"No More Excuses!": Parents Defending K-12 Education

“A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Waste”

Amazon Paperback – April 13, 2022

by David Barnhizer (Author)

“A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Waste”

The wonderful slogan developed decades ago to assist the United Negro College Fund is true and compelling. The problem for the Woke, Critical Race Theory advocates, and Radical Progressives is that development of the mind through a full, balanced, and intensive education creates an obstacle to what they are trying to achieve—in their own oft-voiced words—the “dismantling” and transformation of American society.

We need to look at the reality of what is occurring in K-12 education. There are historical precedents. Mao Zedong wrote in a 1937 tract that open-minded, thoughtful and critical Liberalism was a threat to his “Revolution”. Mao wrote: “Liberalism is extremely harmful in a revolutionary collective. Mao condemned Liberalism because he understood it empowered people to question authority. It is a corrosive which eats away unity, undermines cohesion, causes apathy and creates dissension.”

American civil rights leader Malcolm X eloquently described the purpose of education as follows. “Education is our passport to the future, tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today.” I very much like his urging that: “We need more light about each other. Light creates understanding, understanding creates love, love creates patience, and patience creates unity.”

The incredibly courageous South African civil rights and anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela offered an equally powerful insight into the vital importance of teaching critical thinking, wide-ranging knowledge, personal empowerment, and vital skills. Mandela states: “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world”. Education is the first step for people to gain the knowledge, critical thinking, empowerment and skills they need to make this world a better place.”

To these insights can be added a fundamental statement made by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., one he delivered in a speech at Morehouse College in 1948. “The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. But ... intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character—that is the goal of true education.”

Dr. Alveda King, MLK’s niece, describes the growing divisions in America “When we forget that we are one race — the human race — we begin segregating ourselves and creating division in our nation. Perhaps most concerning is the effect it has on education. … Both unity and victory have been undermined by critical race theory.”

Shawntel Cooper, a Black woman concerned with what her daughter is being taught, states: “We never said don’t teach history – we are fighting to ban CRT. My ancestors did not fight for segregation to be played out again or to indoctrinate little children to alter their natural growth to love without seeing color.”

Accusations of racism, “genderism”, phobias of numerous kinds, and attacks on social class and wealth are weapons to “cancel”, to shame, and to ostracize anyone who challenges the now dominant narrative. In the implementation of that narrative, parents concerned about what is being taught to their children become “terrorists”.

Using the “wrong” word or pronoun can destroy a person’s career. What is going on now is a carefully planned propaganda system of “deadening the mind”. It is radicalizing and “guilting” all who disagree, and in K-12 systems and universities for that matter. This is being achieved by feeding students a one-sided and dishonest system of intensifying driven by emotional angst, victimization, guilt and hate.

In writing about what he considered the current state of American society, historian Ken Burns stated that: “the present day is one of the worst times in American history. … “It’s really serious. There are three great crises before this: the Civil War, the Depression, and World War II. This is equal to it.”