If you have been paying attention to what is happening in the field of education, then the results of a recent Cato Institute survey came as no surprise. Survey results indicate that 68% of Americans between the ages of 18-30 favor socialism over capitalism and more than 1/3rd of that group have a favorable view of communism. Since these figures are well above those of the general population, this indoctrination toward socialism is clearly not occurring at the kitchen table.

Education is considered a crucial and powerful agent of socialization of young people and critical in shaping their values, skills, behaviors, and social integration into society. Because schools serve as a structured environment where young people spend a significant portion of their intellectually formative years, we must recognize that a faculty that endorses socialism produces students who then endorse socialism. Although school boards and college administrations try to claim that political indoctrinations do not take place in America's schools, logic says otherwise. They will claim that teachers and professors are professionally mandated to teach critical analysis and allow the students to make up their own minds. However, an ideologically motivated teacher interprets that mandate for critical analysis by focusing their instruction primarily on critiques of dominant institutions or perceived historical injustices (a left-leaning framing), while spending no time critiquing non-dominant or progressive viewpoints.The student is still exposed to the process of analysis, but the choice of materials and the framing of the issues are where the teacher's ideological influence becomes most potent and noticeable. The combined effect of a left-leaning faculty and a curriculum increasingly focused on issues of social change does indeed create a powerful environment for influencing intellectually impressionable young people toward socialistic ideologies.

Today's public school K-12 classrooms are staffed by predominantly left-leaning instructors organized into radical and very powerful labor unions.The two largest public-school teachers unions, the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) promote progressive ideals, higher taxes, a broad increase in government spending, and an overall opposition to the free market. In 2020-2022, the AFT spent $25 million on political donations, with 99% going to Democrat and socialist candidates. The IEA sent 95% of their $26 million in political donations to Democrat and socialist candidates during that same time period. Their large political "war chests" give both of these unions enormous influence in Washington, D.C., and throughout the country.

How much power these unions wield is indicated by the influence they had on public policy during the Biden administration. A congressional investigation in 2022 revealed that the AFT was given access to revise and edit the Center for Disease Control's official school reopening guidance in 2021, proving that the Biden administration had a pattern of allowing the teacher's unions to influence federal policy. In 2021, the NEA sent letters to social-media companies like Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok. The union demanded that social-media platforms address what the NEA called "misinformation" about unpopular school-board policies and singled out "radicalized adults" spreading "false" beliefs about curriculum and mask mandates. Critics pointed out the similarity in timing and content of the union's demands with the demands presented to social-media platforms by Biden administration officials. A letter from the National School Board Association (NSBA) written with influence from both unions was sent to President Biden calling parents rights groups "domestic terrorists" and requesting federal assistance and the use of the Patriot Act to quell demonstrations by parents. Five days after Biden received that letter, Attorney General Merrick Garland directed the FBI and U.S. Attorneys' offices to create a task force to determine how federal law enforcement could best be used to prosecute threats from parents.