Education Matters

Many of the problems that face the world can be solved by a properly educated populace. Educated people are more likely to be politically engaged, more likely to find satisfying and high paying jobs, and therefore also less likely to commit crimes or join terrorist groups. When we invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, one of the best uses of the billions of dollars we spent (and lost) would have been on schools. However, it's not just the rest of the world that needs to improve their education systems. We do as well.

For decades, the United States has fallen behind the rest of the industrialized world in math and science education as well as several other educational markers. After this week's ruling of the Texas School Board on textbook standards, it's no surprise. For a state that so often claims to love it's independence and hate all federal standards, it's ironic that they, through their size alone, tend to dictate what textbooks will be available to the rest of the nation. As goes Texas, so goes the nation it would seem.

The conservative board has made it its mission to teach an ideology through the public school system so that people who cannot afford private schooling or home school their children will be dictated a conservatie worldview. One of the reasons these board members claim they are making these changes is because of the "secular, "liberal" education system we have that isn't teaching children enough about Jesus and Ronald Reagan. Don McLeroy, a boardmember, even said in an interview that "The way I evaluate history textbooks is first I see how they cover Christianity and Israel."

Many people who want their children raised with a Biblical worldview, who don't want them exposed to scientific theories or non-American ideologies, homeschool their children in order to control exactly what they learn and especially what they don't, but public education is different. We all pay for it, it applies to the largest number of Americans, and it is both a requirement and the only option for many American children. "Secularism" might be a dirty word to extremists, but in this context it's necessary because, though you may wish everyone was in your religion, they're not. If this was a majority Muslim nation, they wouldn't appreciate having that taught to their Christian children.

Public education shouldn't be a means of indoctrination, but to impart information. If you want your children to learn about Christianity, that's what Sunday's and evenings are for, to talk to your own children about the things you want them to know. Public education should be for teaching facts, agreed upon information like mathematics, history, and yes, science. If at the end of the day you want your children to think that Ronald Reagan was the MOST important President, you can tell them so, or if you want them to know that God created that atom, then that's your right. Not only that, it's your job. It shouldn't be the job of a public school teacher to tell your children YOUR opinions. During a regular school year, especially the short year that most American school districts have, a teacher rarely gets through an entire textbook, so it's not like they're filling for time, and when they barely have time to teach actual facts they shouldn't be expected to also have time to indoctrinate your children for you, especially since everyone - even people of the same political or religious persuasion - would have a different opinion on what needs to be taught.

The public sphere should not be used to promote an insular agenda, and the Texas State School Board has taken it to an extreme by cutting historical fact, like Thomas Jefferson, out of the curricullum while inserting arguable political ephemera, like the "Moral Majority" movement, into it. Most children spend 6 hours a day in school, which leaves parents 18 other hours during whcih they can watch Fox News with their kids, or send them to Bible study, or explain to them what they think the Founding Fathers "really" meant. They don't want liberal secularism forced on them, so they shouldn't be forcing their beliefs on us.