Sounding the alarm on America’s “dumbed-down” educational system is the thrust of an unusual campaign for U.S. Senate in California in 2004.
Gail Lightfoot, a Libertarian who has run in four previous statewide campaigns, has garnered the endorsement of renowned New York educator and philosopher John Taylor Gatto in her bid to “increase public awareness of the true cause of our public school problem.”
With no chance of unseating Democrat incumbent Barbara Boxer or competing with her Republican challenger, Lightfoot sees her Senate campaign as an opportunity to bring Gatto’s ideas to bear on public schools and “free parents to take control of their children’s education.”
“This campaign is not about getting votes but about waking the American public up to flaws in its educational system before it’s too late,” she told WND.
On her website, she sums up the campaign this way: “If I can fan the flames of public discontent to make possible a future where our children are not herded into government schools to be dumbed down, I will count that a great victory.”
Lightfoot, 65, plans to raise money for newspaper ads that “show what Mr. Gatto’s research proves,” that “the dumbed-down history, the destruction of moral values, the ongoing attack on the family and the disturbing lack of critical thinking ability in students are all deliberate and intended.”
Lightfoot maintains that the federal government “has no constitutional power to be involved in our children’s education.”
She believes that federal aid and regulations usurp parental, local and state power and control.
“Local and state school officials are eager to do the U.S. Department of Education’s bidding to get federal funds, since they take our property and state taxes for granted,” she said. “The more federal money the schools take, the less control parents have over their children’s schools.”
Sen. Boxer says on her website that she is “working to improve our public schools, including helping communities repair crumbling schools, reduce class size and hire more qualified teachers.” She claims credit for leading “the fight” to authorize $1.25 billion in federal funds for after-school programs. The new law provides an increase of $250 million each year until reaching $2.5 billion in 2007.
No more bureaucracy
So, what would Lightfoot do to rescue American education?
She believes the first step is “to eliminate bureaucracy from the top down and put schools back into the hands of teachers and parents at the local level.”
We don’t need a federal Department of Education, she said.
“Teachers can hire the help they need and have a very slim to none administration,” she told WND. “You don’t need bureaucracy if you bring it down to local level. Private and independent schools don’t have it.”
Once school is in the hands of parents and teachers, she said, they can design schools the way they want.
“Then I think parents and teachers together will say, ‘We need a learning center, a learning lab, computers,’ then guide children as to how they learn best,” Lightfoot said.
Social efficiency
Gatto, New York state’s former Teacher of the Year, presents evidence in his books that American schools are functioning according to design. He maintains that they were copied from a utilitarian, 19th century Prussian model that creates uncritical, worker drones and consumers with a minimal education.
In his highly acclaimed book, “The Underground History of American Education,” he contends that the real makers of modern schooling weren’t at all who we think. Most knowledgeable education historians would point to names such as Cotton Mather, Horace Mann and John Dewey. Gatto, however, says the real shapers were the new American industrialist class at the turn of the 20th century, entrepreneurs Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller and Henry Ford, and capitalist financier J.P. Morgan.
Gatto, who taught public school for 30 years, says these men employed the ideas of Frederick W. Taylor, who inspired the “social efficiency” movement of the early 20th century and provided the “operating philosophy” for fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.
As a result, Gatto says, modern schooling has added a “fourth purpose” to the traditional three, which were “to make good people, to make good citizens, and to make each student find some particular talents to develop to the maximum.”
The “fourth purpose,” was for mass schooling to became a “servant of corporate and political management,” he says, noting that this aim “steadily squeezed the traditional three to the margins.”
Gatto’s book, published in 2000, was called “a work of breathtaking scholarship and encyclopedic scope,” by Adam Robinson, co-founder of The Princeton Review. Among endorsers were noted sociologist Christopher Lasch, who said, “Your ideas are splendid!”
Gatto has made some 1,000 appearances in the last decade communicating his belief that schooling should have as much flexibility, diversity and market choice as humanly possible. He encourages parents to homeschool their children or start charter schools.
Lightfoot ran against Democratic Sen. Diane Feinstein in 2000 but admits she garnered virtually no attention as Feinstein regained her seat without campaigning. She expects Boxer to put up a fight, though, noting that there are rumors the Republicans are considering a surprise candidate that could challenge the incumbent.
Lightfoot said she remains committed to stances she took in her 2000 campaign, including privatizing Social Security.
A registered nurse by profession, she was the Libertarian Party candidate for California secretary of state in 1998, placing second among third party candidates with 2.6 percent of the vote. She says her political philosophy was shaped by the Declaration of Independence and reading the works of Ayn Rand, author of “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead.” She is married with three children and five grandchildren.
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