There are three reasons (at least) that I can’t serve on the School Board. The first two are because I’m a freak, and the last one—well, I’ll tell you at the end, if you read that far.

When they swear me in, they’re going to ask me to take an oath to support the Constitution. But I’m not going to take an oath I can’t keep. And if I don’t take it, they won’t let me hold the office—even though the people voted for me. And what they expect of me is simply to lie like everybody else. But I won’t. So that makes me a freak.

And the second thing that’s a deal—breaker for me is that I know that the first time I voted to accept federal funding for the local school district, I’d be violating that oath. (Most have no clue what I’m talking about.) And that includes the first time I took state money that had been given to the state by the feds for education. The whole system, as it stands today, is built on violating the oath. And the only way I could work in a system like that is to refuse all unconstitutional funding and to start looking for a way to pay for it all locally—which is not working within it at all, but doing a total makeover on it!

And wouldn’t that be something? If we went that way, we might well end up with one-room school houses again, where the teacher is paid partly in chickens and firewood. But then we’d have local humans making local decisions about what local humans ought to be learning—and how they should be learning it. And that’s a job I’d love to have! (Either the teaching, or the deciding!) And the local schools could reflect the values of the local community, rather than being packed with globalist agenda items. And we could decide for ourselves how educational success is to be defined and measured, rather than deferring to the feds on that, too.

And I’m imagining at this point that somewhere between three and seven of my readers will think this is starting to sound kinda good, while the rest have likely quit reading by now—or are reading still only from a strong sense of morbid curiosity at what this freak might write next.

There’s a constant debate running as to whether things are actually getting worse, or whether we’re simply more widely informed of bad events than we used to be. And I’ll not be settling that here. But even so, I’m pretty sure that fifty years ago when I was in elementary school, and certainly 80 years ago where my parents were, there was more high virtue being taught and modeled in the public schools than there is today. And yes, I know there was indoctrination going on then, too—flag-waving and such, and the beginnings of this socialistic grass fire that’s burning hotter than ever across the country today.

And that’s what fire does, mind you; it gets worse and worse, until all its fuel is burned out—or until somebody goes to heroic measures to do violence to the flames by putting them out, choking them for oxygen in one way or another.

And the way I see it, America—who has now educated a few generations on its way down that slippery slope—is content to let this one burn out until everything is destroyed. Meanwhile, a few are making their political careers by pretending to want to put it out, when they really just want to get rich and powerful, playing on the hopes of those who’d like to see things get better, but aren’t willing to think it all through. They’re not going to go to heroic measures to fix anything—though they’ll lie in a heartbeat to get you to vote for them, and when they take that oath at inauguration.

I think that America is too far gone for any meaningful and substantial reform to be successful—barring a massive movement toward the rebirth of honor and high virtue and character. But where would such a movement be kindled if not in the schools? The churches don’t generally seem to be interested in any such thing. Nor do the media outlets. Who, then, would do it?

But lest we are too cynical in our outlook on such propositions, I’d like to remind everybody that America has forgotten how school kids respond to a steady diet of high virtue and honor and beauty in the curriculum—since we’ve pretty much phased that out over the last few generations. I’d like to see what happens if today’s kids were presented with virtue and honor anew at school this year. But the feds are certainly not going to initiate such a thing. Indeed, why would they?

And most of the citizens who might dare to think through all this are likely to be stumped right off the bat by the question of how to fund the schools if federal money is to be refused. I’d be terribly surprised if more than three were ever to gather in any town seeking out new ways to fund local education. I’m afraid it would simply be a foregone conclusion—that if we have to pay for anything new, it’s not worth doing.

But really, this is just another one of those things in which we could do much better if we wanted to. It can never be perfect, but it can be much better—even if we were to go back 80 years and do what they were doing then. And I think we could do even better than they were doing 80 years ago, but don’t miss my point: that it would be an improvement just to revert to 1943’s educational standards.

And that brings me to the third reason I can’t serve on the School Board—as promised: Who would elect me?