Pay attention to your kids' schools
Pre-college education in the Chicago suburbs is not ideologically neutral. The schools are a battleground for the minds, hearts and souls of our children. The increasingly activist combatants are left liberals and religious fundamentalists.
For instance, a kindergarten teacher from an upscale western suburb explained to me that descriptions of families must be taught and defined in terms of couples of every combination of sexual persuasion and states of cohabitation with non-judgmental politically correct terminology and attitude.
A science teacher in an upscale northwest suburban high school was warned to not teach Darwinian evolution in the biology class.
In the former instance, the school board had been taken over by left liberals and the administrators allowed them to dictate instructional policy, fearing loss of position or job. The latter instance resulted from pressures exerted by a mega-church and religious fundamentalists threatening to prevent passage of school referendums.
The result is education and its children. Both left liberalism and religious fundamentalism are taught with fervor as a religion. One can't carry an intelligent conversation with adherents of either side. These are relentless unswayable crusades. Rationality is excluded.
Life is a process of learning, evaluating, understanding, judging and responding. When these activities are captured and confined within the ideologies of these two religions by their instruction in pre-college schooling, a stunted human being is the result. Rationality, emotion and belief are significant formative and animating components of the way we chose to live our lives. Nothing in life is neutral in its consequences.
What role should a concerned parent play in education and its children? Assuring that acquisition of knowledge and skills of evaluation and application are not derailed by activist ideology is a good beginning. Every adult citizen should be concerned with community pre-college education and the quality of its children. Know what is happening in our school districts.
M. Michael Dorr
Kildeer