Coddling American Children

Parents across America are rising up in anger at what their children are being taught in school. And rightly so. The problem goes beyond the teaching of critical race theory. The truth is, folding deviant ideologies into the curriculum deprives children of the chance to learn math and science, history and language.

Worse yet, American schools have become therapy factories, working to improve children’s self-esteem, ignoring the skills they will need to learn to compete in the economy. If a child cannot compete, he will quickly lose his self-esteem and will discover that his teachers have been lying to him.

It means that we have given up on competing with China, A Chinese man sounds the alarm. Habi Zhang has just moved from China to New Jersey-- to do graduate study. He enrolled his child in a public school. The child is in the third grade.

Here is what he found:

I recently registered my son in the third grade at a New Jersey public school. Hattie had recently finished two years of elementary school in Chengdu, China, where he trotted off to school each day with a backpack stuffed with thick textbooks and materials for practices and quizzes. Here he leaves for school with little in his backpack other than a required “healthy snack.”

The boy’s father tutored him in math, from the time he was in kindergarten. Considering that most New York City public school children cannot do algebra in the eighth grade, it is sobering to think that in China this man taught his son algebra when he was 7:

My son is not a genius, but he started studying math at an early age. When he was 5, I taught him fractions. Two years later, I introduced him to algebra. It is a core belief in Chinese society that talent can be trained, so schools should be tough on children. Chinese students score at the top of international math and science tests.

And, of course, American schools want children to have work/life balance. Thus, they take special care not to give them too much homework. At times, it’s no homework at all:

This is not a philosophy shared by American schools. On Friday night my son came home announcing in bewilderment that he didn’t have any homework. In China students tend to receive twice as much homework on the weekend, given the two days to complete it. How will America compete with a China determined to train the best mathematicians, scientists and engineers?

Surely, Zhang seems the problems with the Chinese educational system. It indoctrinates children in Communist Party propaganda. We, on the other hand, indoctrinate children in neo Marxist propaganda. The difference is that the Chinese teach advanced math and science, while we teach high self-esteem:

Chinese education pushes the young in directions that serve the party and the state. Youth are trained to be skilled laborers ready to endure hard work and brutal competition. Such political indoctrination is taught side by side with math and science. American education is supposed to be about opening minds but appears not to fill them with much. Worse, young Americans are not prepared for the demands of being an adult.

In the name of producing mental health, the American educational system is producing clients for mental health professionals.

This phenomenon started in higher education. For years attending American universities, I have been disturbed to watch colleges fabricate “anxiety” and “depression” in students who are not mentally ill. Administrators have used grossly exaggerated terms such as “trauma,” and melodramatic expressions such as “I cannot begin to imagine what you have suffered,” to turn into a catastrophe what is best described as disappointment. This creates a culture of victimization.