We here at TPOL have recently been taken to task by several people because we oppose public (government-run, tax-supported) schools and try to point out the dangers of entrusting children to those institutions.

A recent news story explains part of the problem: You no longer have to prove your ability to read, write, and do arithmetic in New Jersey to teach school.

In 2025, New Jersey joins a growing number of States that do not require teachers in their GRTF schools to know basic skills – even in subjects which they are supposedly teaching children. The excuses given for this reduction in qualifications are many. NJ claimed they can’t hire enough teachers otherwise. NY and CA apparently did it for purposes of DEI. (As did LA Fire Department – which got us what?)

Each of these is yet another reason not to send your children, grandchildren, or anyone else’s children to a public school—not just in those States, but in any State.

Why?

The quality of American schools – not just but especially GRTF institutions, has deteriorated for half a century and more. Not only do these entities fail to teach critical subjects, but much of what they teach is nothing but propaganda: ideas that are intended to demoralize, denigrate, and destablize their students, the students’ families, and society. All while picking the pockets of American taxpayers. Present and future.

Worse, much of what they now teach in both critical and “nice-to-have” subjects is just plain wrong. It is based not only on a warped view of the world, but on ignorance of fundamental (and provable) facts. It is skewed to promote not just a political platform, but a political and social platform that has been demonstrated to fail at protecting human life, providing prosperity, and peace. Indeed, what results from the nihilism (regressivism, “progressivism”) that is the foundation of what more and more people in more and more schools? More deaths and lives of misery. More poverty – not just physical but moral and spiritual. And more war and less peace. Internal and external.

The public schools and those who run them, fund them, and more and more of those who staff them? They suffer from several mental dissonance: they consider themselves an elite vanguard of humanity leading the rest of us to an eartly paradise. (Sound familiar to anyone?) Yes they seek to pollute even their own ranks with people whom they know are unable to do the things that they supposedly are teaching us in order to save us! (Again, sound familiar? Scribes and Pharisees, anyone? Most of the religious world?) So-called teachers who do not have the skills they claim to be able to teach?

And the excuses? Flimsy indeed, but so much so that we question the reasons and the motive. Do you need to know basic math skills to teach English? Reading? Music? These enemies of knowledge and true education clearly claim that you do not. Common sense and six thousand years of recorded history demonstrate both how wrong and how stupid that is.

How can anyone who is truly a lover of liberty, who supports the libertarian ideals and principles of self-determination, self-government, personal responsibility, and free will possibly advocate for and support the modern “American” system of public (government-run, tax-supported) schools.

Maybe we are blind and oblivous, but we cannot see how anyone honestly can do so.