What Wake County Public Schools Failed to Teach My Three Children - and it's NOT what You Think

When little Seth (now 22) started elementary school in 2004, I would have said our school district was one of the best in our state, if not the country.  By the time Luke (now 18) graduated last month, I’d say my perception had been flipped upside down.  Here’s why.

Finally, after 16 years, my three sons have completed their traditional government/public school education.  We are blessed to have lived in Wake County, NC, a district that has historically shown pretty good academic results, at least until recently, and at least by NC standards.  

Were some of my kids challenged and did they significantly advance and excel academically?  Yes, sometimes.  Were some of my kids unchallenged and passed along with grades better than they deserved?  Also yes and sometimes.  All in all, I think they each received a decent education in most of the academic fundamentals, and I largely give that credit to some of the excellent teachers they had along the way, and the above-average local schools that happened to surround our place of residence.  

With that said, if we had to do it all over again, we would have sent them to private or charter schools from middle school onwards.  One reason is that I have observed a decline in focus on academics in public schools.  And the other reason is that that academic focus has gradually being supplanted - not just supplemented - with a maniacal focus on socio-political agendas.  As a result, I believe my children dodged a steady barrage of "indoctrination bullets" that otherwise would have produced woke virtue-signaling social justice warriors on paths to lifestyles marked by self-indulgence expectations of something they didn't earn, and/or self-guilt apologies for something they didn't do.

Watching children go through the process of government education is like watching a frog boiling, but like the frog, not realizing until it is too late what the fate of the frog will be.  It starts in elementary school with a focus on rainbows and unicorns and visions of a happy utopia where everyone is above average and everyone is a winner and no one gets their feelings hurt and no one is ever really wrong.  And, lo and behold, in some ways that continues all the way through high school.  

Fortunately, my three frogs escaped the pot before being boiled alive.  They got their requisite basic education, and largely missed the indoctrination that has more than ever become the hallmark of government education, especially in “Woke” County, in EVERY SINGLE SUBJECT - including math and science.  

I am probably like many parents.  When my kids were in elementary school, the teachings were benign and harmless, though I’m not so sure that is still the case.  But for my kids, as they advanced in grades, and certainly by the time they graduated, I saw more and more red flags.  These warning signs were indicative of academic mediocrity and social and political indoctrination agendas.  There were fewer and fewer indicators about academic excellence, critical thinking, and knowledge acquisition.  Because those "things" of education were impossible for all students to achieve all the time, they took a back seat to the softer (and less academically rigorous) priorities of social engineering education (social emotional learning, circle time, identity surveys, social justice protest alignment, etc).  If not everyone can be an honors student, then perhaps no one should be.  If not everyone is gaining knowledge in school, then perhaps knowledge should not be the objective of education.  If grammar is difficult for some to master, then perhaps grammar rules are too restrictive or shouldn't be graded.  If the 7 point grading scale is too harsh, perhaps a 10 point grading scale would improve students' passing rates.  If standardized test scores are declining, then perhaps they are no good and should be eliminated.  If one school is failing, then perhaps moving students to it from a successful school will help it to not fail.  You get the picture.  Those are some macro examples of how education is evolving - or rather devolving.  The rest of this article will talk about some micro examples that hit closer to home for my three students.  

Through the first 13 years, my involvement in my children's education mainly consisted of homework help and occasionally writing teachers with questions about issues I saw.  My "skin in the game" amped up to overdrive in 2018, when I chose to deeply involve myself in the fight against a naively-selected and poorly-implemented experimental math curriculum.  I spoke at numerous school board meetings and spent countless hours researching data and sharing my findings and opinions in this blog.  My involvement was so severe and threatening, that I was actually sued by the vendor while WCPSS leaders silently sat on their hands (and probably smirked inside, having played a part in feeding info about me to this vendor).  I've said it many times before, but I would argue that the fight against this math curriculum brought parents from the left and the right together - more than any politician ever has - against a common foe: bad education.  Unfortunately, that didn't translate into votes.  Many parents refused to vote for candidates who were in favor of school choice, or who aligned with some of the observations and points of view I'm sharing here,  even if they were also against a bad math education program!

In hindsight, my deep dive into this math “curriculum” and our school system’s efforts to prop it up, exposed so much more about the behind-the-scenes machine that is running government education (into the ground, in my opinion).  Most parents never realize until it is too late what is happening in the classroom, and what their children are being taught - in addition to the basic readin’, ‘ritin’ and ‘rithmatic they are supposed to learn.

What follows are not the biased fictional recollections of a right-wing nut job.  Each and every anecdote cited here is based on content I personally witnessed over the last 16 years, either in my children's homework, notes, teacher training programs and material that was either made available or leaked to the public, teacher survey comments, public records, accounts from other parents, or as part of published pieces by progressive educationalists revered by WCPSS leadership in one way or another.  Any one of these things by themselves could be looked past as one-off cases or even a difference of opinion, but with the benefit of hindsight of the aggregate, my conclusion is that we dodged indoctrination bullets for much of the last 16 years, and I'm thankful to put that behind us.  For that reason, I am glad that the Wake County Public School System (WCPSS) failed to teach my kids a few things.  

WCPSS failed to teach my children that Communism was better than Capitalism because it offered free healthcare and full employment, whereas Capitalism did not.  WCPSS also failed to teach my children that one of the problems with Capitalism was that only the best workers are rewarded, whereas, in Communism, everyone is paid fairly.  I’m really glad my kids were not paying attention that day!  WCPSS also failed to teach my children that “In a perfect world where Communism worked out, war was beyond necessary, sharing would render police useless, and money would be a thing of the past.”  

Speaking of the police, WCPSS failed to teach my children that the police - as a rule - embodied systematic behaviors of racist oppression.  Speaking of race, WCPSS failed to teach my children that they should awaken every day feeling guilty and hate themselves because they are white.  They failed to teach my children that the most important attributes of a person are their extrinsic "identity" characteristics and categories, such as color, gender, and sexual orientation, and that those attributes supersede and must be considered before and above all others.  Contrary to the Martin Luther King teachings I learned as a child in school in the 70s, WCPSS failed to teach my children to treat every person according to the color of their skin INSTEAD OF the content of their character.   

WCPSS failed to teach my children that most of the problems in the country are caused by Republicans.  WCPSS failed to teach my children that most of the problems in the country are caused by “old white guys,” such as Washington and Jefferson.  

Speaking of old white guys, or more specifically, those “lazy” European settlers, WCPSS failed to teach my children that the European settlers of America “had neither the skill nor the desire to ‘go boldly where none dared go before’.”  The new settlers encountered “no wilderness” as the Indians had the place groomed in a “parklike environment.”  Sorry, but that lesson did not sink in with my kids.  WCPSS failed to teach my kids that the main reason the colonists made the trip was for profit, and religious freedom was not a factor.  As such, WCPSS failed to diminish the importance of Thanksgiving to my kids, with teachings about the elementary school “little morality play, the first Thanksgiving” which “celebrates our ethnocentrism even more than the overly patriotic holidays like Independence Day and Memorial Day.”  Sorry, but I guess my kids still are patriotic traditionalists when it comes to all three of those holidays.

WCPSS failed to teach my children that all science is settled because in other cases, they taught that science should be ignored, and the prevailing opinion of woke citizenry and those in power trumps science.  You can’t have it both ways, WCPSS.

WCPSS failed to teach my children that the US Constitution is a living document, meaning legislation no longer comes solely from the legislature, but from the courts.  And that the rights of the individual take a back seat to the greater good and whatever is deemed as how things ought to be.

WCPSS failed to teach my children that a student walkout protesting something that happened hundreds of miles away is a welcomed exercise of free speech, while a student walkout protesting something happening in their own classrooms is not.  My kid rejected your hypocrisy lesson, WCPSS.

WCPSS failed to teach my children that Greta Thunberg is a climate scientist, George Floyd is a hero, Trump was the worst president ever, Obama was the best president ever, kneeling for the national anthem is patriotic, standing for the national anthem is racist, parents who choose charter schools are racist, the main reason parents pull their kids out of schools is because they're racist, "Zoom in a room" is the same as "in-person instruction," and 2 + 2 sometimes equals 5.  

WCPSS also failed to teach my children that “real world” math problems, cited by WCPSS as partial reasoning for selecting a certain experimental curriculum, include a “zombie invasion wiping out the population.  The number of people is diminishing fast.  Each day that goes by, 48% of the living population is lost.”  Indeed, a zombie invasion of indoctrination is wiping out the public’s collective desire to send their kids to government schools.  The number of students is diminishing fast.

Most parents either never see these red flags, or it’s too late when they see them, or they are naively “on board” with the ideologies that are red flags to me and many others who are paying attention.  There is a portion of the population who will scoff at my observations here as being merely “anti-public school.”  To discard these observations as unfounded rantings continues the willful ignorance so many in public school leadership choose to exhibit.  I am not alone in these observations.  This stuff really IS happening in public schools to YOUR children,  The pot IS boiling.  Save your frogs… or better yet, save the public school system before it destroys itself.

To some, the only problem with public education is that it needs more and more and more money.  For the rest of us, the problem with public education is everything else, and that can't be quantified in financial terms.  Instead, it can be quantified in declining academic performance, declining enrollment, and a furthering of the divide between rich and poor, and black and white.  This, despite efforts to artificially bridge those gaps with virtue-signalling programs and white-privilege training, when education itself is the greatest hope upon which we should rely.  

Alas, my kids are done with government elementary, middle, and high school.  And so am I!  Now, onto government college!

My Review of "Out on Good Behavior: Teaching math while looking over your shoulder"

"Out on Good Behavior: Teaching math while looking over your shoulder," by second-career middle-school math teacher Barry Garelick, both infuriates me and gives me hope.  This is Garelick's fourth book about his journey to becoming an effective math teacher out of his love of math, appreciation of traditional AND effective math education, and somewhat out of necessity.  I would categorize his authorship of four books, however, as a sense of duty.

This is a quick and enjoyable read that any school teacher, leader, or school board member should check out.  It has some laugh-out-loud moments as Garelick recounts some of his many memorable student anecdotes and quotes.  Garelick's writing style is enjoyable, conversational and engaging.  He has a great sense and the right mix of humor, irony, and sarcasm, which I really appreciate.  Yet, he's seriously on-point in his observations.

This book focuses on the first few years of Garelick's new career as a math teacher.  Specifically, he covers many of his experiences during the two year "parole" period right after becoming a teacher, when new teachers are observed and coached by an assigned mentor.  Garelick readily admits how he achieved (and still achieves?) the advice given to him by a fellow teacher: “Tell the administration what they want to hear, then do what is best for your students.”

The world of math education - and probably all subjects' education, but I only have delved into the domain of math - is rife with buzzwords and impressive sounding lingo.  Garelick sees right through and questions these supposed "ideas," most of which are hollow consultant-speak ruses that are more effective at selling curriculums and textbooks to naive and virtue-signalling school boards and administrators.  

As a math-loving parent with an M.S. in Computer Science and a minor in Electrical Engineering, I am no dummy when it comes to math.  Neither is Garelick, whose first career was in environmental science.  We both could see through the word salad edu-fads quoted back to us by those who influence and make decisions about our children's math education, including “growth mindset,” “grit,” “critical thinking,” “21st century skills,” “collaboration,” “creativity,” "nuance," "productive struggle," "intentionality," "instructional shifts," “open-ended questions are better than problems with one right answer,” and "disdain for teaching by telling, desks in rows, teacher at the front, and direct instruction."  And let's not forget, the dreaded "ROTE" memorization!

Garelick writes, "Younger teachers have been taught in ed school to accept as valid many of the edu-fads and buzzwords. Older teachers somewhat buy into it but have enough experience that, in the end, allows them to do things like teach at the front of the room using explicit and direct instruction and answering students’ questions directly.  I have been fortunate enough to work in schools where I’ve been given the autonomy to teach as I wish. I recognize, however, that there are teachers who are not allowed to do so and must conform to mandated practices with which they disagree and that are ineffective. It is to these teachers that this book is especially dedicated."

Garelick is not some antiquated closed-minded neanderthal opposed to new ideas.  He is a wise and passionate educator who realizes there must be substance to ideas which translates to results.  While the education industry continues to play whack-a-mole, continually changing methods and approaches to teaching in order to ostensibly "level the playing field" so that "all students are math students," Garelick knows what works and what doesn't, and has found ways to see through the nonsense, strategically "adapt" versus blindly "adopt" new concepts, but otherwise has been successful in "telling them what they want to hear" while his students go about the business of learning math. 

Back to my opening sentence about this book.  This book infuriates me because it reminds me of all the times I heard school board members and leaders in my school district parrot back talking points of math "curriculum" vendors such as Mathematics Vision Project and whack-a-mole math fad-ed prophets and peddlers, while talking down to parents legitimately questioning why their children were failing in math.  Then when challenged on their assertions made as matters-of-fact, they either quote out-of-context statistically irrelevant data, change the subject, or go silent.  Keep in mind, this is the same camp of math education "innovators" who are driving the "2+2=5" movement and the movements to remove accelerated math from middle-school.  No thank you.  This book gives me hope because there are people like Barry Garelick and the many astute math teachers in my school district who see through the buzzwords and hype, and instead do what's best for their students: teach them using what works best.