*Guest author Ryan Heath is a licensed attorney and President and CEO of The Gavel Project, a legal organization that exists to fight unethical government and employer mandates and protect the freedom of Americans, especially children.  The Gavel Project is currently challenging several California school districts for their unconstitutional treatment of students and parents regarding COVID-19 vaccine mandates and mask mandates. (The opinions expressed in guest op-eds are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of RedState.com.)

As a lawyer, I love to ask questions. My favorite, lately, is compound: How did we get to a place where people openly advocate that it is “reasonable” to publicly support the forcible vaccination of children when:

• On the one hand, reliable evidence shows that healthy children generally have an effective death rate of zero percent (a recent study from Johns Hopkins found zero deaths caused by COVID-19 among nearly fifty-thousand healthy children), and
• At the same time, we have a zero percent understanding of what impact this drug will have on kids in five years?

The answer to this question is obvious: There are bad people in this world who don’t mind doing bad things because it makes them rich.

The smell of nonsense is ripe on the left and right. With the rise of COVID-19, however, it has become particularly foul on the left. What our nation faces today is an attack on the American dream through the intentional classification of society based on access to opportunity. This attack is promulgated, most notably, by the left through its control over America’s higher educational institutions.

Many teachers are selfless individuals who truly care about making their students’ lives better. These teachers are fulfilled by the success of their pupils. They are preparing children to succeed, and they are heroes for it. I was blessed to learn from many such teachers during my formative years. My seventh-grade algebra teacher is a wonderful example.

As a student struggling with undiagnosed ADHD, I had an especially difficult time learning math. My struggles, however, faded away in the seventh grade. That year, I had a math teacher who recognized that I wasn’t stupid, and he set out to prove it to me. When I struggled, Mr. B challenged me to succeed. When I did, he encouraged me and emphasized that I wasn’t, in fact, dumb. He cared; and he believed in me. When I acted out, he called my parents and told them that I wasn’t living up to my potential. This honorable man told my parents the truth: that I was being lazy, and that I could succeed, if only I tried.

Unfortunately, the methodology of building children up with encouragement, so that they learn to try hard and succeed, now appears to be dead in America’s education system. The left killed it; and they did so by poisoning the root…universities.

Studies show that our nation’s college professors are 95% more likely to give to Democrat political campaigns as compared to Republican. Accordingly, college students are 95% more likely to learn from professors that support progressive over conservative ideals.

Generally, universities provide degrees on a scaled system, often including the following categories of merit: Associate (which typically takes two years of general undergraduate studies to earn); Bachelor of Arts or Science (typically, four years of study is required before earning this title); and various postgraduate degrees. Usually, an additional year of study beyond undergraduate work is necessary to earn a Master’s. A Juris Doctor (Doctor of Law) usually takes three years of postgraduate work. Medical doctors often spend four years in medical school following their undergraduate studies, prior to starting multi-year residencies for their specialty training. Those pursuing a Ph.D. can expect to spend an average of six additional years after undergraduate studies before earning this honorific.

It is unsurprising, then, that the level of degree one earns (and, thereby, the amount of time that the given individual spends in college) directly correlates with the likelihood that the person is to self-identify as having “consistently liberal political values.” Indeed, for each Republican among “health” teachers in higher education, there are apparently ninety-nine Democrats. It’s the same ratio for “English” teachers: three Republicans for ninety-seven Democrats.

To the extent that a given professor exercises political bias in his or her teaching, and insofar as that professor is persuasive, the impact manifests on the left. This disproportionate balance of ideology within our higher education system is wreaking havoc on American society. In effect, the nation is encouraging its children (who cannot even purchase alcohol because we do not trust them to make wise decisions) to sign contracts taking on hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt, so that these teenagers can learn farcical theories from a bunch of Marxist, adjunct professors that are hell-bent on destroying our nation.

Most university professors (especially those in social studies, gender studies, and other humanities departments) have accomplished very little with their lives. That is, nothing other than earning a piece of paper signifying that the recipient can accurately repeat the sounds made by like-minded people. Sadly, many of the individuals charged with educating our children, so that they can build a better future, have been lying to them about the fundamental nature of reality.

Specifically, these individuals have been teaching that, if humans are born with a certain skin color, they are oppressed by “systemic racism,” which is often evidenced by observations of disparate outcome among members of different races with a particular focus on context and history. At the same time, another lie is presented: Another group of individuals who are born with lighter (white) skin are inherently racist by the mere fact of their existence.

Telling children that their futures are preordained because of their skin color is the same sort of propaganda that made the KKK famous. This practice is disgusting, and should not be subsidized by taxpayer dollars.

Because so many college students are getting useless degrees, universities have a large pool of cheap labor from which to exploit. This exploitation is done in the form of hiring “adjunct professors.” During the past five decades, the number of adjunct faculty members has skyrocketed. Today, full-time (tenured track) professors make up merely 25% of all university professors, as compared to 78% in 1969.

Because there is such high demand for these futile positions (given that the only other job one can acquire with a degree like “Queer Studies” involves making coffee), the pay for college professors is low. Nearly one-third of adjunct professors recently surveyed reported making less than $25,000 annually, placing them below the poverty line.

While the number of tenured professors has fallen, the cost of attaining a college degree has risen drastically. Tuition has gone up 1,200% since 1980 (as compared to 236% inflation during the same time). Indeed, for the past three decades, the cost of attaining a four-year undergraduate degree from a traditional private college has almost doubled. Concurrently, the cost of a similar degree from a public institution has practically tripled. In all, Americans owe $1.7 trillion in student loans.

As part of my job, I teach children to engage in civil disobedience. I have found it particularly difficult to motivate high school aged students, as compared to younger children (the cutoff line appears to be puberty). Apart from social pressure to conform, the main excuse I heard for not wanting to protest was a concern for college admission. Although first appearing to make sense, I see this argument as rather silly.

In effect, these students refused to demand an education to which they are clearly entitled, per state and federal law (including constitutional provisions), free of harassment and discrimination (here in the state of California, that is enshrined in the California Education Code Section 201), so they could merely enter the next level of indoctrination camps.

It is time to cancel our traditional college models.

*Head to thegavelproject.com to learn more about the mission, and how you can support it.