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And the Real Cost of Indoctrination
By J. Jeff Toler for Shenandoah Christian Alliance j.toler@sca4christ.org
- Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. —James 3:1
In fiscal year 2024, the Department of Education (DOE) spent $268 billion. Since 1980, DOE spending has increased 372%, which is almost double the growth rate of the rest of the federal government.
The DOE has become rapidly insane. Most of the DOE funding supports educational institutions that critics have long been arguing producing politically radical graduates in immense numbers, which are already having a grievous impact on our political discourse and systems for decades.
Ben Shapiro has said, “If you didn’t like the Hamas “tentifadas” on [college] campuses last year, you can blame the fact that we as a society have decided it is deeply imperative that we send all of our teenagers to institutions of higher education that indoctrinate them in trash. You can blame that on the fact that our lower education institutions, secondary education like high school, [and] primary education has been indoctrinating kids with left-wing values for decades.” 1.
When it comes to higher education last year, the Department of Education spent $165 billion on higher education.
It’s ironic really. Being a public servant has been the most lucrative, protected job in the history of the republic. We can’t compare a bureaucracy to autocracy, theocracy, and certainly not to a democracy. In fact, when Democrats talk about the threat to democracy, bureaucracy is what they are really thinking about.
Hopefully, under the Trump presidency, the DOE’s freewheeling history of fraudulent left-wing indoctrination will soon be over. Based on his whirlwind pace, there is a better than good chance it will. Consider:
In just four weeks, President Donald Trump has been upending everything that the Washington DC “swamp” holds “sacred”—if you can call their schemes sacred.
Just last week, he banned the Associated Press from the Oval Office and Air Force One for refusing to use the new name, “Gulf of America.”
He imposed 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, and preparing reciprocal tariffs for countries that are taxing American-made goods.
Trump spoke with several foreign leaders, with talks with Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy in what is shaping up to be an offramp for both leaders to end the war in Ukraine.
He spoke with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, discussing defense, trade, and mineral supply chains. On Tuesday he hosted King Abdullah II of Jordan to discuss the situation in Gaza.
On Thursday, he hosted India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the White House for a joint press conference. They announced a new initiative focusing on military cooperation, trade, and technology sharing. Trump will boost military sales to India by “many billions” of dollars, and revealed plans to collaborate on semiconductor development and artificial intelligence technologies.
He appeared with Elon Musk in the Oval Office, who detailed how DOGE has been finding waste and fraud—targeting the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. (CFPB) Trump ordered its 1,700 employees to stop most of their work as he cut off their funding.
Trump managed to secure the release of Marc Fogel, who was arrested and thrown in Russia’s Rybinsk prison for possessing medical marijuana. His was a bad idea, but hardly deserving three and a half years.
But it was Trump’s creation of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to be headed by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy (who later bowed out to run for governor of Ohio) has proved to be nothing less than political genius. Already DOGE is discovering $billions in wasteful, fraudulent, and deeply self-serving projects using our tax-payer money.
While wasting or simply syphoning off other people’s money is one thing, using it to further outrageously divisive, ideological, and unpopular schemes is quite another.
Christopher F. Rufo
Shapiro sat with Christopher F. Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor of City Journal, and the author of “America’s Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything” to discuss what was discovered by DOGE. 2.
Their conversation revealed something few of us—certainly parents—ever even knew existed:
Equity Assistance Centers at the Department of Education
These centers were established by legislation going back to the 1960s to provide colorblind equality and education. They are, claims Rufo, “a kind of noble principle, but as with much of our civil rights apparatus it’s been hijacked by the radical left.”
These education centers receive millions of dollars in public funds and they’re in charge of advising public school districts in all 50 states who have been captured by leftwing radicals promoting a Black Lives Matter agenda, and who describe the education system as a “concentration camp.” 3. I don’t know what’s worse: the irony or the hyperbole!
We’ve already learned how and when the DOE was created in 1979, 4. and deep into the Carter administration. 45 years is plenty of time to corrupt good intentions. After all, as you know, the road to hell is paved with them.
The extent of the systematic infiltration, positioning, and domination of the education systems has exacted serious damage, and extracted otherwise potentially brilliant minds from learning the orthodoxy of a liberal education—in the classic sense of the word.
According to Rufo, the Department of Education is an “institution that spends billions of dollars every year and it functions in essence as a left-wing patronage machine.”
“The Ibram X Khendi / Robin D’Angelo style narrative is being pushed by thousands of employees associated with the Department. They’re saying America is fundamentally racist. They’re saying that all white people function as white supremacists. They’re saying [to white people] you have to give up your power, privilege, and resources to the oppressed.”
The havoc this has created in our schools should be obvious by now. Theoretically, this kind of propaganda has linkage to the rise in school shootings, campus strife, and the lower ranking in STEM scores. 5. Many may be discouraged with the curriculum our students need to develop into upwardly mobile adults as their parents—and all their parents before them—have managed to do for generations.
While Trump is already getting predictable pushback for his claim that America’s students rank last in the top 40 nations, his claim that, “We’re at the top of the list when it comes to cost per pupil,” is almost impossible to dispute. It begs the question, “what if our curriculum was geared more toward teaching than with ideological indoctrination?”
When we hear our own children and students claim America is racist, but often struggle with basic math and science, is that something we must assume can’t be faced head on?
At the heart of the issue is politicized curriculum, wasted spending, or worse, grifting by political appointees and profiteers. It’s been going on for decades. Whatever you might say about DOGE, it’s rightly making the Democratic Party apparatchiks 6. hysterical.
This is the time when school is out and the jig is up. 7.
Photo by Meg Boulden on Unsplash
Resources for this article:
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTElMvkD70U&t=879s
3. https://youtu.be/xTElMvkD70U?t=879
4. https://mailchi.mp/sca4christ/understanding-the-times-18248386
6. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/apparatchik
7. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/the%20jig%20is%20up
