Tuesday, September 23, 2008

A Public School Agenda? Of Course! (Jim Fedako)

Fellow homeschooler Jim Fedako says the public school's agenda is certainly not education:

Let me be honest and forthright: I have an agenda – I always do.

You can be certain that I am typing with a purpose in mind. I am typing in order to satisfy a much sought-after end. My end – my reason – is the hope that this article will influence a few, turning them toward the path of liberty.

Are you shocked or offended that I have an agenda? Is it wrong – no, is it necessarily evil when a man has an agenda; when a man has a given end for which he will use some means to obtain? Certainly not. We all have agendas that guide our actions. And we accept the presence of our own personal agendas without question or concern.

When discussing the evils of government-run education, many folks say that I have a personal agenda. Well, no kidding. If I wake in the morning, I have an agenda. The rhetorical use of the word agenda in a pejorative sense implies that others do not have agendas – this being a false assertion. Those folks have at least one agenda that gets them out of bed in the morning: to continue forcing me to pay for their government school nonsense.

So why it is that many – nay, most Americans – take offense to the idea that public schools have an agenda? Why is it that folks who recognize their own agendas cannot recognize that the individuals running the school system have agendas too? Why can’t these folks accept that those who fought some 150 years ago for the adoption of government-run schools had an evil agenda? Or that many today use government schools for vile intentions? Why not? Yes, why not, indeed?

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