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Allen Quist – Challenging The New Federal Curriculum

By Theresa Fritz Camoriano

          Another interesting speaker at the Freedom 21 Conference was Allen Quist, who is a Professor of Political Science at Bethany Lutheran College in Mankato, Minnesota.  Professor Quist served three terms in the Minnesota House of Representatives, played an important role in legalizing home schooling in Minnesota, and has written a book Fed Ed:  The New Federal Curriculum and How It’s Enforced. 

          Professor Quist explained how federal legislation, such as the “No Child Left Behind Act”, creates a federal curriculum, and he pointed out that the civic education curriculum is intended to undermine the principles on which the U.S. was founded.  The goal is to move us from our foundation as an individualist-oriented society to a collectivist-oriented society.  For example, the textbook consistently treats the foundational principles as “ideas”, not as “self-evident truths”.  It suggests that these “ideas” are outdated and are no better than the ideas of other cultures.  For example, quoting from page 207 of the text We the People:  The Citizen and the Constitution:

          “As fundamental and lasting as its guarantees have been, the U.S. Bill of Rights is a document of the eighteenth century, reflecting the issues and concerns of the age in which it was written…Other national guarantees of rights also reflect the cultures that created them.  Many of these cultures have values and priorities different from our own.  In many Asian countries, for example, the rights of the individuals are secondary to the interests of the whole community.  Islamic countries take their code of laws from the teachings of the Koran, the book of sacred writings accepted by Muslims as revelations to the prophet Mohammad by God.”

          According to Quist, the curriculum teaches multiculturalism, applying the philosophy of “postmodernism” or “constructivism” (all truth is a social construct).  On the other hand, while the founding principles of the U.S. are always treated as just “ideas”, multiculturalism is not presented as being a mere idea or philosophy.  Instead it is always presented as being the truth. 

          Here is what the text says about the Bill of Rights:

          “The reaction of most people to the Bill of Rights was lukewarm at best.  Its passage had little effect on the average person…The Anti-Federalists…said the amendments were ‘good for nothing’. …Even Madison, tired of all the disagreement and dissent, had come to think of the whole experience as a ‘nauseous project’.”

          According to Quist, there are 16 pages of text devoted to the First Amendment, but only a negative statement about the Second (right to bear arms).  Also, the Ninth and Tenth Amendments (powers reserved to the states and the people) have been censored out of the text.  Quist says the text promotes a political agenda and worldview that is “hostile to national sovereignty”. 

          Quist says the unifying theme of the text is to produce a “radical transformation of American government so that we will willingly give up our national sovereignty (and freedom) and succumb to a one world-government (of tyranny) instead.”  According to Quist, “The book is really propaganda.  It is social engineering, not education.  It is decidedly anti-American and anti-freedom.”  So, once again, your tax dollars are being used to undermine the foundational principles of this country and to indoctrinate children in the utopian dream of peace through one-world government.

          Quist and his wife are energetically fighting the implementation of this curriculum, and have had some success in Minnesota, but they acknowledge that it is an uphill fight, with no end in sight.  Since those promoting the curriculum have huge amounts of tax dollars at their disposal, and those opposing the curriculum have none, it is definitely a David fighting a Goliath.  Some have said that the battle cannot be won and the answer is, instead, for parents to remove their children from the government schools and take responsibility for their education – to stop abdicating our parental responsibility to the state.  More on that approach next week.

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