ACHTUNG: This is not a “fair and balanced article. It is an editorial by the editor.

In the twilight of my autumn years, I have been plagued by horrible fear that our public education system is collapsing because of unfair pressure from outside forces.

It came to mind this week when I received e-mails from Wayland Schools Assistant Supt. for Finances and Operations Patricia Velie and from the Allegan Area Education Service Agency. I found both to be alarming, especially in light of developments over the past 40 years in Michigan and the United States. They seemed to offer more proof that privatization, religious education, charter schools and just plain old greed are drowning public education in the bathtub.

Ms. Velie sent me a heartfelt request to publicize a school-sponsored event from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Monday, Jan. 23, to invite people to a sort of “open house” in hopes of recruiting more sorely needed bus drivers.

The AAESA’s e-mail was about the launch of a new program attempting to recruit more teachers.

Both communications were sent to me in the wake of depressing information that teachers, school bus drivers and other educational support personnel are in short supply. Wages are indeed part of that issue, but so is something as simple as respect.

The AAESA’s e-mailed press release reported:

“A consortium of 40 Intermediate School Districts (ISDs) and Educational Service Agencies (ESAs) has formed an innovative partnership to address the teacher shortage crisis in Michigan. Dubbed ‘Talent Together,’ the partnership includes districts spanning 64 counties—from the Upper Peninsula to Southeast Michigan—that collectively serve over 1,030,000 students. To date, this is the largest education collaboration of its kind in state history…

“Michigan’s teacher pipeline has been challenged in recent years, exacerbated by the impact of the COVID pandemic. State data shows that from 2008-2016, enrollment in teacher preparation programs fell by more than 66%, and during that period Michigan also led the nation in attrition from those programs. Allegan County has seen a similar drop in applications for open teaching positions…

“Talent Together believes this program will produce hundreds more teachers in the next five years. The program is being built for sustainability, so that even when initial Grow Your Own grant dollars are exhausted, Talent Together can continue to provide opportunities for interested candidates to become teachers.”

My take is that some very powerful forces have set their sights on destroying public education as we have known it for nearly a half century. The reasons stem from a longtime effort to eliminate teachers’ unions and to weaken public schools under the guise of “competition,” with religious schools, charter schools and “schools of choice” programs.

I worry that these divisive forces have been winning a lot of battles and may be closing in on winning the war.

As a student of history, I maintain that when this great nation was founded, one of the principles associated with it was the concept of free public education for all children. Well, at first perhaps not for girls, people of color or indigenous populations, but democratizing events afterward eventually led to trying to meet that goal.

A huge part of a free education system was to tax all citizens to pay for the service.

Challenges to this system arose when religious-based schools began to spring up, particularly after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1962 that no school official may force any of the children to pray under their guidance. Fundamentalist, evangelical and Catholic schools emerged under the principles that they could insist their students receive religious instruction.

Things began to heat up in recent years when private, religious schools began to find ways to obtain public tax dollars formerly reserved only for public schools. One good example was Dick and Betsy DeVos’ voucher program proposal that was rejected by 70 percent of the voters in Michigan at the turn of the 21st century. That proposal has not gone away.

Under their plan from 20 years ago, all parents would get a voucher that would enable their children to go to the school of their own choosing. Sounds reasonable on the surface, but it results in the general public paying for religious instruction.

The First Amendment states, “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion.”

However, religious schools have found allies in privatization, particularly from charter schools that actually aren’t different in practice than public schools except for their administration. Furthermore, there is no evidence that private and charter schools have improved education with competition, they have only drained money from the public education coffers.

Now comes the parental rights groups that align themselves with right-wing politicians who protest against mandates for wearing masks during a pandemic and rail against the non-existent “Critical Race Theory” that isn’t taught in these parts, but perhaps should be.

This is not to mention leftover efforts to ban books, to segregate schools, to avoid educating mentally, emotionally and physically challenged children, and most appallingly, to provide easier ways for athletically gifted students to attend other schools to get more attention and better chances for athletic scholarships.

Public education has been under a half century of assault from a variety of sources that only serve to divide and segregate students to the point where they grow up only with kids who look like them, think like them and live like them. To steal and revise an old Fox News phrase, it’s a “War on the Melting Pot.”

My personal sympathies go out to public educators, bus drivers, aides, crossing guards, lunch ladies and even administrators.

Wasn’t it Abraham Lincoln who once said, “A nation divided against itself cannot stand?”