The public education system in Alaska and across the nation is nakedly exposed to influences that conflict with our Republic’s most fundamental values and traditions. Allowing it to remain unaddressed threatens permanent damage to families, the future of our republic, and without them, the freedoms we have traditionally enjoyed.

State constitutional education clauses, which Alaska and every other state has, assert a “right” to government-run schooling that ultimately enables wholesale violation of some rights, while facilitating ongoing abuses of others. Public education’s existing structure helps perpetrate the pseudo-replacement of parents with a shadowy committee of remote agents. These faceless bureaucrats command sophisticated resources, which are bent on delivering propaganda to classrooms in ways that are inconsistent with freedom and other traditional American values.

EARLY AMERICAN EDUCATION

Public education throughout the United States traces its roots to the earliest American pilgrims. For these Protestants – and for many of their descendants today – the primary way to connect with God was by reading the Bible. Literacy was, and arguably still is, required to satisfy one’s spiritual and moral needs.

Thomas Jefferson once noted – mind you, when colonists were feverishly shaping and exchanging visionary ideas about what constitutes liberty and freedom within the framework of a legitimate government – “A native [born American] who cannot read and write is as rare an appearance, as… a Comet or an Earthquake.”

Colonial revolutionaries – known affectionately as our Founding Fathers – concisely summarized the government’s purpose as nothing more than an obligation to secure the rights of its citizens. Should that include a right to public education?

Despite finding value in schools, education never entered the picture when it came to enshrining the natural rights of individuals in our U.S. Constitution. The term education never appears. Why? It’s not an oversight.

Among the concentration of small business merchants in 18^th century port towns like Boston, what right-minded red-blooded revolutionary would be agreeable to entrusting the government with the power to direct his own child’s education with his own hard-earned money? Likely not one! Why should it be any different today? Tax funded “free” schools began trending in the United States around the mid-1800’s.

Had the Founding Fathers recognized an education a right, it would have amounted to nothing less than swapping one tyrant king for another brand of tyranny.

As the orchestrators of public education have become increasingly more remote, unilaterally aligned, and centralized, public education has become less responsive and less accountable to students, parents, and educators.

When meshed with modern notions of liberty and freedom – where liberty is a man’s right to use the little girls’ changing-room and engage in physical competition with women; where freedom can be taken away when preferred pronouns are not used; where divinely imparted individual rights are trampled by mortal bureaucrats in favor of government power to equitably redistribute wealth and then characterize it as right – together the elements of liberty, freedom, and public education take on culturally incendiary characteristics. 

PUBLIC EDUCATION IN ALASKA

In Alaska, the pilgrim era heritage of schooling children; Article VII Section 1 of the Alaska state constitution; an expansive supply of natural resources; and a steady supply of federal funding together help fuel the misunderstanding that education must be a “right.”  From a government perspective, the same elements seem to generate a sense of duty among the three branches of state government.

The Alaska Department of Law cites several cases offering a state level interpretation of Alaska’s education clause. Based on these cases, the judicial branch’s interpretation of the state’s role in education is that education is a right that Alaska is obligated to deliver with measurable results.

Conspicuously, unless determined necessary by a jury of your peers, no other rights identified in the U.S. Constitution are ones the government must provide and deliver. They simply exist – naturally – and persist in perpetuity, in spite of recent pandemic associated attempts to eradicate them. Public education, however, is not a right at all. Much like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, it is an entitlement, albeit one that poses an existential threat to freedom.

In Moore v. State, a four-part test was created by the Alaska judiciary to evaluate education adequacy. The test considers funding, standards, assessment, and oversight. Objection! Your honor something seems terribly out of order here.

EDUCATION GONE ROGUE

Alaska’s interpreted constitutional right to education is not the root of the problem, but rather the tip of the spear. The public education network lends itself well to the implementation of global goals for an envisioned society of global citizens. The education environment places certain education interests in the forceful seat of government, taking on positions of parental surrogacy in authoritarian ways. The core of these rogue education interests appears to include the technology industry, the U.S. Department of Education, national teachers’ unions, the United Nations (UN) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

GLOBAL HEGEMONY: UNITED NATIONS & THE CCP

While education policy and funding sit at the top of legislators’ minds in Juneau, the United States faces something far more sinister than a simple greedy monarch. The perceived obligation to deliver education results exists not only at the state level, but also federally, and among even more expansive and more influential organizations. These organizations grow increasingly more imposing at the local level than even our own federal government has become. One of these entities is the UN.

The UN has evolved since its inception in 1964 as a re-worked League of Nations. Once helmed primarily by key allies of World War II, today it masquerades as a poised one-world-government solution for global citizens with nearly 200 member states around the world. In 2022, U.S. contributions to the UN totaled $18 billion, representing approximately one third of the UN’s total budget. Does the U.S. measure its return on this investment? Apparently not.

Unlike the UK, France, and Russia, China was not a significant ally during World War II, yet, as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, China was empowered with unilateral veto authority over the council’s binding resolutions along with the key allies.

In1966, just two short years after being entrusted with this authority, Mao Zedong initiated the Chinese cultural revolution, directly causing the death of 40 million Chinese citizens over a decade of ruthless domestic terrorization and culminating in the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) dictatorship over Chinese citizens. If we know this is how the CCP gained dehumanizing power over its own people, what could the CCP have planned for those who resist progressive advancements in the CCP’s authority around the globe?

The UN’s original Charter used the term development in close association with maintaining a peaceful coexistence among independent sovereign states. Fast forward 60 years. Today the UN uses the term development primarily in association with sustainable development, which can only be viewed as the antithesis of the UN’s original charter.

Among the UN’s 17 sustainable development goals for 2030 – originally published in 2015 – goal number four seeks to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.”  If you have ever listened to the Anchorage School District’s regular review of its “Goals and Guardrails,” sustainable development goal number four should sound eerily familiar. If not, consider consulting the Anchorage School District’s Office of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Community Engagement.

Unpopular three letter socialist acronyms espoused by the current federal administration like DEI and ESG are the propaganda agenda of the United Nations. The term “ESG” first appeared in the UN’s 2004 Global Compact report titled “Who Cares Wins.” Do Alaskans care about maintaining an education system that underpins preservation of American freedom? Do U.S. citizens care? If not for American freedom, why bother with education at all? Do voting illegal aliens care? If not, why bother with the hassle of illegally crossing the United States border? What do you hope to gain for you or your kids over the long term?

As reported by Ting Shi of Bloomberg News in 2017 – and conspicuously matching the timing of Mao’s cultural revolution following creation of the UN – just two short years after the UN’s announcement of Agenda 2030 President Xi Jinping “laid out an ambitious plan to make China a ‘great modern socialist country’ in the following 30 years … achieving a ‘beautiful China’ with the rule of law, innovative companies, a clean environment, and expanding middle class, adequate public transportation and reduced disparities between urban and rural areas.”

Agenda 2030 is identified as a stepping-stone towards the UN’s Long-Term Vision for 2050. Regarding integration of plan elements, a UN report published by Cambridge University Press entitled, Global Environment Outlook, GEO-6, Healthy Planet, Healthy People, proclaims this, “The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development emphasizes that the goals and targets are integrated and indivisible, and aim to contribute to coherent sustainability policies (United Nations 2015a) – meaning that they depend on each other in different ways (Nilsson, Griggs and Visbeck 2016).” They depend on each other to achieve the CCP’s long-term vision. 2050 will mark the 100^th anniversary of the Peoples Republic of China (PRC), which was founded on October 1, 1949, by Mao Zedong.

In anticipation of the 100^th anniversary of the PRC, the UN serves the CCP’s global interests through the implementation of Agenda 2030 by spreading sustainable development policies within government institutions of all kinds around the globe – especially education. The saturation of DEI and ESG values in U.S. education curriculum is a manifestation of the alternate brand of tyranny our Founding Fathers initially avoided by leaving education out of the U.S. Constitution. Celebrated as evidence of democracy by the left, popular demand for public education as a right can be further distilled and identified as democratic socialism.

EDUCATION REFORM: SCHOOL CHOICE

A natural antidote to an ailing public school system is school choice. As promoted by Alaska’s Governor Dunleavy, school choice is delivered through options like charter schools. Others include homeschooling, school lotteries, and similar options which support the concept of public funding accompanying the child wherever he or she may go. However, as is the case with COVID and vaccines, we cannot be so sure that the cure will not also help deliver the solution.

In testimony delivered to the Alaska Senate Education Committee on March 5, 2024, Anchorage School Board President Margo Bellamy argues charter schools should remain under the control of school districts because charter schools must follow district policy. Interestingly, she also indicates charter schools are free to choose their curriculum. Does that reflect the recent experience of ASD charter schools and stipulated charter requirements?

We are at least 25 years into this non-kinetic culture war and have significant ground to regain. Evidence of the degree to which socialism’s infectious contagion has spread can be found now in the backbone of our economy – that which perhaps embodies the freedom to pursue happiness – our capital markets.

The Securities and Exchange Commission appears to have abandoned all financial prudence by requiring corporations to include climate disclosures in their financial reporting. It seems we may have educated an entire generation of anti-capitalist DEI and ESG soldiers for the future exploitation of radicals like Gretta Thunberg. As recently reported by Joshua Phillipp of the Crossroads Podcast and as detailed in an on-line publication called The Impact Investor, which promotes ESG, Merrill Lynch is reportedly generating and assigning personal ESG scores to their investment clients. This is the just the beta version of the CCP’s social credit score system.

Surely the CCP has anticipated reaction and response to their socialist takeover of public education. Although perhaps slow to notice these fateful public education events and trends, those who love freedom have been waking up to the shock of repetitive attacks on rights once believed to be unshakable like, for one example, the infringement on first amendment free speech pursued by the Biden Administration’s Office of Disinformation in partnership with the tech industry.

How might school choice help the CCP achieve its ultimate objectives? If public education is an institution that is to be preserved, two potential avenues appear to exist going forward. The first avenue – maintaining the public school system as it stands today without reform represents an all or nothing bet. The second avenue – empowering school choice breaks the existing unilateralistic education chain.

When advancing immediate education policy and funding, the range of potential near-term outcomes of political events makes assessing the advantages and disadvantages of these diverging avenues exponentially more difficult.

PANDEMIC RESPONSE: EDUCATION FUNDING & TECHNOLOGY

In August 2020, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) estimated at least a third of the world’s schoolchildren – 463 million children globally – were unable to access remote learning when COVID-19 shuttered their schools. As discovered through FOIA requests, Judicial Watch announced in September 2021 that national teachers unions directed COVID restrictions in schools including CDC guidance on reopening. In response to this apparent crisis U.S. Congress issued numerous COVID relief spending bills with money for education.

The Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) Fund grant was authorized by the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, enacted on March 27, 2020, known as ESSER; the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations (CRRSA) Act, enacted on December 27, 2020, known as ESSER II; and the American Rescue Plan (ARP) Act of 2021, enacted on March 11, 2021, known as ARP ESSER.  

Under the ESSER Fund, the U.S Department of Education awarded a total of $189.5 billion to State educational agencies (SEA) to provide local educational agencies (LEA) with emergency relief funds to prevent, prepare for, and respond to the impact that the coronavirus has had, and continues to have, on elementary and secondary schools across the nation. In 2023 the U.S. Department of Education Office of Inspector General reported, “92 percent of LEAs used ESSER funds to purchase hardware, software, connectivity, and related products or services to continue instruction during the coronavirus.”  Meanwhile the report also identifies, “LEAs that did not use ESSER funds to purchase educational technology most frequently reported that they used other funds to purchase educational technology and used ESSER funds for other expenditures assigned a higher priority.”

Under what authority does the federal Department of Education have the power to distribute more than $189 billion in borrowed money for education? None according to the U.S. Constitution.

UNESCO’s 2021/2 Global Education Monitoring Report urges governments to “see all institutions, students and teachers as part of a single system.”  School choice in combination with an unprecedented investment in education technology potentially represents a two-pronged work-around to ensure DEI and ESG education trends continue.

Should school choice gain momentum, the recent deployment of technology enables a direct connection to DEI and ESG curriculum delivery without disruption in the case where education reform comes to fruition. Alternatively, should the existing public education system be maintained, technology simply increases efficiency of the existing DEI and ESG curriculum delivery and outcomes. The recent deployment of technology therefore represents a win-win scenario for continued DEI and ESG propagation. As technology resources and technology hardware are fully integrated into the public school system we must ask, is the technology industry simply a service provider, or do they have more to gain?

In 2018 the Brookings Institution reported the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation gives more than $880 million to the United Nations annually. Meanwhile, the tech industry continues to benefit from federal spending, most recently $52.7 billion through the CHIPS Act. This represents a significant and circular exchange of circular funds.

Although probably not well known, Alaska Statute 14.03.016 empowers parents with the ability to review and screen inappropriate educational materials. However, through advancements and technology and artificial intelligence, uniquely customized education programming will be tailored specifically to your child. The education content will be continuously evolving instantaneously depending on your child’s responses and input. Thus, there will be little opportunity for parental review because future educational materials will not be printed in textbooks and carried home in backpacks where parents may review the table of contents. You might only know for sure what your child is learning by watching and listening to every moment of their digitally delivered curriculum. This raises serious questions.

Will digital education come with parental controls? It may depend on your interpretation parental rights and responsibilities. With this realization, how might we maintain traditional curriculum and advance it in a way that ensures its integrity? Has traditionally reliable curriculum already been retired and lost?

Saxon Math, for example, has decades of documented success in the education of U.S. children. Such documentation is available on Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s (HMH) website and includes an article published by Education Week in 2009 entitled, Study Gives Edge to 2 Math Programs, and a study published by the Educational Research Institute of America entitled, A Longitudinal Analysis of State Mathematics Scores for Florida Schools Using Saxon Math. Saxon Math for K-5 was reviewed by the Gates-funded EdReports in 2015. Saxon Algebra 1, Geometry, and Algebra 2 were reviewed in 2018. HMH subsequently slated it for retirement in 2024 and today offers a number of other math curriculum options. HMH has since delayed Saxon Math’s retirement to 2027.

Assuming higher academia remains inseparable from the “single system” decreed by UNESCO, will your personal ESG score predetermine the quality and content of DEI and ESG themes uniquely programmed and delivered to your child? Will your child’s future high school academic transcript also include ESG scores? How might your own ESG score, or your child’s be used to determine their eligibility to pursue academic programs of their choice and the cost of their attendance?

CONCLUSION

If public education has any redeeming purpose, it is to preserve our freedom. Unfortunately, the benefits derived from our system of freedom, like liberty and free markets, are currently being jointly exploited by socialists and communists through the United Nations in their campaign to institute a global government.

Public education can be viewed as the trojan horse of the CCP and the United Nations. It is the gift that has catapulted an invasion of socialism. It is the hierarchy of financial dependency coupled with education’s status as a right which constitutes the encrypted layered network architecture through which the CCP dominated United Nations have directed the education of children around the world.

Review of these facts and observations serves as a good lesson to illustrate why we must always pay close attention to the spirit of our Republic’s founding principles. Powers reserved to the states and the people should be carefully sorted between the states and the people. Education, it seems, was not given the careful consideration it deserves.

Public education can only be tolerated to the extent it is successful in maintaining the health of our Republic as measured by our level of adherence to our founding principles and our ability to maintain American traditions.

States must address the education issues they have been presented with and the imminent threats they pose to the preservation of freedom. Should states fail to respond appropriately, an individual’s ability to enjoy life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness may be lost for longer than you might care to imagine.

The views expressed here are those of the author.

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