OPINION:
President Donald Trump has moved forward with a campaign promise to abolish the Department of Education and is prepping an executive order to do just that as we speak, NBC News reported, citing Capitol Hill sources.
And of course, the Democrats are in an uproar. But the federalization of America’s public school system never should have occurred in the first place.
The education of our nation’s children rests firmly in the hands of parents and family to oversee; secondly, local governments; thirdly, the state; and finally, coming in last place — if at all — the feds. That’s how Founding Fathers envisioned the proper chain of command for the education of youth; that’s the chain of command the Constitution of the United States recognizes and respects. Both Ninth and Tenth Amendments make clear: the powers not specifically granted the federal branches are assumed as the rights of the people and reserved to the respective states.
Education of children is not a constitutional role of the federal government — despite what Democrats and leftists and Jimmy Carter, the former president who gave us the DOE, as a concession to the unions — despite what these sources might say; despite how these sources might cite the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as cause for ensuring all the states provide suitable education for youth; despite how these sources dug deep and spun hard to use that amendment as justification for the creation of the federal agency in 1979. It’s been a square peg in a round hole from the get-go. And the politicization and weaponization of education in America have left children — remember the children? — as the exploited tools of a determined left that wants nothing less than to raise the next generation of leaders to hate Western ideals and dumb down the citizenry at large so as to better control the population. The money in education speaks volumes.
From OpenSecrets.org: “Political donations from the education industry largely come from individuals associated with various institutions, as universities and schools typically cannot form PACs. The industry reached new heights in political donations with their highest cycle ever coming in the 2016 presidential year with the 2018 cycle becoming a close second. The industry dramatically favors liberals and has become more liberal in preference as the industry has spent more money.”
Education industry — the term alone is somewhat chilling. It reminds of references to the military-industrial complex and images of boots stomping Marxists as they march on, march on, march on toward their next social justice experiment.
Yet this is what feds have done to education. They’ve turned it into a political, money-making, money-sharing, influence-buying beast — for the ideological left.
“Democrats haven’t received under 70 percent of education industry donations in a cycle since 2002,” OpenSecrets.org wrote.
Think about that.
For more than two decades, the clear beneficiaries of education lobbyists have been the Democrat Party, Democrat politicians, Democrat congressional members. They haven’t received less than 70% of all monetary contributions since 2002. No wonder America’s schools are churning out the sheep. No surprise the graduates of today become the anti-American activists of tomorrow. The streets are filled with brick-throwing, Molotov cocktail-hurling, antisemitic-screaming, MAGA-bashing, Marxist-loving, medicated maniacs — the pride of the education industry leaders. They don’t think; they knee-jerk. And they believe Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is brilliant.
This is what federal takeover of education — of children’s minds — brings. And seated at the top of the pyramid of federal infiltration, dealing and wheeling and double-dealing and wheeling on behalf of teachers’ unions, sits the Department of Education.
“You can divine the true purpose of the Department of Education from its history as well as from its spending priorities,” The Heritage Foundation wrote. “The department was founded in 1980 by President Carter as a political reward to the National Education Association (NEA). … Looking at the department’s spending priorities confirms how the department was meant to address the material and political concerns of the unions. In its first year, more than half of the department’s budget was designed to pour cash into districts facing a financial pinch from the Baby Bust and local taxpayer revolts.”
Political agenda, meet federal fist.
The Department of Education has become the masthead of all that’s wrong with America’s education system. Enough of the progressive-socialist-communist-Marxist-collectivist ideologies, already.
“The top 20 recipients of education industry money in 2018 were all Democrats,” OpenSecrets.org wrote.
“In 2018, individuals from the education industry gave more than $64.5 million to Democrats and just $7.8 million to Republicans,” OpenSecrets.org wrote.
“[In] 2016 … more than $75 million [went] to Democrats and $12 million to Republicans,” OpenSecrets.org wrote.
In the 2023-2024 cycle, the top education industry donors — University of California, Stanford University, Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University and Columbia University — gave between $14 million and $2.7 million to Democrats, and between $313,569 and $95,261 to Republicans. That’s quite a difference.
That speaks clearly on the matter of why many of today’s youth seem less concerned with the loss of American Exceptionalism and more upset about the potential of losing TikTok.
If America wants to have an education system that brings forth critically thinking and ingenious creatives who can carry this country into global dominance for years to come, then leftist infusion of money into the education system must be slowed and federal controls on the shaping of youthful minds must stop.
Dismantling the Department of Education is a good place to begin.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on X @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter and podcast by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “God-Given Or Bust: Defeating Marxism and Saving America With Biblical Truths,” is available by clicking HERE.
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