Revamping education? We can only hope

When he was a child, my husband’s nickname was “Sputnik.” That’s because he was born the day after the famous Russian satellite was successfully launched in 1957.

That historical moment spurred more than just a childish moniker for a young boy. It also spurred the so-called Space Race, a “symbol of the broad ideological and political contest between two rival world powers,” in the words of the National Air and Space Museum.

It also spurred a change in our public education system. Concerned that America was falling behind in educating its children when compared to global standards, rampant changes swept the nation. “Two generations after the event,” NASA chief historian Roger D. Launius wrote in 1997, “words do not easily convey the American reaction to the Soviet satellite.”

The most obvious concern was the failings of the U.S. educational system in comparison to the Soviets. “The schools are in terrible shape,” Life magazine noted in a 1958 five-part series addressing the crisis. “What has long been an ignored national problem, Sputnik has made a recognized crisis.”

Science education, in particular, was ramped up. “With the Soviets claiming the first manned spaceflight, the drive to create a generation of scientists and engineers intensified even further,” notes this article. “In the two decades after Sputnik soared into orbit, the NSF [National Science Foundation] contributed $500 million for teacher and classroom development.” Technology was brought into the classrooms for the first time, largely consisting of audio-visual aids that now seem primitive.

This revamping of America’s public education system culminated in 1979 when President Jimmy Carter authorized the Federal Department of Education. Things went downhill from there.

Rather than focus on what parents wanted their children taught – reading, writing, math, history, geography, science – suddenly America’s public schools lurched left into an agenda-driven curriculum. Whatever marvelous educational advances were promised, they’ve long since sputtered out in favor of progressive indoctrination.

My husband and I were in the midst of this educational reformation of the 1960s and 70s. I distinctly remember holding hands in a circle and singing Kumbaya. Far away in another state, my husband’s class participated in school-wide renditions of “In the Year 2525.” These activities didn’t teach us science or math, but they did herald the beginning of the decades-long process of turning children into proper little leftists.

In subsequent generations, parents have fought and fought and fought against these progressive fads with little success. Teachers were often required to incorporate lesson plans and teaching methodologies contrary to both educational success and common sense. The satirical songwriter and mathematician Tom Lehrer famously poked fun at this trend back in 1965 (watch this hilarious YouTube video to see what I mean).

And then it got worse. Older traditional teachers retired, and a younger, more radical agenda-driven crop of educators entered the field. Climate change, critical race theory, and gender ideology replaced history and math and especially science. Horrified parents yanked their kids out of school in droves, but it made little difference to the educators. Indoctrination was now the norm, aided and abetted by powerful teachers’ unions whose goals, apparently, have nothing to do with education and everything to do with retaining power.

It is for these reasons that I view Trump’s plan to dismantle the Department of Education as one of the most exciting possibilities for the incoming administration. That department should never have been formed in the first place.

Public education in America is broken. It is deeply, deeply broken. When our daughters were babies over 25 years ago, my husband and I decided we would never let them set foot in a public school, and they didn’t. (We homeschooled.) Twenty-five years later, education has deteriorated even more, spiraling down not just to laughable levels, but into the realm of absolute evil.

The federal Department of Education put kid-hating nutjobs in charge of education, and catered to every left-wing radical agenda that ever flitted across the minds of extremists.

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Now the left is in meltdown mode at the possibility of losing full control of the nation’s children. Teachers are freaking out in classrooms (see here and here and here and here and here and here and here) and administrators are in full damage-control mode, frantically trying to convince the public that all their efforts are beneficial and (/sarc/) for the children.

The plaintive cry of “We just need more money for schools!” continues to rent the air, but this time people aren’t buying it. The government has been throwing money at the problem for generations, and the educational results are worse than ever.

Children shouldn’t be “transitioned” for purposes of obscure gratification without their parents’ knowledge or consent. Parents shouldn’t be handcuffed and termed “domestic terrorists” and have the Dept. of Justice sicced on them for raising concerns at school board meetings. Parents are fed up with having children radicalized by teachers.

And that’s the point: Parents are fed up. Really seriously fed up. That’s one of the reasons Trump was elected an in an historical landslide. PARENTS ARE FED UP.

An EdChoice Schooling in America Survey from April 2024 showed fully 70% of the public and 64% of parents of school-age children think K-12 education is on the wrong track. A Pew Research Center poll found that only 16% of Americans were willing to say things are going in the right direction in education. The 2022 NAEP revealed that nationwide, 29% of the nation’s 8th-graders are proficient in reading, while just 26% are proficient in math. This is progress?

Spoiler alert, this is one of the many reasons Trump was reelected. As historian Victor Davis Hanson put it, “The fault, dear Democrats, is in yourselves.” He continued: “This election, the left committed the two cardinal sins of American politics: one, never talk down to the American people as too stupid to appreciate the wisdom of their supposed elite betters; and two, never abandon the upwardly mobile aspirations and real struggles of the middle class.”

Will Trump’s changes turn America’s schools around? I don’t know. But I do know something has to be done. We’ve become a laughingstock on the world stage. Our enemies (notably Russia and China) look upon the progressive indoctrination of our students and applaud. They know weakness when they see it.

The Founding Fathers deliberately omitted education from the Constitution. They knew it was not a federal matter, but an issue that should be left at the state or local level. Until a few decades ago, that was the case. Now it’s the opposite.

“The key to improving education quality and stopping schools from promoting a political agenda is restoring control over education to those most concerned that children receive a quality education and who best know children’s unique needs and abilities: Parents,” notes Ron Paul.

I’m willing to bet an enormous number of concerned parents aren’t so-called right-wing extremists; they’re centrist or even liberal. But where their kids are concerned, don’t poke the mama bears with a stick; they’ll fight back tooth and nail.

In fact, they just did.