded, “LGBTQ+,” by which I’m sure he meant indoctrination into the idea that non-traditional sexuality is OK.  He went on to qualify: “Now, that’s public schools.  Private schools can at least be held accountable.”

Now, at this point he had answered my question, and I had the good sense simply to thank him and politely end the conversation, but a few thoughts remained on my mind:

• Your kid isn’t even walking and talking at this point.  It seems that you’re trying to solve a problem that doesn’t actually exist.

• Let’s say that seven years from now he’ll be in third grade.  How much interest do you think he’s going to have in learning about homosexuality at that point?  How much impetus will his teacher have to introduce topics like sex education that are irrelevant and confusing in young students’ lives?

• Do you seriously believe that discussion on this topic “grooms” kids to become gay? How did you become straight?  When your blood serum testosterone level hit a certain point, perhaps when you were 12 years old, you took on a sexual identity, quite independent of something you had seen on TV or in a movie.

• Are you suggesting that public school teachers have more latitude and less accountability as to how and what they teach than instructors in private institutions? Keep in mind that these folks have administrators breathing down their necks and can face jail time for noncompliance with state mandates re: things like critical race theory and teaching from banned books.

• If parents have the financial means, they can put their kids through private schools, and yes, those schools have distinctly different approaches to politics, religion, philosophy, and their overall approach to education.  For example, if you want your kid to learn that the world is 6000 years old because the bible says so, you’ll need a deeply religious school, one that explicitly rejects science, to fulfill that task.  In general, however, private education tends to be more liberal in terms of teaching techniques and subject matter than our vanilla public schools whose curricula is the joint work of thousands of bureaucrats.

Friends say I have too much time on my hands.  Perhaps they’re right.