The Right’s attack on public education is aimed not only at the public schools but at a broader range of progressive values and policies. It must be understood as a part of a multi-front ideological campaign that the Right has pursued very aggressively, and so far quite successfully, against the idea that government should be in the business of helping people. That campaign is well-funded, well-orchestrated, and unrelenting. In this section, we consider numerous examples of the Right’s attack rhetoric and then describe in more detail the goals of the Right’s attack on education.
Demonization of Public Schools, Teachers and Teacher Unions
The Right routinely uses two levels of communication – an explicit, forceful version for their own “movement conservatives,” and a milder, sanitized version designed for public consumption. The quotations in the subsections below (and in appendix 2 of this report) reveal the contrast between the extreme language of their internal discussions and the more intellectual or “respectable” language used by their “mainstream” representatives in the media. ,
The Right has mastered the art of contentious, malevolent, and inflammatory language. They use such language in attacking public education and teacher unions, in order to inflame supporters and rally them to action against public education. In “conservative” opinion websites, periodicals, and news websites, teachers are regularly described as “thugs” and agents of “statist” attempts to “indoctrinate our children” with “immoral,” “socialistic,” “anti-American,” and “anti-capitalist” values. Teacher organizations are accused of blocking efforts to “reform” the educational system. Even the highest political officials have used such inflammatory language, as when Secretary of Education Rod Paige, in February, 2004, referred to the National Education Association (NEA) as a “terrorist organization.”[5]
Other language used by opponents of public education may be less extreme, but no less influential. Writers on the Right frequently refer to public schools as “government schools.” Economist Milton Friedman is considered the father of the movement to privatize schools. The website of the Milton & Rose D. Friedman Foundation describes public schools this way:
“Government schools are established by law. Elected and appointed public officials nominally have authority over them. In practice, however, actual authority is typically exercised by professional bureaucrats and the teachers' unions.” [6]
Friedman’s comment ignores that school boards across the land regularly hold public meetings – meetings that represent democracy in action, with elected school boards, public participation, and public accountability. With privatization, maintaining the two-way relationship that now exists between school boards and the public would be highly unlikely.
“Collectivism” is a term the Right commonly uses as an intended slur to describe efforts toward building community.
“The collectivist (Nazi, communist, socialist) notion that there is such a thing as a "free" education is a monstrous myth -- anything of value must be paid for. The state per say [sic] produces nothing, all state funds are forcibly taken from others through taxes, etc. When one recommends the "state funding of education to preserve freedom", one is asking that the freedom of one's fellow citizens be abridged, that their wealth be looted by public officials, all for the alleged purpose of protecting freedom.”
- Capitalism.org[7]
Of course, progressives and liberals are always cast in the worst possible light:
“The liberal applauds the imprisoning of home schooling parents who dare to raise their children outside the control of collectivist public schools.”
- From 120 Truths about Liberals[8]
Other intended smears the Right commonly uses to describe government are the words “statism” and “statist.”
“Eighty-eight percent of all American school children attend public schools controlled by public-sector bureaucracies and teachers' unions, and which impart the statist values one would expect given that control.”
- Escape from the Public Schools[9]
Thomas L. Johnson, of The Future of Freedom Foundation, shows how the common conservative description of public education as “socialism” is typically used in conservative anti-public-education writings:
“In their famous manifesto they [Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, authors of the Communist Manifesto] list 10 conditions necessary to have a valid socialist society. The last one reads: “Free education for all children in public schools.”
Other famous supporters of public education include Hitler, Stalin, Castro, Mao Zedong, Mussolini [emphasis added], and every other 20th-century dictator, as well as virtually every politician throughout the entire world. [. . .] The best possible reform that could ever be effected is eliminating the completely politicized socialist government schools and replacing them with private, profit-making, and charitable education businesses that offer courses of instruction only to willing customers. We need to introduce education to the free market.”[10]
The use of inflamed rhetoric is a characteristic tactic to desensitize the public while throwing “red meat” to the Right’s “base.” Consider this example of anti-democracy rhetoric, associating democracy with fascism, nazism, etc.
“Variants of statism include: socialism, nazism (national socialism), theocracy, [pure] democracy, communism, fascism, tribalism, etc.”
- Capitalism.org[11]
Comparisons to Hitler, Stalin, etc. are not uncommon in right-wing writings about public education. Conservatives also say that public schools are a “tool for tyrants.” At the website Retaking
“Public education has unquestionably been the greatest tool for tyrants throughout the history of man. From the time of Babylon until now it has been the foremost institution in changing the culture of a country from a liberty loving civilization to a nation that is enslaved to other men, and the cruelest of tyrants. Ironically, the enslaved people under these regimes did not complain about their bondage because they were taught it was freedom.
Public education progressed rapidly in the twentieth century, as John Dewey and other socialists refined the art of brainwashing and amoral training. But the perfection of the public school concept undoubtedly came under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime in
The internal discussions among conservatives are usually virulently anti-union in nature. Following are two examples of the kind of language typically used.
“You cannot understand the plight of
-- Charlene K. Haar, Special Interests in the Classroom [13]
Another example of anti-union rhetoric is to refer to union management as “labor bosses.” The National Education Association (NEA) is a favorite target of conservatives.
“Indeed, the NEA offers a textbook example of how Big Labor bosses work hand in glove with Democratic politicians. Intentionally and almost certainly illegally, the NEA bosses and other Big Labor leaders and their Democratic vassals keep the rank-and-file members ignorant of the political use of millions and millions of dollars forcibly extracted form their paychecks in the form of compulsory union dues.”
- The Washington Times, Labor Day Editorial, 2002[14]
Another strand of right-wing school-privatization rhetoric follows a cultural war/religious line of attack. Teachers are frequently accused of “teaching immorality” and “promoting a homosexual lifestyle.” In “The Gathering Storm” at EducationNews.org, self-described as “The Internet’s Leading Source of Education News,” Jann Flury writes,
“For years now, concerned parents and teachers have been watching– helpless and aghast– as homosexual activists invaded our public schools to promote the homosexual lifestyle.”[15]
A WorldNetDaily “news” headline blares “Homosexual agenda promoted by NEA”[16] while at the Christian Broadcasting Network, a “news report” tells readers that,
“Homosexual activists put together a long-term plan some 16 years ago to convert
“[. . .] In San Francisco public schools, there's an actual lesson plan for teaching first-graders, even kindergartners, about homosexuality. In one district, gay parents are invited to come in and read to students from approved books like 'Gloria Goes to Gay Pride.' ”[17]
These quotations are but a fraction, and are not the most extreme examples, of the vitriol widely deployed against public education, teachers and teacher organizations. This is not the language of policy disagreement. This is not the reasoned discourse of civilized issue debate. This is the language of culture war.
Additional examples of the Right’s anti-public education rhetoric can be found in Appendix 2.
Complete Privatization of Schools Is the Ideological Goal
At first glance the public rhetoric of the “School Choice” movement appears to be about providing the public with reasonable alternatives to the “public school monopoly.” Their arguments are carefully crafted, couched in reasonable-sounding language. What could be wrong with “allowing” parents to “choose’ where their children go to school?
However, closer examination reveals that “School Choice” is part of a long term strategy.
While initially vouchers were promoted as providing "choice," the voucher forces are becoming less covert about their real goal – completely privatizing schools.
The recent study “Voucher Veneer: The Deeper Agenda to Privatize Public Education[18],” from the People For the American Way Foundation, shows that vouchers and other “school choice” proposals are really part of a deeper, hidden agenda to completely privatize the public education system. From the report:
“A network of Religious Right groups, free-market economists, ultraconservative columnists and others are using vouchers as a vehicle to achieve their ultimate goal of privatizing education. Their embrace of vouchers reflects their view that to be successful, privatization must be achieved incrementally. The long-term goal is to make all schooling an activity supplied by private sources: for-profit management companies, religious organizations and home schools. The movement believes that targeted voucher plans, such as those in Florida ,
Richard M. Ebling, the president of the Foundation for Economic Education, in writing for the Future of Freedom Foundation uses the “free market” to make a case for privatization.
“It's time, therefore, to rethink the entire idea of public schooling in
- From “It's Time to Put Public Education Behind Us,” by Richard M. Ebeling[19]
In Public Schools: Make Them Private, Milton Friedman doesn’t try to hide the real agenda. He calls vouchers a “transition from a government to a market system:”
“Our elementary and secondary educational system needs to be radically restructured. Such a reconstruction can be achieved only by privatizing a major segment of the educational system--i.e., by enabling a private, for-profit industry to develop that will provide a wide variety of learning opportunities and offer effective competition to public schools. The most feasible way to bring about such a transfer from government to private enterprise is to enact in each state a voucher system that enables parents to choose freely the schools their children attend. The voucher must be universal, available to all parents, and large enough to cover the costs of a high-quality education. No conditions should be attached to vouchers that interfere with the freedom of private enterprises to experiment, to explore, and to innovate.”
“The problem is how to get from here to there. Vouchers are not an end in themselves; they are a means to make a transition from a government to a market system.”[20]
Beyond Ideology – Two Other Goals
In addition to the ideological attack on public schools, the Right has an additional purpose. As radical as the idea of privatizing public schools may seem, the right-wing movement has an even broader agenda in this school privatization drive, namely “defunding the Left” by defunding teacher unions. By privatizing public schools, and destroying teacher unions, the Right hopes to eliminate teacher unions as a source of support to the Right’s political opposition. This goal is part of a broader effort to destroy other supporters of the Right’s political opposition, including trial lawyers and organized labor.
The National Education Association report, The Real Story Behind Paycheck Protection, “catalogues a sophisticated web of groups and wealthy individuals and shows the direct link between anti-worker and anti-public education initiatives.”[21]
“With the funding and influence of the NEA and other progressive groups eliminated or severely curtailed, leaders of the conservative network would be free to pursue their agenda. And that agenda is hostile to public education.”
Conclusion, NEA’s Paycheck Protection report[22]
In an interview titled, “Unions the "Major Obstacle" to Market-Oriented Reforms,” Myron Lieberman, a renowned opponent of public education, freely expresses his anti-organized labor agenda:
“Unions cannot flourish, even survive, if there is competition among the producers, who employ services provided by union members. We have seen this over and over, in dozens of different industries. The NEA/AFT are well aware of this, hence their strategy is to defeat and denigrate school choice and contracting out in every way they can. [. . .] The power of teacher unions to block reform must and can be weakened in a variety of ways. [. . .] The primary strategy must be to weaken the teacher unions financially so that they can no longer intimidate school boards and legislators. …taxpayer subsidies to the teacher unions that should be terminated are time off with pay to conduct union business, payroll deduction of union dues, PAC contributions at no cost to the union, and taxpayer funding of pension contributions for NEA/AFT staff who are teachers on leave from school district employment.”[23]
Rob Levine, the co-editor of www.mediatransparency.org, describing the Right’s hidden agenda in Goal of school choice movement is to break up unions, writes,
“In "With school choice, every child can win" (March 1), the Heritage Foundation's Jennifer Garrett fails to mention that the real goals of the school choice movement are the breakup of one of the last two unionized sectors of U.S. society: public primary and secondary education, and the conversion to private profit of some of the $300 billion spent in the U.S. each year on public primary and secondary education.
She also fails to mention that most of the school choice movement is led and funded by a small group of wealthy conservative philanthropies. In short, Garrett paints a misleading and partisan picture both of the school choice movement and the "evidence" purporting to show that choice students do better academically.” [24]
In Why the Right Hates Public Education, Barbara Miner, a Milwaukee-based journalist specializing in education, writes,
“In mainstream publications, conservatives tend to muffle their partisan antagonism toward teacher unions. Not so in conservative publications and documents.
The issue comes down to "a matter of power," said Terry Moe, a senior fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution and co-author of the book Politics, Markets, and America's Schools, in an interview with the Heartland Institute in Chicago this summer.
The NEA and AFT "have a lot of money for campaign contributions and for lobbying," he said. "They also have a lot of electoral clout because they have many activists out in the trenches in every political district. . . . No other group can claim this kind of geographically uniform political activity. They are everywhere."
School vouchers are a way to diminish that power. "School choice allows children and money to leave the system, and that means there will be fewer public teacher jobs, lower union membership, and lower dues," Moe explains.”[25]
The right-wing think tank Heartland Institute is clear about their ultimate agenda. In their 1991 document, A Marketing Plan for Education Choice[26], Joseph Bast and Robert Wittmann write,
“Finally, in many states union endorsements and contributions (cash as well as in-kind) go overwhelmingly to candidates and incumbents in the Democrat Party. This means Republican, independent, and third party officials and candidates probably receive little or no support from the teachers unions, while their opponents receive considerable assistance. Some independents and Republicans, then, may welcome educational choice as a way to reduce the political support of their opponents.”
Beyond the agenda of defunding supporters of moderate and progressive causes, the Right hopes to use school privatization to appeal politically to certain mostly-Democratic voting constituencies, such as Catholics, African Americans and Latinos. In an interview, Grover Norquist admits, “School choice reaches right into the heart of the Democratic coalition and takes people out of it. It divides the left because the teachers' unions are on one side and all the parents of poor children are on the other …”[27]
Dividing African Americans from the Democratic coalition is one of the goals of the school-privatization movement. Black Commentator’s investigative article, Voucher Tricksters: The Hard Right Enters Through the Schoolhouse Door, looks in particular at the role of the Bradley Foundation in school voucher efforts, and comments on the cynical use of “poor black children” to drive the school privatization movement:[28]
“The furor over public funding of private religious schools has nothing to do with the education of Black children. Those who frame the debate in terms of providing African American youngsters with educational options are either lying, deluded or simply too desperate to recognize the enemy chattering in front of their faces. We are now engaged in a battle instigated by the most racist forces in the nation, funded by those same ultra-conservatives, and loudly applauded by their media mouthpieces.”
Black Commentator also notes that The Bradley Foundation, one of the (if not the) primary funders of the voucher “movement” also “financed the career of Charles Murray, author of "The Bell Curve," the infamous 1994 book that bestowed academic and media authenticity to the theory that Blacks are intellectually inferior to whites.” Black Commentator goes on to warn,
“Two major forces stand in the way of wholesale corporate raiding of public education: Black leadership and organized labor, primarily teachers unions. African Americans harbor an almost mystical attachment to education, long believed to be the one reliable route out of degradation. Historically, no issue has had a higher priority among Black leadership, who also rank as the nation's most pro-union political grouping at all levels of elected office - federal, state and municipal. The teachers unions' stake is obvious. In numbers and reliability, the two groups represent the heart of the Democratic Party - or, at least, its progressive wing.
The voucher offensive is designed to crush both of them. It goes without saying that privatization will decimate the unions. The Black leadership problem is almost as straightforward. The current crop of African American office holders must either be made to submit - that is, break with the unions - or be replaced.”
Again, in Why the Right Hates Public Education, Barbara Miner writes,
“While universal vouchers remain the goal, for tactical reasons conservatives have wrapped vouchers in the mantle of concern for poor African Americans and Latinos. Indeed, voucher supporters are fond of calling school choice the new civil rights movement. This plays well not only with voters of color but also with liberal suburban whites who, while they may be leery of allowing significant numbers of minorities into their schools, nonetheless support the concept of equal rights for all.
Conservatives and their front groups in the African American and Latino communities have not been shy about comparing voucher opponents to Southern segregationists. During the Congressional push for vouchers in Washington , D.C. , this fall, groups such as D.C. Parents for School Choice launched a particularly vicious campaign against prominent Democrats. "Forty years ago, politicians like George Wallace stood in the doors of good schools trying to prevent poor black children from getting in," one ad said, comparing voucher opponents like Senator Edward Kennedy to Wallace.
Virginia Walden-Ford, executive director of D.C. Parents for School Choice, was vague in explaining to the Washington community newspaper The Common Denominator how her group financed the ads. She did admit that over the years her group had received money from the Bradley Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, and Children First America--all prominent conservative organizations supporting vouchers. The Institute for Justice, a libertarian legal group, provided media support. So did Audrey Mullen, a signer of the Separation of School and State proclamation.
Even if Republicans fail to woo African Americans and Latinos to the Republican Party, they may dampen African American and Latino voter turnout--a neutralization strategy, as it were.
"The strategy is to get young black people not to vote," says Michael Charney, editor of The Critique, the newspaper of the teachers' union in Cleveland , which also has a voucher program. "These radio commercials are aimed at the hip-hop generation. The goal is to discredit Democrats and breed cynicism."
The commercials, he continues, "are part of a conscious strategy by the most advanced elements in the electoral Republican machine. It's smart from their view, even if it is disgusting."
David Sheridan, an analyst for the NEA, agrees it will be tough for the Republicans to win over African American voters. "But I think it's different with the Hispanic audience," he says. "I think they see this as a major effort to get more Hispanic voters into the Republican camp."[29]