No longer will little Johnnie be allowed to march into the first day of class with his new shiny pencil box or glossy notebook tucked happily under his arm. Instead, Johnnie is to supply a pencil box purchased by Mommy and Daddy to be surrendered to credentialed pedagogues to be dispersed as they see fit. For example, a student could end up bringing a really cool “Star Wars” or “Gundam Wing” notebook only to have it snatched and replaced with one sporting an insignia promoting some assinine leftwing cause such as recycling or nuclear disarmament.

This is socialism at its most basic.

Proponents of this preposterous proposal point out that not all students possess the financial wherewithal to requisition the nicest school supplies. Frankly, what of it?

While it might be unfortunate, I do not bear a governmental or social responsibility to ameliorate the plight of every impoverished waif who crosses the schoolhouse door. Parents are the ones imbued with the charge of providing for the needs of their children. If they cannot, they may have to sacrifice from their own pleasure --- perhaps meaning fewer CD’s, body piercings, or nights on the town --- or the child may have to do with less.

It must be remembered that those of us who are materially comfortable are not by definition obligated to adress every deprivation we come across if we do not feel so led by the stirrings of our conscience. For example, just because the ugly and dimwitted face fewer prospects of marriage does not mean we ought to be compelled to share our spouses with them. At one time charity was seen as a laudable thing because it arose from the convictions of individual character rather than from strong-armed blackballing.

There is more to this scheme than the logistics of notebooks and paper. It is an attempt to mold by coercive example in a way dry bookwork never could.

No one can doubt that children subject to these annual lessons in confiscatory redistribution will be affected in some way. Having their school supplies hijacked from their tiny arms year after year, many students will be conditioned into perceiving that their property and possessions earned by the sweat of their own toil are not really theirs but instead beneficences bestowed by prevailing elites.

There is no telling where a generation reared on such disguised communalism might end up. In the future, instead of locating and purchasing a dwelling of one’s own, one might have to pay a significant fee or tax for the “honor” and “privilege” of being assigned a residence of the government’s choice. Or perhaps even worse still, couples producing more than one child might be compelled to donate excess offspring to the infertile desiring a child of their own.

Don’t dismiss such possibilities as ludicrous. Just a few years ago, it would have seemed ridiculous to suggest that pupils would be denied the ownership of their own school supplies.

Parents must act now before their children, and thus the future of this great republic, are lost to a subtle yet nearly total form of bureaucratic control. While teachers are due a certain degree of respect in terms of students behaving themselves, cooperation with and obedience to the decrees of the education system should at times be conditional and provisional.

Parents must do everything within their power to see that their children receive the best education possible, yet it must be remembered that the parents are not the ones in school. Thus, they must act when school authorities upset the delicate scholastic equilibrium established between parents, children, and educators.

The first thing parents ought to due if at all possible is to remove their offspring from schools --- be they public, private, or parochial --- that undermine the sanctity of private property or the individualized ownership of goods and free their young minds from the clutches of such misguided utopias.

Yet this ideal course of action is not always possible. In such instances, parents should not send a single pencil or sheet of notebook paper to class if the supplies are going to be hoarded in community stockpiles, or in the case of my cousin’s child who attends Patuxent Elementary in Lusby, Maryland, where parents are required to contribute multiple quantities of a particular item, they should send in no more than what is needed by their own children. For example, if guidelines call for three pencil boxes, only one should be sent in with the child be instructed not to forfeit the coveted items. Parents should also organize themselves and formally protest these policies in anyway they can, getting out the message to everyone they know and even going so far as to contact elected officials if they feel so led.

Communist economies were ground to a screeching halt by workers refusing to break their backs since they could not enjoy the rewards of personal enterprise. By following a similar course of action, hopefully American parents can nip this Bolshevist cancer in the bud before it becomes yet another disease ingrained in the corpse of America’s dying system of education.

Hillary Clinton popularized the lunacy that is takes a village to raise a child. Now it seems those of us in the village are being forced to pick up the tab as well.

Copyright 2001 by Frederick B. Meekins

For additional commentary by this author and links to stories around the Internet, please check out the following: The American WorldView Dispatch.