It seemed like you could not turn on the nightly news, or open a newspaper, in 2021 without seeing a school board meeting collapse into enraged shouting and even arrests. Indeed, just a few days ago in Oregon, a meeting about changing a school mascot ended with a board member punched in the face. It felt almost de rigueur in a year that featured the National School Boards Association begging the FBI to investigate possible “domestic terrorism” behind protests, a Virginia gubernatorial election that turned on frustrated parents, and a national wave of “book banning.”
If 2021 has felt like the angriest education year you can remember, that is probably because it has been. But while the temperature has been especially feverish, the root problem is old: public schooling, which forces diverse people to fund, and de facto attend, government-controlled schools.
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