The federal role in education is limited as it should be because of the Tenth Amendment. Under the constitution education policy is decided at the state and local levels. So, we do not need the federal Department of Education with its 4,200 employees and $68.6 billion budget. Based on the US Census data, http://www.census.gov/, School Enrollment--Social and Economic Characteristics of Students: October 2006. That works out to federal government spending of slightly more than $9,266 per year per student. We have not been getting our monies worth. This greatly increased spending has not improved educational results[i] and this year spending has been increased to over $84 Billion dollars. At the same time new weighted standards[ii], to “level the playing field”, for educational funding are being put in place. The people in charge of the system will now determine where the money is spent based on their own objectives.

The DE was created in 1980. Its dedication to furthering the establishment of federal bureaucracy has not improved the quality of education in America. The Department of Education should be limited to a fact gathering agency. It should not have control over any money which can be used as leverage to manipulate the states. Only awards of individual merit should be allowed to students in order to further programs of national and international interest. Funding should flow from the states to all students on an equal basis. In a free country Parents should have the right to choose which school is best for their children. Free choice in education means supporting the full menu of educational options, including public schools, charter schools, private schools, magnet schools, vocational schools and home schooling just to name a few. The money should follow the child.  

We are in a crisis like we have not faced since the time Abraham Lincoln said quoting from the Bible– Luke 11:17 "A house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe our government cannot endure, permanently half trying to institute a national secular humanist religion and half clinging to the thread of hope that we will return to the founding fathers vision of freedom of religion.  We are no longer allowed to teach our children that they have freedom of choice in all matters of religion, that religious beliefs are distinctly personnel. Secular humanism is destroying the Christian foundations of our government and education system. It will ultimately tend to subvert our political freedom and happiness as more and more laws are written to "control or punish people for what they may be thinking".

Whenever the pillars of Christianity are overthrown, our present form of government, and all the blessings and freedoms which we hold so dear, will fall by the wayside. Muslim activist groups sponsored by foreign governments wage a "bloodless" revolution to fight what they call anti-Muslim bias in American public schools and promote Islam in a positive light in American classrooms using our own texts books against us. The three major U.S. publishers of world history texts – Houghton Mifflin, McGraw Hill and Prentice Hall – have all let Muslim activist review their books and in fact, some of the history books are published according to their suggestions.

Due to their efforts since 1990 – including lobbying state education boards – grade-school text units on Islam have flourished. "Across the Centuries," for one, spends more than 30 pages on Islam and includes colorful prose and graphics offering a sanitized version of Islam. The text softens the meaning of "jihad" – a concept interpreted in Abdullah Yusuf Ali's "The Meaning of the Holy Quran" to mean "waging war," or "fighting in Allah's cause" – with dying while fighting in the cause being the highest form of jihad. Holy war is not part of the definition found in the "Across the Centuries" textbook, however. "An Islamic term that is often misunderstood is jihad," the text says on page 64. "The term means 'to struggle,' to do one's best to resist temptation and overcome evil." The conflicted term "jihad" with it's double meaning is taught as a stepping stone to infiltrate and subvert our American Christian Culture for these same test books are not allowed to teach being saved by the Grace of God through Faith in Jesus Christ and as a result being filled with the Holy Spirit to guide you.

True freedom is not an internal war or "Struggle" but rather a recognition that all fall short of the Glory of God and cannot even follow His Ten Commandments and must accept the fact that He sent His only son, Jesus Christ that we might have forgiveness for our sins and the means to resist temptation. Why are foreign Muslim governments allowed to infiltrate our schools when Christians are not even allowed in their country?

Ask yourself as our early leaders did. Can any free democratic government be permanent, where the public worship of God and the support of Christian religion constitute no part of the policy or duty of the government?

The congress that wrote the first amendment considered freedom of religion an experiment to overcome the past problems with state established religions. They were worried about rivalry among Christian sects, and preventing any national ecclesiastical establishment, which would make one branch of Christianity the exclusive patronage of the national government. 

When the so called separations amendment was written, according to Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story, "The real difficulty lies in ascertaining the limits, to which government may rightly go in fostering and encouraging religion". They did not want an Anti-Christian test. They were not looking to eliminate religion from our society. They had no doubts that a secular nation would not survive.

"Probably at the time of the adoption of the constitution, and of the amendment to it, now under consideration, the general, if not the universal, sentiment in America was, that Christianity ought to receive encouragement from the state, so far as was not incompatible with the private rights of conscience, and the freedom of religious worship. An attempt to level all religions, and to make it a matter of state policy to hold all in utter indifference, would have created universal disapprobation, if not universal indignation.1
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1 See 2 Lloyd's Deb. 195, 196.

CH. XLIV.] FREEDOM OF RELIGION. 727

§ 1869. It yet remains a problem to be solved in human affairs, whether any free government can be permanent, where the public worship of God, and the support of religion, constitute no part of the policy or duty of the state in any assignable shape. The future experience of Christendom, and chiefly of the American states, must settle this problem, as yet new in the history of the world, abundant, as it has been, in experiments in the theory of government.

§ 1870. But the duty of supporting religion, and especially the Christian religion, is very different from the right to force the consciences of other men, or to punish them for worshipping God in the manner, which, they believe, their accountability to him requires. It has been truly said, that "religion or the duty we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be dictated only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence,"1 Mr. Locke himself, who did not doubt the right of government to interfere in matters of religion, and especially to encourage Christianity, at the same time has expressed his opinion of the right of private judgment, and liberty of conscience, in a manner becoming his character, as a sincere friend of civil and religious liberty. "No man, or society of men," says he, "have any authority to impose their opinions or interpretations on any other, the meanest Christian; since, in matters of religion, every man must know, and believe, and give an account for himself."2 The rights of conscience are, indeed, beyond the just reach of any human power. They are given by God, and cannot be encroached upon by human authority, without
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1 Virginia Bill of Rights, 1 Tuck. Back. Comm. App. 296; 2 Tuck. Black. Comm. App. note G. p. 10, 11.
2 Lord King's Life of Locke, p. 373.

728 CONSTITUTION OF THE U. STATES. [BOOK III.

a criminal disobedience or, the precepts or natural, as well as o.r revealed religion.

§ 1871. The real object of the amendment was, not to countenance, much less to advance Mahometanism (or Islam which did not even get recognized), or Judaism, or infidelity, by prostrating Christianity; but to exclude all rivalry among Christian sects, and to prevent any national ecclesiastical establishment, which should give to an hierarchy the exclusive patronage of the national government. It thus cut off the means of religious persecution, (the vice and pest of former ages,) and of the subversion of the rights of conscience in matters of religion, which had been trampled upon almost from the days of the Apostles to the present age.1 The history of the parent country had afforded the most solemn warnings and melancholy instructions on this head;2 and even New England, the land of the persecuted puritans, as well as other colonies, where the Church of England had maintained its superiority, would furnish out a chapter, as full of the darkest bigotry and intolerance, as any, which could be found to disgrace the pages of foreign annals.3 Apostasy, heresy, and nonconformity had been standard crimes for public appeals, to kindle the flames of persecution, and apologize for the .most atrocious triumphs over innocence and virtue.4 "

Christianity had been deformed by the demon of persecution upon the European continent, and the island of Great Britain had followed with punishment for non-conformity to the worship of the church. We face the same today as Christianity is forced from the public arena much like the laws of England merely tolerated protestant dissenters in their public worship upon certain conditions, for the most part they were considered at once irritating and degrading; Today tests are also established as government actions are used to excluded Christian ideals from public display, discussion and any mention in public schools.

The very same Congress that passed the First Amendment passed the Northwest Ordinance, which required:

Art. 3. Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.

This is a clear endorsement of the value of religion in our society, beginning in schools established and controlled by the individual states.

Yet, the 1st amendment has been turned into "the separations clause" and is now the biggest weakness in the foundational documents of the nation. It has been used to remove religion from our society and now we are lost without direction and principles upon which to stand. Lost to epicurean lifestyles celebrating secular humanism, showing no respect for the biblical doctrine upon which our constitution and laws are based, forgetting all about the rights of fellow citizens and with no regard for human life or for Jesus Christ. The secular humanist form of government today has created a Constitutional crisis that could ultimately destroy the nation.

The Constitution clearly limits the federal role in education because of the Tenth Amendment.  Decisions about education must be decided at the state and local levels with the ultimate decision being made by the parents. So technically, a profound change needs to take place in how decisions are make about how are children are educated.

We do not need the federal Department of Education with its 4,200 employees and $200 billion budget...

We need to return to teaching the common Christian cultural and moral origins we share and prepare for the long battle ahead with the people who do not value life wherever they might be located.

We should institute this resolution voted in by the United States Congress in 1782: “The Congress of the United States recommends and approves the Holy Bible for use in all schools."

President Reagan understood the importance of the Bible in this regard presenting the following in a 1983 Joint Resolution of Congress: "Whereas the Bible, the Word of God, has made a unique contribution in shaping the United States as a distinctive and blessed nation of people. Whereas Biblical teachings inspired concepts of civil government that are contained in our Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of The United States ... Whereas that renewing our knowledge of, and faith in God through Holy Scriptures can strengthen us as a nation and a people. Now therefore be it resolved ... that the President is authorized and requested to designate 1983 as a national "Year of the Bible" in recognition of both the formative influence the Bible has been for our nation, and our national need to study and apply the teachings of the Holy Scriptures."  On February 3, 1983 - President Ronald Reagan issued the above requested proclamation.

Patrick Henry in the year 1776 wrote this: "It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great Nation was founded not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ. For that reason alone, people of other faiths have been afforded freedom of worship here."

In order to understand why the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the basis of our freedom of religion we must read the Bible. Freedom of Choice is offered only by Jesus Christ.

Henceforth: Class should begin every morning with reading Bible selections and discussions about how the Bible played a unique contribution in shaping the USA. 

There is nothing more important than teaching Biblical character to the heirs of our nation.

The national government does not control the schools. Parents should be allowed to choose the nature and place of their child's education including home schooling. State and local educational funding must follow the student equally.

May the parents and students of our country Experience Christian love in profound and authentic ways as we seek to train our heirs in the way they should go". According to: (John 13:35) "By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another". This is the corner stone of individual character—Love for one another.

We will either come to accept our Judao/Christian heritage or we will be a totally Secular Humanistic Atheist society. The United States will cease to be divided, if God is confined to the inside of a Church building as Secular Humanists desire all is lost and the "experiment" in a new form of Government based on freedom of religion will have failed. We will be a nation free from Religion, a Godless mass of people tossed to and fro by the forces of the evil desires of men.

You do not have to convert to Christianity, your Religion or lack there of is an individual choice. God is Lord of both our bodies and our minds; He chose not to coerce us in our faith. He wants us to willingly follow him.

But as a nation Divided over how we educate our children we cannot meet the powerful Islamic challenge from abroad when we are fighting over the very basic values upon which the nation was founded. Let's not abandon our Judea/Christian values which have brought us to the leadership position in the world today, 

According to: (John 13:35) "By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another". This is the corner stone of individual character—Love for one another. The Christian binding that makes America, “One Nation Under God”.

TAKE ACTION! Reduce the DE funding back to pre 2006 levels and make it an information resource agency only. The Department of Education should not under any circumstances be allowed to provide funding to the states. It should not even be a stand alone agency.

God Bless the United States of America!