The Brick and Mortar Avalanche.
The Brick and Mortar Avalanche.
The financial and psychological ruin of American schools.
Over the last two years, the collapse of American schools was an inevitability. Psychological abuse, coercion, and a lack of accurate curriculum with knowledgeable people to teach it; all led to student absences and the monetary loss that comes with any lack of attendance. Now that homeschooling has risen by roughly 11% just within the last two years, that number is not getting smaller. It’s getting bigger. If American K12 schools drop their attendance by another 10% of the student population, the game is over.
Public, private and charter schools are seeing a lack of enrollment, as are universities and colleges in America. The financial strain on the student (via increased tuition and the cost of living) and the purposeful imploding of the economy are major contributors, but so is the unwillingness of students to want to attend. Universities, for example, are experiencing an all-time low in student attendance among the already enrolled. That’s right. Enrolled students are choosing to not go to class. This is due to two major factors; the cost of gasoline in order to travel, and psychological strain.
Dr. Robin McCutcheon, economics professor at Marshal University, has stated on my podcast (American Education FM) that students don’t want to attend because they can’t afford the cost of gasoline in order to travel to campus. Students have openly stated that they just won’t show up anymore, and many professors themselves feel the same way. Dr. McCutcheon also stated that many professors are unwilling to attend in person if students aren’t showing up, thereby forcing the professors to design their classes online once again, while claiming academic freedom within their contracts in order to force this instructional move.
Miami University just published a story in their student newspaper The Miami Student, stating that students aren’t attending due to the mental strain of attending in person (i.e., seeing people wear masks, even though they aren’t required), combined with slowly figuring out that they can learn more efficiently online. Lecture classes that once had 100 students in face-to-face attendance, are now only bringing in approximately 30 students.
What neither university, the students or educators themselves have figured out yet, is that the COVID shots are a major contributing factor as well. With 90 plus percent of the students and staff members jabbed within these two institutions, the writing is on the wall for continued ill health and a lack of attendance. Not only have the masks contributed to oxygen deprivation over the past two years for those who have worn them (and many still are wearing them regardless of the presence of a so-called mandate), but the shots themselves contribute to cognitive decline, as it’s clearly stated within the adverse reactions in the now-unsealed Pfizer documents. (https://phmpt.org/pfizers-documents/)
The Miami Student article titled, Rising student disengagement and disconnection, a pandemic fallout that Miami faces, the author claims that the university is fine with a lack of attendance and so are professors. In fact, professors are quoted within the article as stating that they no longer have attendance policies (policies that would have previously effected a students grade and eligibility in the past). The quoted professors and university officials go on to say that they believe that changing the way in which professors teach will be a major contributing factor in increasing student attendance. They claim that more “interactive and hands-on lessons,” instead of lecturing, will draw students back into the classroom.
Little do they know how mistaken they are.
In essence, what we now see are students forcing administrators and professors to bend the knee and change long-standing attendance and instructional policy. If the students don’t show up, the professors lose. If the professors and students don’t show up together, the school financially collapses.
The attendance at the university level doesn’t pass the eye test either when driving around a university campus, let alone the personnel moves that are publicly being made that clearly prove that American universities are bleeding enrollment. Schools everywhere are cutting staff members due to lowered student attendance because the existence of one always hinges on the other. Now, at the end of the 2022 school year, within both universities and K12 schools, administrators are doubling the teaching requirements for teachers and professors due to the lack of student enrollment, and K12 districts are combining schools due to the inability to keep their once filled schools, full. For example, The Oakland Unified School District in Oakland California, is considering as many as 13 schools to close permanently at the end of this school year. This school district is not singular in this regard. Nationwide, the school closures were consistent before 2020. Just imagine how it is now?
Within an article titled, 43 Latest Homeschooling Statistics (2022), the author highlights some of the major changes over the course of the last two years:
As of 2020, the U.S. had 2.6 million homeschooling students. (NHERI)
Alaska and Oklahoma currently have the most homeschooling students at 27.5% and 20.1% respectively. (United States Census Bureau)
Illinois and Iowa have the fewest students homeschooling at 5.4% and 6% respectively. (United States Census Bureau)
The homeschooling population in the U.S. grows at a rate of 2%-8% each year. (NHERI)
One out of 12 students in the U.S. is homeschooled. (United States Census Bureau)
During 2021, Massachusetts jumped from 1.5% to 12.1% homeschooling families. (United States Census Bureau)
Roughly 6%-7% of school-aged children homeschool according to the NHERI.
According to Forbes, 58% of parents said that the Covid pandemic was extremely important in their decision to homeschool.
23% of parents said religion was extremely important in their decision to homeschool. (Forbes)
Homeschooling families spend an average of $600 annually on homeschool.(NHERI)
27% of people said they were much more interested in homeschooling as a result of the pandemic. (Edchoice)
While the increase in homeschooling is a secondary contributing factor in the closures of K12 schools, it has also become the last option for many families. Now, however, those families are finding that homeschooling should have been their first option, not their last resort.
The sad part (if one wants to call it that), is that the money managers and administrators within both K12 and university settings can’t see the writing on the wall. They can’t understand why students are not returning to their schools, and they are desperate to lure them back in. The common K12 and university blanket excuse is “COVID” or the “Pandemic” were to blame. The truth is, the jabbed are sick and dying, and the jabbed who are alive and received the toxic batches may be experiencing a malaise that’s an intentional side-effect of the chemicals flowing through their veins, combined with the visual psychological torture of what they have witnessed over the last two years.
These reasons will never be admitted to by these “educational institutions” themselves, because they simply don’t know it to be true. It’s not even a thought in their minds. As I stated in a Substack article one year ago, even if the decision makers are shown the truth, in particular regarding how quickly they foreclosed on forcing the jabs on themselves and countless others, they never considered this to be a business-destroying decision. In fact, they probably assumed their decision making would strengthen their trust with the general public and that attendance would increase based on that belief alone. Boy, were they wrong.
Less students will attend brick and mortar K12 schools and universities in the 2022-2023 school year than ever before. More teachers and non-teaching staff will be let go due to the lack of funding that is hinged on the lowered levels of enrollment. This continues to be an inevitability.
Do not let the summer time pass without truly investigating online learning at the university level, through universities like Purdue Global University, Walden University, or many other accredited universities, where you’re in control. The same is true for K12 schools and their homeschooling alternatives, such as Abeka.com and CalvertEducation.com.
The future is for American individuality, if individuals grab it. Fleeing abusive institutions that have destroyed themselves and their bottom line, by their own hand, is a move that parents aren’t reversing their stance on when it comes to their children’s education; and students themselves agree. Let K12 and universities continue to do what they are doing. They’ll never be the wiser anyway.
In the words of Ayn Rand;
Every major horror of history was committed in the name of an altruistic motive. Has any act of selfishness ever equalled the carnage perpetrated by disciples of altruism.
-(1963). “For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand”
BIO: Dr. Sean M. Brooks, Ph.D. is the author of several books including; The Unmasking of American Schools: The Sanctioned Abuse of Americas Teachers and Students, and he’s the host of the podcast American Education FM.