Public Education Is…

In previous installments of this humble “weblog,” we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” have decried the patent idiocy of numerous bumper stickers. If you ask us—and, technically speaking, you have not—bumper stickers are nothing but vehicular eyesores.

Now, a careful perusal of this humble “weblog” will lead you to believe that left-leaning slogans particularly irk us. Sure, we may pretend to disdain bumper stickers tout court, but we keep mentioning those emblazoned with left-wing shibboleths as particularly loathsome.

But not today, dear reader. Not today.

For, on his way to work a few short days ago, one of the senior editors here at “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly”—let’s just call him “Chip”—spied a rip-roaring right-wing bumper sticker that may rank up at the top of most obtuse slogans ever imagined. Slapped on an appropriately folksy pickup truck, it offered a rather frightening message. To be downright honest, “Chip” wondered how unhinged the fellow who put on this sticker must be.

Its message? The bumper sticker read as follows:

Public Education Is Child Abuse

We know what you’re thinking, dear reader: Wow. What a complete crazy person.

As much as we find fault with much of the public education status quo in this country—the teachers unions, the red tape, Judith Butler, &c.—we simply can’t understand why anyone rational would pine to shut down all our nation’s public schools. But the guy in this pickup truck didn’t merely plump for school vouchers; he aimed to annihilate American public education wholesale.

Although this sentiment on its own is completely bonkers, the bumper sticker in question even manages to up the crazy factor from this preternaturally high level. For it proclaims that public education isn’t merely bad, but is akin to “child abuse.”

Child abuse? Dear Lord. We’re glad we didn’t attend school with this guy. We’re not quite sure what they were teaching there, but they must have messed up something horrible.

In fact, this bumper sticker comes across as so hyperbolic that one wonders whether its owner recognizes what child abuse is. Perhaps he’s an unrepentant child abuser himself, and thus aims at a bit of self-exoneration by proffering a dubious connection between child abuse and, say, the University of Michigan.

And, as we all know, such a connection is only valid in regard to Michigan’s Women’s Studies Department.