CRAIGforCONGRESS
Missouri's 7th District, U.S. House of Representatives

 

 

 

Congressional Issues 2006
MORALITY AND CULTURE
Education

Kevin Craig believes that Education may well be the most important issue in this campaign.

The federal government makes it illegal for a school teacher in a government-run school to teach students that the Declaration of Independence really is true.
• that the existence of God is a "self-evident truth"
• that our rights are the product of intelligent design (not the government)
• that all Americans are obligated to conform their lives to "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God"
• that our actions must one day pass judgment with "the Supreme Judge of the world"
• that all Americans should have "a firm reliance on the Protection of Divine Providence."
The Federal Government says that teachers in government-operated schools paid for by your property taxes cannot "endorse" or "promote" these ideas. Students can be taught that a long time ago some people believed the Declaration of Independence was true, but teachers cannot say it really is objectively true, and that students can stand up and risk their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor in defense of those unchanging true principles.
And we wonder why the more government-education a person has, the more likely he is to be illiterate, anti-social, peer-dependent, easily-misled, and amoral. America's Founding Fathers would see government-run education as perhaps the greatest threat to the Republic they created. Government schools are certainly the greatest threat to the idea of "Liberty Under God."

America's Founding Fathers would say most Americans today are illiterate victims of educational malpractice at the hands of the federal government.

Our incumbent Congressman has repeatedly supported more control of education by the federal government, and should be turned out of office for this reason alone. Education is not one of the powers enumerated in the Constitution, and the federal Department of Education should be abolished if only for this procedural reason, to say nothing of the atheistic influence the federal government has had on American education.

Most voters in Southwest Missouri are Republicans, and should vote Libertarian because Libertarians make better Republicans than Republican Politicians. When our current Congressman was first elected in 1996, the Republican Party Platform repeated the promises made when Ronald Reagan campaigned for President:

As a first step in reforming government, we support elimination of the Departments of Commerce, Housing and Urban Development, Education, and Energy, and the elimination, defunding or privatization of agencies which are obsolete, redundant, of limited value, or too regional in focus. Examples of agencies we seek to defund or to privatize are the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and the Legal Services Corporation.

Libertarians would actually keep the promises made by Ronald Reagan in the 1980's and Republicans in 1996: abolish the Federal Department of Education. Instead, the Bush Administration, led by the Majority Whip in Congress, has worked to increase federal spending and control of local education. Not abolish, INCREASE federal control and spending.

Federal education spending is up 36 percent since Bush took office. In fact, federal education funding is increasing faster than states can spend it. In 2004, states returned $66 million in unused federal education dollars to Washington. At the beginning of 2005, the states held over $6 billion in unspent federal funds that were appropriated to them between FY2000 and FY2003. Lack of money is not the problem. Increased funding has no led to increased achievement. Over the past three decades, per-pupil education spending has doubled, but test scores have remained stagnant. (Heritage Foundation)

There are many reasons why conservatives in Southwest Missouri should be horrified at these broken promises.

A generation of government-run schools produces a generation of voters who vote for more government. The "public schools" under Presidents Johnson and Nixon produced the politicians and bureaucrats of the Bush-Clinton era -- and those who voted for them.

Every honest American, regardless of religion, should demand the separation of school and state. Every politician who takes an oath to "support the Constitution" should get the federal government out of education, because the Constitution gives the federal government no power over the intensely personal and local act of educating children.

Bureaucrats do not educate children as well as parents. Schools do better the more they resemble a family and the less they resemble a government institution.

But most important, government should get out of education because education is inescapably religious.

America's "Organic Law" on Public Schools

If most politicians ignore the irreplaceable role played by families in education, they seem hell-bent on ignoring the most fundamental purpose of schools in the eyes of America's Founding Fathers: to teach religion and morality.

The Federal Government has done everything it can to remove religion and morality from schools.

Politicians take an oath which the U.S. Supreme Court has said indicates an affirmation of America's "organic law." One part of America's Organic Law makes a stunning declaration about the purpose of education. In his concurring opinion in Engel v. Vitale, 370 US 421 at 443, the case which removed voluntary prayer from public schools, Justice Douglas admitted:

Religion was once deemed to be a function of the public school system. The Northwest Ordinance, which antedated the First Amendment, provided in Article III that 
Religion, morality, and knowledge 
being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, 
schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.

George Washington reminded the nation in his Farewell Address (one of the most important and influential [at one time] addresses in the history of the United States):

Of all the dispositions and habits, which lead to political prosperity, Religion, and Morality are indispensable supports.—In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of Men and Citizens. —The mere Politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them.—A volume could not trace all their connexions with private and public felicity.—Let it simply be asked where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths, which are the instruments of investigation in Courts of Justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition, that morality can be maintained without religion.—Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure—reason and experience both forbid us to expect, that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.—

Those who try to keep religion and morality separated from education violate their oath of office. Not a single person who signed the Constitution believed that education could or should be "secular"; none of them believed that public schools should not teach "religion, morality and knowledge." Nor should we.

Because education is intensely personal and inescapably value-laden, and because parents should have authority to choose the education their children will receive, government coercion is inappropriate. Atheists should not be taxed to provide Christian education, and Christians should not be taxed to provide secular education.

Most social problems can be traced to graduates of government schools who lack honesty, morality, virtue, integrity, and personal responsibility, and are tempted to engage in theft or fraud because they lack the income potential that comes from being able to read, write, calculate and competently discharge their assignments. America's Founding Fathers recognized the connection between ignorance and tyranny. Why don't we?

Capitalism and Education

Education is no more a governmental function than selling groceries.

The grocery store you go to each week is a miracle of capitalism. Billions of people in this world would be in awe at your grocery store. Aisle after aisle of clean, conveniently packaged items, all of the highest quality in the world, at the lowest prices in the world. The credit for this miracle goes to "greedy businessmen" and capitalists, not the government.

Why should we not have education provided by "greedy businessmen" as well? Parents would then have the choice of a wonderfully helpful selection of educational systems, with a variety which can help all the various and unique needs of individual children, with an appropriate emphasis on music, math or sports, as parents see fit, not as some government bureaucrat, responding to special interests, sees fit. Children would experience the highest quality education in the world, at the lowest prices -- far lower than inferior government-monopoly education costs today.

Any parent who deprives a child of food is subject to criminal prosecution.
Any parent who deprives a child of education is also subject to criminal prosecution.

Surely it is worse to starve a child to death than to neglect a child's education, yet we trust parents to get their kids fed! Nobody suggests that because the neighbor next door feeds her kids too many Hostess™ Twinkies®, that parental rights to feed children should be abolished, all grocery stores should be federalized, and government grocery stores should only sell one brand of food, which should be placed into consumers' shopping carts in appropriate amounts by government-credentialed "nutritionists." But that's how the government runs education. And your current Congressman has voted for more government control of education.

Give parents full choice over their children's education, just like they have full choice over their children's diet, and watch capitalists help parents give their children the highest test scores in the world.*

Not to mention honesty, morality, and Christian character -- which is what a majority of parents want for their children.

* Unless those parents are themselves victims of prior government education; see Consumer Protection, and FDA. This is why education is such an important issue. Parents want their children to be successful, fully-functioning adults. Government appears to want people to remain in a state of childlike dependence. Victims of government schools are easily misled by salesmen who were never taught Christian virtues in government schools, are are now willing to sell poison at a profit.

We trust businesses to provide our food, clothing, and shelter. We can trust businesses to provide education.

See also Kevin Craig's position on these issues:

After federal intervention in education is eliminated, we should work for the complete abolition of government interference in education at state and local levels. Kevin Craig supports the separation of school and state.

A Libertarian Position on Education:

The Issue: Government schools lead to the indoctrination of children and interfere with the free choice of individuals. Compulsory education laws… spawn prison-like schools with many of the problems associated with prisons…

The Principle: Education, like any other service, is best provided by the free market, achieving greater quality and efficiency with more diversity of choice.

Solutions: We advocate the complete separation of education and State. Government ownership, operation, regulation, and subsidy of schools and colleges should be ended. We call for the repeal of the guarantees of tax-funded, government-provided education, which are found in most state constitutions. We condemn compulsory education laws…and we call for an immediate repeal of such laws. Until government involvement in education is ended, we support elimination, within the governmental school system, of forced busing and corporal punishment. We further support immediate reduction of tax support for schools, and removal of the burden of school taxes from those not responsible for the education of children.

Transitional Action: As an interim measure to encourage the growth of private schools and variety in education, including home schooling, we support tax credits for tuition and other expenditures related to an individual's education. We likewise favor tax credits for child care and oppose nationalization of the child-care industry. We oppose denial of tax-exempt status to schools because of those schools' private policies on hiring, admissions and student deportment. We support the repeal of all taxes on the income or property of private schools, whether profit or non-profit.

From the National Libertarian Party Platform.

Federal Education is an attack on the Family.

Virtue 101- character education in schools

Culture (independent.org)
The Theory of Education in the United States by Albert Jay Nock | [The Page-Barbour Lectures for 1931 at the University of Virginia.]

Teaching Captivity?
Discover the Reality of the Gay Agenda in Public Schools

Bush promised that his No Child Left Behind Act would permit children to transfer out of dangerous public schools. But states defined "persistently dangerous" schools to insure that almost no children can escape violence. A Colorado school with a thousand students could have more than 150 homicides in a single year and still not be classified as dangerous.
—James Bovard, "Bush's Top Ten Farces"

Federal Control of Education is Unconstitutional.

Congressmen must take an oath to "support the Constitution." America's Constitution has as one of its most basic features the concept of "delegated authority." The Federal Government has no power to do anything unless "We the People" delegated that power to the Federal Government in the Constitution. For example, America's Founding Fathers gave the Federal Government no power to regulate the sale and distribution of alcohol, so when Prohibitionists wanted the Federal Government to ban alcohol in the early 20th century, they had to amend the U.S. Constitution to give the feds that power. Amending the Constitution is a significant obstacle to increasing government power. (When Prohibition was found to be a tragic and costly failure, the 18th Amendment was repealed.)

The Constitution gives the Federal Government no power to tell your local school what to teach or not to teach. The Constitution gives the Federal Government no power to take money from Christians to teach evolution, or to take money from atheists to teach religion and morality. The Constitution has never been amended to give the Federal Government power over your children's education. Therefore Congressmen who voted for Bush's "No Child Left Behind" Act violated their oath of office.

Kevin Craig would "push the button" and eliminate all federal control of education, abolish the Federal Department of Education, and cut all government spending on education. If elected, of course, this would not happen. But perhaps 434 other representatives need to hear a voice that suggests that the 110th Congress should:

  • identify and list all federal education programs;
  • abolish all programs and agencies (including the Department of Education) not provided for by the Constitution;
  • return education to the state, local, and family level;

  • devolve responsibility for special education to the states,

  • eliminate federal regulations that waste resources and pit parents against teachers, and

  • refuse to turn the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act into an entitlement for state governments.

The Underground History of American Education

John Taylor Gatto

Prologue

The shocking possibility that dumb people don’t exist in sufficient numbers to warrant the millions of careers devoted to tending them will seem incredible to you. Yet that is my central proposition: the mass dumbness which justifies official schooling first had to be dreamed of; it isn’t real.

PART ONE
Of Schooling, Education, And Myself
Chapter One
The Way It Used To Be

Our official assumptions about the nature of modern childhood are dead wrong. Children allowed to take responsibility and given a serious part in the larger world are always superior to those merely permitted to play and be passive. At the age of twelve, Admiral Farragut got his first command. I was in fifth grade when I learned of this. Had Farragut gone to my school he would have been in seventh.
Chapter Two
An Angry Look At Modern Schooling

The secret of American schooling is that it doesn’t teach the way children learn and it isn’t supposed to. It took seven years of reading and reflection to finally figure out that mass schooling of the young by force was a creation of the four great coal powers of the nineteenth century. Nearly one hundred years later, on April 11, 1933, Max Mason, president of the Rockefeller Foundation, announced to insiders that a comprehensive national program was underway to allow, in Mason’s words, “the control of human behavior.”
Chapter Three
Eyeless In Gaza

Something strange has been going on in government schools, especially where the matter of reading is concerned. Abundant data exist to show that by 1840 the incidence of complex literacy in the United States was between 93 and 100 percent, wherever such a thing mattered. Yet compulsory schooling existed nowhere. Between the two world wars, schoolmen seem to have been assigned the task of terminating our universal reading proficiency.
Chapter Four
I Quit, I Think

I lived through the great transformation which turned schools from often useful places into laboratories of state experimentation with the lives of children, a form of pornography masquerading as pedagogical science. All theories of child-rearing talk in averages, but the evidence of your own eyes and ears tells you that average men and women don’t really exist except as a statistical conceit.

PART TWO
The Foundations Of Schooling
Chapter Five
True Believers And The
Unspeakable Chautauqua

From start to finish, school as we know it is a tale of true believers and how they took the children to a land far away. All of us have a tiny element of true believer in our makeups. You have only to reflect on some of your own wild inner urges and the lunatic gleam that comes into your own eyes on those occasions to begin to understand what might happen if those impulses were made a permanent condition.
Chapter Six
The Lure Of Utopia

Presumably humane utopian interventions like compulsion schooling aren’t always the blessing they appear to be. For instance, Sir Humphrey Davy’s safety lamp saved thousands of coalminers from gruesome death, but it wasted many more lives than it rescued. That lamp alone allowed the coal industry to grow rapidly, exposing miners to mortal danger for which there is no protection. What Davy did for coal producers, forced schooling has done for the corporate economy.
Chapter Seven
The Prussian Connection

In 1935, at the University of Chicago’s experimental school where John Dewey had once held sway, Howard C. Hill, head of the social science department, published an inspirational textbook called The Life and Work of the Citizen. The title page clearly shows four cartoon hands symbolizing law, order, science, and the trades interlocked to form a perfect swastika. By 1935, Prussian pattern and Prussian goals had embedded themselves so deeply into the vitals of institutional schooling that hardly a soul noticed the traditional purposes of the enterprise were being abandoned.
Chapter Eight
A Coal-Fired Dream World

A dramatic shift to mass production and mass schooling occurred in the same heady rush. Mass production could not be rationalized unless the population accepted massification. In a democratic republic, school was the only reliable long-range instrument available to accomplish this. Older American forms of schooling would not have been equal to the responsibility which coal, steam, steel, and machinery laid upon the national leadership. Coal demanded the schools we have and so we got them—as an ultimate act of rationality.
Chapter Nine
The Cult Of Scientific Management

“In the past,” Frederick Taylor wrote, “Man has been first. In the future, System must be first.” The thought processes of the standardized worker had to be standardized, too, in order to render him a dependable consumer. Scientific management spread rapidly from the factory into the schools to seek this goal.

PART THREE
A Personal Interlude
Chapter Ten
My Green River

The great destructive myth of the twentieth century was the aggressive contention that a child could not grow up correctly in the unique circumstances of his own family. Forced schooling was the principal agency broadcasting this attitude.

PART FOUR
Metamorphosis
Chapter Eleven
The Crunch

The experience of global war gave official school reform a grand taste for what was possible. Government intervention was proclaimed the antidote for all dissent. In every nook and cranny of American life new social organizations flourished, all feeding on intervention into personal sovereignty and family life. A new republic was here at last just as Herbert Croly announced, and government school was its church.
Chapter Twelve
Daughters Of The Barons
of Runnemede

The new compulsion-school institution was assigned the task of fixing the social order into place, albeit with the cautions of Pareto and Mosca kept in mind. Society was to reflect the needs of modern corporate organization and the requirements of rational evolution. The best breeding stock had to be protected and displayed. The supreme challenge was to specify who was who in the new hierarchical order.
Chapter Thirteen
The Empty Child

The basic hypothesis of utopia-building is that the structure of personhood can be broken and reformed again and again. The notion of empty children was the most important concept which inspired social architects and engineers to believe that schools could indeed be remade into socialization laboratories.
Chapter Fourteen
Absolute Absolution

God was pitched out of forced schooling on his ear after WWII. This wasn’t because of any constitutional proscription—there was none that anyone had been able to find in over a century and a half—but because the political state and corporate economy considered the Western spiritual tradition too dangerous a competitor. And it is.
Chapter Fifteen
The Psychopathology Of Everyday Schooling

None of the familiar school sequences is defensible according to the rules of evidence, all are arbitrary; most grounded in superstition or aesthetic prejudice of one sort or another. Pestalozzi’s basic “Simple to Complex” formulation, for instance, is a prescription for disaster in the classroom.

PART FIVE
The Problem Of Modern Schooling
Chapter Sixteen
A Conspiracy Against Ourselves

Spare yourself the anxiety of thinking of this school thing as a conspiracy, even though the project is indeed riddled with petty conspirators. It was and is a fully rational transaction in which all of us play a part. We trade the liberty of our kids and our free will for a secure social order and a very prosperous economy. It’s a bargain in which most of us agree to become as children ourselves, under the same tutelage which holds the young, in exchange for food, entertainment, and safety. The difficulty is that the contract fixes the goal of human life so low that students go mad trying to escape it.
Chapter Seventeen
The Politics Of Schooling

At the heart of the durability of mass schooling is a brilliantly designed power fragmentation system which distributes decision-making so widely among so many warring interests that large-scale change is impossible without a guidebook. Few insiders understand how to steer this ship and the few who do may have lost the will to control it.
Chapter Eighteen
Breaking Out Of The Trap

The only conceivable way to break out of this trap is to repudiate any further centralization of schooling in the form of national goals, national tests, national teaching licenses, school-to-work plans, and the rest of the utopian package which accompanies these. Schooling must be desystematized, the system must be put to death. Adam Smith has correctly instructed us for more than two centuries now that the wealth of nations is the product of freedom, not of tutelage. The connection between the corporate economy, national politics, and schooling is a disease of collectivism which must be broken if children are to become sovereign, creative adults, capable of lifting a free society to unimaginable heights. The rational manage- ment model has damaged the roots of a free society and the free market it claims to defend.
Epilogue

What has happened in our schools was foreseen long ago by Jefferson. We have been recolonized silently in a second American Revolution. Time to take our script from this country’s revolutionary start, time to renew traditional hostility toward hierarchy and tutelage. We became a unique nation from the bottom up, that is the only way to rebuild a worthy concept of education.
About The Books I Used

Index

Acknowledgments

About The Author
"Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty."

—Thomas Jefferson

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