LETTER: Narrow minds, not schools, threaten American freedom

To Ozaukee Press:

The recent letter to the editor accusing public schools of indoctrinating young people into socialism substitutes outrage for evidence. Disagreement with how younger voters think does not constitute proof of brainwashing.

The author warns of “excessive state control, authoritarianism, lack of innovation, and suppression of individual freedom,” yet many Americans today are experiencing exactly those pressures within our current economic and political system: corporate consolidation, declining worker power, erosion of democratic norms, and growing inequality. Pointing this out is not socialism, it is observation.

Electing a mayor in New York City, by New York City voters, is not evidence of a nationwide ideological takeover, as the letter implied, nor is it an indictment of public education. Young people are responding to material realities: unaffordable housing, crushing student debt, inaccessible health care, and wages that have failed to keep pace with productivity. Calling that response “indoctrination” is a convenient way to avoid engaging with the substance of their concerns.

Equating modern Democratic policies with regimes like North Korea or Stalinist Russia is historically unserious. Public schools in the United States do not teach authoritarianism; they teach students how to read critically, evaluate evidence, and debate ideas. Those skills inevitably produce independent thinkers, and independent thinkers do not reliably vote the way any one group would prefer.

What truly threatens freedom is not education, exposure to different viewpoints in the media, or young people questioning inherited assumptions.

It is the insistence that only one worldview is legitimate and that exposure to alternatives is dangerous. A democracy confident in itself does not fear inquiry, it depends on it.

Peter Vander Velden

Port Washington