Politico describes a meeting of wealthy Christians where Betsy and Dick DeVos explained the religious motivation behind their dedication to school vouchers.
The billionaire philanthropist whom Donald Trump has tapped to lead the Education Department once compared her work in education reform to a biblical battleground where she wants to “advance God’s Kingdom.”
Trump’s pick, Betsy DeVos, a national leader of the school choice movement, has pursued that work in large part by spending millions to promote the use of taxpayer dollars on private and religious schools.
Her comments came during a 2001 meeting of “The Gathering,” an annual conference of some of the country’s wealthiest Christians. DeVos and her husband, Dick, were interviewed a year after voters rejected a Michigan ballot initiative to change the state’s constitution to allow public money to be spent on private and religious schools, which the DeVoses had backed.
In the interview, an audio recording, which was obtained by POLITICO, the couple is candid about how their Christian faith drives their efforts to reform American education.
School choice, they say, leads to “greater Kingdom gain.” The two also lament that public schools have “displaced” the Church as the center of communities, and they cite school choice as a way to reverse that troubling trend.
The audio from the private gathering, though 15 years old, offers a rare behind-the-scenes glimpse of DeVos’ personal views — views that may guide her decision-making as the nation’s top education official. DeVos has repeatedly said she wants policies that give families choices about their children’s education — the choice of public schools included — but her critics fear that her goal is to shift public funding from already beleaguered traditional public schools to private and religious schools.
Remember the idea of separation of church and state, which Thomas Jefferson championed? The DeVos family does not accept that principle.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
There is a typo in the title and body of this piece: it should read “advancing Mammon’s Kingdom.”
And who knew that mammon was at the top of a pyramid scheme?
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And then there are those of us who see this all as pure myth. If we are correct, then the DeVos fanatics could be seen as psychopaths. But generally our group is tolerant of others who need a religious foundation to get through life, while their side sees us, atheists, as devil worshipers. What a mess.
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Here’s is an interesting piece of American History in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia about The Separation of Church and State in the United States.
1st paragraph: “Separation of church and state has long been viewed as a cornerstone of American democracy. At the same time, the concept has remained highly controversial in the popular culture and law. Much of the debate over the application and meaning of the phrase focuses on its historical antecedents. This article briefly examines the historical origins of the concept and its subsequent evolutions in the nineteenth century.”
With a lot of paragraphs in between.
Last paragraph: “Thus when the Supreme Court became engaged in church-state controversies in the mid-twentieth century, it could draw on various models of church-state relations. In choosing the more separationist paradigm, the modern Court did not create new law; rather, it built on an evolving tradition, one with a long legacy. While the debate continues over which model is more historically accurate, the idea of separation of church and state remains a core concept in the American experience.”
http://americanhistory.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.001.0001/acrefore-9780199329175-e-29
The U.S. will never be rid of fire-breathing Biblical False Prophets like Betsy DeVos.
Matthew 7:15
“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.”
Deuteronomy 18:20
But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die.”
Revelation 20:10
“And the devil who had deceived them was thrown into a lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.”
Anyone who is interested in reading all of the 100 Bible Verse about False Prophets click the following link. None of the deplorables can make the excuse they didn’t know what they were doing when they were fooled and cast their vote.
https://www.openbible.info/topics/false_prophets
Burn, Betsy and Trump, burn!
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I’ve felt for a long time that a lot of these evangelicals are anti-Christs in disguise. Unfortunately a complicated text like the Bible can be twisted to justify just about any ideology.
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Looks like we gone from the Church of the Invisible Hand to the Church of the Tiny Hands.
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Big laugh, Jon…and perhaps add to it The Church of Chaos Theory.
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Religion and politics have NO PLACE in our public schools and neither should be funded by taxpayers. Unfortunately political indoctrination in our schools is currently being funded by us.
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Ah, I’m not sure what political indoctrination in “our” public schools you are talking about.
Since about a third of public school teachers are registered Republicans, do you mean conservative political indoctrination or are you talking about the less than half of teachers who are registered Democrats or those who are independent voters who are not registered with the GOP or Democratic Party but tend to lean one way or the other?
Then again, maybe you are talking about all of them and the child who hears the conservative point of view in her science class but the liberal view in English, and then the child goes home and hears the political point of view of his parents, but maybe the mother is a Democrat and the father a Republican. Or maybe the child goes to church on Saturday or Sunday and hears the political view of her rabbi or priest or pastor depending on what religions or sect they belong to.
Oh, how confused the children must be. Do we trust them to decide on their own? After all, most adults who are registered voters, Republicans, Democratic, conservative, liberals, moderates, etc. were all children who attended those same public schools that tend to reflect their own community’s diverse political and religions beliefs. I mean, how many teachers are Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Protestants, etc?
I taught for thirty years in in California’s public schools, and I am a witness to the wide diversity of political and religious beliefs among the teachers in every subject area in the schools where I taught. The only rare teacher was an Alt-Right, far-right, white supremacist, conservative, racist, teacher that hated minorities and any religion that wasn’t the one they belonged to. But that would have been difficult for teachers that taught in the schools where I taught where 92 percent of the students were minorities and 70 percent or more came from families that lived in poverty.
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Both religion and politics can and should be taught in public schools. Both are foundations of society, but teaching comparative religion, and the history of politics is imperative, not indoctrination as DeVos suggests.
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I agree, but I think liberals have to own up to the fact that many of them were trying to indoctrinate kids into PC theology. This is one reason there’s a backlash against public schools. It’s often seemed to me in this America of progressive ed, anti-knowledge, skills-only hegemony, that there’s been a vacuum when it comes to transmitting any particular content, especially in elementary schools. The sole exception, however, has been the transmitting of PC catechism (e.g. Saint Martin Luther King) which liberal ed school professors can’t help themselves but to recommend, even though it contradicts their anti-transmission progressive ed ideology. This is not healthy. Schools school teach tons of important facts, not slanted facts, so that kids can grow up to be good critical thinkers. The fact that the populace chose Trump shows that the public ed status quo has failed.
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If the schools have been indoctrinating kids in PC theology for many years, they obviously didn’t succeed.
If all who went to public schools were indoctrinated, why was Trump elected?
By the way, many elite private schools are far more PC than public schools.
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Diane,
Young people are less racist than their elders, so maybe some of the PC indoctrination is working. But I suspect a lot of parents witness their kids learning few facts at all except for PC faves like MLK, Rosa Parks and the evils of Columbus and conclude that the schools are bent on indoctrination (which they are, in many cases) and then react by making disparaging remarks about the curriculum, which the kids pick up on and leads them to tune out the propaganda. As far as I can tell, the only historical fact that has been securely impressed on my seventh graders’ minds by our districts’ elementary schools is that MLK existed. I’m not 100% against indoctrination –e.g. perhaps we should indoctrinate kids to revere the Constitution –but I’d prefer a robust curriculum of knowledge that truly liberates the mind to think for itself rather than fruitless skills practice that leaves the mind vulnerable to believing whatever a charismatic leader tells them.
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How very interesting that some people believe that only THEY know what God wants. One wonders which, what, God they worship.
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When “god” actually means “Supremacy.”
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Those people worship the petty, punitive deity that they have constructed in their own image.
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WHAT? OMG!
Gordon, I wonder what God they worship, too.
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What a shame for the tens of millions of public school children and parents- an entire huge federal agency devoted to replacing their schools.
Seems like those folks deserve some voice in DC. I wonder if anyone outside of ed reform circles will be consulted on the federal privatization plan.
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Separation of church and state has been eroding for some time. Some of that history is here.
About the Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships | The …
https://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/ofbnp/about
The White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships coordinates Centers for Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships in various federal agencies. Each Center forms partnerships between its agency and faith-based and neighborhood organizations to advance specific goals.
History.
Under the administration of Bill Clinton, Congress began faith-based Charitable Choice provisions in three programs (welfare services, substance-abuse treatment and prevention funding, and Community Services Block Grants. His Department of Housing and Urban Development opened a Center for Community and Interfaith Partnerships.
George W. Bush’s first executive order created the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives in the White House. He set up faith-based Centers in 12 major federal agencies, adopted Charitable Choice regulations, and Equal Treatment regulations for other federal programs. He put in place regulations allowing faith-based organizations the freedom to hire on a religious basis when they receive government funds. (That regulation is unchanged, see https://www.justice.gov/archive/fbci/faq.html ).
Obama renamed the Bush faith-based office as the Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, created a new Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, and maintained the existing 12 faith-based centers in federal agencies. Under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) Obama created the Strengthening Communities Fund to help faith-based and community organizations forwarded information about services available through ARRA, especially for disadvantaged and hard-to-serve populations. Obama also created an Advisory Council, of 25 religious and humanitarian leaders to propose how faith-based and community-based groups might help meet other goals (e.g., promoting fatherhood, reducing global warming, and reducing domestic and overseas poverty).
In April, 2016 Obama officials were still tinkering with definitions and regulations for grants and contracts to accommodate Faith-based organizations. The following website shows how the process of getting public comment led to a last hurrah of regulations in each participating agency. Note that the need for all of this bureaucratic activity comes from an Executive Order and in-house regulations. No Congressional action was needed.
Obama’s deliberations (April, 2016) gave attention to the Supreme Court ruling Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, 536 U.S. 639 (2002), noting that funds for vouchers “did not offend the Establishment Clause because, among other things, the program placed the benefit in the hands of individuals, who in turn had the freedom to choose the school to which they took their benefit and “spent” it, whether that school was public or private, nonreligious or religious” Id. at 652-53.
But, the school voucher program upheld in Zelman also required participating private schools to “agree not to discriminate on the basis of race, religion, or ethnic background” 536 U.S. at 645.
You can learn more about these deliberations and comments at Final Regulations Implementing Executive Order 13559: Fundamental Principles and Policymaking Criteria for Partnerships With Faith-Based and Other Neighborhood Organizations
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2016/04/04/2016-07339/federal-agency-final-regulations-implementing-executive-order-13559-fundamental-principles-and (This is not easy to read. If you have the interest and stamina, find the specifics bearing on the Department of Education beginning on page 19373. To find that page you scroll down next to the text (within a right hand column). or, find the specifics for the Department of Education here. http://www2.ed.gov/policy/fund/reg/fbci-reg.html
Executive orders, without the drama of Congressional action, have created the opportunity for religious organizations to become “partners” with federal agencies.
Trump’s power to issue Executive orders on behalf of faith-based initiatives are certain to influence decisions on some domestic programs where he has selected cabinet members who want to expand the use of vouchers and choice. I will not be surprised to these initiatives marketed under the banner of civil rights, and/or the free exercise of religious faith. Heck,Trump and his spokespeople might claim vouchers for choice, including faith-based choice, are no big deal. They just honor a bi-partisan legacy of putting (some) faiths front and center in—you know, making America Great Again.
Here is the stickler. Watch for how this bi-partisan faith-based legacy is put into play, given Trump’s clear eagerness to “manage” Muslims.
http://www.mediaite.com/online/donald-trump-is-not-ruling-out-idea-of-a-database-to-track-muslims/
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There are folks like Betsy DeVos that need billions of dollars with which to buy influence and positions of control because they can’t rely on the power of their ideas and the cogency of their insights.
All of those folks combined don’t have the depth of understanding, not to mention as big a heart, as a true American hero:
“I think there’s many a slaveholder’ll get to Heaven. They don’t know better. They acts up to the light they have.”
“I freed thousands of slaves, and could have freed thousands more, if they had known they were slaves.”
“Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.”
Harriet Tubman.
A better education for all.
😎
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Headline: “Mike Pence’s Voucher Program in Indiana Was a Windfall for Religious Schools”…Mother Jones
Here is a partial quote from the article:
“…But all these fans of religious vouchers may find one detail in Indiana’s history disturbing, especially given their outspoken condemnation of Muslims. Pence has made clear he believes the United States is “in a war against radical Islam.” Last year, as governor, he tried to ban Syrian refugees from resettling in Indiana following the Paris terrorist attacks in 2015. And Trump proposed banning all Muslims from entering the United States. Yet Pence’s favorite education reform ensured that Indiana tax dollars paid for students to attend schools like the MTI School of Knowledge in Indianapolis.
MTI stands for Madrasa Tul-Ilm. It’s an Islamic school, where 90 percent of its 225 students receive state voucher funding for their tuition, according to the school, to the tune of more than $1 million a year, making it one of the largest recipients of state voucher money. Thanks to the vouchers, the number of students attending MTI is now triple what it was in 2011.
In 2013, a young Muslim man named Akram I. Musleh attended the school for about eight weeks, as he bounced around several schools on his way to becoming radicalized. In September, he was indicted for providing material support to terrorists after allegedly trying to join ISIS. The school wouldn’t confirm whether Musleh himself was the beneficiary of a state-funded tuition voucher.”
……………
The voucher system in Indiana sucks money from public schools. It is a way to segregate schools and provide money for religious training. The article is very good at summarizing what is happening to education under Governor Pence and the GOP majority in Congress.
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There will be Christianist analogs to Akram. Some Christian schools, inevitably, will preach extremist ideology. Perhaps this specter will rally moderate Christians to continue supporting public schools.
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Here is more of the article from Mother Jones:
In Indiana, Pence created one of the largest publicly funded voucher programs in the country….
in 2013, Pence and the state’s GOP-controlled Legislature raised the income limits on the program so that a family of four with up to $90,000 in annual income became eligible for vouchers covering half their private school tuition. They also removed most requirements that students come from a public school to access the vouchers, making families already attending private school eligible for tuition subsidies, thus removing any pretense that the vouchers were a tool to help poor children escape failing schools.
By the 2015-16 school year, the number of students using state-funded vouchers had shot up to more than 32,000 in 316 private schools…Almost every single one of these voucher schools is religious. The state Department of Education can’t tell parents which or even whether any of the voucher schools are secular. (A state spokeswoman told me Indiana doesn’t collect data on the school’s religious affiliation.) Out of the list of more than 300 schools, I could find only four that weren’t overtly religious…By the 2013-2014 school year, more than 50 percent of the school choice vouchers were going to shore up Catholic schools….
Indiana’s choice law prohibits the state from regulating the curriculum of schools getting vouchers, so millions of dollars of the state education budget are subsidizing schools whose curricula teaches creationism and the stories and parables in the Bible as literal truth. Among the more popular textbooks are some from Bob Jones University that are known for teaching that humans and dinosaurs existed on the Earth at the same time and that dragons were real. BJU textbooks have also promoted a positive view of the KKK, writing in one book, “the Klan in some areas of the country tried to be a means of reform, fighting the decline in morality and using the symbol of the cross to target bootleggers, wife beaters and immoral movies.”
Other Indiana Christian voucher schools use the A Beka program, whose history books are known for whitewashing slavery. An A Beka passage on slavery notes, “A few slave holders were undeniably cruel. Examples of slaves beaten to death were not common, neither were they unknown. The majority of slave holders treated their slaves well.”…
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