As public schools indoctrinate students in the pseudo-religion of social-justice movements and ideologies, we need to support parents who want an escape.
As public schools indoctrinate students in the pseudo-religion of social-justice movements and ideologies, we need to support parents who want an escape.
I t was three in the morning, and I woke up in a panic. A familiar panic. I’m a mother who needs to educate my seven youngest children. My eldest son who is still at home will begin his first year in college this fall. I’m also a Catholic — and that means that, these days, I’m looking at some frightening bills for education.
I went to my local public high school in the late ’80s. There was nothing particularly awful about it. But then along came gender ideology and critical race theory, and now I do have a problem with government-run schools — including the academically excellent one in my neighborhood.
My four oldest children at home attend a Christian liberal-arts school, and the three youngest attend my local Catholic parochial school. I receive tuition assistance, but I still have to find over $50,000 per academic year for tuition, books, and fees. Financial-aid offices in most colleges across the country rely on the criteria set by a federal form to assess a family’s financial situation — factors that do not account for private-school tuition for younger siblings. My college-bound son just received a financial-aid award from his dream school. And the amount I’m asked to pay is still too much. Hence my latest nocturnal panic.
The next day, I took the chance to ask my parish priest for advice. “Father, I’m not sure I can make ends meet. What do you think about the youngest three going to the local elementary school and enrolling in CCD [the parish religious-education program] on Tuesday evenings?” The response: “No, I can’t recommend you doing so.”
And he’s right. In 2022, a priest can’t recommend it. He doesn’t want my young children coming home from school with their heads stuffed full of agenda-driven theories that, explicitly or implicitly, denigrate the faith in which they’re being raised. Nor do I. I’m just a parent who wants to exercise a very basic freedom — that is, the freedom not to have my children exposed to the tenets of what amounts to a new secular religion. Of course, given unlimited resources, I’d like all my kids to receive a world-class Catholic education. But if there is no money for it, I thought, perhaps I could settle for public schools that didn’t introduce an element of indoctrination into every subject (and, increasingly, every sport). But they’re disappearing.
More and more parents are embracing their role as primary educators of their children by selecting private religious schools — especially Catholic ones — outside the government-run system. And, inevitably, they’re also having to embrace financial sacrifice. In my home state of Virginia, the average cost of a private-school elementary education is $12,882 per year, and high school is $16,570.
Fortunately, there are government-sanctioned programs out there to lessen the financial load. Across the country, “school choice” initiatives are gaining favor. They allow public funds to assist parents to find the best educational fit for their child. In Virginia, I can use 529 education-savings funds for K–12 private-school education (allowing a $4,000 deduction per year on state income taxes). It’s not a huge relief, but it is better than nothing.
An increasing number of states are adopting even more innovative and extensive school-choice initiatives such as education-savings accounts (ESAs) and school vouchers. These programs come closer to the idea of real “school choice” for families like mine. But they are still not the norm — and “progressive voices” in education are determined to disqualify religious schools from such programs, mischaracterizing the First Amendment’s establishment clause.
Which, when you think about it, is shameless hypocrisy. Their relentless pushing of critical race theory and gender ideology amounts to an unprecedented assault on that same First Amendment’s guarantee of the free exercise of religion. As Archbishop José Gómez of Los Angeles, the current head of the U.S. Bishops’ Conference, warned in a powerful speech last fall, these new social-justice movements and ideologies are “pseudo-religions, and even replacements and rivals to traditional Christian beliefs.”
This new style of public education takes my tax dollars and uses them to produce a generation of children who won’t need their religious beliefs protected because they won’t have any. With every passing year I become more aware of this. It’s not just money worries that are forcing me awake at night: It’s the knowledge of what lies behind them.
We’ve reached a stage at which the only way to safeguard parents from this very un-American indoctrination is for the government to address the overwhelming financial burden of private school by giving interested parents access to real school choice in the form of ESAs and vouchers. It’s not a fashionable cause and never will be. But let’s put this very simply. We live in a world in which, like it or not, such measures are needed to preserve religious freedom.