President Trump signed an executive order on Thursday to “shut down” the federal Department of Education, keeping the same campaign promise President Reagan failed to keep over forty years ago. The order goes as far in eliminating the department as the executive branch has the power to go without a successful bill in Congress, which created the department in 1979.
The purpose of the order is to transfer most of the administrative and management functions over public education back to the states while not decreasing or eliminating federal funding of education, including subsidies and guaranteed student loans. It is a good first step but does not address the massive economic distortions in the education industry created by federal financial interventions.
The order is not specific on which functions will be transferred back to the states or eliminated. It simply states, “The Secretary of Education shall, to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law, take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return authority over education to the States and local communities while ensuring the effective and uninterrupted delivery of services, programs, and benefits on which Americans rely.”
Since Congress created the department in 1979 and the bill creating it was duly signed by President Carter, it cannot be formally abolished without a new bill passed in Congress and signed by Trump. Therefore, what functions, if any, the law permits eliminating or transferring to the states is unclear. The administration may decide to find out by trial and error.
Ironically, the order exercises a power it is theoretically written to eliminate: the use of federal funding as leverage to dictate to the states what they may or may not do in terms of how they manage public education:
“Consistent with the Department of Education’s authorities, the Secretary of Education shall ensure that the allocation of any Federal Department of Education funds is subject to rigorous compliance with Federal law and Administration policy, including the requirement that any program or activity receiving Federal assistance terminate illegal discrimination obscured under the label “diversity, equity, and inclusion” or similar terms and programs promoting gender ideology.”
This is based upon the conservative viewpoint that all affirmative action, including the newest branded under “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) violates the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and other federal civil rights legislation. It’s hard to dispute this since the thrust of all those laws is to prohibit the consideration of race, sex, or religion when hiring employees, granting admission to universities, etc. and the stated goal of DEI is to do precisely what the laws prohibit.
The problem with this is that a subsequent Democratic president could write an order requiring any educational institution receiving federal funding to have a DEI program and meet quotas for racial or gender categories. So, the order doesn’t really even attempt to abolish or reduce this aspect of federal interference in state and local public education.
Neither does the order affect the tremendous economic harm done by federal subsidization, especially the guarantee of student loans for college tuition. As I’ve covered in a previous podcast, this intervention has resulted in an absurd artificial rise in college tuition prices. Most of the money has not gone into hiring more teachers but rather to an explosion in the number of administrators in higher education. And, as Trump and other conservatives point out, this has not led to better educated students. Quite the contrary.
Even if the administration were successful in getting a bill through Congress to completely abolish the Department of Education and truly return public education to the states, it would not be a panacea for the ills of government schooling. While an electoral map may indicate more red states than blue states and one may be tempted to think that would translate into a more conservative perspective prevailing in public education in those states, it likely would not.
Even in the reddest of red states, almost 8 out of 10 of the teachers at public schools (almost 9 out of ten in elementary schools) are college educated women, the overwhelming majority white. As a recent survey shows, this demographic is drastically left of just about any other, including racial minorities and other white women. As has been the case since the dawn of the progressive era, sending your child to public school from Kindergarten through senior year high school ensures they will be immersed in left wing values throughout their formative years.
And we all know what happens when they get to the university level.
One shouldn’t assume that private schooling is much different. I decided twenty years ago that my child would be homeschooled based purely on the anti-capitalism I recognized in my own education, most of which was in private schools (I attended Catholic elementary school, high school, and college. Only my graduate work was done at a state school). This was before the Marcusean-Marxist revolution has fully infected the education system.
Contrary to what a lot of people believe, there was never a time when education wasn’t primarily about instilling the “right” political values in children. Plato acknowledged this. So did Hobbes and Rousseau. Ironically, even Jefferson wrote a resolution to ensure his University of Virginia would indoctrinate students in his preferred Lockean libertarian principles.
Among the stated goals of the public school system constructed by American progressives was to “Christianize the Catholics” and promote other early progressive values. They have since swapped Christianity out for a new religion focused on environmentalism and racial “equity.” But it is not less religious or zealous.
The only true answer to freeing children from some sort of indoctrination is the libertarian one, to abolish mandatory schooling. Left to a free market where parents weren’t forced to send their children to school at all – the situation for about half of American history – many more educational choices would emerge that wouldn’t necessarily follow the regimented structure supported by liberals and conservatives alike.
It is no accident that a huge proportion of the the richest men in the world today dropped out of college or otherwise rejected the traditional schooling system. Neither did many of the founders acquire their education in a school setting. As John Taylor Gatto so eloquently reminded us, “schooling” and education are two very different things.
For Americans of the 21st century, education means unlearning the nonsense they were taught in school.
Trump’s executive order is a good first step in at least starting a conversation about government involvement in education, especially at the federal level. But there is a long way to go after that in freeing American children from left wing indoctrination.
This originally appeared on Tom Mullen Talks Freedom.
