This month, Education Reporter is offering something a little different to our readers. Instead of reviewing one book, we’re providing a reading list for adults. As our subscribers know, Phyllis Schlafly Eagles is continuing the work Phyllis did for faith, family, and freedom for many years, and our substantial archives include many book reviews she wrote from 2001 through 2016, with a few more that were added later.

We’re highlighting 10 books from those years, with snippets from each review and a direct link to the full review in the Schlafly Archives. This is beneficial to readers in two ways. First, it gives them a chance to obtain books they might have missed that Phyllis believed were worth reading. As you will see, they are just as poignant now as when she reviewed them. Secondly, we are introducing readers to the Schlafly Archives, which are open to the public. Enjoy!

Crimes of the Educators: How Utopians Are Using Government Schools to Destroy America’s Children, by Samuel Blumenfeld and Alex Newman, WND Books, 2014, Thriftbooks

One of Sam Blumenfeld’s last books, this important deconstruction and explanation of everything that is wrong with American education today should be required reading for parents, educators, legislators, and any American who wants to see our nation survive.

Our education system, public schools and schools of education that train teachers, have been taken over by radicals. Blumenfeld and Newman say that “socialist utopians have been responsible for inflicting more pain on the human race than adherents to any other political philosophy.” And that they have swept into the realm of education.

Grave Influence: 21 Radicals and Their Worldviews that Rule America from the Grave, by Brannon Howse, Worldview Weekend Publishing, 2009, Amazon.com: Books

Brannon Howse leads readers on a whirlwind tour of 21 historical figures and the anti-capitalist, anti-Christian worldviews that motivated them to plan and promote the destruction of the most free and successful nation in history.

Some names in this gallery of radicals are familiar: Nietzsche, Dewey, and Kinsey, to name a few. Readers learn that Dewey, “the father of modern American education,” was a leader in the Marxist movement. His primary interest in schooling children was not to teach them history, science or literature, but to change their values and make them “fit” for life within a socialist state.

One-Party Classroom: How Radical Professors at America’s Top Colleges Indoctrinate Students and Undermine Our Democracy, by David Horowitz and Jacob Laksin, Random House, Inc., 2009, Thriftbooks

David Horowitz and Jacob Laksin have painstakingly researched the course offerings and teaching methods at 12 major universities. Not only do their findings indicate a vast leftwing conspiracy, they also demonstrate a total unwillingness of the faculty and administration to address the lack of academic freedom in the classroom.

Course after course dedicates itself to the theses that Marxism never failed, that differences between men and women have no basis in reality but are imposed by society, and that America’s distinguishing characteristic is its oppression of minorities. Nor do educators advance these opinions as theories to be proved. They presuppose them and use their classroom time to inculcate even more radical ideas in their students.

The Burden of Bad Ideas: How Modern Intellectuals Misshape Our Society, by Heather MacDonald, Ivan R. Dee Publishers, Chicago, 2000, Thriftbooks

Ms. MacDonald believes that bad ideas naturally have bad consequences. She writes that these bad ideas have proliferated since the 1960s, springing from an “inflexible ideology” among American intellectuals that “prevents them from seeing clearly the reality in front of their eyes, if it doesn’t square with theory.”

Central to this ideology is the notion that the poor should not be held responsible for their own behavior because they are victims of an unjust and racist society. Once that premise is accepted, MacDonald writes, the way is paved for “government to assume the role of parents.”

One Nation: What We Can All Do to Save America’s Future, by Ben Carson, M.D., Penguin Books, 2014, Amazon.com: Books

One Nation is Carson’s account of America’s worst problems along with suggestions as to how we can best solve them. He is greatly concerned about overspending and the debt that is being foisted on future generations. Carson identifies federal programs that have poor results for citizens and that add to the indebtedness that will eventually cripple the nation.

He calls on the nation to rekindle “enthusiasm for individual freedom and the reestablishment of the U.S. Constitution as the dominant document of governance.”

The Story-Killers: A Common-Sense Case Against the Common Core, by Terrence O. Moore, Create Space Publishing, 2013, Amazon.com: Books

The Story-Killers exposes the truth about Common Core (CC). Promoters argue that we must adopt CC standards or else students won’t be “career and college ready” or able to succeed in “twenty-first century global competition.” But education is not only about getting a job, nor is it only about attending college. Education is meant to prepare individuals for life as well-informed, independent, and analytical thinkers.

Dr. Moore suggests there is a “crisis in literacy” that is the result of “schools not teaching students to read properly since about 1960.” Every experimental fad has been a “disaster.” Common Core replaces great literature with inferior recent works and relies heavily on informational texts.... When a valuable literary work slips in, the CC “story-killers” ruin it for students by making them tear it apart with boring “compare and contrast” exercises and other dissections “in a lifeless, mechanical way.”

Worshipping the State: How Liberalism Became Our State Religion, by Benjamin Wiker, Ph.D., Regnery Publishing, 2013, Thriftbooks

“Secular liberalism should be litigated against as a violation of the First Amendment” because it is a religion, according to the author of Worshipping the State. When Christianity is removed from public discourse, a state develops that leaves no room “for the worship of anything but itself.”

Liberalism has pushed the nation toward erasing all traces of Christianity from the public square, Wiker writes. He offers a study of governments and the church through the ages, focusing on humanist political philosophers, including Machiavelli, Hobbes, Spinoza, and Rousseau. After explaining how we got here, Wiker addresses what can be done to reverse the current disaster.

Blue Collar Intellectuals: When the Enlightened and the Everyman Elevated America, by Daniel J. Flynn, ISI Books, 2011, Better World Books, Thriftbooks

One Massachusetts prep school estimates that only a few dozen books have ever been checked out of its library at one time. The New York Public Library now offers video games, a sign that libraries have, in the words of author Daniel J. Flynn, been transformed “from centers of education to centers of amusement, from quiet sanctuaries in a noisy world to extensions of that high-decibel environment in which ‘shh’ is the only verboten sound.”

Blue Collar Intellectuals calls for a return to the days when libraries held actual books and leisure time was not all wasted on video games and reality TV. Flynn examines five of the 20th century’s “blue-collar intellectuals,” thinkers from a working-class background who aimed to share their hard-won education with a mass audience.

The Declaration of Independence: A Betrayal of the American Dream, by Dr. Sal Martingano, Balboa Press, 2014, Amazon.com: Books

“Socialism takes over a country by ignorance and ever-increasing entitlements,” according to Sal Martingano. He says socialism means “citizens become totally dependent on the government” and that they eventually find themselves in “bondage.” This will happen when Americans vote to have the government support them or are so poorly educated that the Constitution no longer means anything to them.

The Declaration of Dependence paints a picture of America a trillion dollars in debt and vulnerable to deceit because of the “dumbing down” of citizens who are no longer able to do the due diligence required to keep the government in check ... [T]otalitarianism succeeds “when citizens are willing to trade freedom for the perception of safety.”

Takedown: From Communists to Progressives, How the Left Has Sabotaged Family and Marriage, by Paul Kengor, Ph.D., WND Books, 2015, Amazon.com: Books

Paul Kengor points out the absurd situation in which we find ourselves: that those who suggest using caution, of sticking with natural law and biblical law, with biology and tradition, are treated as the extremists!

Kengor traces the evolution of same-sex marriage as it became a cultural adaptation of communism’s goal to destroy the family unit and to get rid of religion. The enemies of communism are “morality, tradition, religion, and God.” He says, “The takedown of marriage has arrived, with the boundaries that always defined it removed. Most of all, the notion of a God, a Designer who set those boundaries, had to be removed and is being removed.”

Want to be notified of new
Education Reporter content?
Your information will NOT be sold or shared and will ONLY be used to notify you of new content.

Click Here

Return to Home PageEducation Reporter Online - October 2025