Mark Wingfield: It’s time to stop the insanity that is killing public education
Writing for Baptist News Global, Mark Wingfield lays out the many forces arayed against public education.
Within the last year, I have witnessed my own outstanding school district capitulate to these ideological terrorists — aided by weak-willed and well-meaning people who think they can keep the peace. Yet there is no negotiating or compromise with the far-right ideologues.
To think otherwise is insanity.
What I am saying is that our public school systems — from coast to coast and border to border — are under a full-frontal, coordinated attack from angry parents who have been fired up with all sorts of scare tactics. They are doing and demanding insane things because other opportunists have stoked the fires of hate within them.
It’s time to put out the fire. It’s time to stand up not just for an individual family’s good but for the community good. It’s time to make plain that whatever sincerely held religious beliefs some parents may have, they may not force those beliefs and their revisionist history on all children.
Some of the more cynical among us believe the goal of these political operatives is not actually to take over public schools but to so discredit them and demoralize their teachers and staff that they will fail — and then their private sectarian schools and charter schools will be waiting in the wings to pick up the pieces.
We cannot let this happen. For the sake of all children, for the future of our communities and our nation, we must rise to defend public education that lifts up the least of these among us and helps every child excel.