Saving K-12 Private Schools

What seems daunting is actually rather simple

I’m a proud product of Catholic education. I had Sisters of St Joseph for grammar school, Xavarian Brothers for high school, and Jesuits for college (Boston College). I went off the reservation for graduate school (Syracuse), but the die had been set.

Attentive readers of my Critical Thinking commentaries are well aware that I have been extensively involved with the K-12 education business, for both public and private schools. IMO both need to be preserved, which means that both need fixing.

For some time now I’ve written commentaries about the enormous importance of being a Critical Thinker. (Here are some of the MANY benefits.) As a society we are being daily bombarded with propaganda, and our best defense is to be a Critical Thinker. I attribute my ability and interest in Critical Thinking to the fine teachers I had.

Critical Thinking is a skill (like cooking) that needs to be properly taught. The appropriate time and place to do this is in K-12 Science classes. Why Science? Because real scientists are natural skeptics who ask a lot of questions — which is just what Critical Thinkers are and should do.

But Critical Thinking is NOT being properly taught in public schools and rarely in private schools.

To understand the private school solution, a few brief comments about public schools is necessary… The main threat (out of several) to the public school system is that anti-American Left-wing ideology is taking over the curriculum in almost every subject area, but especially in Science and History.

The fix for this starts with Conservative organizations (e.g., Heritage & AEI) paying a LOT more attention to the curricula. Although they typically say that education is a top priority, curricula have been largely ignored. Not surprisingly, the Left is aggressively taking full advantage of this shameful neglect.

Additionally, State Education Superintendents (and State Boards of Education) also need to give the curricula a lot more attention. This business of giving deference to education administrators who oversee curricula, is toxic nonsense — as many of those people are a major part of the problem. This deference has led to multiple bad outcomes, like the purposefully deceptive Social Emotional Learning (SEL) scam.

This is just a bit of background, as this commentary is about private schools.

K-12 Catholic schools used to be successful as many parents strongly wanted to have their children taught Judeo-Christian standards, and were willing to pay for this. However, times have changed (in many ways) — but most Catholic schools are still relying on this archaic model.

Another outdated part of the Old Model is that the default solution to every financial challenge is to have another fund-raiser (rather than do things differently to prevent the financial problem).

Just one example of how times have changed (for the worse) is that the number of Catholics attending weekly Mass has dropped precipitously over the last few decades. It stands to reason that when parents are less attached to Judeo-Christian standards, their interest in having their kids be taught Judeo-Christian standards will also decrease.

Considering that the cost of K-12 private schools can be substantial, the question is: will these parents be willing to pay a premium cost for what is (in effect) a public school plus a religion class? The answer for many parents is NO.

The good news here is that COVID has provided the solution!

For the first time, parents had the opportunity to look over the shoulders of their children to see what they were being taught in most public schools. Two problems quickly became apparent:

1 - their children are being told WHAT to think rather than HOW to think, and

2 - the WHAT part is largely Left-Wing, atheistic, and anti-American.

The result of this is that there has been an unprecedented increase in Home-Schooling.

However, very few parents want to home-school their children, as (to do it right) this requires an enormous amount of time, effort, and competence on their part. Further, their child would largely miss out on the positive social benefits of interacting with other classmates, as well as lose out on extra-curricular activities. (E.g., I was the editor of my high school’s weekly Newspaper which was a fabulous experience.)

ALL of the home-school children (plus a lot of public school students who for one reason or another were unable to become home schoolers), are PRIME CANDIDATES for attending a private school. However, to get parents to move their children to a private school, the private school MUST sufficiently address their needs — and then properly market that commitment to them.

In other words, the light bulb should go on at K-12 private schools: addressing these public school deficiencies should be the basis for a New Model. To survive, private schools MUST clearly differentiate themselves from public schools. As such they should be loudly telling parents that in their school:

1 - children will be taught HOW to think (i.e., Critical Thinking skills), and

2 - children will be given a Judeo-Christian, pro-American, classic education.

If you can’t intuitively see the merits of this New Model, then look at how a real-world example has been a resounding success — at a relatively low cost besides!

The Bottom Line here is that (since times have changed rather radically) private Schools need to be aware that they must adopt the New Model. The slow learners will suffer the fate of those who laboriously put all their memories on VHS tapes.

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Here are other materials by this scientist that you might find interesting:

Check out the Archives of this Critical Thinking substack.

WiseEnergy.org: discusses the Science (or lack thereof) behind our energy options.

C19Science.info: covers the lack of genuine Science behind our COVID-19 policies.

Election-Integrity.info: multiple major reports on the election integrity issue.

Media Balance Newsletter: a free, twice-a-month newsletter that covers what the mainstream media does not do, on issues from COVID to climate, elections to education, renewables to religion, etc. Here are the Newsletter’s 2023 Archives. Please send me an email to get your free copy. When emailing me, please make sure to include your full name and the state where you live. (Of course, you can cancel the Media Balance Newsletter at any time - but why would you?

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