GOVERNMENT EDUCATION AND A NATION AT RISK

Government education and A Nation at Risk

March 11, 2003

The Hoover Institute recently issued a report (a book actually) entitled, "Our Schools and Our Future ... are we still at risk?" The book, 300+ pages, revisits "A Nation At Risk." The following quote is from the Hoover Institute website at Stanford University:

"Twenty years ago, the National Commission on Excellence in Education delivered a shocking report called A Nation at Risk, which awakened millions of Americans to a national crisis in primary and secondary education. But today, while reverberations from that report are still being felt, solid and conclusive reforms in American primary and secondary education remain elusive. Why?"

Why, indeed! Undoubtedly, the answers given here will not be anything close to those given by the Hoover Institute, will not be politically correct, but will go to the root of the problem.

Government schools have inherent traits that seriously and directly affect their ability to reach the stated goal and that have never been addressed―

1. Government schools violate the First Amendment. Education, in every instance, is based upon a religious world view. As such, government schools violate the First Amendment prohibition of a state established religion and the free exercise of religion.

2. By their very construct, government schools serve the needs of the government, they do not serve the people.

3. Government schools are there to produce workers for a government managed economy.

4. Government schools are controlled from Washington, DC, not at the state or local level.

Such sheds a great deal of light on why government schools are failing and will continue to fail, despite the billions upon billions of taxpayer dollars that have been, and, undoubtedly, will be poured into them.

Hoover Institute, as part of Stanford University, an institution receiving federal assistance in the form of tax dollars, undoubtedly avoided, in its analyses, any mention or analysis of the above problems. Lest we forget, federal assistance spells compliance and conformity to the federal agenda, i.e., silence concerning any real problems or negative effects.

It is a proven fact that the farther from the people the governance structure is, the less efficient and less effective the institution. Thomas Jefferson,

"The true theory of our Constitution is surely the wisest and best ... When all government ... shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another, and will become as ... oppressive as the government from which we separated."

Government schools are no exception. As such, they are neither efficient nor effective. That condition will continue and grow worse as all power and governance has now been ceded, via grants to the states, to the federal government. The states and school districts; state departments of education, boards of education, and local school boards are but puppet bodies implementing the dictates out of Washington, DC.

The purpose of the government is to justify its existence. In that pursuit, government inevitably seeks increased power and position. It is the responsibility of the people to hold the government in check, to oversee the instruments established by our Founding Fathers to secure the rights of men. In failing to do so, the people have allowed the government to take control of education and use education to further the agenda of the government in pursuit of power and position. To that end,

1. the religions of humanism and New Age, also the religions of systems governance, are the foundation of what is being taught in the government schools.

2. children are not being taught to read; cannot think for themselves or express themselves either verbally or in writing; have insufficient command of the English language; can not spell; are not being taught the history of our nation; do not know one form of government from the next; for the most part, do not know the geography of our nation or the world, leaving them devoid of needed factual information; have limited exposure to math and science, robbing them of the factual knowledge base needed in many instances.

3. children are being encouraged to participate in nonacademic endeavors as a substitute for academic endeavors to include arts and crafts, music, sports, theater, drama, vocational prep ... and parents are being encouraged, in the interests of structured supervision, to leave their children in the school atmosphere longer each day.

All of this adds up to illiterate children who can spout the government line and rhetoric quite effectively, can tell you how he/she feels about any given issue, but whose opinions have no foundation in fact.

What is the solution? The solution is simple: disband government schools and the infrastructure that has been established to govern and operate them; privatize all education in the manner and fashion intended by our Founding Fathers and as prescribed by the First Amendment prohibiting the government from establishing a state religion or interfering in the free exercise of religion.

Given the current social, economic and political climate in the United States, this will not be an easy task. Too many people are apathetic, ignorant, and dependent on the government to do for them what they don't want to do for themselves. The transformation to a totally privatized system of education in accordance with the First Amendment of the United States Constitution would require dedication, perseverance, and patience. It would also require knowledge of the fundamental purpose of education and dedication to achieving that purpose.

The dismantling of the government school bureaucracy could also possibly be accomplished by the filing of a class action lawsuit challenging the right of any government or government institution, state or federal, to engage in the enterprise of education under the First Amendment (freedom of religion) and the Tenth Amendment (state's rights). Such a suit would, of course, have to prevail. That the U.S. Department of Education violates the Tenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution would not hurt such an endeavor.

However, totally privatized, education would, once again, be accountable to parents, be efficient as competition would drive the system, and, therefore, would be effective in graduating an innovative, creative, intelligent child, capable of using the scope of his/her knowledge to formulate a reasoned conclusion such that he/she can reach for the star or stars of his/her choice in a free market society.

Counter to the claims of the Hoover Institute and those of like mind, government education has been very effective in doing what it was intended to do: increase the power and position of the government. To expect that government schools will ever be effective in producing an innovative, creative, intelligent populace is a pipe dream.