I may have told this story once before, but I want to tell it again.
One day, over 20 years ago, I was substitute-teaching in a public high school classroom. The students had an in-class assignment to work on, there wasn’t much for me to do, so I asked them if they’d mind if I read some of the papers they’d handed in earlier. With their permission, I went ahead.
It was a U.S. history class, and the papers were about the Mexican War. I must have read at least a dozen of them before I stopped. I stopped because I was surprised that every single paper that I read expressed exactly the same opinion: the war was unjust, it was all America’s fault, we had not even a trace of right on our side, boo, hiss, etc. So I spoke to the class about it.
“This must be something new in history,” I said. “The vast resources of the state–in this case, the school building and its personnel, textbooks, computers, teachers–have been used to convince a generation of students that their own country is unworthy of their loyalty. Their country is a bad country. The state is subverting itself. I can’t believe that this can possibly turn out well.” And then the bell rang.
A month or so later, I was in the hall between classes when one of the girls from that history class came up to me with something that she felt she had to say. “I can’t stop thinking about what you said to our class, the last time you were there. I just can’t stop thinking about it.”
I thanked her for that. To know that I actually helped to kick a mind into gear was, in addition to being a surprise, rewarding–personally. I wasn’t wasting my time! Because of something I said, someone was thinking!
Between then and now, though, the public schools and Far Left teachers’ unions have doubled down on their campaign to alienate young people from their country.
So I can’t stop thinking about it, either.
America must really be great, to have survived two decades of this perverse “educational” enterprise. A lesser country would have folded.
But even as we speak, Far Left Crazy is still working on our children’s hearts and minds.