Tear Down

If we’re honest, the American education system is a dumpster set ablaze. It has become politicized and weaponized and children are suffering for it. It has fully become a situation of haves and have-nots. 

The haves can go wherever they want to school with the option of private school, charter school, or even homeschooling on the table. 

Families who have to struggle to get by are watching their schools deteriorate, are being left behind technologically, and living in districts that deal with school closures and neglect. 

How we as a society are allowing this to happen is nothing less than a shining example of how far we have fallen. 

We don’t value the young or their education while at the same time, we bemoan the death of unborn children. 

Kids, we have decided, only have value if they are seen as victims or potential victims. 

They have no value if they are seen as individuals with self-direction and drive. 

Save the unborn.
Save the kids from the groomers. 

Save the kids from the pedos. 

Just don’t bother with them when they’re OK and going to school. 

Schools are just indoctrination centers anyway. 

A claim that is becoming a reality. 

We are stealing truth from kids and with it are warping their sense of the world. 

Gay people don’t exist. 

Trans people don’t exist. 

Climate crisis doesn’t exist. 

Human rights don’t exist. 

Act like a child but dress like an adult. 

Do what I say as I ignore you. 

Work hard for the things I never worked hard for myself. 

Grab your see-through backpack and pray no one with a weapon comes to school. 

It’s heartbreaking but it’s our reality. 

We need to tear it down but first we need to reinvigorate a national movement for education. Not for Christians, or atheists or Republicans or Democrats but for everyone. 

Education is not political. 

History is fact. 

If you don’t like it then change the present, don’t like about the past. 

The sad fact of the matter is though that the Republicans have utterly weaponized all facets of education. 

Banning books. 

Changing history classes and what they teach. 

Forcing kids to pretend to be someone they are not. 

Molding what kids learn based on our narrow politics. 

The sickest joke of all is that we pour money into football stadiums while we shutter art rooms and theater departments. We want REAL MEN and we want entertainment. 

Screw the rest. 

The only way forward though is to focus on the kids. 

To focus on teaching them and to teach them in ways that meet them. Which is to say via the senses of sight, sound, and touch. 

We need to better utilize tech to challenge and excite kids.
We need to lean more into experiential learning so they don’t get bored. 

We need to drop the rote memorization for genuine LEARNING and how do you do that? By letting kids understand history and science and how scary and exciting they are. 

History isn’t in a book, it’s in a tense courtroom, or on a battlefield, or created in the dark of night. 

Science is dangerous and exciting. 

It’s standing on the edge of the ocean and wanting to know what is beneath those waves. 

Kids don’t need to be placated or preached to. 

They don’t need expensive dances and outrageous sports stadiums. 

They need understanding and the opportunity to learn. 

They need sports, and art, and music, and math, and science, and history, and reading.
They need it all. 

And we do too. 

By hiding the world from kids we do them a disservice and we make them play catch-up with other kids who were educated holistically and with other kids in foreign nations. 

Kids are entering a world where it’s commonplace to have multiple jobs and they need to understand that and what it means. 

They need to understand that you can have your social media but you can’t force yourself into being famous and rich. 

We need school boards to stop playing politics and to do their jobs. 

We need to not let kids dress however they want or talk back or sit on their phones or get away with everything. We need strong teachers and strong admins who don’t look to punish but do so when it’s necessary. 

Kids are struggling to discover who they are and that makes them volatile. 

We can’t let them become bullies to the teachers and students. 

And we can’t let the parents entitle them to be that way. 

We need to make education and school exciting.
It won’t always be fun, but it can be a challenge that kids want to rise to. 

We need to strengthen public education because our nation is better if kids all learn the same things but tailored to their learning. Not every kid learns the same and that’s fine.
Meet them where they are…to a degree. 

Make school and learning year ‘round but change it up so it doesn’t feel like a punishment. 

Get kids out of the school and into the world more or bring the world to them. 

Support them and their health, emotional and physical. 

Teach hope. 

FUND EDUCATION, not war. 

If we do these things then kids have a chance. 

They will still become Dems or Repubs or whatever. 

There will still be monsters and saints among them. 

There will still be geniuses and kids that need to try harder to break even. 

But they’ll all have a fighting chance. 

We are so obsessed with building stadiums and bombs and mansions but never schools. 

Is it any wonder our kids are desperate and disconnected?

They want the world we pretend we live in, one of easy fame and wealth, of boring luxury and easy work. 

The only way to start showing them the way forward is to stop painting pictures on walls and pretending it’s a path and not a dead end. 

…c…

I write books

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