Worse Than Indoctrination
Written by Brian Garst, Posted in Education, Government Meddling
The President’s address to the schoolchildren, and future Obama voters, has been heavily criticized for the creepy, cult-like overtones accompanied it by the White House recommended lesson plans. I’m more concerned with the fact that there are any such lesson plans at all than I am the speech itself.
The real threat is not that Dear Leader will start saturating the schools with his ugly mug. What ought to concern us all, however, is the prospect of centralizing classroom planning and content creation in Washington.
America has a long tradition of decentralized schooling, where local school boards determine the content and lesson plans of schools in their district. This insulates lesson plans from easy manipulation by political forces.
The fact that the lesson plans accompanying Obama’s speech are merely “recommended” is little comfort. The Department of Education is already doling out billions of dollars to local school districts. It would be quite easy for them to require, as the government has done in the past, the adoption of certain “recommended” changes as a necessary criteria for receiving such funds. Washington simply has no business coming up with lesson plans for America’s schools.
I serve as Vice President of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity, a non-profit think tank dedicated to preserving tax competition and free markets. This site features my personal views, which are not reflective of CF&P.