There’s an old saying, “As the tree is bent, so grows the tree.” The deplorable state of our nation, culturally, morally, politically, and economically, is the result of an education system that teaches children to see in government a high degree of competence and benevolence. This shouldn’t surprise us since public schools are government schools.

Many conservatives no longer send their children to public schools. While you and I are not compelled to send our children to public schools, we are compelled to pay for public schools. Parents that do not send their children to public schools pay a double tax — the required tuition payments. In addition, we are still impacted by 90 percent of the student population that still go to public schools. One day they will vote. Today, they make up the majority of the Occupy movement.

A story that has not gotten much attention is the student participation that took place during Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s battle with the unions and legislation that dismantled public sector employee collective bargaining rights. Union people are still at the capitol in Madison protesting.

Now we’re learning that fourth-grader were bused to the state capitol. You can see the young people marching with the union protestors singing a unionized version of ‘This Land Is Your Land’ as they marched around the Capitol Rotunda. This is how WMTV in Madison reported the story:

When you send your kids off to school, you expect them to learn all about the “three r’s”: reading, writing and recall efforts? That doesn’t seem right, and it didn’t seem right to FOX6 Investigator Bryan Polcyn either. It is common practice for elementary schools to take students on a tour of the Wisconsin State Capitol, but how would you feel if your child went on just such a field trip, and ended up being led, quite literally, into the middle of a political protest?

One superintendent refused to watch video of this very thing occurring, and his elementary school principal waited 22 days to tell parents what happened.

The story has gotten very little attention. You and I know that if fourth graders had been bused to a Tea Party event by a conservative, anti-union teacher, without the consent of the parents, that teacher would have been fired on the spot.

Not every public school teacher is a socialist. Many public school teachers don’t want to be in a union. They are conservatives. Even so, schools in the United States keep getting more liberal.

It’s been said that as California goes, so goes the nation. California and Texas, because of their size, determine what goes into textbooks. We might dismiss the “fruits and nuts” on the Left Coast as being too far away to affect us, but one day public school kids in states across the nation will be reading textbooks that were developed by textbook writers in California.

The battle for the hearts and minds of our children goes on everyday in America. “Get them young” is the tried and true tactic of the Left. “A young tree is easier twisted than an old tree.” That’s one of the reasons that these fourth graders were being propagandized by these union thugs.

Think about it. Schools used to be controlled locally. Then state governments got into the act. Then the unthinkable happened. Under Jimmy Carter, a Federal Department of Education was established. The No Child Left Behind legislation, a boondoggle of a program that received bipartisan support, made local control of education almost impossible. You can see the late Senator Edward Kennedy and John Boehner, two of the bill’s co-authors, standing behind President Bush as he signed the legislation.

Conservatives believe that they can save public schools by this type of legislation while liberals believe they can control them. Who do you think is winning?

As if this wasn’t enough control, now there is a move to develop a national curriculum. There is concern “about Democrat-driven plans in the U.S. Senate to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, a massive federal program last reauthorized in 2001 as the No Child Left Behind Act.” The 868-page bill . . . will 1) increase the federal role in education at the expense of state, local and parental control, and 2) will greatly increase the pressure on states to align their curriculum and standards, resulting in de facto national education standards,” said the report published by the Home School Legal Defense Association.

Good trees grow straight, but not when they’re bent by some outside force.