Someone has made the claim that socialism is being taught in our junior college in our town.  Some official discounted that possibility and challenged him to "prove it."

Now, that would be difficult to do.  Socialism is defined in various ways, such as the ownership of the means of production or the control of industry.  But one thing they all seem to have in common is that under socialism, the government does many things that individuals would usually do for themselves, or that would be done by private industry.

Over the past several decades, we have gotten so used to government in our lives that we do not even consider that there might be other ways to deal with issues.  In our town, our public hospital is the largest industry in the county.  Little by little, our hospital has taken over local clinics and some medical offices, such that almost all medical care has some relationship to the hospital, and thus hospital policies.  Whatever the hospital requires of its staff and patients, it also requires of the regional clinics.  Now this same hospital is going to become a 501(c)(3) organization so that the citizens of our county will have nothing to say about what the hospital does.

It does not seem to appear to anyone that in the past, most hospitals were private, or owned and directed by religious and charitable organizations.

The more centralized the hospital becomes, the more control it has over the lives of the patients who use the hospital.  And if the hospital receives some government directive to do certain things, that directive is soon felt by nearly every medical facility in our area.

Socialism, then, means big government, and as time has gone on, the governments, both local and national, have become larger.  Thus, more taxes mean more government.

So what is happening in the classroom that has anything to do with socialism?

No teacher is going to stand up in class and say, "Children, today we are going to learn about the benefits of socialism."  They know that a few people who have studied the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution might find serious objections.

But there is nothing stopping the teacher from extolling one government program or another.

Welfare is just one government program that involves more and more government at all levels.  We are used to that, and in fact expect the government to do more.  Never mind that in the past, individuals, churches, and charitable organizations took care of the needy; now it is just assumed that the government has to do it.  So if a teacher happens to suggest that welfare is good, that teacher is teaching socialism.

Climate change has been much in the news the past few years.  The narrative is that carbon dioxide is increasing and somehow this increase will cause the temperature to increase until it reaches a point where it burns up the Earth.  No one seems to remember that just a few short years ago, we were concerned about global cooling.

So the teacher teaches students that we all have to do our part to control the use of fossil fuels to reduce the carbon dioxide in the air and thus control global warming, and no one considers that he may be teaching socialism (or even Marxism). 

Just a few short years ago, in third grade, we were taught that all plants use carbon dioxide to grow; that plants produce oxygen, which all animals need to survive; and that the more carbon dioxide in the air, the better for everyone.  The teacher, then, teaches climate change hysteria, and no one considers that he may be teaching socialism.

The CDC and the National Institutes of Health insist that we have to do certain things to stop the spread of a virus.  Few remember that we have had similar viruses each winter.  Teachers teach the importance of being locked down, wearing masks, hand sanitation, social separations, and other programs suggested (required?) by the government and the urgency of these matters, and the children are indoctrinated in socialism.

History teachers have the responsibility to teach all history, both modern and ancient.  In the process, they often teach about the New Deal, which is a classic example of the progress of socialism among us in America.  When the teacher suggests that what the New Deal did was a great benefit to us as a nation, the teacher is teaching socialism.

Actually, the basis of the public school system is socialism in action.  Private schools and homeschooling account for only a small portion of the students, so when a public-school teacher tells her students that the public school system is great, that teacher is teaching socialism.

In the past, there have been calls for equality, liberty, and solidarity of the collective, and these themes have been common in our schools.  These themes were frequently championed over the individual.

At the height of the [Occupy Wall Street] movement, it was found that among those 18–29 years old, 49 percent of people claimed to have a positive view of socialism, as compared to 46 percent with a positive view of capitalism.  Additionally, this same age group had a 43 percent negative view of socialism as compared to 47 percent with negative views of capitalism.

Parents who sent their kids off to college with a strong work ethic and support of the free enterprise system have been very surprised to realize that the school was gradually training them to be true socialists.  Where did those idea originate?  In the schools.

Patriots should not have to defend our great free enterprise system

And the ironic cause of that demise could very well be our own reluctance either to privatize or radically restructure the most socialist enterprise in the Western world, that $180 billion near-monopoly known as U.S. public education.

The author further commented: Milton Friedman made it clear that our system of public education was turning out little socialists.

"Because they are products of a socialist system — namely public education. How can you expect such a system to inculcate the values of free enterprise and individual entrepreneurship and competition when it is based on monopoly state ownership, abhors competition, and survives only through compulsion and taxation?"

If we expect our kids to reflect our values of hard work and personal integrity, we are going to have to take a closer look at public education.

Jim Hollingsworth is a graduate of Pensacola Christian College.  He has written four books.

1. Climate Change: A Convenient Truth
2. Cortez: A Biography Only available from the author: See  below.
3. The Ancient Culture of the Aztec Empire
4. Abortion Compassion

A Commentary on the Book of Romans is with the publisher and should be available in about a month.

Jim Hollingsworth receives mail at: jimhollingsworth@frontier.com.

Image via Max Pixel.