Education and the U.S. Constitution

A few years ago, I visited the Millis, MA public library, and perused their book sale table where a purchased for $1.00 a gem entitled History of The Formation of the Union under the Constitution: With Liberty Documents and the Report of the Commission. It was published by the U.S Government Printing Office in 1941 on behalf of the United States Constitution Sesquicentennial Commission whose members included President Franklin Roosevelt. The book contains a chapter entitled “Questions and Answers Pertaining to the Constitution.” On page 128, we read:

1. The United States government is frequently described as one of limited powers. Is this true?
2. Yes. The United States government possesses only such powers as are specifically granted to it.

And:

1. Where in the Constitution is there mention of education?
2. There is none; education is a matter reserved for the states.   

This was published by New Deal Democrats who signed off on the publishing of the book. What happened since 1941? The only way for the U.S. government to have any legitimate or legal involvement in education is to add an amendment to the Constitution to make involvement in education constitutional, but such an amendment was never added. So, why is there a Department of Education and why does the U.S. government spend billions of taxpayer dollars- $79 billion in 2020-funding education?

The Morrell Land Grant College Act of 1862 may have been the first time the U.S. government got involved with education. Named after U.S. Representative and later U.S. Senator Justin Morrill from Vermont, it set aside federal land to build agricultural and mechanical schools.

In 1867, under the Andrew Johnson Administration, the Office of Education was created for the “purpose of collecting information on schools and teaching that would help the States establish effective school systems.”  Politicians violated the U.S. Constitution back then as well. And like all government entities, its power and influence grew incrementally.

Senator Justin Morrell

Senator Morrill was at it again when the “Second Morrill Act” was passed in 1890 giving the Office of Education the job of administering support of the land-grant schools. Vocational education became the next major area of Federal aid to schools, with the 1917 Smith-Hughes Act, and the 1946 George-Barden Act focusing on agricultural, industrial, and home economics training for high school students.

The same year that the federal government published the above-mentioned book stating that the federal government has no role in education, the New Deal Democrat controlled Congress passed the Lanham Act which, among other things, granted money to public schools around the U.S. The federal unconstitutional floodgate opened wide in 1958 when Congress passed the National Defense Education Act. This act was justified by its supporters due to the launching of Sputnik by the Soviets even though we already had the technology to launch our own satellites. In 1965, Congress passed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, and the Higher Education Act, the latter funded college tuitions, and gave the U.S. government a near monopoly of college loans while drastically increasing the cost of a college education. These grants are now known as Pell Grants named after Senator Claiborne Pell of Rhode Island. In 1980, President Carter with the full support of the National Education Association, made the Department of Education a cabinet level entity.

In the late 1980s and 1990s, under George H.W. Bush, the “Education President,” Bill Clinton, and George W Bush, the federal government gave us Outcome Based Education, Goals 2000.No Child Left Behind, and School to Work. During the Obama Administration, we got the disaster called Common Core. My mentor, the late Sam Blumenfeld, a pioneer of the modern homeschool movement documented what he called “the deliberately dumbing down of America.” His last book co-written by Alex Newman entitled Crimes of the Educators explains how it happened.

A book published by the federal government with the blessing of Franklin Roosevelt righty reads that our federal government was a government of specified powers, and that education was not one of these powers. But, over the past one hundred years, members of Congress from both major parties violated their oaths of office and voted for these programs.

A correlation can be made between the unconstitutional involvement of the federal government and the decline of academic standards. In 1983, the National Commission on Excellence in Education issued a report entitled A Nation at Risk. The commission concluded that if a foreign power did to our schools what we did, we would consider it an act of war. The commission made recommendations, but it did not address federal involvement in government schools, nor did it advocate reintroducing intensive phonics. As an aside, around the same time that this report came out, the Reagan Administration came under fire when it cut funds to school lunch programs and classified ketchup as a vegetable. The correct answer of the Reagan Administration should have been said that it has no authority to fund school lunch programs.

While we have much to do to unravel one hundred years of federal government overreach, which should include supporting and voting for constitutionalists, I recommend reading Crimes of the Educators by Sam Blumenfeld and Alex Newman. This book should prove to be an eye-opener and will give people a clear understating of the problem. Sam was a pioneer in the homeschool movement who spent most of his adult life warning parents about the plans of the so-called progressives to deliberately dumb down America. Camp Constitution inherited most of Sam’s books, papers and recording and with it, we created the Blumenfeld Archives-a free on-line resource:  https://campconstitution.net/sam-blumenfeld-archive/   Another excellent resource is Freedom Project Academy https://fpeusa.org/-a fully accredited  classical education on-line K-12 school.

Readers who would like a PDF version of History of The Formation of the Union Under the Constitution, and.or Crimes of the Educators  may E-mail me at campconstitution1@gmail.com