By Rebecca Friedrichs
FOX News: November 19, 2024
President Trump is exactly right to remove the federal government from our educational system. This is one giant step toward restoring parental authority and excellence in our schools.
America’s founders never intended for us to have a national Department of Education, and they specifically did not want the government intruding into education. They knew such overreach would lead to the destruction of our schools and our nation, and now we have modern proof that they were right.
Thank God President Trump seeks to dismantle the national Department of Education. It’s a constitutional move, and it cannot come soon enough!
Since our founders made clear that federal intrusion into education is destructive, how did we end up with a national Department of Education and massive federal influence over our schools?
The so-called teacher unions did it.
It all started in 1867 when President Andrew Johnson – at the behest of the commissioner of education and National Education Association – signed legislation to start a national Department of Education to collect data on our schools. The department was grouped with other federal departments at the time.
This allowed NEA to grow in influence and power over education. Slowly but surely, NEA successfully implemented its politically-driven agenda, which included the removal of phonics instruction, morality, Western Civilization, the Classics, and many other destructive changes. NEA aggressively pushed for all teachers to be unionized too, even though teachers did not ask for their representation.
In 1976, NEA endorsed Jimmy Carter for president. When Carter was elected, his thank you gift to the NEA was an independent National Department of Education including a cabinet position.
This set a dangerous precedent of “educational” organizations meddling in politics to gain power and influence – exactly why our nation’s founders forbade federal influence in education. They knew education must be excellent and moral so that citizens can self-govern and protect our Republic, which is why they believed education was the responsibility of local townspeople. Parents ran the schools, hired the teachers, and oversaw curriculum decisions. The federal government and special interest groups were not invited.
In fact, between the late 1800s and 1930 (before teacher unions intruded) and when 80% of our school funding was from local sources, 20% from state sources and ZERO from the federal government, our students were thriving. Americans were highly successful across the educational spectrum, our country was flourishing, and our schools were the envy of the world.
Since NEA and the federal government took over our schools, student test scores have plummeted.
America now has 45 – 65 million functional illiterates. Many of these are high school graduates, yet they struggle…
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