COMMUNITY SERVICE TRANSFORMING INTO STUDENT ACTIVISM

COMMUNITY SERVICE TRANSFORMING INTO STUDENT ACTIVISM

By Domenick J. Maglio PhD. Traditional Realist

The US public education function has changed radically. Initially it was the Three Rs: to read, write and learn arithmetic. The teacher’s main purpose was to assist the students developing of academic skills, learn basic history and develop good character. This presented them with tools necessary to be future learners and critical thinkers.

During LBJs presidency “The Great Society” viewed schools as a means to equalize educational opportunities for disadvantaged students. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act passed under LBJs presidency federalized education through federal grant monies. Before this federal intervention the individual states were primarily responsible for public education.

After this became law public schools proceeded rapidly to fill in the economic gaps of the lower income families. Nourishment through providing full breakfast, lunch, some dinners, backpacks of food for the weekends and even food during the summer became a reality. Currently in most county school districts financial means testing is no longer required for free food. The important moral values of family life were taught by being together at the table but were suddenly taken over by government schools. As these programs grew, the autonomy and authority of the family over their child’s life has diminished.

Psychological and social needs of public school children have gradually expanded as new services provided to students. Divorce, drugs, death, sex education, bullying and various other counseling groups took students out of their academic classes. Special education classes proliferated for all types of behavioral and educational deficiencies. Parents were even directed by school personnel to place their children on psychotropic medication even when mental health professional did not prescribe it. This drastic change in the decreasing influence of parents is the impetus for the Home School explosion and the “School Choice” movement.

Community service requirements have been institutionalized by the public school for non-profit groups supposedly to give students knowledge of the work world.

Currently many school districts are experimenting with directly indoctrinating students as community activists for social justice.

The seemingly innocuous community service program has morphed into “student activism.” The community service hours can now be used for being involved in social change issues. Progressive advisors are empowered to encourage activities such as identifying and addressing social issues. Their tactics range from walkouts, empowering students to organize on social media and even protesting specific policies locally and in the state capital. Strategies from the book, Rules for Radicals of social activism are used but not underscored.

In essence, these students become the unpaid soldiers of the social justice march to socialism in our nation. Students are politically unsophisticated and too young to understand the political and social implications of these advocacy tactics.

Just like the Stoneman Douglas school shooting, after the horrendous mass shooting of innocent youths some were elevated by the media to instant experts on most social ills. These students were empowered by the media, teachers and parents to speak on many issues of which they had limited knowledge.  Many students on social media from all over the nation made their simplistic and naïve opinions heard online. David Hogg and others of the school shooting celebrity status have been exploited by the political elites to rally adolescents to progressive causes without understanding the opposing side of the issue.

These terrible events feature immediate progressive spokespeople focusing on their feelings about the traumatic experience but shining little light on positive and realistic solutions. These social justice student converts in our public schools have been teaching revisionist history. U.S. civics and history have been drastically reduced or eliminated in our public schools in order to minimize any possibility of critical thinking skills forming.

The US public educational system on the elementary, secondary and university levels should cease and desist from incentivizing students by community service credit and questionable future fame to recruit teenagers to be radical protestors. Instead they should teach strong basic academic skills, moral character traits, unbiased history and drawing logical critical thinking skills from provable events.

The return to this comprehensive agenda is essential for the appreciation, health and stability of the nation. The objective of producing social change warriors by propagandizing students should be outside the realm of US public education. Indoctrination programs do exist in dictatorial centralized nations but should not exist here.

Our students should not be taught pipe dreams of socialistic/communistic utopian ideals that have never born fruit. Rather they should focus on the factual history that shows failure after failure of socialist experiments and the exceptionalism of America.

Domenick Maglio, PhD. is a columnist carried by various newspapers, an author of several books and owner/director of Wider Horizons School, a college prep program. Dr. Maglio is an author of weekly newspaper articles, INVASION WITHIN  and a new just published book, entitled, IN CHARGE PARENTING In a PC World. You can visit Dr. Maglio at www.drmaglio.blogspot.com.