Top-Down Education
by Joanne Mandel

Having narrowly escaped the attempt to muscle through "immigration reform," voters ought to take note of another slow moving train headed our way courtesy of the combined efforts of big business and leftist progressives who seem to hold the trump cards in Congress. Many of the same deceptive tactics on display during the attempt to pass the immigration bill, before the public realized that their concerns were being ignored, were used quite successfully when Congress passed an "education reform" bill in 2002. Then, too, it was Senator Ted Kennedy and President George W. Bush who championed passage over objections raised by grassroots groups. Coming before the advent of the united efforts of bloggers and talk show hosts, the concerns of everyday Americans had no chance to prevail. In 2002, the details in the 700-plus pages of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) never entered the public debate.

Senator Lamar Alexander, who supports re-authorizing the No Child Left Behind Act, nonetheless has said it represents the high-water mark of federal involvement in local schools which runs against the historic grain of American education. By "federal involvement" he means top-down, centralized control, an arrangement more in keeping with the European political model where a governing elite, insulated from voter concerns by their political system, determines what is best for the country. Our system of government based upon the consent of the governed is intended to be quite different.

An excellent way to become an informed citizen, ready to participate in the battle over reauthorization of NCLB this September, is offered in the 150-page book, America's Schools: Battleground for Freedom (2005) by Allen Quist, Professor of Political Science at Bethany Lutheran College. It is our good fortune that Mr. Quist has both a scholarly and a practical interest in this massive federal intrusion into the management of every school in the country. And it is his shining accomplishment to have written a comprehensive analysis, the sort that is essential if the truth is to emerge.

In his book, Mr. Quist shows how NCLB meets the demands of special interest groups at the expense of everyday Americans. Corporate management, not thinking beyond the bottom line, lobbied hard for an education program that would supply them with pre-trained, entry-level workers. Leftist progressives have managed to establish a curriculum based on the National Standards for Civics and Government (an updated version of the National History Standards which the US Senate voted down 99 to 1 in 1995). After years of lessons - in science as well as social studies classes - filled with reminders of our national flaws and failures - many high school graduates no longer regard themselves as citizens of the United States but rather proudly regard themselves as "citizens of the world," in keeping with the leftist progressive attitude at the heart of the National Standards.

The author calls our attention to an apt description of the battle lines in American education: "Most Americans see the public school as an institution dedicated to the transmission of knowledge...[but others] view it as an agent of radical social change." Traditional academic education, committed to teaching the fundamental principles of freedom to our children, is being swept aside. “American Schools: The Battleground for Freedom” offers well-documented support for the argument that the latter are using K-12 instruction to promote radical social change.

The author explains that the new curriculum is meant to accomplish some very curious things: it undermines both national sovereignty, ignoring the need for national borders, and love of G-d and country which are treated as outdated and divisive barriers to world peace. The themes throughout K-12 promote multiculturalism and a postmodern perspective that disqualifies rational argument and the distinction between good and evil. Mr. Quist's concise accounts of these concepts expose the destructive potential of the new curriculum. Children who subscribe to it cannot be expected to serve their country in time of need.

Proponents of nationalizing education under the guise of "education reform" are clever and those who haven't learned to read between the lines are sure to be out-foxed. A notable instance of the success of their tactics came in 1994 when President Bill Clinton signed three education bills. Critics of Goals 2000: Educate America Act, the most controversial of the three, were won over by assurances that participation by the states would be voluntary. After it passed they found out that any state that decided not to participate would be denied education funding. It was the proverbial 'offer you couldn't refuse' and all 50 States eventually complied.

Goals 2000 effectively took education policy in a new direction. NCLB incorporates that departure from traditional arrangements and includes controls to prevent any backsliding by the states. The goals established in 1994 require that the high school graduation rate increase to at least 90 percent, that United States students be first in the world in mathematics and science achievement, and that every school promote partnerships that will increase parental involvement and participation in promoting the social, emotional, and academic growth of children. These goals are cause for concern for several reasons. First of all, the goals read like a utopian wish list and require a level of success obtainable only in the world to come. Yet, they are not simply aspirations, they are legal obligations.

What sort of mischief might a school undertake without the knowledge or consent of parents under this partnership arrangement? The fact that Washington executed an end run around the 10th amendment to the US Constitution, the one that restricts federal involvement in all powers that are reserved to the states and the people, when it hijacked education policy should raise a red flag. Goals 2000 and NCLB with their federal mandates for curriculum standards, annual testing and massive data collection on every child are features of a heavy-handed, top down centralized regime, one most out of step with the American system of government. In fact it is at cross-purposes with the latitude needed to be a self-governing people. This breach of custom was candidly acknowledged in a progress report submitted by the federal government to the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 2000.*

"Most countries have national curricula and even national examinations...In the United States, however, education is managed at the state and local levels...Thus, the very concept of designing and agreeing on a [national] set of learning outcomes across traditional jurisdictional lines is new, and in the minds of many, unsettling and undesirable. [p. 12 of the progress report]"

In June of 2007 President George W. Bush challenged critics of NCLB by insisting that the law does indeed promote local control of schools. He seems to have reduced the meaning of "local control" to local responsibility for fixing what Washington says is wrong. Despite the president's claims, there has been a fundamental transfer of control from the local and state level to a centralized bureaucracy in the nation's capitol. That shift was facilitated by the absence of information that might have alerted the public to the growing strength of a multicultural worldview in American educational and political circles.

Classrooms have truly become the battleground for individual freedom. All too often what is taught in K-12 is subtly indoctrinating children with values, attitudes and beliefs that conform to a multicultural and internationalist agenda, the one that almost prevailed in the battle over the immigration bill. We are now being made to submit to policies orchestrated in Washington and even Paris. Because it is ignored in public discourse, we have not recognized how much our status as self-governing people has been eroded. We may still vote for local school board members but those really calling the shots are a long way from home.

*A copy of the annual Report of the National Goals Panel is available at state departments of education or state libraries.