From Covert To Overt

First we have a very significant video:

(Applause to Bayou Renaissance Man for the link.)

I hope you viewed the whole thing. To me, the most significant aspect of the report was the school's refusal to assure the parents that the game would not be repeated -- indeed, the school's statement strongly implied that the game would be repeated. This represents a shift from one phase of the left's strategy to the next one: from the covert portion of the left's program of indoctrination to an overt attempt to divide children from their parents. The destruction of the family's privacy is the critical step in the elimination of parental authority and its replacement by the authority of teachers, administrators, and other unrelated functionaries.

The report doesn't give us a complete list of the questions put to the children in the "cross the line game." It's not unthinkable that some of them, at least, bore on aspects of the family that might be deemed worthy of the attentions of Child Abusive Protective Services. What might follow -- indeed, what probably would follow -- hardly needs to be described in detail. For the moment, let's refrain from pondering whether the teacher asked the kids about anything nominally criminal.

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Ponder well this passage from 1984:

    'By the way, old boy,’ he said. ’I hear that little beggar of mine let fly at you with his catapult yesterday. I gave him a good dressing-down for it. In fact I told him I’d take the catapult away if he does it again.'
    ’I think he was a little upset at not going to the execution,’ said Winston.
    ’Ah, well — what I mean to say, shows the right spirit, doesn’t it? Mischievous little beggars they are, both of them, but talk about keenness! All they think about is the Spies, and the war, of course. D’you know what that little girl of mine did last Saturday, when her troop was on a hike out Berkhamsted way? She got two other girls to go with her, slipped off from the hike, and spent the whole afternoon following a strange man. They kept on his tail for two hours, right through the woods, and then, when they got into Amersham, handed him over to the patrols.’
    ’What did they do that for?’ said Winston, somewhat taken aback. Parsons went on triumphantly:
    ’My kid made sure he was some kind of enemy agent — might have been dropped by parachute, for instance. But here’s the point, old boy. What do you think put her on to him in the first place? She spotted he was wearing a funny kind of shoes — said she’d never seen anyone wearing shoes like that before. So the chances were he was a foreigner. Pretty smart for a nipper of seven, eh?’
    'What happened to the man?’ said Winston.
    ’Ah, that I couldn’t say, of course. But I wouldn’t be altogether surprised if-’ Parsons made the motion of aiming a rifle, and clicked his tongue for the explosion.

Parsons is an uncritical, even unthinking supporter of the Party's regime. His implicit endorsement of his daughter's deed is obvious; he wouldn't have had her do anything else. The irony, of course, arrives later in the book:

    Parsons walked into the cell. He was wearing khaki shorts and a sports-shirt.
    This time Winston was startled into self-forgetfulness.
    ’You here!’ he said.
    Parsons gave Winston a glance in which there was neither interest nor surprise, but only misery. He began walking jerkily up and down, evidently unable to keep still. Each time he straightened his pudgy knees it was apparent that they were trembling. His eyes had a wide-open, staring look, as though he could not prevent himself from gazing at something in the middle distance.
    ’What are you in for?’ said Winston.
    ’Thoughtcrime!’ said Parsons, almost blubbering. The tone of his voice implied at once a complete admission of his guilt and a sort of incredulous horror that such a word could be applied to himself. He paused opposite Winston and began eagerly appealing to him: ’You don’t think they’ll shoot me, do you, old chap? They don’t shoot you if you haven’t actually done anything — only thoughts, which you can’t help? I know they give you a fair hearing. Oh, I trust them for that! They’ll know my record, won’t they? You know what kind of chap I was. Not a bad chap in my way. Not brainy, of course, but keen. I tried to do my best for the Party, didn’t I? I’ll get off with five years, don’t you think? Or even ten years? A chap like me could make himself pretty useful in a labour-camp. They wouldn’t shoot me for going off the rails just once?’
    ’Are you guilty?’ said Winston.
    ’Of course I’m guilty!’ cried Parsons with a servile glance at the telescreen. ’You don’t think the Party would arrest an innocent man, do you?’ His froglike face grew calmer, and even took on a slightly sanctimonious expression.
    ’Thoughtcrime is a dreadful thing, old man,’ he said sententiously. ’It’s insidious. It can get hold of you without your even knowing it. Do you know how it got hold of me? In my sleep! Yes, that’s a fact. There I was, working away, trying to do my bit — never knew I had any bad stuff in my mind at all. And then I started talking in my sleep. Do you know what they heard me saying?’
    He sank his voice, like someone who is obliged for medical reasons to utter an obscenity.
    ”Down with Big Brother!” Yes, I said that! Said it over and over again, it seems. Between you and me, old man, I’m glad they got me before it went any further. Do you know what I’m going to say to them when I go up before the tribunal? ”Thank you,” I’m going to say, ”thank you for saving me before it was too late.”
    ’Who denounced you?’ said Winston.
    ’It was my little daughter,’ said Parsons with a sort of doleful pride. ’She listened at the keyhole. Heard what I was saying, and nipped off to the patrols the very next day. Pretty smart for a nipper of seven, eh? I don’t bear her any grudge for it. In fact I’m proud of her. It shows I brought her up in the right spirit, anyway.’

It begins to appear that the Left really does regard Orwell's dystopian classic as an instruction manual.

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It's well established that the "public" schools are essential to the Gramscian "long march through the institutions" at the core of the Left's strategy. Consider their mantra that "the personal is political." Consider their thrusts against parental authority and familial privacy, because "the children belong to all of us." And of course, consider how relentlessly and remorselessly the Left has colonized education colleges, and has encouraged the use of the classroom for political proselytizing.

The disease has reached its terminal stage. The only countermeasure is escape. More and more concerned parents are making the necessary sacrifices to homeschool their children -- and are coming in for more and more opprobrium for "denying their children" the "socialization" available from classroom schooling.

Watch for intensified attempts to foreclose the option of homeschooling: at the state and local levels for the moment, but eventually at the federal level as well -- perhaps via court rulings that homeschooling constitutes a form of child abuse. It's happened in Germany already; don't imagine that "it can't happen here."