For loving parents, children are an infinite joy and immeasurable treasure; their births are truly miraculous – each one a genuine gift from God. We love our children. We sacrifice for their well-being and there is nothing we won’t do to protect our children, so we are very concerned about every influence in their young lives. Unfortunately, parents are not always aware of the dangers or alert to the predators. Protecting them physically is daunting, but straightforward; keep the bad people and drugs away. However, protecting them mentally and spiritually is much more difficult. It can be confusing and elusive, but it’s ultimately most important to a child’s development and growth into a well-adjusted happy productive adult.

Religious education has always been the province of the parents and until 1963 when atheist activist, Madalyn Murray O’Hair, won a Supreme Court case to end Bible reading and prayer in public schools, the government schools generally supported those efforts. After we allowed God to be removed from our schools, the schools were supposed to defer to the parents for moral and spiritual teaching, but it’s virtually impossible to teach conduct, ethics, and manners without some moral framework. In the last over half century, our schools have moved away from Christianity to secularism and have continued their drift into humanism and plain atheism. Basic human decency cannot be taught in a vacuum; some code of conduct or moral foundation must be used. American public education is defaulting to humanism.

Americans have been disconcerted with this incremental erosion of our Judeo-Christian based culture, but being trapped by the taxes we pay for public education, we comforted ourselves that at least the government schools were working to provide the best academic education. Oddly enough, since President Jimmy Carter created the Federal Department of Education in 1980, educational outcomes for American students have declined; we have been steadily falling behind other countries for 40 years.

While the evidence of public schools failing our children was piling up, the Department of Education slipped in a de facto national curriculum under the guise of “Common Core” standards over a decade ago; and education results have plummeted even further. Parents protested and have ever since been fighting both Democrat and Republican establishment politicians to no avail because the leftist education lobby and big business are too powerful.

The battle over Common Core was perhaps the first widespread epiphany for parents that the government schools and teachers’ unions don’t give a rip what parents think. Over the past few decades, sex education in public schools has become more debased, but the past few years, we have watched public schools introduce outright perversion to our children even in elementary school at the demands of the militant LGBTQ+ lobby. And now comes “Critical Race Theory” steeped in Marxism to teach racism to our kids solely to divide and victimize them.

The insanity doesn’t stop there. Some deviant man parading around as Biden’s Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services, identifying as Rachel Levine, defends the grotesque practice of administering puberty blockers or even mutilating surgeries for children in pursuit of the absurd notion of transgenderism without parents’ consent. He insists mollifying emotional irrational teenage notions of sexuality is a “health equity issue.” This pervert is driving public policy to sexually abuse our kids. And the leftists in government schools think it’s appropriate!

Americans have come to understand our government no longer serves us or our wishes, but it’s actually even worse. Government schools don’t believe parents are the ultimate arbiter and authority over the education and raising of our children. The kids are not yours! The government is increasingly asserting control like the kids are government property.

Don’t believe it?! Now they are coming right out and telling parents they don’t matter. Democrat gubernatorial candidate in Virginia, Terry McAuliffe, said: “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” That wasn’t a slip considering parents in Virginia are practically banned from their local school boards. To be clear, Biden's Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said parents shouldn't be the "primary stakeholder" in their kids' education, during his testimony before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions on 9/30/2021.

What?! Parents be damned; education is now the sole purview of the government. Every American should be incensed and stunned at these revelations. Government doesn’t just want to control education; they want to control our kids by indoctrinating their malleable minds with deviant humanist Marxist rubbish!

The problem is twofold. First, government schools are at odds with traditional American values; they have abandoned our Judeo-Christian founding claiming they are more enlightened and simply know better. And second, since they control the purse using our money, they seek a one size fits all solution that completely disregards the wishes of average Americans.

The sad fact is public education cannot be reformed; it’s so warped and lost to special interests, it’s irredeemable. The only solution is school choice in the form of school vouchers. Parents must reclaim control of our kids’ education and that can only be accomplished by ending government control of education monies. We can work with school taxes, but those funds should be given back to the parents as a voucher to choose the right school for their child. Public or private, parents must reassert control of education; our children’s well-being and the nation’s future depend on it!

The saying goes there is nothing in this world you can take with you to the next, but if you raise your children right, you can take them with you. Our kids, their future, the country, and eternity are worth fighting for. This is a war we cannot afford to lose!

“For the protection of wisdom is like the protection of money, and the advantage of knowledge is that wisdom preserves the life of him who has it.” Ecclesiastes 7:12

Pete Riehm is the host of Common Sense Radio heard 8pm every Thursday on FMTalk106.5 or streaming at fmtalk1065.com. Email him at peteriehm@bellsouth.net or on MEWE @PeteRiehm or read all his columns at http://www.renewamerica.com/.kraien