The U.S. Constitution was created to ensure that the rights and liberties of every American citizen are protected. No person or organization can take these inherent rights away from us. No organization, except the private school system.
The fact that public schools are required by law to follow the Constitution is a luxury that most kids either don’t know about or simply take for granted. They probably aren’t aware that on a nearby campus, some poor child is being sent to the principal’s office for saying something against their teacher’s partisan agenda.
Private schools, more specifically Catholic schools, aren’t expected to follow the same rules as public schools. They take rules of the Archdiocese, the regions of the church (similar to districts in states), and create rules that best suit the learning environment that they want to provide for their students.
What this basically means is that it’s their campus, so it’s their rules. No questions asked.
I’m not saying that Catholic schools themselves are bad. Actually, the inspiration behind Catholic schools was a good, wholesome idea: a safe environment where the ideals of Catholicism could be infused with basic education for children. This system also provided young Catholics a more in-depth look at their religion than an hour of Sunday school could possibly provide.
However, now times have changed. Instead of just trying to simply instill their students with the values of Christianity, teachers preach a skewed version of the world. History is no longer a class that teaches the important events of the past and the equally important events of present day. It is a stage for the so-called educators to profess their propaganda to the masses of students. This twisted, biased way that the social studies classes are angled completely snuffs out any growing opinions that may contradict the “facts” the child was just told.
Though this may not be directly violating the First Amendment, it still takes away these students’ rights of future free speech and expression.
Constantly hearing the same hypnopædic voice telling you that one side of an issue is inherently right smothers your sense of questioning and steers your future political views in whichever direction the teacher is aiming for. I speak from experience when I say trying to decipher fact from opinion in a lesson on politics in a Catholic School is very difficult.
Even for a student who is clever enough to realize the bias in their teacher’s lessons, it is difficult to keep their contradicting opinion. Heavily penalized with angry lectures from the teacher, low behavior grades, and sometimes even parent meetings, these students emerge low and beaten down, their once fiery opinions smashed to a pulp.
I understand that most of the time religion directly coincides with the way that people lean on the political scale. However, students can come to their own conclusions about politics. If the teachers are instilling morals of the church during religion, chances are children will figure out how they apply to making decisions about political issues.
I am not saying that all Catholic school teachers educate their students with a political agenda in mind. However, I am saying that a substantial number of them do voice their opinions in class, and this is inherently wrong because students deserve the right to make up their own opinions without the influence of biased rants about political issues.
No current events should be distorted and morphed to best suit a person’s political views, especially when the future minds of America are at stake.
