The History of How Public Schools Have Changed
Parents and grandparents of children currently in American public schools recognize that a decline in academic instruction and the mass exodus of certified teachers nationwide, paired with an increase in disruptive classroom behavior, are indicators of a looming disaster in their children’s future. They have been overwhelmed by and suspicious of the changes in K-12 education’s national mission for workforce development, comprehensive sex education curricula, data collection on individual students, and ineffective discipline policies begun under the Obama’s Race to the Top grant program (p. 37).1 Despite a sense that “something is not right,” they are at a loss to identify the cause of their discomfort and suspicions.
Another segment of Americans who may not have direct contact with children in K-12 schools recognize the federal government’s increased suppression of parent speech at school board meetings and the encouragement of individual states to adopt “a new vision for the historic state-federal partnership in education” as undermining the U.S. Constitution’s implicit doctrine of limited government2. Others know that the increased role of the federal government in K-12 schools has not improved students’ reading and math scores for decades and are at a loss to justify the costs of a U.S. Department of Education or explain who orchestrated the changes to diminish local control of school curricula or why they have been programmatically rolled out.
The transformation of the purpose, content, and administration of public education accelerated under the Obama administration, but changes have been made for over a century with little resistance from the American people, who believed their elected officials were working to “do the right thing” on their behalf. Believing that public education was locally controlled, the average American had no apparent reason to suspect an elitist agenda to use the K-12 education system to prepare students to fundamentally transform the United States of America from the freest, wealthiest, and most generous sovereign nation on earth to a socialist member-state of a world governance system, or what Fabian Society founder H.G. Wells described in his book as The New World Order3.
Wells’ book was not a literary fiction but a futurist’s blueprint describing the agenda of the British Fabian Society to construct a one world culture positioning humans in the place of their Creator, and the United States in submission to planners of a global economy. It is an agenda in which individuals no longer dream of unrealized possibilities, but are subjects of the state that demands attitudes, values, and mindsets conform to accepted standards in order to maintain the desired social climate and, ultimately, utopian world peace.
Phyllis Schlafly read and understood the signs of the times when she began an information campaign to expose the entities and processes changing K-12 public schools from transmission centers of our country’s founding ideas and constitution in service of preserving individual liberty, to propaganda distribution centers reconstructed to prepare American children to accept and participate in one world government serving the collective. One of the entities she exposed was the National Education Association (NEA).
In August 2005, the Phyllis Schlafly Report published, “Follies and Failures of the National Education Assn.” Excerpts of the original article were republished as “How Public Schools Have Changed.”4,5, The original article includes a section titled “How the NEA Has Changed.” Under that section, Phyllis described conflicting content between the NEA’s 2005 resolutions and a 1951 NEA-published civics book — The American Citizens Handbook6. The copy gifted to her was the fourth edition of a series of six that ended with the last edition published in 1968.
Phyllis suggested that the radicalization of public schools over the 50 years between the publication of her book and 2005 was linked to the radicalization of the NEA, but she did not elaborate on how the NEA was radicalized or how this resulted in the radicalization of American K-12 public education. Regardless of whether readers have students enrolled in public schools, they should be concerned about what is being taught because the original purpose of publicly funded education is the preparation of a free people to exercise their right of individual liberty, thereby preserving our Republic — not to create a competitive workforce for the global economy.7,8
How the NEA Handbook Has Changed
A comparison of changes in the first through sixth editions of the NEA’s Handbook offers clues explaining how the NEA gradually changed (nudged) American culture from the sovereignty of individuals to the sovereignty of the collective; from civics grounded in debate and deliberation associated with the biblical worldview of government to civics grounded in criticism and “reform” associated with the secular humanist worldview of human evolution; and from citizens governed by the U.S. constitution and their state constitutions to global citizens governed by the United Nations Charter.
First and Second Editions
The first and second editions of the Handbook were both published in 1941 — the year the United States entered WWII. Both editions were copyrighted to the Hugh Birch-Horace Mann Fund National Education Association of the United States10. The copyright page began as follows:
- America is great (emphasis added) because of the ideals which the pioneers established for its homes, for its schools, and for its democratic community life ... The future of America depends simply on our being ourselves; on our standing by the ideas that have made us great; on magnifying the home; on building up our schools; and on keeping alive among our citizens the spirit of reform and social advance (emphasis added). (p. 4)11
The Table of Contents contained sections with Patriotic Selections, Poetry, and Song, including America First, America, I Love You, and The American Way; Historical Selections including Columbus, The Star-Spangled Banner, and God Bless America; Heroes of American Democracy including Preachers and Theologians along with Authors, Educators, and Statesmen; entire sections on the Flag of the United States, and Charters of American Democracy.
The dedication page of the Handbook states that it was produced for distribution on “Citizenship Recognition Day to be observed by appropriate public ceremonies.” Citizenship Recognition Day was the brainchild of newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst who in 1939 called for a day to celebrate United States Citizenship. Congress created “I Am an American Day” in 194012. In response to that Act, the Handbook was published for distribution to students who came of age to vote and to newly naturalized citizens, “In order that there may be an impressive public occasion for the induction of these new voters to the responsibilities which go with their new status in our self-governing Republic...(emphasis added).” (p. 1)13,14
In the original editions, the United States is identified as a self-governing Republic consistent with Article IV. Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution which guarantees “to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government.”15 Republican does not refer to a political party but to polity — a form of civic government. When asked what kind of government the delegates of the 1787 Constitutional Convention created, Benjamin Franklin replied, “A republic, Madam, if you can keep it.”16 The Pledge of Allegiance to the American flag also affirms the United States of America is a republic with the words, “To the republic for which it stands....”17 By the sixth edition of the Handbook, preservation of a self-governing republic is no longer a focus; instead, the focus in on living in a democracy.
Third and Fourth Editions
WWII ended in September of 1945. In a campaign promoted as an effort to establish world peace, the NEA helped formulate plans for the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).18 It was in this context that the NEA published the third edition of the Handbook (1946) as The United Nations Edition.19 The Preamble of the United Nation’s Charter, “We the peoples” suggests the transformation of the sovereign U.S. citizens as expressed in the U.S. Constitution’s “We the people”, to global citizens governed by the United Nations. In January of 1946, the Handbook editor, J.E. Morgan, wrote an editorial in the NEA Journal entitled "The Teacher and World Government":
- [The teachers of the NEA have] had an important part in seeing that a place for education was written into the UNO charter. They have taken a leading part in the London Conference which drafted the charter for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.... We now have the obligation to follow thru, to see that the UNESCO charter is ratified and put into effective operation. In the struggle to establish an adequate world government, the teacher...can do much to prepare the hearts of and minds children for global understanding and cooperation.... At the very top of the agencies which will assure the coming of world government must stand the school, the teacher, and the organized profession (emphasis added).20
The vision of world government was proposed as the solution to the manufactured crisis of WWII, but prior to the WWs, the British Fabian Society envisioned a new world order.21,22
In 1951, the NEA published the fourth edition of the Handbook — the edition Phyllis featured in her article. According to the “Note on the Fourth Edition” page, “The principal differences between this and the third edition [1946] are:... The inclusion of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights along with the United Nations Charter and the Constitution for UNESCO...” (p. 6) The additions nearly doubled the size of the book.23 Morgan hailed the NEA’s Handbook as a cultural icon, “Like the Bible, dictionary and atlas, The American Citizens Handbook is becoming a part of the living room library in many homes and is looked upon as indispensable for daily reference and reading” (p. 6).
Phyllis applauded the fourth edition’s pro-American content preserved from previous editions:
- ... this nearly-600-page book was intended to promote good citizenship among Public school students. It includes essays on citizenship, brief biographies of “heroes and heroines of American democracy,” and reprints of historical documents that are the “great charters of American democracy.” ...The book unabashedly celebrates old-fashioned virtue and patriotism. ...This NEA civics handbook embraces “the creation of national unity” and “Americanization” as explicit tasks for the public schools. The book states, “It is important that people who are to live and work together shall have a common mind — a like heritage of purpose, religious ideals, love of country, beauty, and wisdom to guide and inspire them.” ...Numerous Old and New Testament selections are included, including the Ten Commandments and the Lord’s Prayer. The Golden Rule, the Boy Scout oath, national songs and uplifting poems appear along with geography facts and a household budget.
While applauding the Handbook’s pro-American, traditional content, she qualified her endorsement stating,
- I don’t approve of everything in the book. It contains a large chapter to promoting the United Nations and a rather embarrassing endorsement of eugenics as a goal of education, so that “highly gifted young people” are encouraged to bear children to “greatly improve our national stock.” Nevertheless, The American Citizens Handbook is a stunning contrast to the radical resolutions adopted by the NEA at its convention this year.24
Phyllis objected to a section of the book containing chapters with titles such as “United Nations Flag of Authority” as well as Sir Julian Huxley’s selective breeding agenda which he promoted through UNESCO (see NEA and UNESCO below).
Fifth and Sixth Editions
The Handbook’s fourth edition was the last edition copyrighted by The Hugh Birch-Horace Mann Fund of the NEA. In 1960, Senior Citizens of America published The American Citizens Handbook: Special 4-H Club Edition.25 Then, Dr. Morgan, approached the National Council for Social Studies (NCSS) for publication of the sixth edition (1968). At that time NCSS was officially a department of the NEA (1925 to 1969).26 According to the Foreword,
- Believing the Handbook to be a useful reference in introducing citizens to the ideals that have inspired the goals and continued development of a democracy (emphasis added) of liberty, equal opportunity, and personal growth, Dr. Morgan generously offered it to the National Council for the Social Studies and contributed his services in preparing this edition. (emphasis added)
On the sixth edition’s page iv is a passage from a co-founder of the Fabian Society — Irish-born British playwright George Bernard Shaw. Shaw indicated that in his role as a thought leader, his responsibility was the transmission of “life” to future generations. Shaw and his wife had no children, suggesting that Shaw was referring to the passing of his “life” to other people’s children.27 Life, as Shaw knew it, was shaped by the British think tank he helped establish — the Fabian Society, a militant, political body of English Socialists influenced by the study of Karl Marx.28
The sixth edition contrasts with the first editions in that it no longer identifies the United States as a self-governing Republic but rather, “the goals and continued development of a democracy.” Though the terms are often confused as synonyms, they refer to very different forms of government and the commonly understood word “democracy” takes on an uncommon meaning.
Footnotes:
Want to be notified of new Education Reporter content?
Your information will NOT be sold or shared and will ONLY be used to notify you of new content.
Click Here
Return to Home Page