David Karki

A large, well-known organization has a significant problem with a small minority of its members committing sexual offenses with minors under their supervision. When the offenders are discovered, they are – for the most part – lightly punished if at all and then quickly and quietly transferred elsewhere, to a location unaware of their criminal background and thus able to offend again.

Extracurricular.

What am I describing? The Catholic Church? The description is an accurate fit, but I’m actually talking about another organization:  U.S. public schools.

It seems as if hardly a day goes by where there isn’t a story in the news about another teacher being sexually involved with a student in their class. Perhaps surprisingly (or perhaps not), the offenders are increasingly female. And the punishment is often very soft, given the difficulty in firing union-protected teachers and getting jurors to see female offenders as true sex predators.

It’s simpler, faster, and cheaper to allow an offending teacher to resign and revoke a state license, thus leaving them free to get another teaching job in another state. Or to cut plea-bargains that allow a criminal past to be more easily covered up, and records to be cleaned sooner.

Yet there is no condemnation for public schools the way there is for the Catholic Church. Both have a serious problem, and a virtually identical one at that. Both frequently handled it by sweeping it under the rug and covering up the truth, which directly led to the offenders getting away with their crime and even being free to commit it again on another unaware group. But the former is spoken highly of and portrayed well, while the latter is vilified, its tenets blamed, and its head officials made scapegoats.

I guess when the organization involved is one that liberals like – and actually depend upon to churn out legions of mind-numbed Democratic voters and shovel union-due laundered campaign cash for the preservation of their political and governmental power – rather than one which has shown a willingness to publicly speak out against their plans and designs, the blatant double-standard in media portrayals makes sense.

There is an irony in this – public schools as we now know them, paid for by taxpayers and run as a government bureaucracy, began at the turn of the Twentieth century as a response to the existing Catholic school system, driven by fear of and bigotry toward them.

Until then, most schooling in America was done on a totally private basis. Parents directly interviewed and hired a teacher for their children, often in small groups not unlike the home school co-ops of today. The teacher was responsible for educating the 20-30 children of the couples to whom they were directly accountable. By the same token, the parents were directly accountable for selecting and paying the teacher, understanding that the education of the children they brought into the world was their responsibility and no one else’s.

However, with the so-called “Progressive” Era at the turn of the century, and the misguided rise of Marxism as a trendy idea, combined with the anti-Catholic animus present, government-run public schools replaced the Laura Ingalls Wilder one-room schoolhouse. And as is often the case with something built on such an immoral and invalid foundation – turning one’s children over to the state to be “educated” – driven by such low motives – anti-Catholic sentiment – only bad results ensued. Really, it’s all been downhill ever since then.

So perhaps it’s fitting that public schools are now embroiled in the very same scandal as the institution they were ostensibly created to supplant and eventually drive out of existence.

The truth, however, is that if we uphold a consistent standard then public schools are arguably much more to be scorned.

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Even absent pedophile teachers, you have taxpayers being run into incalculable debt by the insane over-expense and getting nothing of value in return for it. Children are not getting educated in any sense of the word, certainly not in being able to think critically and for themselves or in being prepared to live an independent, self-sufficient life as a contributor rather than a mindless entitlement-mentality riddled parasite. And why would they be? That doesn’t help perpetuate leftist power, which is and always has been the Marxist purpose of government schools.

Viewed through that lens, public schools are doing a fine job:  Liberal indoctrination going out and tens of billions of dollars pouring in. They have done a masterful job, with the aid of their allies in the biased drive-by media, of terrifying the opposition with their demagogic screams of “You hate children!” whenever their demands for virtually infinite and endless funding aren’t instantly met. Even when the state is hopelessly mired in debt, and education is far and away the single biggest budget item, it’s still held sacrosanct and untouchable where spending cuts are concerned. And when someone finally screws up the nerve to make what’s necessary happen in spite of their militant opposition, such as New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, he’s the target of political (if not literal) knee-capping at best and death threats at worst.

Perhaps if the public schools were putting out the best educated students in the world, we could overlook how utterly over-expensive they are. Maybe we could even deal with the occasional middle-aged woman teacher screwing her 14-year-old student without letting the bad apple spoil the whole good bunch. But they aren’t. They’re sucking up ungodly amounts of money to function as glorified day-care centers and turn out dependent wards who will keep the left in power in perpetuity. And in the last 15-20 years, they’ve become every bit the repository for sex offenders that the Catholic Church has ever been, if not more so.

So where is the outcry against state-run schools? Where is the vilification of a communist education system as an un-American idea, the blame of the tenet of government and not individual parents being responsible for the education of their children, and the scapegoating of Democratic politicians and teachers unions for what their incestuous relationship has wrought? (Republican cowardice shouldn’t be ignored, either.)

At least we’re not all being made to pay for what the Catholic Church has done, aren’t compelled to be a participant in that institution in any way, and don’t suffer any negative impact as a result of their misdeeds. The same cannot be said of public schools.

And the fix is far simpler for the former than the latter. All the Catholic Church need do is come clean, expel and defrock the offending priests, and what’s necessary to ensure that fewer men with homosexual tendencies find their way into the priesthood.  Whether that would mean reconsideration of the celibacy rule, so that more married heterosexuals could consider priesthood and in turn leave the door less open to homosexuals (who have no issue at all with a hetero celibacy requirement, and understanding that a priest molesting an altar boy is obviously a homosexual act), I don’t know. But to the extent that the cover-up was motivated by a shrinking number of priests in part due to that requirement, increasing the supply from another source is the only logical alternative.

As for public schools, you have male and female offenders and homosexual and heterosexual offenses. It’s not nearly so clear a line of demarcation. Not to mention that the real long-term fix isn’t simply changing the demographic makeup of the teachers, but realizing that an institution founded upon such an immoral and invalid concept as education being a governmental and not personal, parental responsibility is inherently unredeemable.

Moreover, cultural and societal change and much political courage will be necessary before public school dominance can possibly be challenged. Far too many have far too much invested in the current system to let it go without a major fight. From the unions and politicians who have a direct financial and power stake in it to those of a feminist ilk who would object to a re-prioritizing of marriage and returning home from the workforce to fulfill a sacred responsibility that never should have been outsourced in the first place (though the main thing would be to cut government and cut taxes so one parent staying home would be affordable again, and then to rebuild a cultural ethic that promotes it, not to specify which parent would do so – I don’t see why dad couldn’t do it, if it made sense for that couple’s circumstances), the forces arrayed against such an effort will be massive.

So, in the end, those in the media and government who rip the Catholic Church would be well-advised to follow Luke 6:42:  You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye and then you will see clearly to take out the speck that is in your brother’s eye.

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