Conservative education reformer John Droz is warning that America’s K-12 system is collapsing by design. He says the U.S. Department of Education could be used to reverse the decline if President Donald Trump and Linda McMahon are willing to lead.
While many Republicans want the Department abolished, and celebrated last month’s 6-3 decision by the Supreme Court to shutter the Department, Droz says scrapping it will only remove one of the few tools available to fight the Left’s monopoly control and stranglehold over government education. Instead, he calls for using the Department’s full authority and budget to dismantle ideological indoctrination, set clear national standards, and restore a curriculum based on critical thinking.
President Trump said in February that the Dept. of Education would be abolished. Droz hopes that Trump can at least use its statutory authority and funding to give relief to American parents who are sending their children to what he called “indoctrination camps.”
Droz publishes his research and findings on Substack, “Critically Thinking about Select Societal Issues.” Droz previously testified before Congress several times in 2012 about necessary policy changes to reform American education.
Right now, Droz says, the nation’s schools are left-wing bastions that are teaching left-wing values, not skills or common sense academic standards. The current goals of American education, from his studies, are: “1) to be anti-American, 2) to substitute atheism for the Judeo-Christian standards of most of their parents, 3) to buy into Socialist and Marxist ideology, 4) to normalize hate, gender dysphoria, sexual perversion, drug use, etc. plus 5) to be non-thinking sheeple.”
From Independent Thought to Indoctrination
According to Droz, the education establishment has replaced teaching “how to think” with teaching “what to think,” and the “what” is controlled entirely by the Left. Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) is now a fixture in teacher training and lesson plans nationwide. Droz calls SEL a Trojan horse for Marxist ideology, disguised as harmless self-help and empathy training.
Meanwhile, there is no meaningful plan in most states to teach critical thinking. “The current system rewards conformity, not inquiry,” Droz told The Gateway Pundit. “Whether it is history, science, or math, the ideology is baked in and the Right has completely abdicated.” Droz notes that one of the few states that outlines a state-level goal to pursue Critical Thinking, North Carolina, currently has no accompanying curriculum that teaches the concept to achieve the goal.
The NGSS Conformity Agenda
Droz points to the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), adopted by 49 states, as an example of curriculum built to enforce mental compliance. Instead of teaching the scientific method, NGSS tells students to accept consensus views, defer to authority, and embrace politically-correct goals without asking questions.
“It is the opposite of science,” Droz said. “It is training children to be lemmings.”
As well, Droz notes, that when he questions education leadership around the country about how they accomplish these goals, they begrudgingly admit that it is all ultimately “up to the teachers.”
And surveys of teacher political attitudes show that they consider themselves to be far-left Democrats, with typical results 90% identifying as Democrats.
Proving Reform Works
Droz cites a network of 16 affordable, Christian-founded private schools in North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia that explicitly commit to producing critical thinkers, the “Thales Academy.” https://www.thalesacademy.org/ Their approach uses traditional instruction, including the Socratic method, and they are so popular that their waiting list is currently two years for admission.
No State Meets the Standard
For Droz, the problem is national in scope. “No state in America is delivering a high-quality K–12 education product,” he said. “Maybe six states have a reasonable grasp of the problem. The rest are doing nothing effective.”
The result is a patchwork of weak policies and inconsistent standards and goals on issues as diverse as pornographic and violent books in school libraries, politically-slanted lesson plans, the purpose of education, and teacher training programs and requirements.
This results in an inconsistent patchwork of results for the nation’s 49.6 million students enrolled in K-12 government education every year, in the nation’s 98,500 government schools.
Eighty Billion Ways to Act
Droz says the Department of Education’s $80 billion annual discretionary budget alone could be used and channelled to set a national goal: replace “what to think” with “how to think.” Federal funding could be tied to states that adopt critical thinking curricula and reform teacher certification to remove ideological content.
“The most effective thing that could be done right now, since no state is providing high-quality K-12 education, is to provide clear, strong leadership to the nation and set a goal that American schools will empower our children with the skills to think critically,” Droz said.
“This one change could completely alter the direction of American education,” Droz says. “If Trump and McMahon lead on this, they could save our schools and save the country. This is an opportunity our country may never have again.”
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