Project 2025 Part 4: Erasing Education

The education policy section is written by Lindsey M. Burke, director for the Centre for Education at the Heritage Foundation, and it should come as no surprise that their mandate for schooling is quite radical and entirely centred around the family rather than federally determined learning requirements.

Essentially Burke argues that parents should be given direct access to education funds via an education savings account (ESA)^[1]Mandate For Leadership, Page 319. The money in this ESA would be provided by the State that the person resides in as well as taxpayers in the local area. The parents can then use the money in the ESA to choose an appropriate learning environment for their child.

This looks all well and good on the surface: they’re giving choice back to the parent. However when you start to dig deeper into their policy recommendations it starts to look a lot more controlling.

Removing Sex, Gender, Identity And Politics From Education

For example: Burke recommends that the “Enforcement of civil rights should be based on a proper understanding of those laws, rejecting gender ideology and critical race theory^[2]Mandate For Leadership, Page 322” meaning that children who are unable to talk about gender, sexual orientation or other traits at home will not be able to have access to knowledge about it at all.

Similarly, the removal of Critical Race Theory from education will mean that BIPOC students will not learn about important elements of their rich and storied history such as redlining, segregation and institutional racism^[3]Education Week: What Is Critical Race Theory, and Why Is It Under Attack?. This means already marginalised students will face even more marginalisation and a lack of access to information they so desperately need.

Free Market Education

Burke goes on to argue that because the education system is so bloated and overreaching, essentially creating jobs for the sake of it rather than the need of them, education quality has fallen and the only way to bring education levels back up is to remove the bureaucracy and open education up to the free market^[4]Bucks County Beacon: Project 2025 Wants to End Public Education As We Know It.

We’ve seen how the “free market” system works in other sectors in America such as health care, with those who are wealthy getting the best treatment and those who are poor or marginalised being left to fend for themselves so does Burke really think that opening the school system up to VC firms and private enterprise is going to be any different?

Passing education funding down to the State level with no strings attached and then letting parents remove their portion of funding will mean there is less money available for State run schools which are already at their limit. I have lost count of the number of times I have seen teachers begging on social media for help in purchasing basic equipment such as colouring pencils or paints because the school has run our of funds and the teacher can’t afford to pay for it out of their own pocket any more – and why should they have to in the first place?

Burke also states that:

The new Administration must take immediate steps to rescind the new requirements and lessen the federal restrictions on charter schools^[5]Mandate For Leadership, Page 331

The problem with this is that the charter school system is already fraught with fraud^[6]Charter Schools: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) with organisations who tender to run Charter Schools wildly overinflating the number of available places to secure more funding ^[7]The Washington Post: Audit of charter school program finds big problems, Michigan gave grants to 71 schools that never opened and California gave grants to 61 unopened Charter Schools and just these two states spent $61 million on charter schools without having a single child educated^[8]Forbes: New Report: Charter Fraud And Waste Worse Than We Thought.

Does Burke truly think that removing federal restrictions on Charter Schools will improve education, or will it just line the pockets of Republican party donors?

Parental Rights Usurp Federal Rights

Burke also wants to pass more control over how their children are treated in terms of sexual identity and gender saying that “the American Society of Plastic Surgeons documented a four-fold increase in the number of biological girls seeking gender surgery between 2016 and 2017^[9]Mandate For Leadership, Page 345”.

Saying that there has been a “four fold increase” makes these figures seem alarming, doesn’t it? I couldn’t find the information Burke was working from (as usual, there are limited sources cited) however I did find some more recent figures and in 2021, 282 people^[10]Reuters: Putting numbers on the rise in children seeking gender care underwent Top Surgery^[11]John Hopkins Medicine: Top Surgery (Chest Feminization or Chest Masculinization).

282 is hardly a number that shows a mass indoctrination of people by the Woke Hive Mind now, does it?

You might be wondering what a gender affirming medical procedure has to do with the American education system, well Burke seems to think that if teachers are sympathetic to a child’s gender identity this will only act to confirm their feelings meaning that they will go ahead with life-altering surgery at a young age.

This is completely untrue of course, Burke offers no figures to back up her claims (she has a mere 19 endnotes compared to the previous section’s 128) but she certainly knows the verbiage to use in order to instil fear into parents essentially telling them that the current school system is indoctrinating their kids into all becoming trans or non-binary.

Some of the things she states are:

No public education employee or contractor shall use a name to address a student other than the name listed on a student’s birth certificate, without the written permission of a student’s parents or guardians^[12]Mandate For Leadership, Page 346.

This assumes that a child is safe enough at home to reveal their chosen name to their parents, with some children the only place they can express their true gender identity is at school but Project 2025 wants to ban this.

This also brings up other issues for all students: The name I go by is not the name I was given at birth but I was able to ask teachers at school to call me “Katy” without my parents having to intervene. Does that mean if “Stephen” prefers to be called “Steve” he would have to get written permission from his parents so the teacher is able to do so?

No public education employee or contractor shall use a pronoun in addressing a student that is different from that student’s biological sex without the written permission of a student’s parents or guardians^[13]Mandate For Leadership, Page 346.

Again, this means that a child who is not safe to be themselves at home cannot be themselves at school. Burke is apparently all for increasing educational learning opportunities so how is a deeply depressed and repressed kid supposed to learn anything when they can’t be their authentic self?

No public institution may require an education employee or contractor to use a pronoun that does not match a person’s biological sex if contrary to the employee’s or contractor’s religious or moral convictions.

So even if a parent writes in to state they are happy with their child’s chosen pronouns, a teacher may refuse to use them and continually misgender a child against the parent’s wishes – please make it make sense.

Project 2025’s education plan would bring a great deal of inequality to the education system in America.

Rather than creating a level playing field where parental choice is key, it will mean that the rich have access to the best education, funded by the State rather than them having to pay for private schools whereas the poorest in society will have less access to education and resources that they need.

In Part 5 we’re going to take a look at how Project 2025 aims to achieve their goals by circumventing Congress and legislation.

Katy Whitton

Katy is the editor-in-chief of FlippingHeck.com a blog about Self-Improvement, Productivity and Small Business Tips. When she’s not working, she enjoys gaming, making music and Reviewing Things.

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www.katywhitton.co.uk