How A Teachers’ Rally Made Me Anti-Education

That's the title of a must read essay by Zombie over at Pajamas Media. Here's a slice, accompanied as always by Zombie's amazing photos:

I write this essay with a heavy heart.

I’ve always considered myself an ardent advocate for education. But a recent rally staged by teachers and students in favor of school funding forced me to reluctantly acknowledge an awful truth:

We have to destroy education in order to save it.

Let me explain how I came to this miserable conclusion.

The May 13 “State of Emergency” School Funding Protest

A few weeks ago (on Friday, May 13, to be precise) teachers up and down the state of California protested for more school funding. This mass multi-city “State of Emergency” protest was meant to be a Big Deal, a headline-grabbing statewide walkout, but you probably didn’t even hear about it at the time, since I suppose the media and the public have grown weary of endless political demonstrations.

But not to worry — blogs to the rescue! Fellow photojournalist Ringo of Ringo’s Pictures fully documented the Los Angeles protest, and I myself had camera duty at the San Francisco rally, the results of which you’ll see here (along with a selection of L.A. pictures).

You may be wondering: if these protests happened back in May, why are we only seeing the pictures now? Very, very good question.

These photos have been languishing on my hard drive for three weeks because every time I got the notion to blog about them, something stopped me. I’ve been making fun of protesters for over eight years now, but this time, I felt conflicted. I mean, c’mon, what have you got against poor teachers and young kids pleading for a few more pennies to keep their schools open? What are you, some kind of cruel anti-education knowledge-hating sadist?

I had some serious cogitatin’ to do. And each time I pushed this report to the back burner, unbidden thoughts kept percolating, simmering in the back of my mind. And it was not until today that I figured out why these otherwise unremarkable protests were so disturbing, and why I could only grumble under my breath at what ought to have been a legitimate social complaint. {..}

But as I walked around the rally in San Francisco, and later scanned the pictures taken by Ringo at the L.A. rally, I found myself thinking uncharitable thoughts about the protesting teachers: I hope your funding gets cut even more! Your demands are futile because the state is bankrupt anyway and there’s no more money to give; but even if the economy were to eventually recover, I would still want to see funding for public education slashed to a minimum.

Horrors! I was taken aback by my own thoughts. How could I be so cruel? What evil right-wing influence was making me think this way? {...}

Last year I published a massive five-part essay about the miserable state of education in America (and no, I won’t even link to the thing, because it would take you a week just to read it and this essay is long enough all by itself). Part 3 of that essay was called “Indoctrination Nation” and discussed the extent to which public schools have ceased to be places for educating America’s youth but have instead become indoctrination centers where our children’s brains are marinated in political correctness and leftist thought patterns.

Read the whole thing here...in context, and with some more stunning photos.

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