The Renaissance of the Classical School, by James Hankins

By James Hankins, First Things, 4 . 26 . 22

We have been hearing a lot in recent months about a staffing crisis in district public schools, teacher burnout, and the large numbers of teachers planning to leave the profession sooner rather than later. The National Education Association, a union representing nearly 3 million public school teachers, published a document in February with some eyebrow-raising statistics: 90 percent of members say they feel that burnout is a serious problem (67 percent say very serious), and more than half, regardless of age, say they plan to leave the profession sooner than expected because of the pandemic. Of course, this being the NEA, the document ignored the teachers union’s own responsibility for the costly mistakes of public schools in the pandemic era. It segued immediately into the usual tone-deaf demands for more taxpayer funding, higher salaries, fewer hours, more protections from COVID, and so on and so on. Other recent reports describe the rapidly accelerating flight of students and teachers from district public schools. The cat is finally out of the bag about what is being taught in the public schools: politicized history, radical gender ideology, and racialized and decolonized everything else. Meanwhile, math and reading scores continue their decades-long slide. …

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