In a comprehensive video presentation on the state of American education, Charlie Kirk delivers a scathing critique of the federal Department of Education and advocates for its complete dismantling. The video, while containing a sponsored segment about student loan refinancing, focuses primarily on Kirk’s educational philosophy and his support for returning education to state control.
Charlie Kirk states that “There never should have been a federal centralized Washington DC-based Department of Education. Never should have been.” According to Kirk, the department represents a “pullet bureau controlling what your kids learn interfering with what education should be.” He argues that proper education is fundamentally about pursuing what is “good, true, and beautiful,” with teachers serving as “gardeners allowing kids to grow into what they actually are, not carpenters trying to cut them into something that the administrative state wants.”
The investigation reveals shocking statistics about educational outcomes. Kirk reports on a particularly disturbing case: “She graduated high school with honors. It’s a true story. CNN.com. She graduated high school with honors, but she can’t read or write. Now she’s suing.” This refers to Alicia Ortiz, a 19-year-old freshman at the University of Connecticut who allegedly cannot read or write despite graduating with honors from high school.
According to Kirk’s reporting, the administrative bloat in American education is staggering. Citing Dr. Larry Arn from Hillsdale College, Kirk states: “There are about 11 million people that work in education in this country. About 7 and a half million of the 11 million are not even teachers. They’re paper pushers, administrative bureaucrats. They are the bloat.”
Kirk contrasts the current educational model with the classical education received by America’s founding fathers. “Our founding fathers were educated classically,” Kirk explains. “Our founding fathers were educated with local communities studying the ancient texts. Our founders understood their Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, Montesquieu.” He emphasizes that “Every founding father was classically Christian educated and boy did they know their Bible.”
The video includes footage of President Trump discussing his plans for the Department of Education. Kirk quotes Trump as saying, “We want to bring the schools back to the states because we have the worst literally 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.”
Kirk argues that the centralized “Prussian German model of education has failed this country,” explaining that this model is “hyper centralized, technocratic” and focused solely on skills rather than wisdom. He advocates for a bottom-up approach to education, stating that “Education definitionally must be bottom up, not top down.”
The presentation also touches on international education rankings, with Kirk noting that American standards have decreased significantly. “We are like 27th in the industrialized world,” he reports, highlighting the disconnect between America’s high per-pupil spending and poor educational outcomes.
The video concludes with a memorial tribute to Charlie Kirk, who passed away six months prior to this recording. The segment emphasizes Kirk’s faith and his impact on bringing people to Christianity, with testimonials about how his work inspired thousands to attend church and explore their faith.
Key Facts — All Alleged
| |
|---|
| Who | Department of Education, Alicia Ortiz, University of Connecticut, Dr. Larry Arn, Hillsdale College |
| Amount | Not disclosed |
| Location | Not specified |
| Program | Department of Education |
| Status | Alleged |
In Charlie Kirk’s Words
“There never should have been a federal centralized Washington DC-based Department of Education. Never should have been.”
— Charlie Kirk
“There are about 11 million people that work in education in this country. About 7 and a half million of the 11 million are not even teachers. They’re paper pushers, administrative bureaucrats.”
— Charlie Kirk
“She graduated high school with honors, but she can’t read or write. Now she’s suing.”
— Charlie Kirk
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Dear [Representative Name],
I am writing as a concerned taxpayer regarding alleged education system failures fraud in your state. Recent independent investigations have brought to light troubling patterns of waste and abuse involving taxpayer-funded programs.
I urge your office to:
- Investigate the allegations of education system failures fraud documented in this and related reports
- Support stronger oversight and accountability measures for federal and state funding
- Ensure that taxpayer dollars are protected from fraud, waste, and abuse
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Full Transcript
Auto-generated transcript. May contain errors.
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There never should have been a federal centralized Washington DCbased Department of Education. Never should have been. There never should have been a department of education that is a pullet bureau controlling what your kids learn interfering with what education should be. Education properly understood is the pursuit of good, true, and beautiful. Teachers should be gardeners allowing kids to grow into what they actually are, not carpenters trying to cut them into something that the administrative state wants. The Prussian German model of education has failed this country. You see, the German model of education is hyper centralized, technocratic. We’re going to give you nothing but skills. You see, our founding fathers were educated classically. Our founding fathers were educated with local communities studying the ancient texts. Our founders understood their Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, Montescu. founding fathers understood the great thinkers that eventually built Western civilization. Education definitionally must be bottom up, not top down. Many of our founding fathers were even sent a sent abroad to learn at then the greatest universities on the planet. But education then was not what it was. It is today. It was about the Socratic exploration towards truth. Every founding father was classically Christian educated and boy did they know their Bible. They knew the roots. They knew the Torah. They knew the story of the Exodus. They knew Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. They knew Romans and they knew first and second Corinthians. We can celebrate America. But if we don’t understand that how we educated our founding fathers is one of the reasons why we have such a great country, then we are we’re failing. One of the main reasons we like partnering with Hillsdale College, the current top-down model has bloated budgets, too many bureaucrats. Dr. Larry Arn from Hillsdale came on our show and gave us a breathtaking number. There are about 11 million people that work in education in this country. About 7 12 million of the 11 million are not even teachers. They’re paper pushers, administrative bureaucrats. They are the bloat. This is President Trump continuing calling for the dismantling, the destruction, and the end of the pernitious Department of Education, Play Cup 25. » Can you tell us anything about the education department that you’re going to uh dismantle? » We are we want to bring the schools back to the states because we have the worst literally 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. We want to not only have school choice, which is important, but we want to bring it back to the states so the states can run the schools and they will be every bit as good as the top educational departments anywhere in the world. » This means more money for states. But just look at this empirically. The more we have gotten away from a parent-based, family-based, citizen-based, student-based learning model, the more that our standards have decreased. The standards of American education are lackluster. We are like 27th in the industrialized world. There is a It’s a true story. Can you guys resend that story that I thought was a parody? There’s a young woman who got honors from her high school. I think I’m getting this right. She was part of the honor society and she could not read or write. So, she’s suing her school. It’s a It’s a real story. She’s suing her school because they gave her honors, but she cannot read or write. You go to almost This is it. She graduated high school with honors. It’s a true story. CNN.com. She graduated high school with honors, but she can’t read or write. Now she’s suing. That is the Department of Education. She cannot read or write, but she’s an honor student. The product of the Department of Education. And what we are getting out is not just the lowering of standards, but it is the downfall of our great nation. It’s a it’s a true It’s a CNN story. Alicia Ortiz is 19 years old, freshman at the University of Connecticut, and she can’t read or write. She was accepted into the University of Connecticut without being able to read or write. Relentless in spirit. You’re listening to the Charlie Kirk show. » You know, we have the best advertisers, the best sponsors, partners. Um, Good Ranchers is run by a couple amazing Christians, Patriots, Ben and Corley Spell out of Texas. They have a crazy story about Corley’s health uh that they actually talked about with Charlie right here in this studio. Uh God miraculously healed her and that’s their opinion. So take it up with them if you disagree with that sort of thing. I believe in that that absolutely 100%. God of the Bible and uh anyways they run good ranchers. They are proud patriots and America’s turning 250. They’re all about America. They support our ranchers. They get the best cuts of meat and then they ship it to you in boxes. So it but it’s frozen. It’s beautifully sealed. It comes right to your house. You don’t have to go out to the store. Skip all of that. Save money. So every cut they offer is raised on local American farms and ranches. Pasture to the final seal on every box. All American. So go to good ranchers.com today. Put in your order. Get pick which cuts of beef you want. You’ll get to pick a free meat that will be included in every order for life. And you’ll get $25 off your first order just by using code Kirk. K I R K. That’s Kirk for $25 off your first order at good ranchers.com. goodanchers.com. American meat delivered. Amazing people. I love those guys. I’m actually I should have I got to contact them. I’m supposed to see them soon. All right. I’m excited about our next guest, Dr. Paul Ray. He’s a professor of history at Hillsdale College. He’s the chair of the Charles Oi and Luis K. Lee uh Western Heritage Center. He’s also the director for the Senator Sen Center of Military History and Strategy. » Woo, that sounds fun. So, we want to talk to Dr. Paul Ray. Welcome to the show, doctor. It’s great to have you back. You You are a very accomplished gentleman. » Thank you. Thank you. I I And it’s good to be back. » It’s great to have you. We want to talk about Iran. And again, we we’re approaching this as an educational uh segment. We want people to understand Iran better. But what do people need to know about the people in the history of Iran better? » Well, the first thing to understand is the Iranians are an ancient nation very much aware of themselves as a nation. » If you look at the Arab world, if you leave aside Egypt, none of the countries in the Arab world are really countries in the old-fashioned sense of the word. The Egyptians have always been on their own and they have a very powerful understanding of who they are. Uh the rest of the Arabs are part of Islam. Uh and there’s no Syria. There’s no Iraq. That’s a that’s a European creation. Uh but Iran is a nation. » And when Islam came to Iran, when they were conquered by the Arabs, they didn’t switch their language. They didn’t go over to the language of the Quran. They retained Persians. So there was a kind of cultural resistance built on a pride in their nation. Uh that’s extremely important for understanding them. Now if you look at recent history in that part of the world, I mean look, they were a great empire in the 6th century BC. uh it is Iran that was responsible for the Xerxes invasion of Greece. If you look at the recent history of Iran, uh it’s not been entirely positive. It was a kind of play thing in the 19th century. Uh the oil uh in the south uh the British exploited that. Very little of the money went to the Iranian people. And one consequence of this is the Khar dynasty was overthrown by a general who then became Shaw. And it’s this the Shaw’s father, the father of the Shaw that we knew 50 years ago. Uh the Palabi family took over. and his goal was to restore the Iranian nation, to restore Persia to its strength. Uh, and he to do that he had to get the Russians out. They were threatening in the north and the English out of the south. And he tried uh to play with the Germans during World War II as a way of getting rid of the English and the Russians. and the English and Russians joined together and booted him and put his 16-year-old son, the Shaw that we once knew, » uh, in power. Now, these two people, the two Palab Shaws, had a kind of goal for Iran. Their model was Mustafa Kimal of the Ottoman Empire and then of Turkey, the man who came to be called Adatururk. And what they wanted to do is to bring Iran into the 20th century. So they were major modernizers. Uh Adaturk succeeded in this and he was able to succeed in this because after World War I, the allies that had won that war, the British, the French, the Italians, uh and so forth, the Greeks wanted to split up Anatolia among them. And he was sent, he had been the hero of the battle of Gallipoli fighting against the British. He was sent by the Sultan to disarm the population of Anatolia. And he did the opposite. He turned them into an army. He defeated the Greeks, drove them out. Uh the Italians, the French and the British withdrew and he created modern Turkey. So he was a hero. And as a hero, he was able to get away with a great deal. Uh and and what did he try to do? Well, he tried to push Islam into the private sector to create a secular state. He abolished the cathed uh when they set up radio stations uh right in the beginning. Half of the radio announcers in the 1920s were women, half of them men. Took a long time for Barbara Walters to become an announcer in the United States. Think of that difference. In 1950, there were more women teaching at at Turkish universities than in American universities. More women chairing departments in universities than in American universities. Same thing was true for Egypt. So there was a kind of modernizing movement that swept the Islamic world. uh Egypt as well as Iran. But the Palavis weren’t heroes. They didn’t have the advantages he had. And they ran into trouble both from the British and the Russians, as I explained, but also from the Mullas, who did not want Turkey to be dragged kicking and screaming into the 20th century. » Iran. Iran. Right. Yeah. » Yeah. Uh Iran, you’re actually right. Uh so uh what happens in the 50s and 60s is that the younger of the two shaws achieve some success by using the Americans to get the British out and arrangements are worked out so that a great deal of the proceeds from the oil that came from Iran ended up in the hands of the government. What did they do? They built roads. They built schools. They built uh uh hospitals. Uh they they they sent large numbers of Iranian students abroad to study. At the time of the Iranian revolution in 1979, there were 50,000 Iranian students studying in the United States. And they were buying a great deal for Iran. There were 50,000 Americans living in Thyron, mostly businessmen, selling them weapons and everything you you could imagine. Uh, this attempt to get them rapidly moving into the 20th century upset people. A lot of the students who went to the United States were radicalized and came back wanting to throw out the Shaw. A fair number of them were communists. Then there were the rural people who were devout and the mullers. One of the things that the younger Shaw did was called the green revolution. He took land away from the great land owners including the mullers and he distributed it among the peasants of Iran. So what builds up gradually is a kind of explosion. » There are two parties to this explosion. On the one hand there’s the religious party led by the Ayatollah Kumeni uh who is a man of cunning ruthlessness and eloquence. On the other hand, there was a mass of people with no particular direction and no particular leader. Uh the people from the leading families in Thrron, the younger people uh and the ones who had studied in the United States. Uh the consequence is when the crisis came in 1979, Hommeni managed to fool the urban population, this modernizing population into thinking that they could live with him perfectly well. Uh the revolution takes place, the Shaw is pushed out. Uh he was a dying man at that time, dying of cancer. uh and Hmeni then edges out the urban population and he establishes something like a totalitarian regime. Uh the other day I gave a talk here at Hillsdale College on this and I woke up in the morning and I asked myself I wonder if there are commasaars in the revolutionary guard and in the Iranian army. That is to say political officers u in Russia. This was the people from the party who watched over the military guys watched over all of the officers. uh and I went to AI that source of great wisdom uh and on this occasion it really was a source of wisdom because it provided very good detail on this and yes there are commasaars in the Iranian army. » So this is a regime of surveillance in which the guardians are surveiled also by mullas who serve as political officers. They can arrest any one of the officers of the military officers. Uh they can reverse any decision that a military officer makes. » Uh this is quite a u a welldisiplined well organized regime. » Dr. Ray. » Uh » yeah, this is I you had me wrapped. My attention was wrapped. This is uh very fascinating and really important. On Tik Tok, teens get over 50 built-in protections from the start. But for parents, further visibility and control of content can help create the right environment. That’s where family pairing comes in. 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You are commanded to go give and to produce and to risk to then go sew into other people. That is a biblical idea that has made the world a profoundly better place. We must put God first in everything that we do. We are nothing here but just for a short instant short little glimpse. We act not out of outcome but we act out of obedience. Everybody this was not earned. You guys were a vessel. We were a vessel. Psalm 1071. Oh, give thanks to the Lord for he is good. For his steadfast love endures forever. » I have to say this without getting emotional, but I’m very proud of my husband. You are so intentional with your faith and you are so intentional with just how you are as a father and a husband. » Becoming a father has made me first of all understand that what I’m fighting for is beyond even yourself. We do not wrestle against flesh and blood but against principalities and darkness and spirits. » Cuz at its core, what we are fighting is a spiritual battle. And if you’re here and you don’t believe in God, okay, fine. I’ll pray for you. And I hope you find Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior cuz it will change your life. How do you want to be remembered? » I want to be I want to be remembered for for courage for my faith. That that would be the most important thing. Most important thing is my faith in my life. We miss you, Charlie. 6 months doesn’t feel real. still 6 months almost exactly. » Yeah. Lost him on September 10th and it is March 10th. So, here’s to you, Charlie. And, um, we had to play it. This is his show. It will always be his show. So, um, Blake, any thoughts? You know, it’s Erica said that if Charlie was given the choice to undo what happened and come back, he wouldn’t. She thought because of what was unleashed by it. I like to I’ve gone a couple times in the last uh week or so where we have uh one of the buildings here on the on the campus is just all of the mail packages, gifts we yeah we’ve received or that people have left outside the campus which we still encourage people to come. We still see people there. So if you’re passing through Phoenix, uh stop by. We love to see people make a visit. Uh, but I look at that and you know, we still get the emails as well. You know, people talking about they started going to church because of Charlie, they kept going to church because of Charlie. Some of them we even get ones where they say, “I’m not really sure if I believe God exists, but I’m still going because Charlie said to.” And, you know, we want to encourage that. You know, leave leave your heart open. And we’ve seen so many cases of that. And I know I think Charlie would even say like if you know if it would help one other person come to Christ you know my martyrdom you know it would be worth it. And we’re not seeing it’s not one person it’s it’s hundreds thousands you know maybe around the world. Yeah. Hundreds millions » because it is a true it truly did have a global impact. » Uh and » it is it’s also true that because » because of what happened to him you never have to see we never have to see Charlie lose his fast ball. We never have to see Charlie » get old, become, you know, become tired. He’s always as he was. He’s » I would have loved that brave. He’s that brave young hero going out onto the campuses speaking to young people, reaching young people, » and we’ll always have that example. » Even Dr. Ray, uh, I know you’re hanging in there. Maybe a little pivot on the six-month mark of losing Charlie. You’re a historian. What did what did Charlie’s contribution and what happened? What did it mean historically? What in in the whole scheme of things, what does it mean to you? » Well, he started something and he was sufficiently a force that I don’t think it’s simply going to stop. » I mean, I you know, you’re continuing his show. I was on his show when he was still with us back in July and August a couple times. Uh, and I was struck by his energy, his sincerity, his open-mindedness. He was interested in listening as well as in talking. But the other thing is he was a young man who moved a great many people and I don’t think that’s going to stop. And obviously you don’t think it’s going to stop uh or you wouldn’t be continuing the Charlie Kirk show. » Correct. Yeah. And um he he enjoyed his conversations with you, doctor. I know that. And you you bring a a wealth I I literally was sitting here the whole time just I I you you provided context to the Middle East that I was not aware of uh between the Turks and the Egyptians and the Iranians and um and he loved learning. He loved that’s why he loved Hillsdale you know he called it the beacon of the north America’s greatest university college and um and you guys are continuing that on and we’re continuing to work with you guys and we’re continuing to work with Dr. AR and uh we just really appreciate your perspective. I know this was a pivot that I didn’t pref I didn’t prepare you for doctor but you’ve you’ve handled it uh brilliantly and um it’s a credit to Hillsdale College that you are uh part of their faculty and you guys can all learn from uh the great professors at Hillsdale. Go to Charlie for Hillsdale. It’s not I didn’t you know it’s not why we had Dr. Ray on. We wanted to learn about the history of the region. But check it out because Hillsdale is one of these these institutions that makes America so special. It it preserves it’s like salt um that you preserve these great ideas for another generation. So check it out. Charlie for Hillsdale. Final word to you. Uh Professor Ray, we have about a minute till the break. » Okay. Um I’ll tell you a story. Uh I spent some years in Turkey 84 to 86. Uh and I ca went back there in 2002, met a group of Turkish journalists, one Iranian journalist with them. And at that time there were pro-American demonstrations at soccer games by just people doing it, chanting in favor of America. And I thought maybe this is the time the revolution is going to go under. And I asked the Turkish the the Iranian journalist and he said, “No, the people who handle security in Iran were graduate students in Eastern Europe in the communist period. They know how to handle a crowd.” » And then he added, “What they don’t know how to handle is their own children. There will be a counterrevolution in Iran, he said, but it’s going to take some