	Pat Buchanan on Education 2000 Reform Candidate for President

School Choice
Other issues under Education

Since 1960s, schools taught shame of America's past

Growing up in the 1940s, we did not feel any need to apologize for America's past, but took pride in all she had accomplished. By the late 1960s, baby boomers were taught to see a brutal country that had enslaved one people and exterminated another. As Catholic schoolchildren of the 1940s were instructed in the temptations of impurity, American children since the 1960s have been indoctrinated in the evil of racism and moral imperative to avoid thoughts, words, or deeds that might be so construed. Source: State of Emergency, by Pat Buchanan, p. 86-8 , Oct 2, 2007

Our traditional books, heroes, and holidays have disappeared

Millions have begun to feel like strangers in their own land. They recoil from a popular culture that is saturated with raw sex and trumpets hedonistic values. They see old holidays disappear and old heroes degraded. They see the art and artifacts of a glorious past removed from their museums and replaced by the depressing, the ugly, the abstract, the anti-American. They watch as books they cherished disappear from the schools they attended, to be replaced by authors and titles they never heard of. The moral code that they were raised to live by has been overthrown. The culture they grew up with is dying inside the country they grew up in.

In half a lifetime, many Americans have seen their God dethroned, their heroes defiled, their culture polluted, their values assaulted, their country invaded, and themselves demonized as extremists and bigots for holding on to beliefs Americans have held for generations.

Source: The Death of the West, by Pat Buchanan, p. 5 , Oct 15, 2002

Bring God and prayer back to public schools

God and the Ten Commandments and school prayer have all been expelled from the public schools. Christmas carols are out, Christian holidays are out. The latest decision of the Supreme Court said that children in stadiums or young people in high school games are not to speak an inspirational moment for fear they may mention God’s name, and offend an atheist in the grandstand. Source: Speech at Bob Jones University in Greenville SC , Sep 18, 2000

Schools went wrong when judges & feds got involved

Over the last 30 years, ever since the judges have gotten heavily into education, and the National Education Association has gotten into control of that Department of Education, test scores go down, there’s violence in classroom, things are going wrong. I would get rid of that Goals 2000, school-to-work-this idea of taking kids at a certain age and putting them right in as though we’re in “1984,” is an outrage. Let folks do it at the local level. Source: Interview on MSNBC’s “Equal Time” on 2000 election , Nov 2, 1999

Block grants to states with all federal education funds

I would take all that money from the federal government for primary and secondary education-I would take it and I would block-grant it out to the states, and I would tell the governors, listen to the local communities. Send the money back to the local communities where parents and teachers and principals-they decide how best to improve education. That way you’ve got however many thousands of school districts competing with one another, and they’re not being dictated to by Washington. Source: Interview on MSNBC’s “Equal Time” on 2000 election , Nov 2, 1999

Federal role in science & scholarships; not grade schools

Q: Would you abolish the federal Department of Education? A: I would abolish those segments that deal with primary and secondary education. There is a federal role in higher education. We need to be first in science. That’s where I’d put some money. And [some funds] for scholarships; that’s a federal responsibility. But primary and secondary education, that belongs to mom, and pop, and the teacher, and the principal and the deputy principal. Source: Interview on MSNBC’s “Equal Time” on 2000 election , Nov 2, 1999

Ed Dept should test the marketplace instead of testing kids

In children’s education, parents come first, teachers come second, and federal judges, not at all. If I am elected president, the bureaucrats at the Department of Education are not going to be testing kids, they’re going to be testing the magic of the marketplace. All federal money for the schoolchildren of America will be sent back to the school districts of America where accountability begins and authority belongs. Source: Announcement as a Reform Party Candidate, Falls Church, VA , Oct 25, 1999

Replace Dept. of Education with states & parents

Parents everywhere are fighting for the hearts and minds of their own children. We must shut down the Department of Education, and return authority to the states and to the people. Source: www.iac.net/~davcam/pat_issu.html , Jul 2, 1999

For school prayer; against multiculturalism

We will preserve our heritage by passing on to our children, through locally controlled education, a love of our land, our history, our English language, and our traditional sense of right and wrong.

Abolish the Department of Education and return its functions and funding to state and local control
Pass a constitutional amendment to allow voluntary prayer
Reject “multicultural” curricula that denigrate our history
Support tax-free education savings accounts.

Source: www.GoPatGo.org/ “Issues: Education of America’s Children” , Jun 11, 1999

End bilingualism; end “hyphenated-Americans”

Not one federal dime should go to perpetuate bilingualism. We look forward to a day when there are no “hyphenated-Americans,” when all are proud to be called, simply, Americans. Source: www.gopatgo2000.com/000-c-immigration.html 5/28/99 , May 28, 1999

Pat Buchanan on School Choice

Support home schooling but don’t give up on public schools

There’s something wrong in the hearts, and so it begins at home. And the home schoolers are one of the best answers to this whole thing, where they teach children values. But we can’t give up on the public schools either. And so I think what we need to do is get the ACLU and the federal judges and the federal bureaucrats and the National Education Association out of the public schools of America, and God and the Ten Commandants back into the schools of America. Source: Remarks at Home Schools Event, Washington, DC , Sep 24, 1999

For vouchers, charter schools, & homeschooling

As President I will:

Support tuition vouchers that can be redeemed at all schools--public and private, secular and religious-that have no government strings attached.
Promote charter schools and magnet schools.
Protect the rights of homeschooling parents to educate their children without government intrusion.
Oppose national testing and teaching standards as intrusions on the rights of parents and the primacy of local communities.