Our Threatened Freedom

Are Public Schools Hazardous to Our Children’s Health

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Political Studies

Lesson: 87-169

Genre: Conversation

Track: 087

Dictation Name: Vol. G - Part 09 - Are Public Schools Hazardous to Our Children’s Health

Location/Venue: Unknown

Year: 1980’s – 1990’s

[Dr. Rushdoony] Are public schools hazardous to our children’s health? This is R.J. Rushdoony with a report on our threatened freedom.

Cigarette smokers find on every pack a warning that smoking cigarettes may be hazardous to their health. Now I am not a smoker, but I rather resent Big Brother’s overzealous claim to tell us what is good or bad for us. In my book that power belongs to God, not state. Furthermore, why not a warning on every federal building reading: warning, big government may be hazardous to your health? Or why not a notice to every parent of the school child, reading warning: public schools may be hazardous to your child’s health?

Such a notice would make sense, after all, according to the State of California, in a five month period recently from September 1, 1980, to February 1, 1981; a hundred and five thousand, three hundred and twenty-eight incidents of crime and violence were recorded in the schools. These were crimes against students, teachers and school employees, crimes against property, and included the possession and use of drugs and alcohol and the possession and or use of weapons and also bomb threats.

The property damage in this five month period came to more than ten point three million dollars, and the schools had to spend thirty-eight point five million dollars on crime control in the schools.

Now, the figures released dealt with reported crimes, even these tell us a grim story. Very obviously, attending a public school today is more hazardous to a child’s health than smoking is to adults. Among some of the unreported school crimes are shakedowns, compelling children to pay their lunch money as protection money to school bullies, or get beaten up. More than one teacher has told me that in some schools it can be dangerous for a teacher to turn his back on the class. I call that a health hazard.

In fact, why not advertise Washington D.C. as hazardous to America’s health? Paying taxes is not easy on either the pocketbook or your blood pressure. Reading the news from Washington rarely makes me feel happy. Having a federal agent visit me or asking me to come to his office, I find less desirable than a case of the measles, or worse. Washington D.C. makes us all sick at heart much of the time, and after making us sick, offers us Medicare. Is there no one up there who still believes that Jefferson was right when he said that the best government is the least government? After all, the more controls we get, the less freedom we have, and the loss of freedom is very hazardous to the health of a country.

This has been R.J. Rushdoony with a report on our threatened freedom.