The Qatari government is funding teacher salaries, curriculums, and programming in school districts large and small across the country, allowing the small country to pursue a scheme of indoctrinating America’s youth.

That is what the first batch of public records requests from OpenTheBooks, reviewed by The Federalist, shows. The “cradle-to-graduation propaganda pipeline” includes grooming teachers to advance Qatari influence and talking points, angling soft cultural changes through language and field trip opportunities, and ultimately, as OpenTheBooks points out, creating “the next generation of activists ready to sew chaos on college campuses.”

Rockefeller & education

Rockefeller & education

The case, Mahmoud v. Taylor, revolved around Muslim, Christian, and Jewish parents from Montgomery County, Maryland. The county school board would not allow these parents to remove their elementary school children from portions of class actively advocating for things like gay marriage, trans-identifying children, pride parades, and the idea that a child can change his “gender identity” at any given moment.

Attorneys for the county board are claiming the purpose of the instruction was to simply engender “inclusivity,” and that the children who were being exposed to the material, ranging from pre-kindergarten to sixth grade, were only being shown that gay “marriages” exist. But that narrative was swiftly cut down by questioning from Justice Samuel Alito to parents’ attorney Eric Baxter, senior counsel at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. //

The books and instruction materials themselves are incredibly controversial, particularly for the exclusively young and captive audience they are meant for in Montgomery County, and Justices Alito and Brett Kavanaugh were both perplexed as to how it became unfeasible for the schools to allow an opt-out choice for parents.

The county offers opt-outs for “virtually everything else under the sun,” said Principal Deputy Solicitor General Sarah Harris, who is representing the Trump administration on the side of the parents. But when it comes to force-feeding children gay and trans propaganda, the opt-out is “not administrable,” according to Schoenfeld. //

Justice Amy Coney Barrett took a different route, noting how Montgomery County’s policy is not one that simply exposes children to a concept, but rather relays a point of view as an unquestionable fact.

“It’s saying: ‘This is the right view of the world,’” Barrett said. “This is how we think about things. This is how you should think about things. This is like, 2+2 is 4.”

The school board also claims that there is no religious hostility in the requirement, but Justice Neil Gorsuch pointed to instances where board members said students were repeating their parents’ religious “dogma,” and expressing anger that the issue has some Muslim parents joining forces with others who they described as white supremacists and xenophobes.

America’s education system wasn’t designed to unlock the genius in every child. It was designed to produce compliance. Efficiency. Predictability. In short—factory workers, not thinkers.

This isn’t a conspiracy theory. It’s a matter of historical record.

The Industrial Blueprint

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, as the U.S. surged into the Industrial Revolution, it looked a lot like today’s China—a manufacturing behemoth. Industrialists like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller understood that in order to fuel mass production, they didn’t need philosophers or inventors. They needed disciplined laborers who could follow instructions, show up on time, and never question authority.

So the school system was modeled on the factory floor:

• Rows of desks like assembly lines
• Bells to simulate shift changes
• Subjects taught in isolation, with minimal cross-disciplinary thought
• One-size-fits-all learning geared toward standardization, not inspiration

Horace Mann and John Dewey—often celebrated as pioneers—helped usher in this system. Dewey even said: “The teacher is not in the school to impose certain ideas or to form certain habits in the child, but is there as a member of the community to select the influences which shall affect the child and assist him in properly responding to these influences.” In other words, social conditioning, not personal discovery. //

It’s time to unplug the conveyor belt.

Let’s stop pretending our schools are sacred. Let’s start building a system that grows free minds, not gray-suited cogs.

Because our children aren’t factory products.

They’re image-bearers of God—capable of wonder, wisdom, and greatness. If we don’t fight for their minds, someone else will program them.

What we have to always do, regardless of who we voted for — you still gotta pay your rent, you still gotta take care of your kids, you still gotta take care of your business — and maybe some of what's happening, like they're trying to take apart the Department of Education, maybe that is a good thing.

Maybe it will force us to make sure that out kids actually get what they need. Maybe it'll force us to go to our state and say 'Listen, I want to make sure, since you've taken all this money from my taxes, I want to make sure that my kids get exactly what they need.' I don't have to wait for the government to do it. We can do it.

This is now in our hands. And it's gonna be tough. Nobody wants to do it, because it's a b****. But you know what? If it comes down to your survival, this is what you gotta do. You gotta take care of what you gotta take care of.

Goldberg then looked off-set, and abruptly said: "And they're telling me that we're gonna be right back."

Needless to say, you could have heard a pin drop while Whoopi told the truth about the state of public education in America. And the dour look on Sunny Hostin's face? Laugh-out-loud hilarious.

Just as good, ABC cutting off the segment with a commercial break. Why that decision was made, we'll likely never know. But do know that based on the reaction of the others on the panel and studio audience, the shocking reaction to Whoopi's comments was palpable. //

stickdude90 an hour ago

Talk about a blind squirrel wearing a broken watch... //

Avatar
TheAmerican1 an hour ago

It's almost as if she's advocating that parents have -- what's that word? It's on the tip of my tongue -- a, um, gosh, what is it?

Oh, I know! A choice in their child's education. //

Curmudgeon99 TheAmerican1 27 minutes ago

She made the argument that things being handled as close to the voters as possible is best. I don't think her big govt. loving friends are going to be forgiving toward her for this.

Girls are far better at navigating the outdated, factory-focused school systems that most public schools rely on. They can sit still for longer periods, listen more intently, and they even test better. If you're a school getting financial kickbacks for higher test scores, then boys are a complication. Moreover, if your school is being incentivized to have special programs for students with learning disabilities, as 36 states did, then getting ADD diagnosed kids was a lucrative venture.

I was a 10-year-old boy being treated like a defective girl. I was standing in the way of a public school making more money, and as such, I had to be drugged into something far more useful. It wasn't until years later that I understood that I was being used. They lied to my mother. Scared her into dosing her child with medications they told her would help me be "normal," despite having no idea what the long-term effects would be.

Does any of this sound familiar? It should. Before the jab, before "gender-affirming care," there was Vitamin R, one of the most egregious scams forced on the public, and particularly children, that was never fully addressed until decades later.

Basic concepts of Microsoft Word for beginners and those who want to start again

The thumbnail version of that is that we don't have the shipbuilding capacity we need, and we don't have the skilled tradesmen we need to build ships. You can see from the Senator's comments that Austal is literally going through all of the local community, even, as Senator Tuberville puts it, "through fast food joints" looking for tradesmen or anyone who could be trained. This is another aspect of something I've been saying and writing for years: our education system is not placing enough focus on the trades. When I was in high school in the '70s, even my small-town eastern Iowa school had a full auto shop, a full wood shop, and a full metal shop. A friend of mine graduated high school and, because of his classes in machining, was hired in a tool & die firm within days of graduating.

Building ships requires tradesmen: welders, pipefitters, electricians, and more. We don't have enough of those. //

This hearing illustrates very plainly why this rebirth of our shipbuilding capacity isn't going to happen overnight. And we don't have the luxury of time and distance we had in 1941. //

OrneryCoot
9 hours ago
High school teacher here. Did my master's thesis on something relevant to this. What would benefit our country greatly (as well as our youth) is an investment in career academies. Basic model is you do a normal K-8 education, and then spend your high school years learning a trade. Welding, construction related fields, tech related work, medical training and the like. After 4 years of real, hands on training in the field, get certified as a welder, electrician, plumber, etc. Having work studies with nearby industries is also a must. Also learn functional math that deals with how to handle finances at home and work, English for practical communication needs via email, resumes, work related correspondence, and a civics course to learn about how our nation functions and to install civic pride. Not everyone needs 4 years of Shakespeare, and that is coming from a teacher certified to teach English and history classes. An education like this provides something that is lacking for many students: a valuable, tangible benefit from their education. Not everyone wants or needs college, but they DO need to make a living. Career academies provide that. I'm sure companies like Austal in Mobile would love to see a school like that in their county, and would provide work studies galore for students

DataRepublican (small r)
@DataRepublican
Anecdotal: my kids have been homeschooled for a month now.

One child is a diagnosed ASD2 who had a full time aide in class.

The other child is a normal, thriving straight-A student.

Guess which child benefited from homeschooling to the extent he’s already doing math two grades ahead.

anon-ai01
3 hours ago
Since Jimmy Carter founded the Dept. of Education in 1978 as a payoff to the teachers' unions for their support, educational achievement for US students has gone from #2 in the world to #40. So many children cannot read. It is a crying shame. Teachers' unions oppose teaching phonics. Returning power to the local level weakens union control. Thank you, Pres. Trump and Sec. McMahon!

Every year, nearly 1 million new citizens are welcomed into the United States through naturalization ceremonies, all of whom must pass the American citizenship exam by answering 6 out of 10 questions correctly.

While 90% of legal immigrants pass the exam, only 36% of Americans can pass it!

Since 1979, the U.S. Department of Education has spent over $3 trillion with virtually nothing to show for it. Despite per-pupil spending having increased by more than 245% over that period, there has been virtually no measurable improvement in student achievement:

Math and reading scores for 13-year-olds are at the lowest level in decades.

Six-in-ten fourth graders and nearly three-quarters of eighth graders are not proficient in math.

Seven-in-ten fourth and eighth graders are not proficient in reading, while 40% of fourth grade students don’t even meet basic reading levels.

Standardized test scores have remained flat for decades.

U.S. students rank 28 out of 37 OECD member countries in math.

Florida’s Voice
@FLVoiceNews
·
Follow
BREAKING: President Trump is tomorrow signing an executive order commencing the closure of the U.S. Department of Education through @EDSecMcMahon, White House confirms to Florida's Voice, first reported by USA Today
6:02 PM · Mar 19, 2025. //

Popdaddy eburke
4 hours ago
I think the EO directs McMahon to identify what can be done at the executive level and develop a plan to present to Congress to clean up their mess.

Rapid Response 47 @RapidResponse47
·
.@POTUS: "We want to bring the schools back to the states because we have the worst education department and education in the world... we're ranked at the bottom of the list, and yet we're number one when it comes to cost per pupil."

11:21 AM · Mar 9, 2025
18.8K

Hank Reardon
3 hours ago
At LEAST four wins here . . .

• American parents love it. Replacing big government leftist indoctrination with . . . locally accountable education. Imagine that!

• Weingarten hates it. Her reign of indoctrination and $500k/yr salary are threatened.

• Carter’s legacy. Going the way of Carter. R.I.P., sir.

• Real estate prices in northern Virginia. Taking another step downward as more big government blue voters prepare to leave town. And (let’s hope) GOP voters fill the void, turning another state solidly red.

"Recruiting in the trade fields is a big problem for American companies today. We have millions of positions open and an untrained labor force to fill them," he said. //

The culture has caught up with his message, so much so that Rowe says they have 10 times more people applying for the scholarship his foundation offers. //

He's right about the shift in culture. People want to be part of this movement. You see it in TikTok accounts of plumbers, farmers and mechanics with insane numbers of followers and shares. It's the same on Instagram, X and Facebook. //

Rowe stressed that young people like Bambino are needed desperately to maintain and build our maritime industrial base.

"There are 15,000 individual companies building our nuclear-powered subs, which now, by the way, are the pointy part of the stick. If things go sideways with Taiwan and our aircraft carriers are very vulnerable, we need these submarines," he said.

Rowe said companies such as BlueForge deliver those submarines and are desperate to hire skilled tradespeople in areas such as additive manufacturing, computer numerical control machining, welding and more. //

And if Rowe gets his way, with a little help, he becomes not unlike George Bailey in "It's a Wonderful Life": a man who has had an effect far beyond what he'll ever fully realize.

When starting a reform process, the rule generally is: You only need to fire one person. After that, word gets around quickly.

It only took the Trump administration one action to impose the funding equivalent of a termination. Columbia University got the “set an example” treatment late last week. The White House announced Friday that they would immediately cancel $400 million in grants and other funding. The new Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism (JTFCAS) warned that they could eventually end billions of dollars in financial support for the school’s refusal to defend its Jewish students and faculty from organized anti-Semitic intimidation campaigns.

That got the attention of two other Poison Ivies yesterday. //

Get ready for more financial reckonings in Academia. The JTFCAS sent warning letters to 60 schools today over their failures to abide by federal law in ensuring access for students regardless of religious affiliation. "All 60 colleges — which include high-profile institutions like Columbia University, Yale University and University of Southern California – are under investigation by the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights,” reports Higher Ed Dive. Five of those investigations have apparently escalated: //

Update: A number of commenters wonder why we're funding Academia at all. Just to remind everyone, I've been making that argument for the last 18 months. But this is an excellent start in the "hoist by own petard" sense.

The truth is, “minimal education experience” is a qualification for running an unconstitutional agency that poses an existential threat to our republic. Myriad data indicate the education industry is one of the nation’s lowest-performing, and its institutions some of the nation’s worst.

Institutions are run by people. The people responsible for the horrific performance of America’s education institutions are the least qualified to improve them. This is Management 101. And it is borne out by numerous longstanding data points. Here are just a few.

We consider some advances in relational and affective neuroscience and related disciplines that attempt to resolve some fundamental aspects of the mind–brain problem. We consider the key role of affect in generating consciousness and in meeting our essential survival needs; the neural correlates of relating; how self and other are represented in the brain and awareness of self and other is generated through interoceptive predictive processes. We describe some leading models of the generation and purpose of consciousness, linking theories of affective and cognitive consciousness. We discuss psychiatric and psychotherapeutic innovations arising from this research, new integrated biopsychosocial interventions and the obstacles to be overcome in applying these models in practice.

With precious few exceptions, American schools are graduating more and more students who are illiterate, innumerate, illogical and ignorant. //

It’s the first case filed against Big Education for “deceptive and fraudulent marketing and sale of products and services” — products that allegedly caused developmental, emotional, and financial injuries.

This complaint goes straight to the heart of the matter: Big Education provides a glaringly defective product that causes undeniable harm and is demonstrably fraudulent — and its consumers, America’s families, are entitled to protection under existing consumer-protection laws. //

The Massachusetts lawsuit focuses on reading and literacy, charging that the plaintiffs have been materially harmed by these curricula — but a win could allow the families’ consumer-protection argument to be deployed more widely. //

The logic of the Massachusetts lawsuit could even be used against damaging social and disciplinary policies in our schools.

For years, Big Education has been pushing diversity, equity, and inclusion principles into every aspect of school life, promising it will bring racial harmony.

Yet systematic meta-analyses of data, capped by a widely cited study from Rutgers University, confirm that DEI has in fact the opposite effect, aggravating overall racial bias and hostility.

Big Education’s multibillion-dollar DEI fraud is ripe for consumer-protection accountability.