Utopian Failure in America's Schools

According to a recent nationwide study by Yale researchers, "preschools are expelling youngsters at three times the rate of public schools."

The study identified a "broad range of antisocial behavior among preschoolers, from the child who cut computer cords as a way to 'liberate the mice' to the 4-year-old who had a bag of marijuana in his backpack. The most frequent grounds for expulsion, child-care experts say, are aggression toward other children in the form of kicking, biting and hair-pulling."

The study acknowledges the growing problem of behavioral disorders among American children. Dartmouth Medical School conducted an earlier study, Hardwired to Connect, which similarly recognized the growing "crisis among children and youth in America." Their conclusions however defined this as the result of "disconnectedness," meaning "a lack of connection to other people (parents, friends, etc.) and deep connections to moral and spiritual meaning." The Dartmouth study claimed that these behavior problems, which they defined as a national crisis, were the direct result of these conditions going so far as to suggest that "society needed to pay considerably more attention to young people's moral, spiritual and religious needs."

In response to the Yale study, so-called "child-development" experts acknowledge the problem but offer a different explanation as to the cause. In their mind, these behavior problems are not necessarily related to neglectful or irresponsible parenting as much as they are the result of poor teacher training. "Child-care experts said that many expulsions could be avoided with better teacher training and greater support from psychologists and social workers." Notice the absence of parents in this list of proposed solutions.

This is the way with all utopians who believe that the state and not the family is the solution to societal problems. The problem, in their minds, could not possibly be the selfish desires and actions of parents who place their own needs ahead of their children thus producing this growing sense of disconnectedness, which in turn produces insecurity and emotional instability. Instead, the solution in the mind of the secular humanist to every problem is, "education." Ignorance is seen as the source of all "evil" in the world and not sin. Of course this is astonishing in light of the fact that the 20th century saw the spread of "education" across the world to an unprecedented degree and yet this was not successful in preventing the unparalleled atrocities of the last century. Recall that Nazi Germany was quite possibly the most educated society on earth.