Phyllis Schlafly: Right on All Issues
Phyllis Schlafly: Right on All Issues
The Education Reporter, Eagle Forum, her family, friends, and associates mourn the passing of Phyllis Schlafly. Multiple volumes could be written about everything Phyllis got right. She understood the issues and correctly predicted outcomes in the areas of international relations, military predominance, politics and policy, and education. Education was especially important to Phyllis because it involves parents and children, and if not properly accomplished the entire nation suffers.
Decades before anyone else voiced concerns, Phyllis Schlafly predicted all the ills that currently plague society, our schools, our families, and our government. Many of these problems begin with poor education and the unintended consequences of bad education policy.
More than thirty years ago, Phyllis Schlafly decided the issues surrounding education had become so complex and serious that a unique publication was necessary to explain to parents and concerned citizens all the experimentation that was happening in schools. In February of 1986, Phyllis began the Education Reporter, a publication of Eagle Forum Education & Legal Defense Fund that details parents’ rights in education, as well as reports what’s happening at schools across the U.S.
The same concerns that Schlafly voiced are the reason socialist Bernie Sanders was recently supported by the preponderance of college students. Those who never learn about the value of our representational republic don’t know enough to try to save it. If students are taught that the U.S. is an evil nation that harms the rest of the world, they will turn against it. Phyllis rightly predicted that a lack of civics education could cause a crisis.
In August of 1995, the Education Reporter covered the National Education Association’s annual convention, at which delegates passed at least five resolutions “indicating the NEA’s antagonism toward parents who make private school or homeschool choices.” The Education Reporter stated, “One resolution attacks homeschooling directly, claiming that it is tolerable only if parents are licensed by the state and use a curriculum approved by the state education department.”
As an ardent supporter of parent-directed homeschooling, Phyllis recognized the importance of mothers and fathers educating their own children. Homeschooling is a bright spot in today’s education landscape. Homeschooling cooperatives, both formal and informal, have sprung up around the nation to support parents and to provide interaction among students.
Phyllis was always ahead of her time. The Education Reporter warned parents in 1995 to be aware that “the NEA wants teaching about homosexuality always to be part of sex education.” Today even kindergarten students are forced to learn about sex, homosexuality, and transgenderism.
The August 1995 Education Reporter says: “The NEA passed a strong resolution against what it calls ‘deleterious programs.’ Those words do not mean violence on television or in the movies. The ‘deleterious programs’ are ‘privatization, performance contracting, tax credits, vouchers, and evaluations of public schools by private groups.’” These are all things that parents still want for their children, and that the NEA has opposed for over twenty years.
When competition becomes a bad thing, the result is a “snowflake generation,” forever fleeing to safe spaces lest someone say something with which they disagree or that might hurt their feelings. Phyllis was never in favor of the “trophies for everyone!” fad. She supported free speech and the First Amendment, even when someone’s feelings might get hurt.
Above all else, Phyllis Schlafly was pro-family. When she alone spoke up against the Equal Rights Amendment as it was being passed in state after state, it was in an effort to protect the American family. Many homemakers who ended up helping her defeat the amendment weren’t aware before Phyllis informed them that passage meant they’d lose protections, like the right to stay home and care for their own children and have a husband support them, or alimony in the event of a divorce.
Phyllis wasn’t anti-gay. She was fearful that the gay rights movement would result in gay marriage, and diminish traditional marriage between one man and one woman. She was against no-fault divorce laws, which allow families to tear themselves apart far too easily, too quickly, and with no good reason. She also worried that special rights for some would result in decreased rights for others. Few would argue that these changes have had a positive effect on families.
The NEA and other progressive, leftist organizations are anti-family. They don’t want parents to have the final say about their children’s education. Or health care. They want children to decide to have sex early, often, and to provide free contraceptives and abortions when careless, mindless sex results in a child. The one choice the NEA approves of is the choice to have an abortion.
At the 1995 NEA convention, that which seemed radical is now mainstream. The following was reported in the Education Reporter:
“Global education” was given a new name, “multicultural education,” which it defines as teaching children the “cultural diversity of U.S. citizenry” and “interdependency in sharing the world’s resources.” “Global” and “interdependent” are code words for teaching children not to be patriotic, “multicultural” means Western Civilization is bad, and “sharing the world’s resources” means U.S. taxpayers should finance the rest of the world. Promoting gay relationships, leftist ideas, revisionist American history, anti-white sentiment, and anti-law and order has given way to activities on college campuses and in communities that are destructive and not conducive to learning. In fact, it’s become downright dangerous.
Phyllis pointed out that subsidized college education programs, the federal government’s involvement in loan and grant programs, would lead to high tuition because colleges would take advantage of government support. Tuition is now sky high and students who never learned about economics, markets, or capitalism in school are currently demanding free college and student-loan forgiveness. As reported in Reason, “Government subsidies have hidden the price of college and broken the market forces that would naturally keep tuition costs down, allowing universities to charge pretty much whatever they want.” (7-29-16) Progressive elected leaders are giving in to student demands, which is just one of the reasons the nation now finds itself a debtor nation, over $20 trillion in debt.
Free elementary, secondary school and college campus health clinics for students and other moves toward universal health care were decried as bad ideas by Phyllis. Today Obamacare is on the brink of collapse, and citizens have seen their health care premiums skyrocket.
Phyllis saw the faults in Common Core early on. She wanted each issue of the Education Reporter to tell the stories about how Common Core was dumbing down students, forcing them to give up great literature and to use silly math techniques, and forcing teachers to teach to tests while states over-tested children. All this is happening just when young minds should be enthusiastic to learn. She saw profiteers, whether individuals, think tanks, or corporations, trying to make money off of education, in a way that harms children.
Phyllis believed in the importance of fathers and of their vital role in the family. The welfare states’ replacement of fathers with government assistance has lead to the destruction of families, lack of discipline in homes and schools, and generations of children missing out on male parental guidance.
What would the nation look like today if more people had paid greater heed to Mrs. Schlafly’s warnings and suggestions? America would certainly be a brighter and more encouraging place.
Phyllis loved to rile feminists with her good humor by saying when she debated them, “I’d like to thank my husband for allowing me to be here.” In that same spirit, Education Reporter thanks Phyllis for her wonderful work and for remaining cheerful and “ladylike,” even in the toughest times.
