Image by Adrian from Pixabay, scaled
Schooling is a critical component of a child’s upbringing. Whether it’s a private school, homeschool, or a public school, the purpose of education is to turn a young man or woman into a sharpened and well-educated American. For more than half a century, though, the true purpose of schooling, which is education, has been undermined by a different purpose: therapy. This is something Phyllis Schlafly recognized and stood strongly against.
In a 1990 speech titled ‘How Therapy Replaced Academics,’ Phyllis explained: “Starting back in the 1970s, there was a shift in the public schools away from the basics, away from subject content, toward a policy of probing the students’ feelings and attitudes and opinions and emotions.”
“The public school classroom,” Phyllis said, “became a place, not for learning, but for treating social problems. This was not done by a counselor on a one-on-one basis of troubled children.” Schooling became a kind of group therapy “of this captive group of minors. Nobody, of course, had consented to this type of therapy — not the students or the parents or the Taxpayers.”
The Federal Government tried to solve this issue in 1978 with the Pupil Protection Act. However, it hasn’t done the trick.
“Because of the opposition of the education establishment of this law, it took six years for the regulations to be promulgated,” Phyllis said. In 1990, when Phyllis gave her speech, the law still had not seen enforcement. “At the same time, the problem that this law addressed has become pervasive. Some professionals even talk openly about what they call the “therapeutic classroom.””
Today, the same issue rears its ugly head in the form of Social and Emotional Learning, also called SEL. This is the same therapeutic classroom style that robs children of the education they deserve, instead replacing it with intrusive therapeutic techniques. It is high time that schooling be restored to its true purpose: educating students.
