LETTER: Education at the Crossroads

EDUCATION AT THE CROSSROADS

TO THE EDITOR:
Today, public education in the United States is at a crossroads, and the yellow lights are flashing.    Education is currently at the forefront of the national debate, and for good reason.  The data suggests our public schools have failed us.  It seems that the more taxpayers spend on public education, the lower the academic performance of public school students.  The Federal Department of Education was established under the Department of Education Organization Act of 1979. This was the consolidation and centralization of public education at the national level. Since then, the costs for public education in the US have soared, while academic results have plummeted. As the reader will see, this should alarm us all, given historical precedent.

 For example: According to a February 2025 report by Fox 45 News Baltimore, entitled “High spending, low results:  Why do Baltimore City Schools perform among the Nation’s worst”. The data suggests that it is not a money problem, but a political problem.  In terms of education, the Government has failed us.

Governments never learn. Only people learn.

Milton Friedman

The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.

Albert Einstein

We’re throwing good money after bad at our failing public education system.  If your desire was to indoctrinate a group of people, under what other guise would be better than through public education?

Education is a weapon whose effects depend upon who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.

Joseph Stalin

Education is not merely neglected in many of our schools today, but is replaced to a great extent by ideological indoctrination.

Thomas Sowell

Historian Richard Grunberger, who witnessed firsthand the rise of the Nazi party in Germany, describes something eerily similar to the current state of public education in the U.S. He wrote:

The schools were heavily targeted in the strategy to de-Christianize the young. Mandatory prayer in schools was stopped in 1935 and from 1941 onward religious instruction was completely eliminated for all students over 14 years old. The Nazi teachers association, actively discouraged its members from taking religious instruction while at the same time many teachers of religious studies (who were all required to be licensed by the state.) inculcated neo-paganism into their pupils during periods of religious instruction. Later teachers were outright prohibited from attending voluntary religious classes organized by the Catholic Church.

He alone who owns the youth, gains the future.

Adolf Hitler

The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of Government in the next.

Abraham Lincoln

It was not an oversight that the framers left education out of the US Constitution and the bill of rights. Education was never mentioned in our founding documents.  Keeping in mind that the US Constitution only delineates what powers the Federal Government is permitted, it is clear the states have authority over education.  The individual states should never be beholden to educational concepts, policies, and political philosophies of the Federal Government.

Therefore, the 10^th Amendment clarifies at which level of Government education should be regulated. 

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

With education run at the state level, the citizenry have a much greater ability to positively reflect the will of the people than at the national level.  This, our founding fathers understood.  Further, education in the federalist papers is rarely mentioned, but religion is extensively indexed.  The decline in Education in the United States seems to coincide with the removal of Religion from our schools.  Be assured, this was not by accident.  Therefore, one must surmise that public education policy established at the Federal level and the resulting mandates passed down to the States is unconstitutional.

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

John Adams

The first requisite for the happiness of the people is the abolition of religion.

Karl Marx

If we have to give up either religion or education, we should give up education.

William Jennings Bryant

The American people have been alerted to these dangers.  As a result, school choice has entered into the political debate.  Whether it be homeschooling, private, parochial or charter schools, parents are removing their children from public schools at ever increasing numbers.  The teachers union and established power brokers of our public education system will oppose school choice and the “dollar follows the child” initiatives at all costs.  They don’t seem to want a healthy competition to public education.  After all, there is a lot of power and money at stake.

Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.

Isaac Asimov

One of the intents of this article is to illustrate how despotic regimes view education as a political weapon.  Consolidating and centralizing education is how those with mal-intent hope to seize control of the populace. The following two quotes illustrate the difference between those who worked for a limited Government and a free people versus those who believe in absolute autocratic control of the population through indoctrination.

I cannot live without books.

Thomas Jefferson

To read too many books is harmful.

Mao Zedong

What happens next in the realm of education is solely up to “We the People”.  Our will must be greater than the will of those who hope to establish dictatorial control over a sovereign people through propaganda and indoctrination.  Those who wish to establish this control realized long ago that seizing total control of education, and removing religion from education was essential to their evil designs.  Through individual quotes, I have attempted to contrast the mindset of those who wish to consolidate and centralize education at the highest levels of Government, with those who believe a solid education includes a sound moral base, and a significant consumption of enlightened literature.

The COVID-19 pandemic gave us a rare and providential opportunity to witness many of the failings and destructive practices inside our nation’s public education system.  It is well past time to hold our elected officials responsible for “your children’s” education.  They are “your children”, not the school system’s, not the Government’s.

What can you do?

1. Attend your local school board public meetings. 
2. Learn about your local school board candidates and vote accordingly.
3. Find a school board candidate who holds your values and work on that campaign.
4. Run for the school board.
5. If you feel public education is failing “your child”, carefully consider other means of educating “your child”

We are at the crossroads.  The yellow lights are flashing.   Don’t yield. Help us bring education closer to the people, by the people and for “We the People”.

Dave Hafer