Fox & Friends alleges century-long conspiracy by progressives to brainwash small children in public schools
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From the June 14, 2022, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends
STEVE DOOCY (CO-HOST): Battle for the American Mind, Uprooting a Century of Miseducation, a brand new book that hits the shelves today. In it, Pete Hegseth and David Goodwin discuss how American education has been destroyed and what we can do to restore it. Here's an excerpt. "Make no mistake about it the historical singularity that was America's founding was a result of classical Christian education. Full stop. Our founders did not stumble their way to brilliance of 1776. They were forged in the foundry of the education of their time." And Pete and David join us live right now. And they've got the number one book in the world. Who's who?
PETE HEGSETH (AUTHOR, FOX AND FRIENDS WEEKEND CO-HOST): Pete. David.
DOOCY: Thank you very much. David, it's very nice to meet you. We were talking to Pete about this yesterday. This is part of a master plan that a lot of people don't have any idea has been going on for decades.
DAVID GOODWIN (AUTHOR): Right.
DOOCY: Regarding education in the country.
GOODWIN: Yes. Well, you know, that's when I was doing the research, some of the research through the original book, which The New Republic in the early part of the 20th century. I thought I would find a lot about labor unions and a lot about minimum wage, a lot about, you know, the things that we know that the progressives were talking about at the time. But education was in every issue. And I was wondering, why.
DOOCY: Right. And Pete who would – who drew up this master plan?
HEGSETH: Well, there were a lot of – there wasn't one master architect, John Dewey's the father of the progressive educational system.
DOOCY: But they were like-minded.
HEGSETH: Very like-minded. Almost all atheists. Almost all socialists. Eventually, almost all Marxists. And they had a plan to capture the minds of our youngest kids. And we're not talking about the lunacy of higher education. This is K through 12. They knew the affections of young people. Elementary school students would shape the way they view America, their faith, for the rest of their life. And so they set it out on a course. They didn't know exactly where it would lead, Steve. All of these architects of progressives, but they knew where it wouldn't lead: Not toward Biblical wisdom, not toward appreciation for our founding documents. And people say to David I all the time, How do I not know this history?
DOOCY: Right.
HEGSETH: 100-year history. You know why? Because the progressives write the history. They write the textbooks.
DOOCY: Right.
HEGSETH: So, David and I had to dig underneath everything that's hidden to find out the real story of how they captured K through 12.
DOOCY: You know, and David, we've known for a long time that America's colleges, for the most part. are way to the left, very progressive. But I don't think a lot of people realized until the last decade or so when they started looking in America's textbooks, how far to the left aome are trying to drag K through 12.
GOODWIN: Well, they've had the advantage. When you have the college system, you control the instruments of education all the way down to the kindergarten. Right. Because you train the teachers, you train the administrators, you train the curriculum providers. You're the ones doing the accreditation, the college – at the college level. All of that flows right from the, you know, kind of nodes of control that the progressives had.
DOOCY: And, you know Pete, so many parents got a good look at what their kids were doing during COVID-19. Your first chapter is our COVID 1619 moment.
HEGSETH: It's exactly right. You're at home looking at your kid's curriculum through your laptop, and suddenly there's a new founding date on their screen, 1619 or they're talking about gender pronouns for seven or eight-year-olds. So we start with the problem, and the first step to any recovery is understanding the depth of your problem. And we outline that. But the best part of the book, in our opinion is those five chapters at the end that are about the solution. And David runs the Association of Classical Christian Schools.
DOOCY: Right.
HEGSETH: Classical Christian Dot Org. There are hundreds of wonderful brick-and-mortar schools across the country that are the exact opposite of what our government schools provide right now. There are online options, there are homeschool curriculum options. The insurgency to take our classroom back has begun, and that's the preferred form of ideological warfare of the weak against the small. You do not have to default to progressive public schools, because otherwise, you're going to war with an educational complex that has 40 hours a week to capture your kid's mind. And that's why we call it a battle. It really is for parents and grandparents.