No child left unbrainwashed: despite the political backlash from several states, the federal government continues to push its nationalized education agenda.

Federal aid to education is comparable to currying water in a leaky bucket from your own reservoir to a big central well. What is left of the water is poured into the well, and then those in charge apportion you some water in that same leaky bucket and you bring it home. Besides losing what water is spilled on the two-way trip, you eventually find yourself being told what to do with the water that remains--although it was your own water in the beginning.

--The Freeman, February 1961

Recently, one quarter of the nation's states complained loudly to the federal government about being "told what to do" with their remaining "water" for education. Twelve states passed resolutions criticizing the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLBA), and 138 Pennsylvania school superintendents protested the Act's provisions. Regarding this outcry, Susan Aspey, a Department of Education spokeswoman, smugly stated: "One hundred or so superintendents and a handful of state resolutions, only a few of which have actually passed both houses, hardly qualify as a widespread rebellion.... It's a sign the law is working." Talk about putting a positive spin on things!

Despite Aspey's confidence, the Bush administration decided recently to "relax" some of the NCLBA's rules. In calculated fashion, the administration hopes to mollify many of the state legislatures that have complained before they realize the true issues at stake.

States' Outrage

Why is it that so many states--including Utah, Idaho, Connecticut, Oklahoma, Virginia, Vermont, Washington, Arizona, Minnesota, Indiana and Wisconsin--are up in arms? Writing for the Congressional Quarterly, Anjetta McQueen calls the NCLBA the "most ambitious overhaul ever of the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act." In the NCLBA, the federal government is sues mandates associated with virtually every aspect of elementary and secondary education, from test performance to teacher quality to school safety to record keeping.

According to President George W. Bush, these mandates will not destroy local control. "The federal government will not micromanage how schools are run," he said when he signed the NCLBA into law on January 8, 2002. "We believe strongly--we believe strongly the best path to education reform is to trust the local people. And so the new role of the federal government is to set high standards, provide resources, hold people accountable, and liberate school districts to meet the standards."

But many of those affected by the NCLBA don't feel very liberated. Bill Weinberg, who quit the Kentucky Board of Education in November 2003 in protest of the NCLBA, calls it "an unwarranted intrusion into state and local control of schools." And James Dillard, a member of the Virginia House of Delegates, led the House in passing an anti NCLBA resolution that calls the Act "the most sweeping intrusion into state and local control of education in the history of the United States."

Much of the criticism of the Act, from both Democrats and Republicans, centers around the same basic issues, such as:

* lack of funding;

* "adequate yearly progress" (AYP) and school performance ratings:

* one-size-fits-all, unrealistic requirements regarding test participation and school transfers; and

* teacher qualification requirements.

Unfortunately, those myopically calling for amendments and changes to the NCLBA to address such details are missing the heart of the matter--the unconstitutional nature of the Act itself. Oklahoma state Representative Bill Graves (R), for one, recognizes the nature of this unconstitutional usurpation. When the Oklahoma State House of Representatives considered a resolution (HCR 1052) calling various aspects of the NCLBA "inappropriate," Graves introduced an amendment that asks the U.S. Congress to repeal the NCLBA. The amendment reads in part: "That in view of the fact that education is not part of the enumerated powers of the United States Congress under Article I of the Constitution ... Congress should repeal said law." The resolution, along with Graves' amendment, passed easily.

In Wickard v. Filburn (1942) the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, "It is hardly lack of due process for the Government to regulate that which it subsidizes." Yet most states seem to be content to be regulated as long as the federal government (via the overburdened American taxpayer) foots the bill for implementing those regulations. It is unfortunate that the states do not see how the federal government robs them of their own "water" (revenues), dribbles it back in a "leaky bucket," and then regulates the use of the water. It is even more unfortunate that most of our lawmakers do not appear to recognize the historical significance and dangers of government-subsidized, government-controlled education.

Enter Public Education

Public education became popular in the 18th century, when Prussian monarchs decided the best way to raise good Prussians was to control their education. Writing for the Action Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, doctoral student Michiel Visser of Oxford states: "Pupils were not primarily supposed to learn reading, writing, arithmetic or anything else, but were meant to become obedient citizens. The history of modern education, then, is a history of social control...."

As early as the mid-1600s, philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz wrote: "Make me the master of education, and I will undertake to change the world."

In 1763, Louis-Rene Caradeuc de la Chalotais (a French philosopher) wrote his Essay on National Education. Therein, he declared, "I claim the tight to demand for the Nation an education that will depend upon the State alone; because it belongs essentially to it, because every nation has an inalienable and imprescriptible right to instruct its members, and finally because the children of the State should be educated by members of the State." In the same year, Frederick II of Prussia made schooling compulsory for all children between five and thirteen.

It wasn't long before other monarchs followed Prussia's lead. Austria's Empress Maria Theresa used state-controlled education methods to strengthen her hold over Austria, and state-controlled education systems became popular throughout Europe, particularly after the French Revolution.

The school "reformer" Horace Mann, who toured German schools in the mid-1800s, was largely responsible for introducing compulsory public education, Prussian-style, in the United States.

The Collectivist's Religion

In the 20th century, state-controlled education has marked the reign of nearly every major dictator, who recognized that he could mold the minds of the nation's youth through the schools. "At every hour of every day, I can tell you on which page of which book each schoolchild in Italy is studying," boasted Benito Mussolini. On another occasion the fascist ruler declared: "It is the State which educates its citizens in civic virtue, gives them a consciousness of their mission and welds them into unity."

In 1918, shortly after the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, a congress of Party education workers stated:

   We must create out of the younger
   generation a generation of Communists.
   We must turn children, who
   can be shaped like wax, into real,
   good Communists.... We must remove
   the children from the crude influence
   of their families. We must
   take them over and, to speak frankly,
   nationalize them. From the first days
   of their lives they will be under the
   healthy influence of Communist
   children's nurseries and schools.
   There they will grow up to be real
    Communists.

Bolshevik education policy meant the displacement of the family as the nation's most important and fundamental social unit, the establishment of institutes to train state-approved teachers, and the disassociation of education from the church and its traditional values. Sound familiar?

Communists and fascists were not the only collectivists interested in monopolizing education. In 1937, Australian historian Stephen H. Roberts published a book entitled The House That Hitler Built. In his book, Roberts described public education under National Socialism in Germany:

   The Nazis have laid a heavy hand on
   education. They know that the textbooks
   of today are shaping the political
   realities of the decades to come,
   and accordingly have made every part
   of education--curiously enough,
   even mathematics--a training
   ground in Nazi ideology. As soon as
   the child enters an elementary school
   (Grundschule) at the age of six, his
   days are given over to the idealizing
   of the Nazis.

For those daring enough to challenge such totalitarian encroachments upon the family. Hitler had a prepackaged response. On November 6, 1933, Hitler confidently stated,

   When an opponent declares, "I will
   not come over to your side," I calmly
   say, "Your child belongs to us already....
   What are you? You will pass
   on. Your descendants, however, now
   stand in the new camp. In a short time
   they will know nothing else but this
   new community."

Our public education system is based on the philosophy of John Dewey, who was heavily influenced by the German-trained George Sylvester Morris, a Hegelian philosopher. * It should be kept in mind that Georg Hegel was the shared ideological godfather for modern collectivists of every stripe. Dewey became the most prominent promoter of so-called American "progressive education."

A collectivist, humanist and atheist, Dewey viewed education as a medium for social development and control. He lavished praise on the Soviet school system, writing:

   That which distinguishes the Soviet
   system both from other national systems
   and from the progressive
   schools of other countries is the conscious
   control of every educational
   procedure by reference to a single and
   comprehensive social purpose.

Dewey was a signer of the 1933 Humanist Manifesto. Two tenets of the manifesto state that "the universe" is "self-existing and [was] not created," and that "the traditional dualism of mind and body must be rejected." Dewey himself wrote:

   There is no God, and there is no soul.
   Hence, there are no needs for the
   props of traditional religion. With
   dogma and creed excluded then immutable
   truth is also dead and buried.
   There is no room for fixed, natural
   law or permanent moral absolutes.

Of course, Dewey had no intention of replacing a belief in God with an intellectual vacuum. He declared that "the teacher is always the prophet of the true God, and the usherer in of the true kingdom of God." Who was atheist Dewey's "true God"? It doesn't require much mental math to determine that Dewey's "true God" and "kingdom of God" was the collectivist state.

As simply one illustration of Dewey's lasting legacy and impact on public education in America, consider the following syllabus. Published by Purdue University's Department of Educational Studies, the syllabus states,

Every widely held rationale for social
studies education highlights the pre-eminent
role of the social studies in
the preparation of these democratic
citizens.... Indeed, the National Council
for the Social Studies (1994) has
defined the primary purpose of the
field as helping "young people make
informed and reasoned decisions for
the public good as citizens of a culturally
diverse, democratic society in
an interdependent world." [Emphasis
added.]

State-controlled education is the same in principle, no matter what it is labeled. Hitler's, Mussolini's and the Bolsheviks' systems of education were designed to compel the children to embrace the State as their savior. Dewey had the same goal. The United States has gone far down the path towards having a nationalized education system, where young people are indoctrinated with "civic virtue" and "a consciousness of their mission" by the State.

Many Americans, when presented with facts such as these, will claim that it is too much of a stretch to compare American public education with the systems of the Nazis, the Communists, and the Fascists. Granted, they do differ, but the difference has been narrowing (and if left unchecked, will continue to narrow) as the public school system is nationalized into a unified system controlled from Washington D.C. The NCLBA, in fact, is a huge step in that direction.

NCLBA Up Close

When stripped of its government-speak, it is clear that the NCLBA is a detailed road map for the eventual nationalization of education in the United States. In the name of improving schools, the measure seeks to place all schoolchildren under the federal government's scrutiny.

From the table of contents of the NCLBA, we read: "Title I: Improving the Academic Achievement of the Disadvantaged"; "Title II: Preparing, Training and Recruiting High Quality Teachers and Principals"; and "Title V: Promoting Informed Parental Choice and Innovative Programs."

At first glance, one is tempted to ask several questions, such as: What is wrong with seeing the "academic achievement of the disadvantaged" improved? Who wouldn't want to see their school staffed with "high quality teachers and principals"? But digging deeper into the hundreds of pages of NCLBA's text, beyond the gloss of the headlines, a more disturbing picture emerges.

In Title I, Section 1001, we read that its stated purpose is to close "the achievement gap between high- and low-performing children, especially the achievement gaps between minority and nonminority students, and between disadvantaged children and their more advantaged peers...." The NCLBA allows three performance levels to be defined by states (basic, proficient, and advanced), but evaluates the schools based on their proficiency performance level. The NCLBA says that states "shall ensure that all students will meet or exceed the State's proficient level of academic achievement on the State assessments within the State's timeline...." (Emphasis added.)

The following quotes, taken directly from Title I, Section 1111, underline the NCLBA's central theme: "the State plan shall describe a strategy for ensuring that students are taught the same knowledge and skills in such subjects and held to the same expectations as are all children"; "The academic standards required ... shall be the same academic standards that the State applies to all schools and children in the State"; "The State shall have such academic standards for all public elementary school and secondary school children ... which shall include the same knowledge, skills, and levels of achievement expected of all children." (Emphasis added.)

How realistic is it to expect children with learning disabilities to perform at the same level as 'all their other classmates, unless the schools lower the expectation of all the students to the level achievable by the learning disabled students? North Carolina state Representative Martin Nesbitt (D) sees the inherent illogicalness of this requirement: "You can't put a child who has a learning disability or other impediment in a class of 30 children and expect [him] to achieve at the level the other children achieve at."

The measure by which states show that they are narrowing the "achievement gap" is something called "adequate yearly progress" (AYP). In the words of the NCLBA, "Adequate yearly progress shall be defined by the State in a manner that applies the same high standards of academic achievement to all public elementary school and secondary school students in the State;" and "results in continuous and substantial academic improvement for all students...." (Emphasis added.)

Of particular concern are the ramifications of not meeting the Act's AYP requirements. If a school misses its AYP goals several years running, the NCLBA specifies what may happen to the school: "[replace] the school staff who are relevant to the failure to make adequate yearly progress"; "institute and fully implement a new curriculum"; "significantly decrease management authority at the school level"; "appoint an outside expert to advise the school on its progress toward making adequate yearly progress"; "extend the school year or school day for the school"; or "restructure the internal organizational structure of the school." (Emphasis added.) Of course, federal funding will require federal input in replacing the staff, drafting the new curriculum, decreasing management authority of the school, etc.

The imposition of these "remedies" under the NCLBA is not hypothetical but a very real threat. In February, the Washington Post noted that "as many as half the schools in some states have failed to meet the law's complicated definition of 'adequate yearly progress.'" And "there are bound to be more schools that don't make the grade," according to John F. Jennings, director of the Center on Education Policy.

Step by Step

To monitor how well the states are doing to improve their schools, the NCLBA requires the states to administer annual standardized tests in reading and math by the 2005-06 school year. Though the states are allowed to design their own tests, there is no doubt that standardized state tests, required by the federal government for federal monitoring, are a stepping-stone to standardized national testing, which in turn is a stepping-stone to a national curriculum. What is tested, after all, is what is taught.

And to ensure that the children are taught by qualified professionals, the NCLBA mandates that states must employ only "highly qualified" teachers and that such teachers must be "'certified" by the state in every subject they teach. But don't expect this mandate to improve academic performance! Since "look say" and other disastrous modern education teaching methods have set the public schools up for failure, failures will continue to occur--and under the NCLBA the federal government is well positioned to provide the "solution" in the form of more federal control on the road to a complete takeover. Many states have complained that they can't afford the additional cost of employing only "highly qualified" teachers. But they should also oppose this mandate on principle, since state certification of every teacher in every subject he teaches means that the local school districts will have even less control over their educational systems.

Step by step, control of education is being transferred from the parents to the school districts to the states to the federal government. And the No Child Left Behind Act is by no means the end result of what the usurpers want to achieve. If no child is to be left behind, could the "highly qualified" teacher certification requirement and other provisions of the NCLBA be extended to private schooling, including home-schooling, through future legislation? This question is not as far-fetched as it may seem at first glance, since, as should be clear by now, the NCLBA is a blatant federal power grab, Bush administration pronouncements about local control notwithstanding.

The true intent behind the NCLBA is unmasked by the Department of Education's stern reaction when a state refuses to play ball. For example, in February, the Utah House passed HB 43, which stated that Utah was not going to implement the Act because the NCLBA was an "unfunded mandate." The Bush administration descended on Utah like a hawk.

After the Utah House passed a bill refusing federal funds, and therefore removing the necessity for complying with the NCLBA's requirements, administration officials made three visits to Utah in less than a month, putting pressure on the Utah Senate. The Department of Education told state representative Margaret Dayton (the sponsor of the bill) and the Utah Senate that if Utah chose not to participate in the NCLBA, all federal education funding to the state would be terminated--even those funds unrelated to the Act. After the threat, according to Utah Republican Senator David Gladwell, the Senate consigned the bill to a committee where it would be studied "for the foreseeable future."

Because of the brush fires of revolt in many of the states, the Bush administration has now decided to "relax" several provisions of the NCLBA. For example, rural schools will now get an extra year--until 2007--to get a "highly qualified" teacher in every classroom. And, according to Department of Education officials, the federal government will also allow more flexibility in required participation rates on standardized tests. But rather than celebrate these "concessions," states should see them for what they are--carrots on a stick. They in no way change the inherent unconstitutional nature of the NCLBA.

Who Shall Teach?

Oklahoma state Representative Bill Graves has a better idea than "reforming" the NCLBA. He wants to get the federal government out of education by doing away with the Department of Education.

Graves told THE NEW AMERICAN that the Department of Education "should never have been created in the first place." He points out that the exact time when the federal government began to get involved in education was when the literacy rate in the U.S. began to decline. He blames this result on the fact that our public school system is based on the humanistic philosophy of John Dewey, which Graves summarizes as "dumb the kids down, and make the nation safe for socialism."

Graves" assessment of Dewey's philosophy is not exaggerated. Dewey himself once wrote, "The mere absorbing of facts and truths is so exclusively individual an affair that it tends very naturally to pass into selfishness. There is no obvious social motive for the acquirement of mere learning, and there is no clear social gain in success thereat." As long as our public school system is based on that approach, says Graves, we will continue to have problems with scholastic performance.

The elimination of the Judeo-Christian influence from our schools was one of the primary goals of John Dewey, who was overtly hostile towards traditional religion. This hostility to belief in God is one reason, Graves says, why private schools and home schooling have blossomed: Parents are waking up to the fact that the public schools are not delivering the kind of education they want for their children.

President Bush has stated that the "[NCLBA] reforms express my deep belief in our public schools and their mission to build the mind and character of every child...." But building children's minds and characters can be a noble or ignoble objective, depending on the values taught. So the essential question is this: Who shall teach, and what values shall be taught? Shall it be values of the parents or of the State?

The United States stands at a very important crossroads. The federal education bureaucracy would have you believe the signposts read "this direction--educate all children; that direction--leave some children behind." But in reality, the signposts read: "this direction--state-controlled education; that direction--freedom." We should hope--and pray--that the state legislatures and our representatives in Congress are literate enough to read these signposts and intelligent enough to choose the right direction.

To help put our education system back on track, it is of paramount importance to contact your state legislators and Congressmen; point out how the NCLBA and all federal involvement in education is un constitutional, and ask them to sponsor bills to reverse the nationalization of our schools--and of our children.

* Hegel's teleological account of history was later adapted by Marx and "inverted" into a materialist theory of historical development.

Jodie Gilmore, a home-schooling mother of two, is a freelance writer.