Issue Position: Education

Issue Position

The Old Testament prophet Hosea wrote, "My people are destroyed from lack of knowledge." As it is in the area of spiritual matters, it is also true In the secular. For far too many years, the average test scores of American students have been falling further and further behind those of students in other nations, and what is the answer we hear for reversing this downward spiral? More money for the Department of Education. Yet despite this non-constitutionally authorized agency being given billions upon billions of dollars since its inception in 1979, the downward direction of our education system has continued. So we must ask, if all that money has not reversed this slide, how is more money the solution? If the continued growth, control and oversight of this department over our local schools has not improved our children's academic levels, then we must ask, what good is it?

With government money comes government control, dictates and interference. It is not the government's responsibility to see that our children are taught the knowledge necessary for them to become productive citizens, able to enjoy life, liberty and their pursuit of happiness. It is us, the parents' and sometimes grandparents' responsibility. Are we to believe that our schools receive back 100% of the dollars we send to Washington that is funneled to this agency? Hardly. If that money were not sent to support this bloated and unauthorized agency, then it could be left in our local communities to be given completely to our schools, without the federal government taking its "cut".

Instead what we now see is an insidious indoctrination occurring in our schools through such programs as "Common Core" and "CSCOPE". These curriculums that are being pushed upon us by the bureaucrats in Washington are antithetical to the values and principles of our founding. They teach that the patriots who participated in the Boston Tea Party were terrorists while those hijackers who flew the planes into the twin towers in New York City and the Pentagon and crashed a third plane in a field in Pennsylvania were "freedom fighters." They elevate the religion of Islam while denigrating Christianity and Judaism. Yet if schools accept the funding from the government, they must teach what the government tells them to teach. Those who promote such teachings are the enemies of freedom and our nation. It was Malcom X who said, "Only a fool would let his enemy teach his children." To see how destructive this "one size fits all" approach that can only be the result of a centrally-planned educational system, listen to this brief testimony of a distraught mother:

Given this, is it any wonder that young people today do not understand and appreciate how special and exceptional our nation has been? It is because they have no firm and truthful grasp of our founding and our principles as a nation. If an individual does not know from whence he came, he cannot know in which direction to go; and if as a nation we do not understand those things which gave us birth, we cannot know in which direction to secure that which we have.

Without knowledge there can be no liberty; without liberty, your children will have no opportunity to realize their dreams and their unalienable rights. We must return control over schools and curriculums to the parents of the students and their local school boards. This means the elimination of the wasteful Department of Education, leaving more funding and control at the local level. Our children deserve the best education; we can do better.

Source