Since I first started paying attention to the developments in American society, I have been concerned about the way American society has begun to break up. Reading about recent book-bannings and teachers getting fired for daring to read thought-provoking, challenging books has enraged me and provoked the following thoughts.
Contrary to the yowling on the right, it is not the fault of minorities of all kinds, ethnic, religious, social, sexual, etc., asserting their rights as citizens of a free country and then fighting for those rights when the majority refuses to recognized them. The supposed unity of the past for which reactionary movements yearn was a façade anyway. American society was always diverse. That is one of its strengths. Just in the past one group, the majority of White people, defined its way of thinking, its values, its structures, all of which, of course, favored this group as normal, the correct way. Its interpretation of American history and understanding of what is good and right was what everyone had to accept as good and right. As long as the assorted minorities did that – or at least did not protest –, all was fine. The problems only began – in the perspective of this group – when minorities, regardless of which minority it was, began to question these givens.
However, a massive contribution to the shattering of the shaky unity of American society, the conviction that we all belong to one United States of America, although we fought hard about exactly what that meant, is the deliberate destruction of the public school system. The splintering of the American public school system has accelerated and sustained the splintering of American society that has led to the polarization we are now experiencing.
When I was growing up in North, SC, for example, all of the White kids attended the same segregated school. Private schools were something exotic. We played against one catholic school in high school athletics, but otherwise we mostly knew about them from TV or movies. Then the schools were desegregated when I started the 8th grade. All of a sudden private schools starting popping up all over the place like weeds, segregation academies like Wade Hampton Academy, Willington Academy, Travis Academy, Calhoun Academy. Those were the ones near North, whose names I can remember. They almost always bore the names of Confederate heroes. Others were founded as Christian schools, but research shows that was only a “guise.”[1] It is definitely not an accident that the South Carolina Association of Christian Schools was founded in 1967[2], for example. Some later merged or closed. Wade Hampton Academy and Willington Academy in Orangeburg merged in 1986 and called themselves Orangeburg Preparatory School. All of these private schools are still disproportionately White.
Following this period of resistance to desegregation of the public schools, we have private schools that are overwhelmingly white although these schools now admit and have a few Black and other minority pupils. The same applies to the private Christian schools for the most part. However, the 73 member schools of the South Carolina Association of Christian Schools teach a fundamentalist theology as they confess in their Statement of Faith: “(1) We believe that the Bible alone, in its autographs, is the verbal, plenarily inspired, and only infallible, authoritative Word of God, and that it is the only fit, final rule in all matters of both faith and practice.” Moreover, they explicitly deny membership to “those associated with, members of, or in accordance with the World Council of Churches, the National Council of Churches, the Modern Charismatic Movement, or the Ecumenical Movement.”[3] These schools do not educate; they indoctrinate. All of their pupils miss the heated debates with my classmates about religious, theological topics that I had at North High School, even after desegregation.
These confessional schools initiate their pupils into an isolated ecosystem. Pupils from these fundamentalist schools go to fundamentalist colleges and then to fundamentalist graduate schools or seminaries. Where are they going to learn critical thinking that challenges what they have always been taught? Not at these schools, colleges or seminaries. All who teach must subscribe to certain beliefs about the bible, ethics, etc. or they do not get the jobs – and if they change their minds, think a bit farther they get fired.
Instead of public schools that all children in the school district attend in which they experience different perspectives, beliefs, tastes in music and art and literature, forms of behavior that do not correspond to that of the majority, we have little islands of people that encounter people who are different or think differently from themselves as little as possible. They live lives in which what they have always thought and believed is continually reinforced. They may reach a high level of knowledge, and some of them may also be quite intelligent. They may achieve a lot. However, they never truly learn to think for themselves.
Home schooling is the same develpment on steroids. Social media tends to reinforce this as well. You get new info or feeds that correspond to what you already think. If you want other perspectives, you have to look for them and most people do not.
It is thus no wonder that American society is so polarized and splintered. The educational system produces this. Assorted voucher systems or state support for such private schools – see Oklahoma and Arizona, for example – is strengthening this tendency. Worst of all, this is not an accident. It is planned. This splintering into enclaves is precisely what some reactionary or very conservative groups want. It is in their interest that we not learn together, that we not encounter different ways of thinking and believing. When we do that, we will learn to deal with our differences in a constructive manner – and we may learn to see their selfishness and narrowmindedness for what it really is and see through them. They do not want that.
The backbone of democracy is the public school system where all children from diverse financial, social and religious backgrounds can meet and learn together and thus learn to live together in their diversity. This insight is behind the drive for universal public education that arose in the US following independence. It had its ups and downs and blind spots, for example, no schools for free Blacks and enslaved persons, but the impulse was there from the beginning.
Public schools that all attend are schools for democracy in which children encounter children who think differently, belief differently and look different – and learn to deal with these children who are not like they are. Public schools train and teach tolerance and understanding for others.
If it were up to me, I would ban all private schools and home schooling. Religious indoctrination has no place in any school – not even school at home. That belongs in Sunday School, the synagogue or other religious schools – or at the dinner table or in the den. Learning about different religions and, just as important, the different schools of thought in the different religions, on the other hand, has a very important place in education and belongs in schools. This kind of education about religions belongs in every school.
[1] Dyer, Jennifer Eaton (April 12, 2007), The Core Beliefs of Southern Evangelicals: A Psycho-Social Investigation of the Evangelical Megachurch Phenomenon (https://ir.vanderbilt.edu/handle/1803/10763) etd.library.vanderbilt.edu (PhD), Vanderbilt University. p. 23. Retrieved August 10, 2023.
[2] https://christianeducation.org/history. Retrieved August 10, 2023.
[3] https://christianeducation.org/about/statement-of-faith. Retrieved August 10, 2023.