Dakota Beacon

There is nothing new under the sun. An urge to control and direct the lives of others never ceases. Sending kids to public school believing they will receive quality education in their formative years can be very deceptive.

President Jimmy Carter federalized public education in 1979 when he established the Department of Education thereby rewarding the National Education Association’s (NEA) for its help with his election campaign. Of course, he may not have federalized public education in fact – but he certainly did so in effect. Local control of education has since dissipated and local school boards have become vassals of the state. Teachers, parents, and school boards have little to say over federally mandated programs and policies. They can talk until they are blue in the face, but money speaks louder than words. Controlling the distribution of federal funds gives the Department of Education enormous leverage to form the lives of the most impressionable.

Before Carter’s actions, John Dewey’s progressive education philosophy taught at Columbia University trained teachers to teach students what to learn -- not how to learn. He set in motion the transition – and the ultimate degradation – of public education. Slow decay followed.

Teachers unions had their agenda, to wit, a liberal persuasion for the nation. From this point on America’s youth became guinea pigs for any socialist fad in vogue. Goals 2000, the School-to-Work program, and a variety of sex education topics come to mind. Political advocacy by teachers including Marxism became accepted in the name of “education.” These youth eventually grew to become the adults of today with kids of their own. By then local schools were deeply beholden to federal agendas. Control was implicit. The hook was set.

An average of $72 billion dollars extracted from the public each year over the past six years (FY 2017-2022) has poured into public education coffers. The results are in and the picture isn’t pretty. Over the decades academic standards tumbled, the gap between races widened, and student discipline plummeted. In the end, there is no correlation between dollars spent on public education and academic achievement. None. Beware the controlling politicians and bureaucrats who plead for money “for the children.”

So, what do we have to show for our money? Not much. Here is a partial list of what most kids are taught. Cultural diversity is America’s strength. The Constitution is outdated and should be changed. Big business is bad. Competition is bad. Rewards must be determined by need and not merit. Cutting taxes is bad. Sex between consenting teenagers is – whatever. Animals have Constitutional rights. Rights are created and distributed by government. Freedom is a controlled substance. Religious speech in school is dangerous. Moral judgments may be hate crimes. Genetic predisposition trumps moral responsibility. National defense promotes war. Christopher Columbus, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson were racists. All opinions are equal. All sexual orientations and identifications are equal. The purpose of government is to provide jobs, housing, and income. A family may be any collection of individuals living together. Consequently, the programming of our kids and grandkids continues.

Many teachers leave their profession, not because of low pay, but because they are tired of blurred boundaries between education and indoctrination. They would prefer customary teaching with traditional tenets rather than be required to force social propaganda on their students.

As the education pendulum swings further leftward, parents -- including some teachers – increasingly remove their children from public schools seeking a private alternative.

Books sketching power plays for control of our children from the 60s and 70s onward include:

** “NEA: Trojan Horse in American Education,” Samuel L. Blumenfeld. The Paradigm Co.,1984. An analysis of the decline of public education predicting our current situation.

** “Ed School Follies: The Miseducation of America’s Teachers,” Rita Kramer. The Free Press,1991. Confronts the core failings of the K-12 system. Shows the politicization of education. Opponents are branded “racist” or worse.

** “Power Grab: How the National Education Association is Betraying Our Children,” G. Gregory Moo. Regnery, 1999. Exposes the power of the NEA. Displays a failed experiment in public education illustrating how the system became more precious than the children it claims to serve.

** “The Politics of Knowledge: The Carnegie Corporation,” Ellen Condliffe Lagemann. University of Chicago Press, 1999. Lagemann focuses on how liberal foundations effectively use power and private money to influence and control public policies.

** “The Conspiracy of Ignorance: The Failure of American Public Schools,” Martin L. Gross. HarperCollins, 1999. American schoolkids lag behind students in the developed world scoring nineteenth out of twenty-one countries in math competition. Almost forty percent are reading at "below basic" levels. (2015 Pew Research: US is 30^th in math and 19^th in science.)

A new generation of parents have experienced the impact of federally controlled education and the programs it mandates. They are rebelling against the “system” – and rightly so.

Dennis M. Patrick can be contacted at (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).