The political MEME we know as socialism, was never part of the state ,but was rather a grass roots emergence whose utility became more and more obvious.
Using education for indocrination was the first interference and rather natural to the process of nation building. Extending the process through grade twelve became necessary in order to also produce trainable adults. then the universities saw an opportunity to operate the training programs. not wonderful but still effective.
Socialism on its own free of power politics is actually sound economics if applied properly free of political inteferance. After all, a properly applied minimum wage as a minimum job covering all human basics eliminates wastage and empowers the natural community to build our civilization.
Obviously we must end the Marxist program pretending to be socialism.
Liberate Education from the State
February 11, 2026
https://www.fff.org/explore-freedom/article/liberate-education-from-the-state/
“Socialism is the triumph of an idea over common senses.” Konrad SeyfferthEducation should be a private choice, like food or housing, and should be offered entirely through self-supporting schools that face the judgement of a free market.
If you have been paying attention to what is happening in the field of education, then the results of a recent Cato Institute survey came as no surprise. Survey results indicate that 68% of Americans between the ages of 18-30 favor socialism over capitalism and more than 1/3rd of that group have a favorable view of communism. Since these figures are well above those of the general population, this indoctrination toward socialism is clearly not occurring at the kitchen table.
Education is considered a crucial and powerful agent of socialization of young people and critical in shaping their values, skills, behaviors, and social integration into society. Because schools serve as a structured environment where young people spend a significant portion of their intellectually formative years, we must recognize that a faculty that endorses socialism produces students who then endorse socialism. Although school boards and college administrations try to claim that political indoctrinations do not take place in America’s schools, logic says otherwise. They will claim that teachers and professors are professionally mandated to teach critical analysis and allow the students to make up their own minds. However, an ideologically motivated teacher interprets that mandate for critical analysis by focusing their instruction primarily on critiques of dominant institutions or perceived historical injustices (a left-leaning framing), while spending no time critiquing non-dominant or progressive viewpoints.The student is still exposed to the process of analysis, but the choice of materials and the framing of the issues are where the teacher’s ideological influence becomes most potent and noticeable. The combined effect of a left-leaning faculty and a curriculum increasingly focused on issues of social change does indeed create a powerful environment for influencing intellectually impressionable young people toward socialistic ideologies.
Today’s public school K-12 classrooms are staffed by predominantly left-leaning instructors organized into radical and very powerful labor unions.The two largest public-school teachers unions, the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) promote progressive ideals, higher taxes, a broad increase in government spending, and an overall opposition to the free market. In 2020-2022, the AFT spent $25 million on political donations, with 99% going to Democrat and socialist candidates. The IEA sent 95% of their $26 million in political donations to Democrat and socialist candidates during that same time period. Their large political “war chests” give both of these unions enormous influence in Washington, D.C., and throughout the country.
How much power these unions wield is indicated by the influence they had on public policy during the Biden administration. A congressional investigation in 2022 revealed that the AFT was given access to revise and edit the Center for Disease Control’s official school reopening guidance in 2021, proving that the Biden administration had a pattern of allowing the teacher’s unions to influence federal policy. In 2021, the NEA sent letters to social-media companies like Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok. The union demanded that social-media platforms address what the NEA called “misinformation” about unpopular school-board policies and singled out “radicalized adults” spreading “false” beliefs about curriculum and mask mandates. Critics pointed out the similarity in timing and content of the union’s demands with the demands presented to social-media platforms by Biden administration officials. A letter from the National School Board Association (NSBA) written with influence from both unions was sent to President Biden calling parents rights groups “domestic terrorists” and requesting federal assistance and the use of the Patriot Act to quell demonstrations by parents. Five days after Biden received that letter, Attorney General Merrick Garland directed the FBI and U.S. Attorneys’ offices to create a task force to determine how federal law enforcement could best be used to prosecute threats from parents.
Political influence does not end with contributions from the unions. Surveys indicated that in 2022 68% of personal political donations by K-12 teachers went to Democrat and socialist candidates. That percentage increases to 84% when we include faculty from higher education. These political leanings are reflected in the educational goals of the instructors. In a 2007-2008 survey, a significant finding was that a higher percentage of educators considered it “very important” to encourage students to be social change agents (58.5%), than to teach the classics of Western civilization,(34.5). That percentage promoting social change grew to over 70% of all instructors by 2020.
In higher education, the percentage of faculty identifying as on the left of the political spectrum has risen from 44% in1998 to 66% in 2024. Significant surveys of college humanities faculty indicate that 70% of the professors surveyed are on the far left of the political spectrum. Within the humanities, the most popular majors are English and history. Both disciplines are described as “monolithically left-leaning,” with 80% of English and history professors self-identifying as politically left or far left. It should be noted that both those subjects are required in nearly all general education requirements in American higher education.
The social sciences present a similar picture. Sociology professors self-identify as either “radical” or “left” at a rate of 83%. Given the strong history of Marxist/critical theoretical traditions in anthropology, it should be no surprise that the percentage of anthropologists that self-identified as Marxists exceeds 25%. The percentage of political science professors who identify as left of center (liberal or far-left) is also at more than 60% and is characterized by a significant numerical imbalance between those that identify as far-left and those that identify as conservative. Economics professors are also far out of line with the nation’s general population. Economics faculty members that self-identify as left of the political center outnumber those who identify as moderate or on the right by around 3 to 1.
The political imbalance of college faculty is especially prevalent at America’s more elite colleges. A 2018 study by Mitchell Langbert of Brooklyn College found that in a survey of 51 top tier colleges, 20 of them did not have any registered Republicans on the faculty and the rest present conservatives as a single-digit minority. The realization that college faculty members identify far more often as Marxist, socialist, or radical than identify as conservative or libertarian would indicate that the diversity that higher education seeks among its faculty does not include diversity of thought.
Government-run and government supported schools are inherently “socialist institutions” that promote the principles of state control and collective, non-competitive resource distribution, thereby undermining the philosophical basis of a free-market capitalist society. The present educational model instills a collectivist mentality where young people become accustomed to state central planning and the idea that a crucial service should be provided equally and without market-driven incentives for quality. As for parent’s involvement in the education of their children, the left often indicates that they should not be involved.
When asked to explain the reasoning for his veto of a bill that would have required schools to inform parents about sexually explicit content in assigned readings, former Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe stated “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” The Michigan Democrat Party posted on their website the following statement: “The purpose of a public education in a public school is not to teach kids only what parents want them to be taught. It is to teach them what society needs them to know. The client of the public school is not the parent, but the entire community, the public.”
The view that the family is an essential, voluntary, and pre-political institution that should be free from state interference is not endorsed within public education. As a result, they refuse to recognize that the clients of America’s schools are the people who pay for them. The only way to return control to the educational consumer is to end public schools. In addition to being petri dishes for socialist policies, public schools are designed to harbor gross mismanagement and financial waste. Government-run schools often have bloated administrative costs and lack incentives to use resources efficiently. Private schools, which must operate on a budget while maintaining quality to attract students, are generally more efficient and of higher quality.
While we see in some states a move to allow greater choice among public schools it generally does not resolve the failings of public education. The promotion of school vouchers still involves government collection and redistribution of wealth and keeps the government-school system in existence. We need to go well beyond that idea. Entirely dismantling the tax-supported government K-12 school system would not only eliminate the immense overhead and regulatory costs associated with public schools, it would also improve the overall quality of education through free-market competition, especially for those in underserved communities.
As for our colleges and universities, what will make things better is to withdraw all government support, which would force each school to shed the protections that are provided through politics and lobbying. Eliminating federal funding for both public and private universities removes the leverage the government has to impose political mandates, such as DEI programs, Title IX enforcement, FERPA, and demands for ADA accommodations. It would make higher education more reliant on tuitions and donations and bring a more competitive element to the industry.
In regard to research activities, changing the funding model from reliance on government support to private and corporate support will dramatically change higher education’s direction and efficiency. The need for a return on investment will reduce funding for programs perceived as having less practical economic return or being overly focused on critical social theory. The public and corporations will be free to support whatever research they like. No more would people be forced through taxation to fund programs and projects they don’t like.
By divorcing the university budget from the political budget cycle, the institution gains the freedom to set its own policies, manage its own affairs, and select its own curriculum without fear of federal financial retribution. If that curriculum is not in keeping with the market or the quality of instruction and research do not meet market expectations the market will withhold support and some institutions will go out of business. Those schools that cannot survive in an openly competitive market, do not need to exist.
The bulk of faculty and administrators in tax supported schools believe that the government gave them a mandate to determine what young citizens are allowed to think. Teaching the conviction that there is a higher, moral standard that dictates what is right and just has given way to the belief that people in government and at the front of the classroom know what is best for all of us. It is time to put an end to that educational tyranny by ending government supported education.
Education should be a private choice, like food or housing, and should be offered entirely through self-supporting schools that face the judgement of a free market. Our ultimate goal should be the complete liberation of education from the state.
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