North Korean-style brainwashing next for Montana?

Gov. Steve Bullock is again on the move, this time personally courting children in kindergarten, asking them if they know what the job of governor is. Well, of course they don’t. They are just small children.

His response to his own question was, “My job is to make sure you all get a great education.” This kind of egotistical nonsense reeks of a desire to be worshiped. I’m surprised that he didn’t tell them that he sleeps in his car and eats rice balls like Kim Jong-un in North Korea, who works as hard for his kindergartners.

The Washington Post published an article headlined “North Korea begins brainwashing children in cult of the Kims as early as kindergarten.” The article says, “The teachers would say: ‘Do you know where the milk came from? It came from the Dear Leader. Because of his love and consideration, we are drinking milk today.”

In any case, I researched for the job description of the governor and I didn’t see Bullock’s claim specified. He certainly didn’t explain to these children that if he were really doing his job he would be safeguarding their right to be children, to learn as individuals, explore and question, and be emotionally nourished to develop a sense of self.

That he would be safeguarding the right of their parents to nourish and choose what they, as parents, feel is best for their offspring. He would surely not be explaining the return on investment when it comes to their lives and future, or spending the money of the citizens of Montana to promote his own agenda to rob these little children of their individuality, and their parents of a choice.

Again, he speaks of the monetary return on investment of what he considers to be human capital — little kids. To him, each one of them will produce the same return in the end. Is his plan to homogenize them into a homogenized workforce, which gives its allegiance to a state apparatus of which he is part?

Education is to be, according to the definition of the U.S. Department of Education, “a means to achieve important economic and social goals of a national character.” That is not teaching, but training.

Common Core is information children are expected to learn, as dictated by federal bureaucrats and state education commissioners. It is one-size-fits-all learning. Anyone who truly cares for children would give them an environment they can flourish in without the expectation of return on investment or the idea that they are someone’s human capital.

A human’s capital is their personal store of knowledge, ability and sense of self; personal assets to be utilized to provide outcomes of which they are the sole beneficiary; to be productive first of all for themselves.

If Gov. Bullock were really doing his job, he would lend an ear to the many that are against the standardization of education and the taking of innocent children as young as four years to be molded by the state. We need to see this for what it is.

John Taylor Gatto, in “The Underground History of Education,” said “From the beginning, there was purpose behind forced schooling, purpose which had nothing to do with what parents, kids, or communities wanted ... School was looked upon from the first decade of the 20th century as a branch of industry and a tool of governance.”

Mary McCracken lives in Kalispell.